Appendix 6 - International Music Council

IMC MUSICAL DIVERSITY PROJECT: SOUTH AFRICA
I. The complementarity or reciprocity between the protection of musical diversity and
that of human rights
Under the infamous policy of Apartheid of the previous South African government, the
following anomaly was found: on the one hand there was a policy of divide and rule, as
evidenced for example by homelands for different ethnic groups. In one sense this
demonstrated a recognition of diversity. On the other hand there was also repression of
diversity, as witnessed by the insistence on the use of the Afrikaans language – this led to
the well-known Soweto Riots of 1976. However, all was understandable in the context of
the promotion of the position of the then ruling White minority, over, and at the expense
of, other citizens of the country.
Against this background it is interesting to read in Manda Tchebwa’s 2005 book African
Music: New Challenges, New Vocations, published by UNESCO, “Generally speaking,
almost the whole of this music zone (note: he is referring to Southern Africa, and
specifically Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe) has been dominated and
influenced by South African music genres, which in turn have been nurtured by the
imaginations of migrant workers who, under apartheid, came from all over the region to
work in the mines .. A question, however, arises: how did this music manage to survive
for so long in the repressive atmosphere imposed by racial segregation? In Franck
Tenaille’s opinion, it was ‘apartheid, in its obsession to classify, that favoured the
preservation of the body of music in the Bantustans and, at the same time, through the
mines, the shebeens (clandestine ghetto bars), the churches, and led to the appearance of
hybrid genres, such as marabi, kwela, mbaquanga, mapantsula and kwaito. These genres
adapted many of the colonizers’ instruments (pennywhistle, organ, accordion, guitar and
brass) and went on to develop numerous imitative versions of American styles (from bigband
to disco)’” (Tchebwa 2005: 40).
Currently, post-1994 and the country’s first democratic elections, there are two points
about the so-called ‘New South Africa’ I would like to reiterate, having made them in a
recent paper delivered in London 1 . First of all a more appropriate term to describe our
country is, I believe, the ‘Newer South Africa’, as first coined, I believe, by my colleague
at the University of Pretoria, the well-known author and music therapist, Mercédès
Pavlicevic. 2 Because, of course, all is not suddenly “new”, although we do have excellent
policies in place. (And where there is a lack of real legislation this can even be seen as
positive, pointing to the fact that we do not regard any of our cultures as being under any
threat – this point was made by Ms Marianne Feenstra, current Chair of our Music
Standards Generating Body, in response to the point made in the document The task for
1 See paper entitled “Music Education: the African Patient”, delivered on invitation at a seminar on What is
a National Curriculum? at the Royal College of Music, London, UK, on 17.02.06.
2 “Taking Music Seriously: Sound Thoughts in the Newer South Africa” in Muziki, Journal of Music
Research in Africa, vol 1:1, 2004, pp. 3-19.
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