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New beat for musical militants

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA Sep 12 2008 07:23

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There’s more than one way to skin a cat. You can put pressure on the courts by staging a riot or by using kwaito. Or both.

Whenever crowds gather to support Zuma in KwaZulu-Natal, they are continuously fed a mix of maskanda music, praising him specifically, and house and kwaito beats to keep his younger groupies’ hips shakin’.

During the march on the Scorpions office in downtown Durban on Wednesday, which called for criminal charges against Zuma to be dropped, music pumped as organisers exhorted the faithful to “show the country and the police that nothing will stop us from getting these charges against our president [Zuma] dropped. We must show the police that they can’t stop us.”

This is becoming typical: utterances carrying layers of profound sub-textual ambiguity.

Police spokesperson Vincent Mdunge confirmed that pro-Zuma supporters had goaded police during the march, when buildings, including government buildings, were “invaded” by marchers and workers inside were “subjected to serious duress. They were intimidated and threatened if they did not go outside to support the march.”

The protest violated the Regulations of Gatherings Act, with groups of Zuma supporters continually deviating from the agreed route to disrupt traffic and badger drivers out of their cars to add to the support.

At some point protesters attacked police with “bottles, stones and rocks”, according to Mdunge, forcing them to use rubber bullets and tear gas. He said two police officers suffered serious head injuries.

Organised by the ANC’s eThekwini region -- KwaZulu-Natal’s largest and, arguably, most virulently pro-Zuma structure -- the march was a pointed reminder that the musical-militant mélange whips listeners into a frenzied state of Zuma adulation and intolerance for any other voice besides His Master’s
.
The ANC’s eThekwini chairperson, John Mchunu, was unapologetic: “The radical part of our plan went very well and we will keep pushing until Zuma’s charges are dropped,” he said.

In this mix of mindless militancy and music, the toyi-toyi becomes a kwaito-generation shadow of its former self.

CONTINUES BELOW

Kwaito and mid-tempo house music is vacuous, repetitive and bereft of creative intelligence. “You are the music while the music lasts,” TS Eliot reminds us.

So it’s unsurprising that Pietermaritzburg is plastered with signs advertising a bash on Friday featuring Trompies, L’Vovo, T’zozo and Professor, Izingane Zomo, Jub Jub and many more.

The posters, dominated by the musical line-up, states the bash will start at 9am at the Pietermaritzburg High Court. This, coincidentally, is where Judge Chris Nicholson will deliver his ruling on whether the National Prosecuting Authority acted illegally by not consulting Zuma before recharging him.

If one looks very closely, occupying minute space are the words “Hands off our President” and the emblems of the ANC and its youth wing.

To casual passers-by, it looks like nothing more than a poster for musical entertainment.

Perhaps the ANCYL knows something that, until Friday morning, should be known only to Nicholson.

And they’re preparing to celebrate.

Perhaps it is merely looking to swell its numbers outside court in a bid to legitimise its claim to be the voice, and fist, of those determined to keep Zuma out of court.

Whatever Nicholson finds, it appears that Zuma’s lawyers will proceed with their application for a permanent stay of prosecution, scheduled to be heard on November 27 and 28.

What, one wonders, does Nicholson make of the blend of music and political agitation?

He is, after all, the author of Richard and Adolf, a book examining the anti-Semitism in composer Richard Wagner’s polemic works and music and the influences it had on Hitler.

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