The role and place of struggle songs in post-apartheid SA

AmaBhunu bangabantu. iBhunu ngumuntu ngabantu … and they too have rights under our Constitution and the Freedom Charter. Tata Madiba said in 1994 that “never again will we be at war with one another”, why chant about killing and shooting?

Is the bank of our history so bankrupt that we have to dig deep into its barrel and scrape out Awudubule ibhunu as the epitome of what we celebrate about the struggle for liberation?

With our Zimbabwean neighbours seeking refuge in our country, should we encourage the chant of “One Settler, One Bullet?”

Should we chant “Liberation before Education” as the vast majority of our people are still not fully liberated economically?

With spiralling crime rates, should we yet again proclaim “good fences make good neighbours?” The word apartheid was used as slogan by the National Party and the NP-led government. Shall we encourage others to chant that word at rallies?

Why don’t we celebrate songs like our national anthem? Or Igama lama khosikazi malibongwe, wathint’ abafazi wathint’ imbokodo?

Or delve into our rich cultural and creative history and echo the songs of Boipatong, Sum’bulala and Black President by MaBrrr. Why don’t we sing “inhlupeko iphelile”? Or Thina Sonke Masakhane? What about A Luta Continua, also by Miriam Makeba?

Celebrate your heritage, but do not alienate your fellow citizens. “Although we are indisputably shaped by our pasts and its events and people, we are not indefinitely bound by it.”

These songs and chants are rooted in a particular period of our collective history, a period marred by blood, violence and oppression.

We must act proactively be crafting a new, inclusive and common South African identity that does not seek to marginalise or alienate any citizen, but make them feel proud to be associated with our South African nation building project.

The ANC Youth League is the first to complain about the lack of participation by white people in general, but are then at the forefront in alienating them and creating the impression that they are not welcome. We read today about Malemaphobia. Is this the country we want to live in?

Put it in our museums and in our libraries so that people can see what we resoundingly rejected in 1994.

Militant and provocative struggle rhetoric does not belong at the forefront of public discourse in a modern, democratic and new South Africa. In 1994 we said: “Out with the old and in with the new.”

Our heritage is not set in stone. Orwell famously said “those who control the present, control the past, and those who control the past control the future”.

Culture and the interpretation and celebration of a heritage is dynamic and never static. It is up to each generation to define its own approach to its heritage.

Are we going to remain stuck in the past? Will we remain slaves of our past? Or learn from it, take the best of it, take that which is in-line with our new democratic and inclusive dispensation, and build our own future?

Celebrate our struggle history when the struggle against inequality, corruption, poverty, oppression and exploitation has truly been won.

Instead we read that in the City Press that Mantashe says “the intention of the song was to inspire and mobilise people”. To do what? Awudubule ibhunu?

We read that Winnie Madikizela-Mandela insulted the judiciary by calling the Equality Court illiterate — this the very democratic institutions that our struggle sought to create.

Will we, 20 years from now, be chanting “burn the bitch” as part of our heritage, as was the case at Zuma’s rape trial?

No. Cope proclaimed “Thina Sonke Masakhane!” Let us build our future in partnership, with a progressive agenda that looks to that future, and brings true hope and real change to our people.

Taken from preparation for discussion as national head of communications for Cope Youth Movement on YFM with Faith Mangope