---
title: "Paul Simon’s Graceland at 40: A boycott-busting, rule-breaking, crossover cult hit endures"
description: "Forty years after its release, Paul Simon’s Graceland remains a musical landmark in the New South Africa. This article by two South African authors is an intergenerational homage to the album, and the country that made it possible."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "HOMAGE TO HOPE OP-ED"
author: "Deon Maas and Anelia Heese"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/deon-maas-and-anelia-heese/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-08-27-paul-simon-s-graceland-at-40-a-boycott-busting-rule-breaking-crossover-cult-hit-endures/"
published: "2026-08-27T13:47:25"
updated: "2026-08-27T13:47:30"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 2115
---

# Paul Simon’s Graceland at 40: A boycott-busting, rule-breaking, crossover cult hit endures

> Forty years after its release, Paul Simon’s Graceland remains a musical landmark in the New South Africa. This article by two South African authors is an intergenerational homage to the album, and the country that made it possible.

By Deon Maas and Anelia Heese · Published 27 August 2026, 15:47 SAST · Updated 27 August 2026, 15:47 SAST

## Key points
- Set against an apartheid South Africa cracking at the seams, Paul Simon arrived as an outsider — guided around Cape Town by troubadour David Kramer while unwittingly stepping into a fraught cultural landscape.
- Graceland broke the cultural boycott and the rules of the time, splitting opinion: some called it a betrayal, others saw it as an unprecedented spotlight on apartheid that amplified international attention.
- As a 43-minute, 18-second record it became a proud, durable conduit for South African music — launching careers (notably Ladysmith Black Mambazo), widening audiences and seeding later homegrown genres like kwaito, gqom and amapiano.
- But the album is not guilt-free: questions of cultural appropriation, power imbalances and unpaid credits/royalties persist, even as its catalytic role in South African music is undisputed.

## Content

If there was one artist in apartheid South Africa that knew how to musically step across the colour line, it is David Kramer. Kramer was the Afrikaans singer whose music was the most banned from airplay on radio, and he was rejected by the Afrikaner establishment for daring to stage musicals with his collaborator Taliep Petersen that showed that Afrikaans was not necessarily a white language.

So it was rather fitting that he was acting as a tour guide for Paul Simon during the recording of the Graceland album. In an anecdote featured in the song, The Paul Simon Story, he tells the tale of showing Simon the tourist hotspot of Cape Point near Cape Town. While there, a bus full of South African tourists halts, disembarks, sees Kramer and swamps him for autographs and photos (this was the time before selfies). No one recognises the world-famous Simon who is left alone by the crowd, watching the spectacle unfold in front of him.

For those born then, South Africa in the Eighties has a unique allure. It is recalled with the cushiness of nostalgia, but roughened with a macabre excitement, since thrill is ultimately a byproduct of violence. With the Graceland album playing in the background, the location of those first memories of the puppies and the trampoline in the backyard sits snugly next to towns that became defined by atrocities. The childhood home, a red-bricked island among the death squads of Vlakplaas, the Sebokeng massacre, the Soweto protests.

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/QAQmoNxGjJPPY59XXMSFNG7rT6M=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/0000177646_876463.jpg)

*David Kramer in Johannesburg on 18 September 2012. (Photo: Gallo Images / Foto24 / Loanna Hoffmann)*

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/lWOkxXyBy_VXcSovwfBYDCDAreg=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/000054168_917189.jpg)

*Taliep Petersen and David Kramer in 1986. (Photo: Gallo Images / Media 24)*

Those who came of age around the time of the first State of Emergency, declared in July 1985, could no longer escape the fact that the fragile shell of totalitarianism was cracking. When prompted, the suburban perpetrators of apartheid speak of this time with an initial stoicism and resignation. Then, almost predictable to a T, the narrative is slated away with a persistent stutter when the lived experience revisits the body of a SADF veteran 40 years on: the shrill wail of someone being necklaced; the acrid smell of gogos wetting themselves during a midnight raid; the piercing stare of a four-year-old throwing a pebble at a Casspir, imitating his elders, as seen through the scope of an R4 rifle.

### Cracks in the façade

The second State of Emergency determined that you couldn’t mention or write about the State of Emergency, not only limiting protest even more, but also preventing the press from reporting on it.

However, besides suppressing mass democratic movements in the townships, South Africa of the Eighties was, paradoxically, soul destroyingly boring for the young adult. The good boys and girls who came of age under the National Party were not up to causing any trouble, and any action or statement that challenged the norm meant trouble. Furthermore, the borders were closed and there were restrictions of movement.

Due to cultural boycotts by the British Actors’ Equity Association and Australian unions against apartheid, the only content on television provided by the sole, state-controlled broadcaster were all American: Miami Vice (translated to Afrikaans), Dallas, MacGyver, The Cosby Show and Knight Rider.

> Pushing things too far could earn you the ‘undesirable’ label from The Committee

Perhaps because the government was so busy squeezing in other places, some cracks started appearing in the façade. Sunday sport made its debut on television, moving away from strict state prohibition on the matter. It did not cause the end of the world, as preached by some churches. Social norms around the presence of women in bars started relaxing, except on Sundays, when they were all closed by law. After a 36-year ban on mixed marriages, the activist Protas Madlala and his white American wife became South Africa’s first couple since 1948 to marry legally across racial lines. This news made international headlines, possibly the first positive thing said about South Africa in a while.

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/x7EgJ3xaXHo98Tbh5xMmeB9ZtG8=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/PXPW0244_974021.jpg)

*A South African Defence Force parade in Pietermaritzburg, 1985. (Photo: Paul Weinberg / Gallo Imagrs)*

Culture was changing, albeit artificially, and too slowly. American schlockmeisters Cannon Films, propped up by South African government subsidies, were riding rough over the South African landscape, making unforgettable films like American Ninja 2: The Confrontation (1987), River of Death (1989), Ben, Bonzo and Big Bad Jo (1988), and Peter Fonda’s Freedom Fighters (1988).

Protest movements in the arts were tolerated merely because it had small, elitist appeal. Pushing things too far could however still earn you the “undesirable” label from The Committee: plays by Athol Fugard, John Kani, Winston Ntshona, Bartho Smit and the cross-dressing Afrikaans satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys were banned. To sanitise any semblance of a mixed heritage, Afrikaans music by Kramer was banned from airplay. Translated schlager was played instead. Joseph Charles and Rufus Radebe of the reggae group Splash were jailed for singing a pro-Mandela song at the Wits Free People’s Concert.

> Stoned and drunk, fellow South Africans embraced those they have never met before and were not allowed to mix with

Internationally, artists recognised that the situation in South Africa was not normal. Peter Gabriel’s Biko, Special AKA’s Free Mandela and Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock made a wider audience aware of what was happening. But since all these songs were banned from airplay in South Africa, they had limited impact domestically, with South African artists not benefiting in royalties nor stature.

Little Steven drove Sun City (and would later give himself the credit that he single-handedly brought down apartheid). The cultural boycott meant that those artists prepared to break it – Queen, Elton John, Tina Turner, Ray Charles, Rod Stewart – were rewarded handsomely, not only with an exorbitant performance fee, but by a hungry audience deprived of any wistful entertainment.

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/0AfB8a58sYkGnkbDHgoMFbrzwdI=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/GettyImages-2172389332_121781.jpg)

*Steven van Zandt (Little Steven) performs during the Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on 15 September 2024. (Photo: Taylor Hill / WireImage)*

### Abnormal became normal

In 1996, Pik Botha, the former apartheid minister of foreign affairs, was asked if there were any specific turning points that made the inner circle of the National Party realise that they couldn’t keep the lid on apartheid forever. Botha did not refer to any major military battles of the Border War or protests, but two local cultural events.

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/jn4nDDJmilv_JPaqDY15hqoHZyE=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/0000196591_700279.jpg)

*Pik Botha at Lynnbridge Mall in Pretoria on 15 August 2013. (Photo: Gallo Images / Foto24 / Herman Verwey)*

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/kWvickfH5N7avbQb2BA5kpJLp6Q=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/images36_903744.jpg)

*The Concert in the Park in Johannesburg on 12 January 1985. Attended by 100,000 paying customers and 25,000 pirate viewers, it was the biggest music show to date in South Africa. (Photo: Nightclubs of the 80s 90s – South Africa)*

Concert in the Park was a benefit concert held in Johannesburg on 12 January 1985. Attended by 100,000 paying customers and 25,000 pirate viewers, it came to be the biggest music show yet in South Africa. It was the first concert that allowed both performers and an audience across the colour line. Stoned and drunk, fellow South Africans embraced those they have never met before and were not allowed to mix with, to hear music that they might have heard on the radio, but that was hitherto bereft of context.

It is speculated that the concert was given permission to proceed because authorities believed it would affirm the hatred the government was nursing and cause mayhem between the different races that had been successfully kept apart until then. But the power of music and youth proved quite the contrary. The dissent had become the mainstream. The abnormal became the normal, the normal became the abnormal.

The other movement Botha mentioned was the rebellious Voëlvry tour. Voëlvry (Afrikaans for “free as a bird” and “fugitive outlaw”) was the first movement of mass dissent using Afrikaans music and caused boycotts, bannings and protests at the major Afrikaans universities. If they can’t even keep the lid on their own kids, never mind those in the rest of the country…

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/b4eGCR0p91zO75pymMidGhKWL-4=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/ED_South1018_391802.jpg)

*The Voëlvry tour in 1989. (Photo: Paul Weinberg / Gallo Images)*

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/H36sfYswrCZZARzyHmv8O6xL4t0=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/PXPWO114_643031.jpg)

*James Phillips performs with the Cherry Faced Lurchers on the Voëlvry tour in 1989. (Photo: Paul Weinberg / Gallo Images)*

Paul Simon stepped into this geographic and mental isolation and inferiority complex. Fresh off the commercial failure of his previous solo album, Hearts and Bones, he was looking for something to revive his career, and a bootleg cassette of the Boyoyo Boys led him there. In the process, he was breaking a lot of rules.

The idea of mixing “pop music” as the West understands it with an indigenous African sound is not new. Afrikaans boeremusiek artists of the 1930s were some of its pioneers. South Africa’s first rock band, The Vikings, headed by Manfred Mann, incorporated the pennywhistle and kwela influences on their 1959 album Rock Party With the Vikings at the Club Pepsi. The rock band Wildebeest further experimented with African drumming on their 1981 Bushrock 1 album.

> It made a lot of people believe that there was actually merit to the country and its musical output, something that was doubted by a lot of people

The Eighties saw the rise of “crossover music” in South Africa – music that was not merely influenced by heritage across racial lines, but incorporated both black and white sound. It could therefore reach a broader audience on separate radio waves: a black and a white audience could attend live gigs, albeit separately. Juluka, Hotline and Mango Groove enjoyed commercial success domestically. But they could only reach marginal success internationally, since being political pariahs meant no one wanted to take a chance and risk money in case of a backlash, and there was no existing platform to sell it from. It was forbidden for artists to step into the country, and even more difficult for South African artists to step out.

### Hope in 43 minutes, 18 seconds

Simon stepping into South Africa was, of course, a different matter. With fame and money comes power and no matter how much criticism is directed your way, if you produce something that people really love, all the problems will go away. Graceland’s cult status among young South Africans today is proof of that.

The album allowed South Africans to enjoy their own music as heard through a foreign ear, and that built a sense of pride. It made a lot of people believe that there was actually merit to the country and its musical output, something that was doubted by a lot of people. Maybe it condensed a form of hope, an idea of a South Africa not of promoted possibilities, but of a navigable reality, into 43 minutes and 18 seconds.

The debate around Simon’s breach of the cultural boycott was a huge story, even in isolated South Africa. As everywhere, there were those who saw Graceland as a crime and those who saw it as an opportunity.

No matter how it was seen, the debates around him breaking the boycott received media coverage all over the world, which in turn led to more focus on apartheid and the fact that it had to go. Even if the attention was negative, it was positive. It did not normalise apartheid but served as a magnifying glass, one that would ignite the fire of concentrated attention three years later with the speech of the then prime minister, FW de Klerk, to unban the ANC.

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/OIAjMpcoRzdfmL_We9-4uqH2fv0=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/GettyImages-2213740998_717588.jpg)

*Paul Simon on The Graceland Tour in Brussels, Belgium, on 15 June 1989. (Photo: Gie Knaeps / Getty Images)*

![Heese-Graceland at 40](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/gCY_JLrsY3b2XMqcGrPiv4U3D20=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/ED_452672_100500.jpg)

*Ladysmith Black Mambazo perform in the Joburg Theatre on 25 May 2023. (Photo: Gallo Images / Oupa Bopape)*

However, the album is not guilt-free. Simon could have been more generous with songwriting credits. As recently as 10 years ago an emergency overnight payout of $10,000 was made to MD Shirinda after he claimed that he had never been paid royalties.

Forty years later, the album still does not escape questions around cultural appropriation, power imbalances and active consent. But between all of this the fact that it served as a springboard for South African music can never be denied. Ladysmith Black Mambazo went on to win five Grammys and South African musicians who had never set foot outside the country got to tour the world and launch new careers. In the subsequent decades South African music has shaken off the restrictions of the isolation and American influences of apartheid, as the popularity of kwaito, gqom and amapiano proves. **DM**

*Deon Maas, a South African based in Berlin, is a media strategist, visual artist and an award-winning author and filmmaker. Anelia Heese is a community experience designer, facilitator and author working between Germany, South Africa and Australia.*