Dear Mr President,
There are a few people who will pinpoint exactly when songs entered our Struggle folklore. However, songs as a form of expression have always been part of Africans, in joy and in sorrow.
It is instructive that this is not unique to Africans in Africa but also in the diaspora, hence we learn about the negro spirituals that were sung in the cotton fields in America during slavery.
Closer to home, women coped with the arduous physical work in the fields through singing. When the colonial government plucked their men from their rural existence to work in the mines, it was songs that they used as a coping mechanism. When they were bundled into single-sex hostels on the Witwatersrand, these oppressed men sought respite through song and dance on days they would not be working.
Indeed, Mr President, it is this aspect of Africa that has baffled anthropologists and Western imperialists – that even during hardships, we sought solace in song.
Songs were also used to encourage and motivate. One of our most famous songs, “Shosholoza”, was employed to motivate workers to do heavy lifting.
When the African National Congress was founded in 1912 by primarily middle-class and educated men to organise our people against the oppressive colonial regime, songs soon emerged as a rallying call.
These songs were not sanctioned by any committee and emerged at a particular epoch and were compositions of the membership itself.
When the ANC and other liberation movements were banned and some of our comrades were incarcerated, it was the songs that served as encouragement and motivation not to give up.
Struggle songs were sung on Robben Island when the oppressor sought to break the bodies and spirits of political prisoners through hard labour at the quarry. Songs also served as succour during the hard exile years far away from home in the camps where our guerrillas trained to prepare a military takeover of their country.
Mr President, the emergence of toyi-toyi is another baffling aspect to outside observers.
The industrial dance has been analysed by those who simply did not understand why the oppressed would chant and hop in expression of their dissatisfaction with the status quo.
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When the ANC was finally unbanned in 1990 and exiles returned home and political prisoners released, they were welcomed in song, dance and chants.
Most of these songs were sung in indigenous languages and therefore did not raise eyebrows. They were understood by our people but the oppressor was deaf to them.
In 1993, when racists assassinated one of our foremost Struggle stalwarts, Comrade Chris Hani, it was through song that we gave him a fitting farewell and also as our expression of our anger towards the dastardly apartheid regime that created the conditions that led to his untimely death. In a packed FNB stadium, when then President FW de Klerk had lost control of a country teetering on the brink of civil war, we sang Hamba Kahle Mkhonto, whose lyrics are unequivocal about our intention to “Kill the Boer”.
However, it was only when then ANC Youth League leader Peter Mokaba chanted “Kill the Boer, the farmer!” in English that the oppressor raised eyebrows.
Despite this ditty being part of Struggle folklore and not a composition of Comrade Peter Mokaba, the white racists were sufficiently discomfited and sought an explanation of the meaning of the song and whether it was a call to arms and to rise against their race.
In a media conference, Comrade Peter Mokaba explained at length that the chant had nothing to do with inciting an uprising against individual whites but was our expression to fight the system of oppression.
Later, during a submission of the ANC before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, former ANC President Thabo Mbeki and his delegation explained the epistemology of Struggle songs to the commissioners.
That ought to have been the end of the matter. However, 27 years after democracy, a court of law was asked to preside and pronounced against the same chant and Struggle song.
Mr President, while this demonstrates that our democracy indeed works, it is also shameful that others would seek to use the Constitution to censor our history because of their discomfort.
There is no shred of evidence that our Struggle songs were deployed to incite the barbaric native to murder white people.
As a matter of fact, white people as a proportion of the population are shielded from the violence prevalent in our society, despite their loud protestations.
The victims of violence in this country remain black people in general and black women in particular, and not white farmers.
It is in this spirit that the ANC welcomes the judgment this week that the chant “Kill the Boer” cannot be banned. Simply because it does not incite a race war.
Even in contemporary history, Struggle songs continue to be composed to define a uniting cause such as we saw during the recent Fees Must Fall protests.
The labour movement is also prolific in composing songs that define their struggles to better their working conditions.
Songs have also proven a uniting force over centuries in Africa and will continue to be so.
Singer Blondie Makhene recorded some of our Struggle songs in the early 1990s and there was never an issue by those who sought to erase our history.
We are pleased that these songs will live on in memory and new ones will be composed to unite our people on our mission to transform our society. DM