It's your world, so live in it!

I wrote this one in 2017, a year ago and I am only getting around to publishing it now.  Whilst a lot can change and has changed in a year, we still have  along way to go. 

We went to see Johnny Clegg in his spectacular final goodbye show at Montecasino last year.  What an emotional experience.  We sometimes forget about the horrors of the apartheid era and what it must have been like in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s being a white man dressing up like a Zulu, performing his ikasi music. 

The show was quite anecdotal and reflective and Johnny describes how he met Sipho, when the latter came to Johannesburg and waited outside Johnny’s parents’ flat and asked if Johnny was “Big Ears”.  You are pulled back to the dark days when black and white people were not allowed to be friends, to perform together etc. He now smiles when he tells his tales of arrest, but surely at the time nobody could have been smiling.  One of the highlights of the show is when Asimbonanga is performed, and a massive video is on screen where Madiba dances on stage with Johnny and Mandisa Dlanga and you cannot help but wonder what will remain of the country that struggle icons fought so hard for, some with their lives. 

The show was magical and spectacular and I felt privileged to witness this final goodbye, where this man at 64 still dances like a young Zulu warrior with moves that would leave most of us injured or dead.  It is a beautiful show filled with special guests and amazing choreography and of course music that gives you chills and leaves you feeling quite emotional. 

Now living in the year 2017 we take things like this for granted, we all know the lyrics to great songs like Asimbonanga, Scatterlings of Africa and Impi and we fail to recall what it must have been like as an artists in South Africa.  We also forget about the massive contribution that a number of great individuals made and the sacrifices to get us to the rainbow nation.  It feels as if we are in a reflective space again, thinking about Johnny Clegg and Savuka and Juluka and the “white zulu” with his amazing dance moves. 

Max du Preez recently took us back a number of years with a piece in the Huffington Post where he recalls meeting the “Agents of Satan”.  Black and white photographs of the events that unfolded in July 1987 reminds us apartheid was not all that long ago.  

“A planeful of mostly white, mostly Afrikaans-speaking South Africans landed at Leopold Senghor Airport in Dakar, capital of Senegal. They were warmly welcomed by the very agents of Satan they had been warned against; people like Thabo Mbeki, Mac Maharaj, Steve Tshwete and Pallo Jordan.”

Beyers Naudé, an anti-apartheid stalwart and NG Kerk dominee, and Abraham Viljoen, twin brother of the then head of the SADF, General Constand Viljoen, Breyten Breytenbach, André P Brink, Grethe Fox, Jakes Gerwel to name but a few met and started the much needed dialogue to move South Africa out of the rut and rot that we were falling into.

It feels like the great men are all retiring, dead or dying.  The ANC stalwarts like Nelson Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada and Oliver Thambo are gone.  The brave and courageous unfaltering media uncovering corruption and webs of lies and deceit on an hourly basis is under siege again.  Black First Land First intimidates the cream of the South African crop of journalists, some who have seen this movie before.

You cannot help but wonder how it must feel after fighting for liberation of your country for the biggest part of your working life, to see glimpses of greatness in the golden era where we all basked in Nelson Mandela’s godlike greatness to be back in the trenches, this time fighting for liberation from the corruptness of the Guptas who seems to have bought our beautiful country over a plate of curry.

This beautiful land has so much to offer the world, there are so many great people here, we have resources and resourceful people and if the corruption can end, we can make South Africa great again.

I want my children to grow up in the South Africa of Nelson Mandela, and Jakes Gerwel, not Jacob Zuma and the Gupta brothers.  I want them to grow up with the music of Johnny Clegg in this beautiful country of ours.  I want them to grow up in South Africa, because there simply is no place like home.  I want them to know that there are few other places on earth where you will feel the sun shining on your face and know that you are at peace, because Africa is a feeling and not a place. 

Farewell Johnny Clegg, and thank you for the music, and for giving me a little bit of hope again.  There are still great men and women out there who are willing to tackle this second struggle of ours.  We will all need to play our part in rebuilding this nation of ours.  If everybody upped and left in the 1980’s where would that have left us. 

Part of raising children in this place is that you never know if you should stay or should go.  As people who unsuccessfully attempted to uproot from Africa, I know that it is not that easy.  So for my kids, and in the words of Johnny Clegg when his son was born, this is still as true in 2017 as it was in 1988:

You have to wash with the crocodile in the river

You have to swim with the sharks in the sea

You have to live with the crooked politician

Trust those things that you can never see

Ayeye ayeye jesse mfana (jesse boy) ayeye ayeye

It's a cruel crazy beautiful world

Every time you wake up I hope it's under a blue sky

It's a cruel crazy beautiful world

One day when you wake up I will have to say goodbye

Goodbye -- It's your world so live in it!

Beyond the door, strange cruel beautiful years lie waiting for you

It kills me to know you won't escape loneliness,

Maybe you lose hope too

Ayeye ayeye jesse mfana ayeye ayeye

When I feel your small body close to mine

I feel weak and strong at the same time

So few years to give you wings to fly

Show you the stars to guide your ship by

It's your world so live in it