Two funerals and one song

The killing of SACP Secretary General Chris Hani on 10 April 1993 was one of the most tragic events in recent South African history, robbing us of one of our greatest leaders, threatening to tear South Africa apart. 

At his funeral, the late Peter Mokaba, then ANC Youth League president sang a song that has been making headlines in recent weeks: Kill the Boer, Kill the farmer. 

The tune, picked up 17 years later, by another ANC Youth League president, Julius Malema, has been linked to the death of right-wing leader Eugene Terre'Blanche. 

It is a bizarre irony that the two songs connect these two radically opposed men. A dignified leader, who fought for the new South Africa and paid with his life, a brutish leader who fought vehemently against the establishment of majority rule, going as far as  leading an assault onto the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park, trying to derail the talks at CODESA during the fragile transition period. 

Freedom songs played a crucial role in the fight against apartheid. They served to upkeep the morale of soldiers and comrades alike, were a medium through which ideas and ideologies could be transmitted. Struggle songs, according to Anne-Mary Gray based at UKZN, reveal a spectrum of communal perceptions and responses to the unfolding events that faced black South Africans between 1912 and 1994. Steve Biko as well as Miriam Makeba highlight this: 

"Any suffering we experienced was made more real by song and rhythm which leads to a culture of defiance, self-assertion and group pride and solidarity. This is a culture that emanates from a situation of a common experience of oppression . . . and is responsible for the restoration of our faith in ourselves and offers a hope in the direction we are taking from here." (Biko, 1978, pp.57,60)

To convey the significance of the fight against HIV/Aids, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) choir, The Generics, changed the lyrics but kept the tunes of well known struggle songs. A change of tongue seems to be more conducive to building  the new South Africa, than a broken record…