SA Rocks

OpenSA! launches in Johannesburg today with a pilot project to make South African heritage more accessible for remixing and re-publishing by online creators. In collaboration with SA Rocks and the African Commons Project, OpenSA! is collecting, tagging and managing donations from people who are willing to make their material freely available online. OpenSA! will also be helping to coordinate outreach to South Africa’s young creators to enable them to learn more about how to find open content that they are free to remix and share.

As access to the Internet grows in South Africa, so too does the range of creative activity by a new generation of active online citizens. Internet publishing in the form of blogging and citizen journalism, online publishing of photographic, video and music publishing are all part of a wide range of democratic speech that we as a young nation are trying to encourage and nurture.

There are some moments in the history and culture of South Africa that are part of our shared heritage – such as Nelson Mandela’s speech when he was released from prison in 1990 or Thabo Mbeki’s ‘I am an African’ speech. For the first time in history we have the means to make those moments available to more than just the professional journalists, filmmakers and researchers who were traditionally authorized to re-publish them.

OpenSA! is a pilot project dedicated to the growing number of young South Africans who are finding their voice online. The project was started in order to nurture this creativity by making it easier for young creators to find and share media about our heritage safely and legally.

Gregor Rohrig appears to be one of the first to contribute to OpenSA!. This is a great move for us as Gregor’s photography is some of the best that I’ve seen of South Africa and its people.

One of the main concepts around this project is the public domain. To find out a bit more info about public domain, what it is and what it means check out the blog post on iHeritage.co.za.

For additional information, please contact Heather Ford
Phone: 011 327 3155 or 082 872 7374

Email: heather@africancommons.org

The African Commons Project is a non-profit organization based in Johannesburg with the goal of mobilizing communities through active participation in collaborative technology (www.africancommons.org).

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This is the last of the SA Rocks Heritage posts. I know that I broke the mould for this weeks theme with a few posts, but they were unavoidable and topical.

Today’s post focuses on the proud, diverse and eclectic history of music in SA. I have tried to create as diverse a list as possible. But if there is something that you truly feel should be in this post please comment and let me know!

Here goes…

Early christian missionaries provided the first formal music training in SA. Enoch Sontonga, who wrote the national anthem Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika was one of the musicians that were successfully trained in this time.

We all know that music has close ties to politics in various ways and SA was no different. In the early 20th Century when government restrictions on blacks became more aggressive marabi was born:

Marabi was played on pianos with accompaniment from pebble-filled cans, often in shebeens, establishments that illegally served alcohol to blacks. By the 1930s, however, marabi had incorporated new instruments, guitars, concertinas and banjos, and new styles of marabi had sprung up. Among these were a marabi/swing fusion called African jazz and jive, a generic term for any popular marabi style.

A blog post about SA music would be incomplete without looking at Afrikaans music in the past and good old Seve Hofmeyer in the present (we love Steve!). Afrikaans music was quite obviously influenced by the Dutch. This progressively became more interesting as time passed Sokkie Sokkie became a firm Afrikaans favourite. From Wikipedia:

A sokkie is a social dance with a partner popular with some Afrikaners. It is also referred to in Afrikaans as “langarm”, a term used to describe the style of dance at a sokkie.

I am personally a big fan of the langarm. It is incredible to watch people that can do it properly. What a joy!

More recently we have seen the rap, RnB and Kwaito scenes pick up with force. I have found that SA rappers have tried a bit too hard to emulate the American rappers that are successful. This hasn’t really struck a note for me to be honest.

I absolutely love the Kwaito vibe that has taken off in SA. I love the feel, the approach and the groove that the Kwaito stars in SA.

Idols has recently created SA pop stars that the public support which I think is great!

And then my personal favourite is the fantastically South African approach to rock that has emerged of late in SA. Freshly Ground and Harris tweed are two of the bands that I associate with a new breed of distinctively SA rock music. The great oldies like Mango Groove cannot be forgotten.

Brilliant muso’s such as Johnny Klegg and the Soweto String Quartet are also unforgettable. Grammy award winners Ladysmith Black Mambazo partnered with Paul Simon over the years to create some phenomenal music.

OK, that’s it from me and my views/thoughts on the topic. Let me know what you think and if you have a better knowledge on the topic.

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So Heritage Day rolled around recently, while I was 10 000kms away from my home, and left this Saffa-in-the-UK feeling more than a little homesick (which I guess is natural), and somewhat bewildered.

Firstly, “what was my heritage?” I pondered, and am still unable to find an answer that fits 100%. I am a white, English speaking South African. Technically, I am of European extraction (English, Dutch and French), but my family have been in the Eastern Cape of South Africa since around 1800. There’s even a book about them. It’s called The Frontier Family. I wish I could tell you where to find this book, but Google has failed me. My entire family tree, however, is in it [excluding me as it was published about five years before I was born] tracing my lineage back to a settler family called Miles.

Now if you’re an Eastern Cape local, you’ll understand if a Thompson, a Cloete or Miles says they couldn’t reproduce with anyone born in the Eastern Cape, but suffice to say there’re a lot of us about.

And here I am in the UK, never been closer to my ancestral home, and I feel no link, no attachment. This place and its people, and their ways, bear very little resemblance to my South African life and values. Is this my heritage? And if not, what is?

A friend said to me this weekend that it must be hard being Afrikaans in South Africa on Heritage Day, and when prompted went on to say that she sees a lot of people conflating proud Afrikaaners with racists. I think she has a point.

We are so keen to be PC and be recognised as “proudly South African”, but can you not be if you went to Stellenbosch Uni and count “De la Rey” among your favourite songs? Sometimes I think that is the message politicians are sending out. Surely, the best move forward for our country is to be as inclusive as possible now? No, we don’t want racist afro-pessimists, but you cannot label an entire group under that heading because the nationalist government of our ugly past was largely Afrikaans.

Moving on, I feel disconnected from my European heritage. It is too far removed from me and my experience and even my grandparents’ lives to have any daily significance. I feel that I am South African, and take offence when the implication is made that I am not because of the colour of my skin.

So what is heritage? I think it is the answer to this question: What of my past do I carry with me into the future? I carry knowledge, not just from my grandmother, but from news, history and friends. I carry hurt, for my once divided nation. I carry hope, to live in a safe, equal society with majority rule and minority protection. In this way, I claim a South African heritage – and one you cant take from me.

“It’s my home it’s where I’ll stay and where I belong
I didn’t choose to be here I was born I might seem out of place
but everything I hold dear is under the African sun”
-Hog Hoggidy Hog.

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I know that many people are going to criticise me for missing out a million local artists who have died, have become famous and who I simply have never heard of. But this is the best I can do, my favourite SA artist of all time, ever is William Kentridge.

I believe that he represents so much of our heritage in his art and his visions of SA. He has produced a music video for Mango Groove – one of the best SA music groups ever produced in our country – and has broadened his offerings on the stage with his productions around the world. What a phenomenal man and an incredibly successful South Africa. He puts the old belief to rest that artists are only successful when they die. This man is successful beyond any doubt.

Here is some of his work that I could find online:

Then in stark contrast of Kentridge’s success and art there has been a massive uprising of graffiti in SA and more specifically Johannesburg. I personally love the idea of graffiti and have the utmost respect for any graffiti artists who are trying their hand at succeeding.

I recently read an article in a magazine about a graffiti artist and was blown away at the dedication these guys have to themselves and their art (and their crews). I had to find a way to include graffiti in to this blog somehow and I feel that this is the perfect week to promote graffiti in SA.

The featured artist that I read about was Rasty – that’s his nickname – who runs with the PCP (pressure control projects) crew and operates out of JHB. This man is a genius and can without any shadow of a doubt be called an artist and a great one at that. His crew is pretty tight and they have begun to make a business out of their passion. They have opened up a store that supplies “Graf” artists with the necessary material to produce their street masterpieces.

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I am always reluctant to blog about Nelson Mandela in spite of the undoubted affect he has had not only on SA but on the world. I am reluctant because I personally feel that the exposure he constantly receives has desensitised South Africans to his incredible achievements.

In the name of heritage I am blogging this post that I found on thepropertymag.co.za.

It is always refreshing to see where our leaders, icons and heroes have come from. This is where Mandela started:

Madiba’s first home was a tiny ‘matchbox’ house in the older area of Soweto called Orlando West.

His first son was born in this house. I am sure that this makes the home even more special and holds fond memories for Mandela.

Heritage is what we make of it and the future is what we learn from our past and subsequently alter. Much has been learned from a man like Nelson Mandela and I am sure he is not done imparting knowledge on the world.

I am very interested to find out if South Africans have had their fill of the man? Not taking anything away from his astounding past and incredible presence, but do people rather want to learn things like this about the man or rehash the knowledge? I personally am more interested in the random facts and interesting historical tidbits regarding his past and his heritage. I have studied the struggles that he overcame and the history that he made, I want to know about the man, not the achievements.

What would you ask Mandela if you met him? Have you met him?

I have on a few occasions and I must say that his presence is quite overwhelming. His humble nature is grounding and his humour is extremely surprising!

photos and quotations courtesay of thepropertymag.co.za

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Our decorated, passionate and complicated past has left us with some very interesting personalities and characters. But have we separated them yet? Have we branded Zuma a clown and Mandela an eternal hero? Do we remember Biko and forget Verwoerd?

I believe that the struggles of the past have left SA with a very tricky political conundrum. How do we forget what some of the “clown” did for SA in the past if they are being clowns now? Let’s be honest, the likes of Zuma are riding the crest of collapsing wave that was the past’s freedom fight. That fight is done with and there are real and tangible issues that these leaders need to be dealing with.

We, as a nation, need to pull together and rid ourselves of the belief that we need to entertain the “struggle” leaders who invariably are, themselves, riding out our pseudo-guilt about the past. Enough already.

Heritage day is a fantastic idea and in my opinion should be used by everyone in SA to reflect on our past, our heritage and ourselves and make some decisions about our future here in SA. Let’s start with our mentality toward our leadership because I think that it might just be a joke sometimes. The struggle is over, apartheid is dead.

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