Rockers Rocking South Africa

Left of What’s Right
Marlan Padayachee jives to a tongue-and cheek sing-along as political dissidents step aside to give way to a babalaas blast of entertaining escapism
DATELINE DURBAN: WITH South Africa’s political drama swirling ahead of the 2009 election, South Africans are taking the arts, culture and entertainment escapism route.
Fourteen years later, there’s growing turbulence in the world’s youngest democracy in the aftermath of the Polokwane Triangle that has changed the political landscape, but take heart because some of the world’s top pop-rockers are heading are to Rainbow Country this sizzling summer.
With the winter of discontent etched the memories of political, crime, social and economic victims, add a spectre of xenophobic violence, compatriots will be letting their hair down as they drown in the soulful and lilting lyrics of Lionel Ritchie. Rod Stewart and marvel at how the Canadian Master of Unusual Comedy, Michel Lauziere, can play Mozart in uptown New York with his skateboard blades tickling the little green bottles.
Soon the sunset clause will be history as the revelers get into the party mood when the big hitters croon and drool on the concert stages.
Maybe, Richie will pop in at the Mandela (P) Residency to say Hello! Is It Me You’re Looking For? As the warring comrades belt out Say You, Say Me to leverage the head-splitting at Luthuli House, the fractured ruling regime may be also toyi-toyiing All Night Long as the breakaway band work out if they could be Truly called counter-revolutionaries.
While Richie croons about Endless Love, hoping Love Will Find a Way, there will be no love lost between the one-time comrades-in-arms as they jive to Stewart’s soulful solos, and declaring that I Know I’m Losing You. With all the parties getting into the voting rhythm from door to door, some may end up Dancing on the Ceiling while looking down on Every Picture Tells a Story with Richie choreographing a famous struggle drowned in sours.
But this is Afrique Du Suid, and the Irish grave-digger will soon grasp there’s Never a Dull Moment as he rubs the political salt into The First Cut is the Deepest before declaring a Three Time Loser by the time Thabo Mbeki is Sailin’ over the Victoria Falls down the Zambezi to have cold turkey with Old Man River. With Richie and Stewart strutting the stages, our own AK-47 dancing president-elect Jacob Zuma declaring It’s All Over Now with Our Endless Love for president-in-waiting Terror Lekota as he takes his gloves off for the Street Fighting Man. Then at the height of the dissensions in the wake of the China Olympics, Katie Malua strummed home the point to Capetonians that There Are Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing to ride to the polling booths without catching the gravy train en route to the Easter election. Broadway musical theatre star Christine Pedi put her foot into politics and gave us a tonic of cabaret, comedy and jazz during a triumphant tour with the ballots re-electing her as the Diva Dame. Then the one-liners took the Mickey Mouse out of us with slapsticks, turning Poetry Africa into a festival of poetic justice. Carlos Gomez put the shutters on the White House as Jitsvinger and Godessa (Three Times A Lady) rapped about rainbowism, leaving Bantu Mwaura probing why Kenyans had lost the political plot. iBushwomen left their footprints about the shifting sands and fortunes of the vanishing Khoi-San tribes while the ink dried on Thomas Mapfumo’s visa before he reached at Beit Bridge. Poet by any name is still a poet as they waxed lyrical about the literary legacy of Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s reluctant statesman who died on Poetry Road with his inspiring revolutionary verses. Until I dish out the 2008 Lemons and Naartjies Awards, laugh it off.

Marlan Padayachee, recipient of the British Council Fellow and US International Visitor’s Award, is an independent freelance journalist and socio-political commentator who runs a media-communications strategy consultancy in South Africa: greengold@telkomsa.net

Published in Juluka magazine USA in November 2008