"PICK YOUR AFRO, DADDY BECAUSE ITS FLAT ON ONE SIDE." #AzaniaCulturalRevolution

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery,

None but ourselves can free our minds.

- Bob Marley SALVATION SONG

#RhodesMustFall is the match to ignite a fire, the burning desire for real and authentic transformation of our nation. #RhodesMustFall is the ignition for a subconscious yearning to spiritually and culturally return to Mother Africa. #RhodesMustFall is the beginning of an ephiphany that Western European Culture can no longer be the barometre of excellence  and achievement for an African state.

South Africa must unchackle itself from the ethos of Colonial culture and find a new innovative culture that embraces our Constitution and the principals of the Freedom Charter. As a nation that was traumatised by the extention of Colonialism through the policy of Aparheid, we need to recognise that we were not only separated from our land, our families, our culture we were segregated from the Africa continent.

The dictatorship banned African music and cultural interaction between South Africans and our African kin.  From 1910 when the Union of South Africa was officially established, Azania this land eMzantsi Afrika, became a European satellite state. Closely following the template of the United States of America, Canada, and Australia, South Africa was molded into a nation with an ethos and culture of White supremacy.

To prove this, my family, is Mfengu, a Xhosa speaking ethnic group, were amongst the of Africans to convert to Christianity and fought alongside the British during the numerous Xhosa Border Wars of Kaffreria in the Eastern Cape as allies. On the 14 May 1838 the Mfengu leadership gathered in Peddie in the presence of the Rev. John Ayliff, swore a great oath to Queen Victoria replacing the dominion of the Paramount Xhosa King Hintsa with that of the British Monarchy. The Mfengu leadership swore to accept Christianity and Western Christian education for their children,  By 1870 the Mfengus were the majority civil servants of the Cape Colony, educated at prestigious Anglican Church Mission Schools like Lovedale and Fremantle in the Eastern Cape and Zonnebloem High School in District Six Cape Town. 

My family therefore fought on the side of the British Empire during the Great South African War known as the Anglo-Boer War. We were rewarded with land taken from Afrikaners, hence our hamlet in the Eastern Cape by the village of Lady Frere is called De Hoop. De Hoop is the name of the settler farm which had previously belonged to a settler family. This property was subdivided into several smaller pieces and given to veterans of her Majesty’s Native soldiers as reward for winning the War.

The municipal area of Lady Frere, situated 40 kilometres north east of the closest major town, Queenstown, was called the Glen Gray district. The area was renowned for the Glen Gray Hospital built by the local Roman Catholic Mission from Prussia via the former German colony of Cameroon. This state of the art hospital was also a training college for native nurses and where my mother would later graduate her first qualifications as a Professional Nurse. 

To mark the Mfengu’s admission as direct subjects of the Empire, the Archbishop of Grahamstown laid the foundations of a proper English County-stle church, St Cyprian’s situated on the outskirts of Cala in the closest village neighbouring the Glen Gray district, Xalanga District. This and the Mission Boys School of Fremantle became the pride and joy of the new African middle class of the area. 

The Mfengu’s now neighboured the Duchy of the Royal family of the abaThembu. The Thembu women of the area in the hamlet of Qgoko in the mThembu lands of Lumko not 10 km from Lady Frere are renowned for their twin-toned singing called ukuQoloka. The vocal sound made in the throatt is unique as it  resembles the deep tones of the Khoisan originated Xhosa string instrument uhadi. The traditional folk music of Qgoko is represented by Madosini a leading Xhosa musician, historian and composer. Madosini is internationally renowned in the World music circles touring extensively worldwide. Nationally she broke through to mainstream pop culture when she collaborated with Thandiswa Mazwai on her debut solo album Zabalaza in 2006.

The AbaThembu are led by the Matanzima royal family who bequeathed the  Madiba clan of which Nelson Mandela was the Chief, and whose family holds the hereditary rights of nobility in the Qunu/Mthatha area. These royal and noble houses refused to convert to Christianity. They knew all too well that the head of the Anglican Church was the Monarch of England whom they had spent decades since the 1700’s resisting. This explains wh Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela even though from  noble lineage was the first of his famil to graduate High School, get tertiary education and assimilate into modern econom.

The Mfengus emersed themselves in British culture as devout Anglicans, dedicated Civil Servants and subjects of the British Empire. Just like the Black Diamonds of today my family became more Victorian than the English. All traditional customs were blended with Anglican Church rituals and finished with modern western panache. Weddings were now two day events with the White Wedding  and reception one day and the  followed by the Traditional Xhosa Wedding the next day.

My parents remember well King George XVI's 1947 tour of South Africa with a young Princess Elizabeth, who’d turned 21 on arrival in Cape Town. The Royal Tour passed through Queenstown, Lady Frere and Cala with my parents school children waving the Union Jack excitedly as the Mfengu Chief didn’t forget his loal subjects.

The turning point for the new African middle class came when after fighting on the winning side of the Great South African War, the natives were not invited to the table of the peace negotiations. Even as they pursued all due diligence and followed the correct diplomatic avenues and political etiquette, the Union of South Africa was conceived without even consulting the African middle class.  What must have been more biting was that the Mfengu's most probably wrote the minutes, typed the documents and administered all the arrangements as Civil Servants. As Civil Servants to His Majest’s Foreign Service  The Mfengus  were the most urban, urbane and civilised natives on the continent. 

What a bitter pill to swallow when the realisation sunk in that no amount of following to the letter the etiquette, ethos, manners culture and religion of the British Empire,  would result in being seen as a fellow human being  with the right to  human dignit and self determination.

The Mfengus, various clans of amaHlubi  who had fled, or been defeated and exiled by the tyrannical conquests of Shaka’s Mfecane, for the second time had sought refuge and not fully been accepted as equals. The Xhosa Royal houses had given The Mfengus settlements on the edges of the Xhosa confederacy, on lands bordering the Sundas ruver shared with the Khoisan people, in particular the Griquas. The Mfengus overtime found their niche and became merchants and middlemen swaying trade between the Griqua Chieftancies of the Khoisan and the Xhosa Duchy of the House of Hintsa (Ciskei  under whose various chiefs they were ruled.

I am sure the Mfengus were the first to hear of news and developments in Camissa and the aggressive foreign settlement around the Fort of Die Kaap De Goede Hoop.  The Mfengus must’ve been the first to hear of the change of regime and the  advancing Dutch Burghers of the Great Trek. I am sure my family was amongst those that devised the plan to align with the British Empire and therefore rise above their lowly social status as refugees, and one day lord over their own land again.

The new Barons of the Mining Industry, British commoners turned wealthy Randlords lost no time at all securing the choice resources of the unified colonies of South Africa. Every effort by law and chicanery was used to disenfranchise the Africans and force them into slavery as cheap labour for all the heavy lifting required in the industrialisation of a nation. South Africa’s rich resources were the spark the ignited The Industrial Revolution of The West and the fuel that ran its engine and technological innovation. In the no holds barred Wild West of the mining towns of Kimberley and Johannesburg, Cecil John Rhodes, wrote the parasitic template for Capitalism’s Machiavillian rise to the top.

Coining the phrase, “ Every man has a price” Rhodes glamourised insatiable greed and the ruthless pursuit of profit at any cost.

We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.

- Cecil John Rhodes

JRR Tolkien born on the outskirts Bloemfontein in Mangaung was so overwhelmed by the native African’s misery at the hands of Cecil John Rhodes and the Oligarchy of the Randlords that he wrote a series of novels that would become classics of the 2oth Century. The first book a truelly inspired critique of the British Empire was The Hobbit. Who can deny the ingenuity of shifting the atrocities of the New World to a Pagan Europe inspired Middle Earth? All of a sudden the reader shares sympathy with simple tribal folk. The British Empire portrayed as The Great Dragon of Revelation, Smaugg, smog covered London sitting on its vast wealth stolen by it vast fire power from the land of the people who actually mined it.

In 2001 on my first tour to London in my  debut as Odidiva performing the showstopper in Brett Bailey’s  BIG DADA-The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin, we performed at The Barbican Theatre complex, home of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Barbican borders the city’s banking and financial district marked by the proliferation of red dragon statues dotted everywhere, even  in the middle of busy streets.

Can one imagine the African delegation from the Union of South Africa that courageously took ta the long, gruelling and expensive journey to gatecrash the talks at The Palace of Versailles. A jury of 18 African men amongst them Lawyers, Civil Servants, Academics, Monarchies and Noblemen faced off against the mighty British Empire and the world’s Colonial Superpowers at the Treaty of Versailles. These brave Africans returned without any concessions or victories. The South African Congress renamed The African National Congress in preparation for the negotiations marking the end of Word War I had punched above its military weight and instigated the Pan African struggle for independence and self determination.

By the first “Winds of Change” in the late 1950' on the continent South Africa was a well resourced, internationally supported, supremely well planned and precisely executed prison for all non-Europeans indigenous to the land. Connection with the outside world was censored and all culture and entertainment well managed to deny any affiliation with fellow Africa and African kin. Only culture and music of the United States and the United Kingdom was broadcast. African excellence in arts,culture and entertainment would leave the country before it became popular and the participants exiled.

The prism for self esteem and pride became very narrow for Africans living in South Africa. All happiness and beauty, excellence and achievement was Caucasian and European. Even fellow South Africans become an other divided by ethnicity, language, religion and even gender. I grew up calling all foreign Africans “abaGhana” even though we spoke in hushed tones of our Uncle waseLusaka, Africa was deep dark and dangerous. Africa was the war, disease, drought and starvation broadcast through SABC from the BBC, ABC, NBC and CBS. No one listened to any South African music or musicians. The radios mirrored our Native Reservations, Radio Xhosa, Radio Zulu...television the same. TV1 was in English and Afrikaans, TV2 Zulu  and Xhosa, TV 3 Sotho/Tswana. Outside of the Transvaal (formerly Zuid Afrikaanse Republic TV 2 and TV 3 replaced one for the other depending on the province.

21 ears after Freedom Da SABC still uses the same Goebbels inspired propaganda blueprint for a Constitutional Democrac . The divisive social project of the Apartheid regime remains only with new names and a new coat of paint. Radio Five is Five FM, Radio Xhosa Umhlobo Wenene, Radio Metro is now Metro Fm, Radio Sondergrense is RSG and Radio 2oooo remains amongst an host of regional radio stations. The Television stations reversed the numbers and kept the format. All the radio stations play overwhelmingly music from The West. Our cinemas exhibit the exact same feature films as released in the USA, Canada and the U.K.  The deliver of our Sports presenters emulates the clipped  tones and verbrado of Australia. Ears have been spent pushing and punting South African Hip Hop onl for the indigenous format of Kwaito prove more resilient and popular to the point that South African Hip Hop’s biggest hits all resemble Kwaito from JR’s make the circle bigger to AKA’s Brenda Fassie  beats sampling Appleseed style toasting ALL EES ON ME and the Caracas Smash the is straight up TKZee and Trompies reboot.  Like Australian and British actors before and alongside them South African actors and directors move to Hollwood and become American, acting like Americans and producing American mtholog. For those who don’t know The Dail Show is a satirical  comed show on US current affairs. Trevor Noah will soon be as African as Charlize Theron. If not he will go the same wa as Piers Morgan.

The Western Capitalist religious culture is at odds with ubuntu, reconciliation, generosity, creativity innovative transformation State social benefits like National Health Insurance over Medical Aid. In the West the government would’ve paid Africa Bank instead of writing off our debt. In Australia all basic amenities like electricity and water are in private hands and capitalist business believes onl in profit as a viable business. The African way of life destroyed by colonialism and the Industrial Revolution is now being pursued as sustainable eco-friendly the ver design for living.

In the words of an old disco anthem:

“ Zipping up m boots going back to m roots each, to the place of m birth right down to earth I’m going down got m head turned around.”

The Golden Age of Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Ibrahim Rasool and others blazing at the top of popular world culture passed us by. Bob Marley came through cassette tapes copied from copies carried over the border by freedom fighters of Umkhonto We Sizwe and APLA and just as likely from SANDF soldiers via the domestic servant relationships and relations.

I remember clearly the night uKhansazi and Treasure Tshabalala played that song with the melody of Nkosi Sikelela iAfrika on the Friday night music show Ziyaduma. Bright Blue’s It wasn’t Roaring It Was Weeping. Our Struggle through the eyes of the lethally armed men sitting in the armoured vehicles dotted around our townships. This ominous presence of violence and oppression sympathising with us while expropriating our national anthem for emotional effect. I guess we could empathise with the young men forced to uphold a tyrannical dictatorship. White resistance to Apartheid only materialised when the inconvenience of compulsory 2years military service became the price for living the “American Dream” in a sea of misery. Funny how man balked when required to participate in the horrors the whole world knew were the requirement in maintaining White Privilege  and 20^th century government enforced slavery.

Prior to this 1989 Bright Blue hit we had witnessed the White Zulu Johnny Clegg take over our airwaves and TV screens followed by Thandeka, PJ Powers. Even traditional music the only popular African music allowed to flourish, besides Bubble-gum Pop was bigger better and world renowned when done by Caucasians. If it wasn’t for Paul Simon ruining the best African Soul band of all time, Stimela, by poaching the lead singer, guitarist Ray Phiri to be musical director of his Graceland album and tour, things might have stayed that way.

Just as Brenda Fassie began her Zeitgeist as Queen of Bubble Gum pop mimicking American Pop music, with anthems like Zola Budd, Mahlathini and The Mahotella Queens and Ladysmith Black Mambazo hit pay dirt with Paul Simon’s Graceland. The authorities allowed it on our airwaves and the wall to wall doses of local music fanned the fires that raged in the streets of townships fuel by the UD. This inspired resistance to the State of Emergency raising the violence to fever pitch.

By 1989 even Brenda Fassie could not help but be influenced by streets she’d filled with pride. She released her most daring album, titled Black President. Within days Black President was banned and taken off the shelves of stores nationwide. In this game of Russian Roulette, Brenda Fassie would emerge the victor as her popularity proved too great to warrant turning her into a matyr for the resistance campaign. PW Botha’s government blinked and unbanned the politically charged album. Her pop rival Yvonne Chaka Chaka cunningly jumped onto the Graceland hope and changed tack,   releasing “Umqombothi” modelling herself on Mama Afrika Miriam Makeba , vonne Chaka Chaka soon well on her way to international fame  and the glor of social activism as “The Princess of Africa” .

Shell Road to Fame from 1986 to 1992 was the American Idol of its day annually delivering an African from rags to riches. Happiness could be Black and African. Especially as the Cultural boycott targeted Shell for supplying fuel and petroleum products to the murderous Apartheid regime. In its man ears of winners no deserved to win this talent search better than its biggest star Rebecca Malope. Her star has not waned and burns ever brighter as the Queen of South African Gospel.

For those of us, like me at Boarding School, one television programme did what should be done today to help heal our brutally harmed dysfunctional relationship with our fellow African brothers and sisters. Toyota Top Twenty after the exit of Patricia Lewis became the first television show of the New South Africa. 

Lawrence Dube and Alex Jay introduced the entire country to the African continent as their Thursday evening top 20 chart show blended Western Pop music, with local music and most importantly African World music. Salief Keita shocked and amazed with his bleached albino features and mesmerising voice, singing “ Afrika, Afrika Yeah!”. This before West African fooball players became huge in the English Premiership on SuperSport. Salief Keita was singing in some foreign African language in a high pitch tone rich and powerful like the Call to Prayer coming from the mosques Gatesville Rylands, Cape Town.

Neneh Cherry a British Pop Rock Rebel,the Kelis of her time, replied James Brown “It’s A Man’s World” with “ Woman, this is a woman’s world” before creating pure Pop music history with Youssou N’Dour and the hauntingly timeless “ 7 Seconds”.

Youssou N'Dour and Nenah Cherry - 7 Seconds

 Alex Jay and Lawrence Dube knowledgeable music specialists, witty, charmingly adorable with an authentic on-screen camaraderie created a timely iconic moment in South African television.

Mango Groove owes Dube and Jay their careers as they became Toyota Top 20’s most prolific chart toppers capturing the optimism of the Transitional Years by invoking South Africa’s Great Jazz era of the 1950’s with a multiracial cast realising Archbishop Tutu’s “Rainbow Nation of God”.

A Ruby Red headed Yellow boned Nubian Warrior woman dashing across endless undulating Sand Dunes of the Sahara, in the music video of Ishmael Lo’s hit song “ Dibidibi Yeah”, became the stuff of Boarding School wet dreams in the all boys school dormitories.

The red headed character would reemerge as the inspiration for the Femme Fatale, in the Congolese hit feature film Viva Reva in 2012. 

TT20 held the nation’s youth with baited breath as it exclusively debuted the internationally anticipated African premiere of Janet Jackson’s That’s The Way Love Goes music video.  TT20 started at 5pm the beginning of our scheduled shower time  and ended at 6pm, the commencement of our Dinner time at Van Der Bijl  Boarding House. The day of Janet Jackson’s premiere  was the unprecedented 5 minute delay of Dinner at a Bishop’s boarding house and of the SABC 6 o'clock news.

One of Lawrence Dube’s favourite songs, began this journey into African World music on Toyota Top Twenty. The remix of Didi by Algerian Superstar Cheb Khaled. Dube waxed lyric on the song much to Alex Jay’s playful chagrin. Children raised on American RnB from the likes of Luther Vandross, Freddie Jackson and Peabo Bryson were enraptured by this Arabic wail over Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch style tambourine vibrations. I immediately claimed it as my personal theme song adding the O while singing along.  Years later in 2013 Cheb Khaled’s Didi would prove the perfect ice breaker while meeting North African musicians in the Green Room of music hall Divan du Monde, in Paris’s red light district Pigalle.

“Odidi, not Didi for Didier...like Didi by Khaled with an O, d’accord?”

I am still bemused recall by their shocked surprise on me describing our Cape Malay Muslim culture and people in a city with the same climate and vineyards as their North African homelands.

When Metro Fm DJ Eddie Zondi passed away  we should have put the Slow Jam Sundays to rest beside him. South Africa broadcasts via Dstv to the rest of Africa but listens to none of Africa. South Africans contestants on Big Brother Africa time and again are left out of touch when fellow contestants connect through music popular all over Afrika at the same time but not here in Azania.

How can we think we are the leader of Africa when we don’t know dance to the same drum as our brethren? We don’t even know that Matabele in Zimbabwe is Ndebele which resembles Zulu in history and culture,almost precisely as the Zimbabwean Ndebele are descendents Shaka’s general Lobengula. Our northern border of the Limpopo river cuts in half the Venda people whose language shares strong similarity with Shona. The Shangaan and Tsonga people are equally divided between Mozambique and South Africa. South Africa has more Tswana people than Botswana, the population of Sotho people in eMzantsi exceeds Lesotho and the same with the Swati people of Swaziland. Kikonga the language of the people the Congo is named after shares much vocabulary and conjugation with isXhosa.

The gorgeous ebony beauty with feline eyes and a perfectly round plump pout, Khadja Nin was a Lawrence Dube’s biggest crush on Toyota Top 20, Samborela sends me back to reminisce about the original cast of House of the Holy Afro. My three Mampompane sized Diva’s who called themselves “Jazzart” for coining all the cool “Chorro” or choreography in the show. The tenor of the 3 ladies Zoleka played Khaja Nin in her first car a silver Mazada 323 sedan, bought from my former manager and mentor Andrew Michau.

As with any hit boyband the beginning of its decline begins with the departure of an original member.  Alex Ja was first to depart returning to the beginnings of his TV career presenting a grown up version of Pop Shop, No Jacket Required. Lawrence Dube held the fort with dignit for another ear until the birth of CCV tv  another inspired concept that should have become the norm. My friend Paul Adams and I regularly reminice about CCV's ZERO HOUR ZONE and the Electric Circuit. Zero Hour Zone kept apace with the flourishing rave scene with events by Pharcyde, Vortex and Mother. At the same time Zero Hour Zone  introduced me to my favourite, and arguably the World's best Hip Hop group of All Time, Parisien born African Diaspora outfit Saian Supa Crew.

Better than any pop duo I can recall Alex Jay and Lawrence Dube both sang lead and held their own in limelight with cool smooth and mad skills. Toota Top Twent  is what should have inspired the transformation of SABC radio and television, from the segrationist Apartheid social project divided according to colour, language and racial stereotypes to something new, transformative intune with a new melting pot of South Africa assimilating into the African Diaspora.

Alex Jay kept us in Huey and The News, My House in the Middle of the Street, crowed when Red Hot Chilli Peppers won Best Rap group Grammy for their Maskandi/Mbaqanga influenced Give it Away Now. Jay championed Qumba Zoo who ended up topping the Billboard Dance and Pop charts, encouraged Springbok Nude Girls and Henry Ate. Toyota Top 20 also delivered a decade of Peter Gabriel evolution from the music video innovation of Sledgehammer to Deep Forest, Don’t Give Up and the WOMAD festivals.

Lawrence Dube broadened the musical and cultural horizon of a generation and prepared them to welcome Africa into their hearts and fellow Africans into their homes.

The ANC and its government must now realise that a Presidency must inspire a mood and a feeling that cajoles this motley crew of peoples artificial .merged into one nation.

The ANC must now surely regret the unceremonious ousting of  former President Thabo Mbeki  6 months  before is term was due to end. The hubris of dening Mbeki his final lap of  glory to bring home his African Renaissance. He was recalled a week before  with the build up at the annual UN Heads of State General Assembly that would’ve gulvanised support leading to the gamechanging  African Diaspora conference.  The Chef d’ Oevre to this Coup d’ Grace would’ve been the unveiling of the Thabo Mbeki Presidential legacy project, the new state of the art Library and Archives of the world’s oldest University in Timbuktu, Mali.

In hindsight Thabo Mbeki’s "Recollection" the ANC NEC marked the end of a peaceful decade in Africa.  One ma  believe it to be the Omen that returned the curse  of war and disease to Africa. Walking in the footsteps of its spiritual ancestors, history repeated, as the Empire laid waste to Carthage.

Mbeki’s I am An African presidency was for us Azanians more than the continent. It was Azania’s opportunity to reward Africa’s warm hospitality fierce loyalty and sacrifice in our struggle to unshackle and overthrow the yolk of White Supremacy. It was our moment to bond, reconcile with Mother Africa  from whose bosom we’d been abducted, violated and traumatised. Africa would’ve drawn strength and begun the African Renaissance in earnest, empowered emboldened and united.

We Are One - Black Coffee and Hugh Masekela

The Performing Arts, Culture and Creative Arts are the true alchemy for the soul of a nation like ours.

“The Afro is the Drum, its the Beat,

Its the voice of Magaret Singane singing” Bayete ziNkosi!”

Echoing through the Great Rift Valley

the intro

The outro

The Chorus

And the Verse

Of every son of this earths’s great womb

The Afro is African

The Afro is Mahogany Soul with a Baobab Bass

A Papyrus Pitch bathed in Palm Oil

And wrapped in a Coffee Cacophony

The Afro is African

The Afro is dynamic bold and constrative

For it can be nice and easy

Or hard and Rough

But in order to keep growing it needs

nourishment

Plaiting

Placating

But most of all it needs love

uThando

So, to all my brothers and sisters of Azania in KwaZulu and Gauteng and beyond

“Pick your Afro Daddy because its Flat on One Side”

- Odidi ODIDIVA Mfenyana THE AFRO IS AFRICAN