JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 26 — "Proudly South African" is this nation's E Pluribus Unum, a slogan stamped on products, echoed in radio commercials and inculcated into the new South African DNA. Much as America's motto celebrates melding many into one, South Africa's says that it doesn't matter what you look like — we can all be proud of our young country.
Enter Louis Pepler, who, perhaps inadvertently, has cast the notion of South African pride in a whole new light. He and two friends penned an unlikely rock ballad about an Afrikaner general named De la Rey who battled British forces a century ago, and it instantly became an Afrikaner anthem.
Mr. Pepler calls the song, "De la Rey," a testament to Afrikaner pride. "I'm part of this rainbow country of ours," he said. "But I'm one of the colors, and I'm sticking up for who I am. I'm proud of who I am."
Which would be fine, except that nobody, not even Afrikaners themselves, agrees on what an Afrikaner is these days.
A dozen years after the end of an Afrikaner government that invented apartheid, the mere concept of Afrikaner pride remains an exquisitely sensitive issue among whites and blacks alike. Are Afrikaners the feared Dutch descendants who built an empire based on a belief in their God-ordained racial superiority? Are they just another ethnic group, like the Zulu and Sotho and Xhosa, with a distinct place in the new democracy? Or are they South Africans first and foremost— 2.5 million whites in a stewpot of 4.5 million whites among 47.5 million people — and Afrikaners second, or third?
"De la Rey" has become a vessel for those aspirations and fears and, for the last month, the object of a caustic, often racially tinged national debate.
I'm generally pretty mellow about this sort of thing, but I can certainly see the concern here. The Afrikaners ruled with an iron fist, disenfranchised millions of their countrymen, and sought to silence political dissent. They were no heroes. (And I'm even cutting them a bit of slack because many members of the Irish resistance fought with the Boers, under the highly complex theory that if you were shooting at a Brit, for whatever cause, it was a good thing.) Idealizing one of their historical forebears strikes me as pretty offensive, even if intended innocently--and I'm not convinced it was.
Taken literally, the lyrics are clear: "De la Rey" is a song about Afrikaner history. In the Second Boer War, from 1899 to 1902, a much larger British force overwhelmed the Boers, or Afrikaners, in a scramble for gold and land — but only after Gen. Koos de la Rey inflicted punishing defeats on the British. Nearly 28,000 Afrikaners and perhaps 20,000 black Africans died in British concentration camps during the war, many of them women and children. Their suffering is a central theme in Afrikaner lore.
Mr. Pepler's song is set in the trenches of that war. In the music video, a blooded and beleaguered Afrikaner soldier sings of "a handful of us against a whole big force" and "a nation that will rise again" — as the Afrikaners later did, winning control of South Africa in an election in 1948.
"De la Rey, de la Rey," the refrain pleads, "will you come and lead the Boers?"
But while the lyrics as a whole refer to the Boer War, some see in those phrases, and in the soldier's hopeless plight, a metaphor for Afrikaners' reduced place in post-apartheid society. His plea for a leader is viewed as a call for resistance to South Africa's government, which is based on universal suffrage.
The lyrics are as follows:
Delarey - Bok van Blerk lyrics (English Translation)
On a mountain in the night
We lie in the dark and wait
In the mud and the blood
As rain and streepsak clings to me
And my house and my farm were burnt to the ground so they could capture us
But those flames and those fires now burns deep deep within me.
De La Rey, De La Rey can you come and lead the Boers?
De La Rey, De La Rey
General, General we will fall around you as one.
General De La Rey.
The Khakis that laugh
A handful of us against an massive force
With our backs to the cliffs of the mountains
They think its over for us
But the heart of a Boer is deeper and wider, they will come to see
On a horse he comes, the lion of West Transvaal
De La Rey, De La Rey can you come and lead the Boers?
De La Rey, De La Rey
General, General we will fall around you as one.
General De La Rey.
Because my wife and my child are in a camp dying,
And the Khakis are walking over a nation that will rise again
De La Rey, De La Rey can you come and lead the Boers?
De La Rey, De La Rey
General, General we will fall around you as one. General De La Rey.
What do you guys think?
UPDATE: I actually thought a lot about this song all night, plus I got a commenter from Pretoria (I checked the IP and everything!) who calls this "a big sob story." So it's as I imagined, the rough equivalent of, say, Jerry Lee Lewis penning a song in 1955 celebrating Stonewall Jackson, as an expression of ethnic pride in the face of the civil rights movement which, by implication, denigrates the goals of that movement and celebrates the racist underpinnings of the system which has been dismantled.
It's not that Pepler's song is actively racist: it doesn't need to be. Like many colonial texts, it focuses on the battle between the white people over who gets to control the resources and the land of the third world: the actual indigenous population might as well not even exist in this formulation. They're even less important than the landscape, which at least merits a mention. The only people who "matter" are the soldiers and the obligatory blonde wife and child. Christ, even Heart of Darkness was more sympathetic to the indigenous African population than this. At least they existed, however dehumanized.
I'm not suggesting that we're in "Skinhead Boy" territory here: at least not intentionally. But part of the point of Lynx and Lamb is that they, well, kind of suck, and this doesn't, really. It's well-produced and catchy (partly why I ruminated on it all night), both anthemic and orchestral at the same time.It's apparently become something of an arena chant at South African sporting events. (It was banned, and then unbanned at Loftus Versfeld Stadium, a rugby pitch in Pretoria.)
There's clearly a difference between hate speech and racial pride, or is there? Does it matter who speaks, what their history is?
8 comments:
The Lyrics - although very relevant to the time of the Anglo-Boer War, it hardly applies the current climate back home and come across as one BIG sob-story.
Sorry outjies maar julle tyd het gekom, geskyn ... en lank laas verdwyn ...
-- a "banana-boy" struggling to survive in ... The Diaspora ...
Very interesting post. Even though I'm old and have no familiarity with the song/video, as I read it I was reminded of my own reactions back when Southern Rock was on the rise. I knew the music was great and that it came out of the racial mixture of the South's experience, but viscerally, I just could not get into it; expanding expression of white good-ol'-boy identity music was to disturbing for me.
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Hi Power Pop
I completely disagree with your assesment. If De la Rey is a colonial, then all of NY should be damned as a colonial city.
Historical fact, Britain got their ideas for concentration camps from the colonial Spanish who introduced it in Cuba circa 1896 to oppose the then revolution.
The British regarded Afrikaners with disdain because they spoke a bastard language, were'nt educated, and lived like the natives. The Afrikaners fought one war and several battles with the British before this war.
The Afrikaners language was banned from public life, and more than 10% of the republics population was wiped out in this war.
It think a careful reading of history would be in order. The general is question here was aginst war and opposed anti-immigration policies. Hardly a bad rolemodel, even in the 21st century.
Your post *is* disturbing because it shows how easily a lack of understanding can lead to hateful things being said by even open minded people.
It also illustrates how good people can come to do bad things. Excatly what happened to the Afrikaners.
Unfortunately life is allot more complicated, we might look for simple black and white villians (excuse the pun). Reality is far more messy.
http://mhambi.blogspot.com/2007/02/de-la-rey-left-wing-icon.html
Wessel,
Point taken, but it's not 1907; it's 2007, and the vast majority of SA's have suffered under 50 years of Afrikaner rule between now and then. It would be irresponsible, I think, to view the song merely as a historical piece. Obviously, the resurgent Afrikaner minority sees it as an anthem.
To me it would be like some German metal group singing praises for grandpa or great granpa's commanding officer in the SS and "them thar endeering" traitor flags them southern types fly and moan about here.
The album on which this track is found also features one about Bryan Habana, a rugby hero, who is what South Africans would call coloured. Importantly Habana like most coloureds speak Afrikaans.
I was wondering whether you thought this track by Afrikaans punk band Fokofpolisiekar (Fuckoffpolicecar) is powerpop? Guess not, the rhythm's not very dancy.
The Afrikaners' apartheid history is terrible. But I would take issue with the amount of moral approbrium we get. Yes, I am an Afrikaner
Zaire, where Hearts of Darkness is set, is a complete mess (5 million people slaugtered in the last 10 years of civil war) and almost any other African state (bar Botswana) South of the Sahara is far worse off than South Africa, which is a country that protects women's and gays rights, respects the rule of law and whose population is wealthier and have much better prospects for the future.
Is this in spite of Afrikaners? I think not.
They are the only colonials that did not keep refering to themselves as Portuguese or French or English. We refer to ourselves as African.
Lastly, here is a good summary of other music going down in Afrikaans in reaction to recent events in the country.
Well NY Mary, you like many others appear to have swallowed the romanticised self-written history of British culture hook line and sinker.
Apartheid was not "invented" by the post '48 Nat party (Afrikaans) government - an open minded scan of history in SA will show that the greed for control over the lucrative minerals drove successive UK administrators to assume dominance. Read about the Sand River convention, then about the annexation. Read about the humiliation of Britain in the First Freedom War - and read too about how Britain reacted in its heyday to defeat at Khartoum (Omdurman) Kanpur (Lucknow) Isandhlwana (Ulundi) or Majuba/Spioenkop/Magersfontein (Camps). Read about Glen Grey, the land act, the strop bill. Read about the terms on which diamonds and gold were dug, refined and traded through London - about the diamond syndicate, about the gold standard. Read widely, and with an open mind. Look actively on all sides for snippets which do not only fall into the "history as written, published, and taught by the victors" genre.
It is possible that you may find that firstly the articulate and well-recorded Imperial Brits do not need to be loved (or ignored) by the victims of their might or of their deceit. Parallels with current superpower issues may be rich for you.
If your thinking travels closer to reality on the ground in SA, you may also find that many South Africans across all types are concerned about leadership at home. Although it is presented as being well provided here in our quaint one-party democracy with floor crossing to hoover up strays, many here find a leadership vacuum leaving concern to grow in fields like AIDS, crime (violent and white-collar), multi-empowerment, corruption.
Perhaps some minority leadership calls like this song can grow (by challenge and by example) into a broader movement which will offer a true SA leader.
It is interesting that this leadership plea comes at a time that our current President has an obligation to step aside for an as yet unknown successor. The lobbying is underway.
Okay, I actually wasn't going to do this, in the interest of not sounding too pedantic, but some of this shit I can't let slide.
First, I am a scholar of colonialism. My primary work has been in British colonialism, but believe me, I am in no danger--none whatsoever--of "buying" any "romanticised self-written history of British culture." If the Boers have an appalling history of race relations, it does not then follow that the British must have had a good one. (See your compatriot, above on "black or white" thinking.) My own ancestors were displaced by the British, for what it's worth.
Second, colonialism was a shitty, unjust system. Period. It still is. It fucked up the third world; it fucked up the first world. Its effects cannot be erased, and there is no way to do it "well." Most of the early texts critiquing colonialism, such as Multatuli's "Max Havelaar" and Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," imply that, if only Europeans had come to the colonies as better people, with empathy and restraint, it would all have been okay. By the time we get to actual indigenous voices, such as Achebe, it is clear: even a benevolent colonizer is still a colonizer, and the damage cannot be undone. Third world political systems are still reeling from the effects.
Third, I find it interesting, Stuart, that you denigrate your political system while Wessel brags on it. Not sure what to make of that.
But I am an American, and for me the crucial parallel is, as several commenters noted, Southern rock. A people whose system was based, fundamentally, economically, on racial injustice, are overturned. Mostly, that's a good thing, but there will always be an undercurrent of seething rage that finds voice, a pointing back to ancient heroes and arguing for the justice and nobility of the fallen system.
Well, enjoy your rage, but I claim the right to call bullshit on it. A line like "And the Khakis are walking over a nation that will rise again" is not a historical referent; it's a threat, a warning to uppity blacks that they had better keep their place. To NOT see that is willfully blind. We have Lynryd Skynryd and Charlie Daniels; you have these guys.
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