Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series posts about how the hymn "Nkosi Sikelela' iAfrica" ("God Bless Africa") was and is sung at certain contemporary protests and at certain current memorial services in South Africa.
This post provides information about the use of "Nkosi Sikelela' iAfrica" as a struggle song [protest song]. Information about South Africa's #feesmustfall" [Fees Must Fall] movement and information about gender based violence in South Africa which sparked the current #aminext [AM I Next] movement are also included in this post.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/11/nkosi-sikelel-iafrika-sung-at_21.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. Part II presents a video of and comments about the hymn "Nkosi Sikelela' iAfrica" ("God Bless Africa") being sung at contemporary #feesmustfall protests.
That post also showcases a video example of the hymn "Nkosi Sikelela' iAfrica" ("God Bless Africa") being sung by the University of Witwatersrand Seventh Day Adventist Student Movement (The Mighty Wits SDASM) along with selected comments from that video's discussion thread. Those comments noted that that hymn was sung and is being sung at memorial services in South Africa for victims of gender based violence in South Africa, and/or other events or protests associated with the current #aminext [AM I Next] movement in that nation.
The content of this post is presented for historical and socio-cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who were and are active in these protests movements. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
RIP all victims of gender based violence in South Africa and throughout the world.
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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/11/south-africas-aminext-am-i-next.html for a closely related pancocojams post entitled South Africa's #aminext [Am I Next] Movement Against Gender Based Violence (with videos of the tribute song "Bambulele Uyinene")
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INFORMATION ABOUT THE SONG "NKOSI SIKELELA' IAFRICA"'S USE AS A STRUGGLE [PROTEST] SONG
From https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27245511 South Africa's songs of power By Pumza Fihlani, BBC News, Johannesburg, 4 May 2014
"During the struggle against white-minority rule in South Africa, songs played a vital role in galvanising popular support and boosting the morale of protesters. Twenty years after the advent of democracy, they are still a big part of this year's election.
Many of the political songs are based on the call-and-response pattern used in many churches.
Crowds, often numbering in their thousands, of all ages, join in, creating a feeling of immense strength and unity. Jacob Zuma was well known as a singer and was loved at rallies but he has toned down his performances since becoming president.
As the party which led the battle against apartheid, many of the old songs are associated with the governing African National Congress (ANC) but its challengers have composed their own songs.
Nkosi Sikelela' iAfrica (God Bless Africa)
The national anthem, Nkosi Sikelela' iAfrica (God Bless Africa), has a long history as a protest song.
Written by Enoch Sontonga, a teacher and preacher from the Eastern Cape province, it came to feature prominently at the ANC's secret meetings.
Although written some 15 years prior to the formation of the ANC in 1912, the party's founding president John Langalibalele Dube introduced it at their gatherings and it became the party's anthem.
The ruling party's former chief whip Mathole Motshekga says struggle songs originated from the courses of colonialism, slavery and apartheid which is why the earliest songs had a "religious character".”...
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From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nkosi_Sikelel%27_iAfrika "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika"
..."The hymn ["Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika"] was originally composed as a hymn in 1897 by Enoch Sontonga, a teacher at a Methodist mission school near Johannesburg. He based the melody on the hymn tune "Aberystwyth" by Joseph Parry.[2] The words of the first stanza and chorus were originally written in Xhosa as a hymn. In 1927 seven additional Xhosa stanzas[3] were added by the poet Samuel Mqhayi... The hymn became popular in South African churches and was taken up by the choir of Ohlange High School, whose co-founder served as the first president of the South African Native National Congress. It was sung to close the Congress meeting in 1912, and by 1925 it had become the official closing anthem of the organisation, now known as the African National Congress.[5] "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" was first published in 1927.[5] The song was the official anthem for the African National Congress during the apartheid era and was a symbol of the anti-apartheid movement.[6] For decades during the apartheid regime it was considered by many to be the unofficial national anthem of South Africa, representing the suffering of the oppressed masses. Because of its connection to the ANC, the song was banned by the regime during the apartheid era.[7]”...
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INFORMATION ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA'S FEES MUST FALL [#feesmustfall] MOVEMENT
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeesMustFall
#FeesMustFall was a student-led protest movement[6] that began in mid-October 2015 in South Africa. The goals of the movement were to stop increases in student fees as well as to increase government funding of universities. The movements were started and led by the SRC leader of the University of Witwatersrand of 2015, Shaeera Kalla. On 2 October Kalla attended her last council meeting as SRC president, she is accompanied by Nompendulo as an observer heading towards being the incoming SRC President of 2016.[7] Protests started at the University of Witwatersrand and spread to the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University before rapidly spreading to other universities across the country.[8]
The 2015 protest ended when it was announced by the South African government that there would be no tuition fee increases for 2016. The protest in 2016 began when the South African Minister of Higher Education announced that there would be fee increases capped at 8% for 2017; however, each institution was given the freedom to decide by how much their tuition would increase."...
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INFORMATION ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA'S MOVEMENT AGAINST GENDER BASED VIOLENCE
From https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-death-of-uyinene-mrwetyana-and-the-rise-of-south-africas-aminext-movement The Death of Uyinene Mrwetyana and the Rise of South Africa’s #AmINext Movement By Rosa Lyster, September 12, 2019
"A memorial at the Clareinch Post Office, in the suburbs of Cape Town, where the nineteen-year-old Uyinene Mrwetyana was murdered, setting off widespread protests.Photograph by Rodger Bosch / AFP / Getty
...On Saturday, August 24th, in the early afternoon, a nineteen-year-old University of Cape Town student named Uyinene Mrwetyana went to the post office. The precise details of what happened when she got there won’t be heard until a trial, which is scheduled for November, but police have confirmed the following: a man behind the counter told her that the credit-card machine wasn’t working, because the electricity was down, so he wouldn’t be able to process her payment. Power outages are common in South Africa, a normal part of life that you wouldn’t necessarily think twice about. The man told Mrwetyana to come back a bit later, and he’d be able to help her then. She did so, some time shortly after 2 p.m., when everyone else working at the post office had gone home. On Monday, September 2nd, a packed courtroom heard during a pre-trial hearing that the man working behind the counter had confessed to [raping and murdering Mrwetyana]*
[...]
According to the most recent statistics released by the South African Police Service, a woman is murdered every three hours in South Africa. The country has one of the highest rates of rape in the world, and, according to the most recent data from the World Health Organization, it ranks fourth out of a hundred and eighty-three countries when it comes to femicide, or the killing of a woman or girl on account of her gender. Every week, there is a story in South Africa that should stop us in our tracks—a newspaper report detailing what feels like a freak detonation of psychotic, demented violence against women, a one-off explosion of hate that somehow just keeps on happening.
[...]
For many South Africans, the protests following Mrwetyana’s death have been an indication that there are ways of responding to this crisis that go beyond sadness and anger and the state’s promise to set up some sort of commission of inquiry at a vague time in the future. Confronted with the reality of how she died, and the knowledge that “the post office” must now be added to the long list of places to be scared of, women around the country are reaching what feels like a breaking point. At protests and vigils this week, the mood has been a combination of fury and astonishment at how distorted our definition of “normal” has become. This past Thursday, in Cape Town, thousands of people marched on Parliament to demand a more definitive and urgent response to violence against women. It would be easy to say that there have been so many marches just like it, with the same songs, the same posters with the faces and names of dead women and girls, many of the same slogans. But, walking up Plein Street to the parliamentary buildings, where President Cyril Ramaphosa was scheduled to address the protesters, the mood felt different, as if the flashover had occurred, the point when when the fire in the room becomes the room on fire. It might have been all the schoolchildren in attendance—kids maybe on their first march, as opposed to their tenth—or the hundreds of placards asking “Am I Next?,”... Mrwetyana’s death, so grotesquely emblematic of the state’s failure to protect women and children, seems to have channelled the anger that so many feel and directed it toward a clear target. The feeling that someone should do something is turning, quickly, into the conviction that someone is going to have to do something.”...
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*The details of Uyinene Mrwetyana rape and murder are given in this article.
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INFORMATION ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA'S AM I NEXT [#aminext] MOVEMENT
From https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/am-i-next-protests-where-what-we-know-planned-disruptions-video/
..."What prompted ‘Am I Next’ protests? [in South Africa]
The Am I Next movement has, in the last 24 hours, garnered support on a national scale. It rose out of the frustrations of many South African women who have grown tired of the perceived inaction displayed by the government.
In the last 24 hours, South Africans learned that first-year UCT film student, Uyinene Mrwetyana was allegedly murdered by a Post Office employee. A six-year-old, Amy-Lee de Jager — thankfully she has been found and safely reunited with her family — was, on Monday, kidnapped in front of her school.
The country also recently heard of the gruesome murders of Leighandre Jegels, Nolunde Vumsindo, Meghan Cremer, Jesse Hess and others.
[...]
The apparent inability of law enforcement agencies and the government to nip the scourge of femicide and violence against women in the bud has prompted scores of women to band together for what they call “Am I Next” protests."...
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This concludes Part I of this two part pancocojams series.
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