Online Information About South African Amagwijos ("Gwijos")

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series about South African amagwijos (also given as "igwijos" and "gwijos") vocal music.

This post presents information about South Africa's amagwijos.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/09/five-youtube-videos-of-south-african_40.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. Part II showcases several YouTube videos of the gwijo song "uTata KaBoy".  

Selected comments from these videos' discussion threads are included in this post. These comments provide information about gwijo and/or provide some lyrics for the song  "uTata KaBoy".

The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks also to those who are sharing the South African tradition of amawijos with the world.
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Some of the content of this post was published in this 2019 pancocojams post: http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/10/information-about-videos-about-south.html "Information About & Videos About South Africans' Gwijo 
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Click the tags that are given below for more pancocojams posts on this subject.

Update: September 8, 2020. Watch this video:that was published on YouTube on Sep. 5, 2020:

MEC MANDLA MSIBI LEADING ANC REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE SONGS. ANC MPUMALANGA PEC MEMBER SINGS GWIJO

uhuru mofokeng, Sept. 5, 2020

The MEC of COGTA Mpumalanga province leading and singing ANC revolutionary struggle songs. Gwijo.

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Thanks to all those who are featured in this video and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.

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DISCLAIMER:
I'm an African American who unfortunately doesn't speak any language but English and has only learned about amagwijos from from watching YouTube videos and from reading the comments of those discussion threads and from reading online articles on that subject, in particular online articles about The Gwijo Squad, a group of fans that sing gwijos at rugby games.  

This pancocojams post and others on this subject are published to share examples of these embedded videos and document information that I've found online. This post is also published in the hope that it will spur people who sing or have sung gwijos and know about their history and present day usages to share that information online.

Additions and corrections of the information that is included in this post are very welcome.

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INFORMATION ABOUT SOUTH AFRICAN "GWIJOS" ("AMAGWIJOS"))
Excerpt #1:
From https://www.soccerladuma.co.za/fan-park/update/ten-words-from-mzansi-s-football-dictionary/304884#targetText=%E2%80%9DIgwijo%E2%80%9D%20or%20%E2%80%9CAmagwijo%E2%80%9D,dressing%20rooms%20just%20before%20games. Ten Words From Mzansi’s Football Dictionary, By Captain Alzheimers June 2, 2015
..."”Igwijo” or “Amagwijo”

The words simply means ‘song.’ Those are the songs sung in stadiums by fans and by players in dressing rooms just before games."...
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Pancocojams Editor's Note [latest revision: September 5, 2020]
"Amagwijo" ("igwijo", "gwijo") are amaXhosa words and amagwijos have been mostly performed in amaXhosa by public school students living in the Eastern Cape of South Africa .

Some gwijos are also sung in Zulu (and perhaps in other traditional South African languages.) Note: A South African responded "Sotho" [language] to my question in another YouTube video discussion thread about what language that song was sung in.

With regard to dates documenting these songs and when they were sung, this article https://www.newframe.com/gwijo-squad-the-new-sound-of-south-african-sport/#:~:text=1%20June%202019%3A%20The%20Gwijo%20Squad%20started%20as%20a%20group,Ellis%20Park%20in%20June%202018  about the group of fans known as the Gwijo Squad indicates that gwijos were sung in South African high schools as early as 1994. That same article indicates that "A group of rugby fans who took the spirit of igwijo with them to Gauteng and other parts of the country decided to get together, initially as a group of buoyant followers to support the first black Springbok captain – Siya Kolisi – for his first assignment against England at Ellis Park in June last year. (June 2018). "


Also, one South African in a YouTube video of amagwijo wrote that he remembered singing songs like gwijos during his army training in 2011.

If I understand it correctly, the main purpose of those songs is the same as the main purpose of songs and cheers in the United States pep rallies before a football game or a basketball game - to booster the spirit of their team who are competing as well as the spirits of those hearing these songs/cheers and the spirits of the singers themselves. One major difference between gwijos and cheerleading cheers in that United States is that is that in South Africa the entire student body sings gwijos which are led by students who are designated spirit leaders while cheers in the United States are led and performed by a small designated group of student cheerleaders.

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Excerpt #2
 From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItNp_wtbfXg&t=4s THE BEST GWIJO SONGS IN 2019....||AMAGWIJO||(jumayima, Maka nontsikelela, utata ka boy,hosana) AMAGWIJO OF SA, Jul 4, 2019
[comment posted by Chwayitile kiva, 2019,
"During after 1994 amagwijo were banned in Private school, the said its savage. today black white purple yellow joining together to sing amagwijo.
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I think the word "after" here might be a typo for the English words "around" or "about".

My guess is that "black white purple yellow" is a facetious way of referring to "people of all races"/"people of any skin color".

Is it accurate to say that the Gwijo squad lifted this custom from high school* students and that custom began in the early 1990s?
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If I understand it correctly, the word "college" is used in South Africa to refer to the educational level that people in the United States refer to as "high school", except that in the United States high school is 9-12th grade and (I've read that) in South Africa "college" is 8-12th grade.

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Excerpt #3
From https://www.newframe.com/gwijo-squad-the-new-sound-of-south-african-sport/ Gwijo Squad, the new sound of South African sport
A group of friends celebrating an iconic moment – the first match of South Africa’s first black Springbok rugby captain – gave birth to a sound that’s shaken up the sporting landscape.

By: Sibusiso Mjikeliso [...]
Photographer: Ihsaan Haffejee [...], 20 Jun 2019
“It is said that freedom wasn’t free. And that, when democracy was negotiated, the last vestiges ceded into the hands of white minority control were the land and rugby.

Rugby was at the heart of the former rulers’ chests – almost literally so, when you consider the constant wrangling over the existence of the Springbok badge and its position on the World Cup jersey. The sport gave meaning to so many, within the segregated confines and among those marginalised.

However, time has brought a new generation and a breath of fresh air into the sport. They call themselves the Gwijo Squad and as far as disruptions go, they are the noisy new neighbours chanting in the west stand.

You might have seen them on some obtrusive viral video, perhaps sent unsolicited to your neighbourhood watch WhatsApp group. They sing songs of jubilation, elation and devastation. To the uninitiated ear, they sound like “struggle songs” but they are, in fact, the chants that reverberate through Xhosa initiation ceremonies, weddings and, of course, rugby matches in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces.

You might have even asked yourself, “Who are these people, really?” Perhaps you might question what they want at old rugby coliseums such as Loftus Versfeld, Ellis Park and Newlands.

More than a concert of predominantly black African, Xhosa-speaking rugby fanatics, the Gwijo Squad is made up of individuals determined to create a movement that could end in the true unification of a sport that was used as a powerful tool to suppress black people.

[...]

[photo caption] "1 June 2019: The Gwijo Squad started as a group of rugby fans from the Eastern Cape who took the spirit of igwijo with them to Gauteng, initially to support first black Springbok captain Siya Kolisi in his inaugural assignment against England at Ellis Park in June 2018."

[...]

Igwijo and the trouble it caused 
In many ways, [Xhanti] Madolo has always been the guy at the forefront of a wave of change. In high school, he was the rugby cheerleader and courted trouble at post-1994 Dale College in King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape for his penchant for igwijo.

“We sang the school songs with pride and vigour, but we mixed things up with igwijo the year I took over as cheerleader [in 2000],” he recalls.

“We needed to take the cheering to another level, because our team was on another level and the culture was changing. We started bringing in the more popular traditional songs: “Ntombi emnhlotshazana … Yinton’ le uyenzayo, ayilunganga (Fair-skinned girl, what you’re doing is not right)”. And we readapted struggle songs, replacing names like Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela with the first team captain.

“The boys took to it, but the teachers on the other hand had other opinions. They banned igwijo. I don’t know how many times I have been called into the headmaster’s [James Haupt] office because of igwijo.

“Then Grey High School [from Port Elizabeth] threatened not to play against Dale if amagwijo would be sung at rugby matches. They said they were ‘savage songs’ or something like that. But it was too big a thing, too big to contain. They couldn’t fight it and it grew into something that is now the norm in the passages at the school.”...

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Excerpt #4
[This is an excerpt of my partial transcript of the YouTube video "Understanding the Gwijo Squad movement" published by SABC Digital News, Sep 6, 2019  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BwIgH7lisI&t=5s
..."Chulumanco Macingwane (CM)  [Chairman of the Gwijo Squad, a group of rugby fans that sings gwijos at rugby games]. 
"The word igwijo is a Xhosa word, but the practice of gwijo, the singing of these traditional songs that take the form of a leader and respondents is something that is completely ubiquitous in the country. It exists in every single one of our cultures which is why it resonates so much with people of all cultures. Incidentally, I was explaining to some, to some really enthusiastic White supporters today that when you see a gwijo squad or a group of Black people singing gwijo, don't assume that everyone speaks the language that they are singing in. We might be singing in isiXhosa and there might be Venda people and Sotho people and such but it's because this thing exists in all those cultures. So whatever language it is being sung in, they, it resonates with them and they take right with it [I'm not sure of these words]. Why we felt that if a Venda dude can learn a Xhosa gwijo, it should not be that much difficult if at all for an Afrikaan say to learn a Xhosa gwijo. So that's why..."

(interviewer): "It's for everyone."

(C.M.): "We felt that we needed to bring the spirit of gwijo absolutely to every color, creed, language". Yes.

interviewer: "So, it's songs to get you through hardship. Rugby is particularly apt. Those players on the field have a lot of pressure"...
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More excerpts of this unofficial transcript can be found in this 2019 pancocojams post: http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/10/information-about-videos-about-south.html
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Excerpt #5
From https://www.iol.co.za/sport/opinion/gwijo-squad-roars-for-all-colours-of-the-springbok-nation-17383568 Gwijo Squad roars for all colours of the Springbok nation

By Lungani Zama,  published Oct 7, 2018

"Ahead of the Springboks’ opening international of the 2018 season at Ellis Park, there was a momentous gathering of mates in Johannesburg, all there to witness what they dubbed “Siya Kolisi Day”.

It was the inauguration of the first, black Bok skipper and, with it, the emancipation of a million voices.

Those voices express themselves in the form of AmaGwijo, an endless playlist of cultural and cerebral hymns.

They haven’t just sprouted up because there is now a black leader. Far from it. These songs, amagwijo, have been an integral part of Xhosa culture for generations.

They sing, and beautifully so.

They sing when they are happy, and the rhythm has gusto. They sing when times are tough, and the songs resonate with a touch of melancholy.

They sing, and the emergence of the Gwijo Squad, is intent on turning that ‘they’ into ‘we’.

Their gathering from Ellis Park has grown louder by the voice, and swelled by number.

[...]

They are part of an increasingly diverse Bok mob, and the team and Saru have embraced their unique ‘gees’.

Their gospel is now being shared around the world, and drawing more and more locals – of all races – towards them.

[...]

Their constant chorus harks back to schoolboy rugby, and it’s tradition of war cries. There is a tribalism there, but it is not an exclusively Xhosa clique. Everyone is welcome.

Wozani, nonke (come, all of you) – just bring your most patriotic voices. The future is here, and it’s all colours of the rainbow nation."

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This concludes Part I of this two part pancocojams series.

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