No more kwela, brothers and sisters
Quick tempo, repetitive and shrill, ‘kwela’, otherwise known as the penny whistle, is a form of authentic South African music rendered on flute. It is backed by drums and guitar with no lyric. The sound and rhythm imitate a small bird, the kwela, which is courting a mate.
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According to Wikipedia, kwela music evolved from other older traditional music forms by blacks in the 1950s and it later became a lookout music to warn trouble makers of “kwela-kwela,” a derogatory Zulu term for police. Gradually, this music infiltrated the white areas where roving black groups played it to beg for money.
At a time in history, the image of kwela as a lookout for trouble was abandoned. It was modernised by inclusion of other instruments and regarded only as an invitational music adopted as the sound of South Africans, both black and white. Kwela has been the signature tune of Radio South Africa (RSA), the biggest propaganda organ of apartheid in their broadcasts to Black Africa. In Ghana, kwela was made popular by a weekend programme dubbed “Going down South,” by Radio Ghana. Interestingly, in spite of our reputation as copy cats for foreign music, no Ghanaian band has gone into kwela music.
I was nearly addicted to kwela in the early 1970s when I was a night production shift manager in a factory. In moments of less activity, I used to keep myself awake with radio which I tuned to RSA. On a particular night, there was a lecture delivered by a Professor of Stellenbosch University. I cannot remember his name or the exact title of the lecture but the gist has stayed in my memory because of two features. In the first place, the lecture sought to propagate a theory of justification for exclusionism which was revulsive and palpably false. In the second place, the lecturer’s sleepy, undulating Afrikaan-accented English was worth remembering. I imagined him as a big blond man, a feature I have somehow associated with every racist who comes from that part of the continent.
For 45 minutes, he spoke about the distinctiveness of subsets of races. He said that Africa occupies 12.5 per cent of the world’s land mass. As a geographical fact, I found out that this was false. He said South Africa as a nation is 12.5 per cent of the land mass of our continent, an assertion which was also false. He further claimed that the white population of South Africa was 12.5 per cent while the blacks constituted 77.5 per cent. This too was false.
Now, here is his pitch: He invited listeners to take particular note of the recurring 12.5 per cent which he called a microcosm. He said that Africa is a distinct entity situated in a larger entity. South Africa is a microcosm of Africa; so is the white population a microcosm of total population of that nation.
He asserted that the 12.5 per cent factor did not come about by accident. He stressed that nature had ordained it so and should be accepted. God has made whites and blacks to be different. Each has a distinct culture and distinct needs. This, in fact, is the basis of justification for apartheid and the creation of several unviable pseudo-states called “the homelands”. In view of what has been happening to foreigners in South Africa, I can imagine the Zulus also saying, “God made us different from you lot”.
I rarely hear kwela these days. It may be that it is because I no longer listen to RSA. Or, it may well be that kwela is one of the insidious apartheid tools that has no relevance post Mandela’s release. It may have been swamped by the unrelenting invasion of migrants, ideas and cultures from Africa - the other Africa which the Afrikaans and Zulus pronounce “Orfrica” and some add, “North of the Limpopo”. The invasion of South Africa by the Orfricans is like a deluge whose force Black South Africa could not stand and had to explode in hate of foreigners labelled desperate hustlers and accused of taking over their jobs and women and causing an escalation in crime.
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The message to the foreigners is loud and clear: “Go home. Your personal security and the safety of your investments
are not assured here.” With the veins on each side of the neck standing out like the knots of a rope, they act their threat, employing petrol, matches and machetes. They have forgotten the era when their leaders, fleeing from white-on–black apartheid, used to mill all over Africa as freedom fighters and were dismissed by the white racists with epithets such as stateless bums, terrorists and international vagabonds.
They say nothing about their own nationals and their investments in mining, brewing, banking and telecommunications spread all over Africa after they have driven “the desperate hustlers” from the Rainbow Nation. They have not contemplated what is likely to happen to all that volume of business that has been routed through South Africa since the new dawn of global sourcing by multinational companies in English-speaking Africa.
Kwela is no longer an invitational music. Rather, it has reverted to a lookout signal for the presence of hustlers. This is the time for assessment of relationships. We the mobrowas in Ghana have sold ourselves cheap through uncontrolled migration.
Meanwhile, Nigeria is planning to launch a compensation demand of some 84 million naira from South Africa. What is Ghana’s intended action?
(Author: Blame not the Darkness; Akora; The Sissain Bridge)