“A Properly Decent Human Being”

 

Curmie can’t speak for everyone, but sometimes, Gentle Reader, he could use a reminder that not all white South Africans are amoral Nazi plutocrats.  The recent passing of the great playwright Athol Fugard was one such reminder, but in a sad way.  It was a special pleasure, therefore, to read that a statue of the late musician and activist Johnny Clegg has now been unveiled in Cape Town as part of a unique and growing exhibition called The Long March to Freedom.

Curmie might as well quote rather than paraphrase Ashleigh Nefdt here:

The Long March to Freedom is a unique and monumental procession of life-size bronze statues, each of which depicts freedom fighters who never gave up the idea of a liberated South Africa. It tells a story of South Africa that spans 350 years; boasting the company of everyone from Khoi leaders who ruled hundreds of years ago, proud Zulu and Xhosa kings and those who led South Africa to light during our fiercest fight for freedom including Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Beyers Naude, Albert Luthuli, OR Tambo and now, Johnny Clegg.

Born in England, Clegg grew up in Johannesburg, where he became fascinated by Zulu culture.  He learned the language and both the musical and dance styles.  His first (by no means his last) arrest for violating apartheid laws came at the age of fifteen.  A year later he met and started to perform with Sipho Mchunu.  Needless to say, a white teenager and a young black man performing together raised more than a few eyebrows in South Africa in 1969.  The fact that they sang in both English and Zulu probably ruffled a few feathers, too.  That didn’t change when the duo expanded into the band Juluka, adding four more musicians: two white, two black.

Juluka faced harassment and censorship both before and after releasing their first album in 1979.  National broadcasters wouldn’t play their music, but they still did shows in churches, private residences, and the like.  And the band toured internationally as well as releasing two platinum and five gold albums.  Juluka disbanded in 1985 when Mchunu retired from music (they’d re-unite briefly in the late ‘90s).

Clegg then founded a new band, Savuka, with Juluka band-mate Dudu Zulu.  The band released four albums and an EP before Dudu Zulu was shot and killed in 1993.  The group’s first album, “Third World Child,” broke international sales records in three European countries, and “Heat, Dust, and Dreams” earned a Grammy nomination.

He went on to a solo career, still with both black and white fellow musicians, although that became less of a big deal after the fall of apartheid in 1993 and the election of Nelson Mandela the following year.  Most of the songs Clegg is known for came from the Juluka or Savuka days, and they figured prominently in his live shows. 

Curmie can’t remember when, exactly, he first encountered Clegg’s music, but it was at least thirty years ago.  He doesn’t own all of Clegg’s CDs, but he does have four of them: one with Juluka and three with Savuka.  Songs like “Scatterlings of Africa,” “Great Heart,” “African Sky Blue,” and “Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World” have been heard a lot at Chez Curmie and on his Spotify feed.  But it’s “Asimbonanga” that holds special place in Curmie’s heart.

It was that song, about the incarceration of Nelson Mandela (“Asimbonanga” means “we have not seen him”), that Curmie chose as curtain call music for his production of Fugard’s “Master Harold”… and the boys, which Curmie firmly believes is the best show he’s ever directed.  The play has nothing to do with Mandela, but a lot to do with the apartheid system Mandela opposed.  Curmie stands by his choice, and he still can’t listen to that song without getting a little teary-eyed, and if it’s this clip from a 1999 concert, it’s all over.

Curmie thinks Johnny Clegg was an outstanding musician and song-writer.  But that doesn’t get you a statue in the Long Match to Freedom exhibition.  Rather, it was his activism, his perseverance, and his humanity which make him a worthy recipient of that honor.  It’s why he was mentioned alongside the likes of Athol Fugard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Václav Havel in what became Curmie’s signature lecture, the “Uncle Norb Speech.”  It’s why Curmie’s alma mater awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters in 2012.

The statue shows Clegg not with a guitar in his hands, but in a traditional Zulu dance. His family says he would often perform such dances at home “to ground himself during often heart-breaking and difficult times.”  His son describes “who he was at his core: Zulu culture, music, and dance.”

At the unveiling ceremony, Dali Tambo, the founder of Artists Against Apartheid, highlighted “the fact that he always represented racial harmony, a coming together, a uniting of the people of South Africa.  He was anti-apartheid in that way; he was anti-racist in that way.”  Clegg’s longtime friend Max De Preez said that “Johnny would have reminded us today that the safest, richest, future would be to embrace the people and cultures and music and humanity of our continent.”

De Preez sums up Johnny Clegg: “he was a properly decent human being, and that is the biggest compliment that can be paid to anyone.”  Curmie can’t improve on that description.