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And the first most wonderfully annoying yet catchy and strange song of 2010 goes to…

..Die Antwoord. Like if 2 Unlimited or CnC Music Factory grew up as redneck Zef-rap Afrikaaners, played their gameboys, baile funk/carioca, old skool electro and Eminem rather too much, met a strange funsized blonde, met a 24 year old progeria suffering DJ, wearing clothes with an obvious Keith Haring influence then recorded a funny hiphop album with hooks that Black Eyed Peas would reject as too kawaii* sometimes with a donk beat that the Bolton massif would go nuts for. Brilliantly nuts, basically.

So here’s Enter the Ninja – this year’s Tatu meets 2Unlimited meets GLC hybrid. What? You weren’t looking for that? Kak!

As you could have guessed, severely NSFW…

and Zef Side (Zef is Afrikaans for redneck) – love their manifesto/mantra

“To sum it all up, in this place, South Africa, you get a lot of different things: whites, coloureds, English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, watookal. I’m like all these different things, all these different people in one person.”

Thanks to BoingBoing for turning me on to this…I ignored the original posts but the follow ups and Leon Botha (a very good artist) intrigued me…they are blowing up bigstyle (although mostly Internet fame you can’t cash down the bank). And a good interview here – as Yo-Landi put it their philosophy is ‘drive fast and play kak (shit) music loud. It’s a zef rap-rave jol (party), with lasers, smoke machines, 3D graphics, rappers… and everyone’s gonna be there.’ (my translations). Sounds good to me!

For a more academic take on Ninja and co go here – I read Koos Kombuis’s book about Voelvry and James Phillips (odd bloke) so it’s an interesting comparison but some of the politics mentioned there is dodge – yes there are and were progessive Afrikaners but it’s not a far stretch to connect apartheid with Afrikaners since they were in power and nearly all supporting those policies (why Voelvry was so sharply political, and did help the fall of apartheid – cos the ‘good’ Afrikaner kids weren’t supporting their parents bigotry – but it is a stretch to connect Die Antwoord with this movement!). But I can understand the attraction and tensions between British and Afrikaner white South Africans – John grew up there as a Scottish import (must have been annoying to be referred as ‘Inglesman’ when there were more than the English in SA 😉

Anyway I think the ladies doth analyse too much – hearing Afrikaans in humourous GLC-style rap is really funny, fokken lekker 😉 And I’d rather these guys and gals get famous than the blandness that is B.E.P…they might be surreal performance art and all playing roles from a previous project – or be the ZA version of The Streets – but when it’s this fun, who actually gives a fokk?

* Japanese for cute, allegedly.

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Tim B

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10 responses to “And the first most wonderfully annoying yet catchy and strange song of 2010 goes to…”

  1. Kameraad Mhambi avatar
    Kameraad Mhambi

    “yes there are and were progessive Afrikaners but it’s not a far stretch to connect apartheid with Afrikaners since they were in power and nearly all supporting those policies”

    You miss the point I’m making – I don’t deny that Afrikaners were (mainly) responsible for apartheid at all. Read the article again.

    And also read this.
    http://mhambi.blogspot.com/2008/03/are-afrikaners-planets-worst-racists.html

    The point I made is that like James Phillips (who really kick-started the whole Voelvry movement), Ninja, is an English speaking saffa that expressed himself through Afrikaans culture. Why? Because until the 1970’s English speaking South Africans still more readily aligned themselves with British culture (and in many ways still do). More recently (after 1994) they have become not ‘English’, but ‘South African’. Ninja found a treasure trove of culture to references and dip into. And a ready made support base. Same as Phillips.

    Also read this where much the same point is made
    http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/davidjsmith/2010/02/03/is-afrikaans-cooler-as-engels/

    Reply
    1. Tim avatar
      Tim

      I got your reference about James Phillips, the whole Bernoldus Niemand thing, the taking of a more locally historic and politically opposed culture to make a point to those people – what I didn’t like was the backdoor defence for Afrikaners. My partner was one of those 1970’s people you refer to, difference was he was fighting against apartheid and got the shit from the AWB, security forces etc. for it – something not many Afrikaners were doing at the time. And has family there so I’ve visited.

      Yes I can see the conflict in Afrikaners – Koos described this well and first hand in SA talking to Afrikaners talking about how things have changed…yes it’s their home, 300 odd years of culture, but told cos of their colour and past policies it’s not their home. I sympathise with that; that the British came in, beat them up, invented the concentration camp, then criticised their lifestyle when it was far more complex than that. I am no posterboy for British foreign policy; the Brits have been behind most of the crap in the last 100-150 years because of the problems of Empire.

      But let’s not do special pleading – apart from say segregation in the US which you can say was very similar, apartheid was specially horrible, unique, and yes they generally deserve the racist tag – ones I’ve met here in London are FAR from reconciliated, in fact they say stuff like ‘Mandela is a terorist’ and ‘all blacks are criminals and rapists’ – now it might be that all the bad ones left, but still that’s why that particular belief continues outside of SA. The Spitting Image song ‘I’ve never met a nice South African’ talking about Afrikaners – might not be entirely true, I have met some nice people…but I understand where that comes from – and have experienced it myself first hand.

      And also Britain was an escape route for the British and 2nd generation – in the mid 1970’s to the mid 1980’s SA became hell on earth…I don’t see why people should be criticised for getting out when they realised the problem (caused by the Afrikaner Nationalist government) could not be solved by them…no amount of integration by the British would solve the Afrikaner vs Black & Coloured issue – it went further than that. Like Zulu vs Xhosa and Hutus vs Rwandans it’s tribal history, tribal beef…

      So please don’t tell me I don’t understand.

      I still think it’s a stretch – either intentionally or not so James Phillips was involved in Voelvry and politics, I just get funny parody and something more akin to Goldie Lookin’ Chain or The Streets – it’s a clever parody of a certain type of SA redneck I’m guessing.

      Reply
      1. Tim avatar
        Tim

        And your article ‘wasn’t about that’? So why quote this rather incendiary – and IMO wrong – piece from Business Today?

        “As the editor of Business day recently wrote:

        “THE 1970s were a heady time to be a white English-speaking liberal in SA. As a post- Mandela black leadership began to define itself in the form of Steve Biko and other young activists, many white liberals began to see a relevant place for themselves in South African politics — they would be aiders and abetters of the revolution against apartheid.

        The truth be told, white liberal English speakers still smarted from the break with Britain and never made much distinction then between apartheid and its creators — nationalist Afrikaners.””

        From what I know from the dock worker’s strikes (74?), things got really bad for whites who supported the struggle against apartheid, they used to just bomb your car, or post death notices, or knock your teeth out. As the whole Biko episode proved, everyone was fair game from then. A frightened state does some horrible things, and colour stopped being a bar to that…a bit like the fear over terrorists now.

        Reply
  2. Kameraad Mhambi avatar
    Kameraad Mhambi

    Are you dof? (An Afrikaans term meaning slow to comprehend.)

    Hilary Joffe’s quote above is quoted verbatim. What it says in case I have to spell it out for you, is not that their was’nt racism amongst Afrikaners, but that a lot of what went round as being anti-apartheid in the English community was driven by anti-Afrikaner sentiment, in particular because of the break with Britain. Now Joffe is not just an average journo, shes a noted sociologist as well. (and an English speaker).

    If you need more evidence consider this from the Truth & Reconciliation report:

    “The 1989 survey also showed sixty per cent of students who said they were members of the opposition DP (traditionally English) expressed support for repressive action taken by the state against the protest initiatives of the ANC or the UDF. This figure rose to the high eighties amongst Afrikaans-speaking white students.

    When the last survey was done in June 1989, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the African National Congress (ANC) had less than 5 per cent support in white student ranks.”

    http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/special/conscrip/conscr01.htm

    So although there were a difference the vast majority of English white SA supported the actions of the Nationalists if not the Nationalists themselves.

    Another thing to contemplate, material conditions in Rhodesia were much the same as apartheid SA, but there were no Afrikaners. The presence of Afrikaners allowed white English SA to take a much more liberal position – and a lot of it was fake. Especially considering the more than a century old animosity and prejudice between these two groups.

    I don’t doubt the sincerity of your partner. But she / he is an individual.

    There’s a whole section of interviews on my site with Gavin Evans, white ANC underground member. You might find it interesting. http://mhambi.com/?s=gavin+evans

    Reply
    1. Tim avatar
      Tim

      No I’m not deaf or dumb, I get what you’re saying. That’s what I’m resisting…you’re sounding dangerously like you’re saying the ‘resistance to the Afrikaners’ was all engineered by white liberals, which is rubbish. And sounding like you’re painting yourself as a victim of the English (for it is most likely the English rather than the rest) is not really endearing to me, nor the rest of the world. Afrikaners were in power, they fucked up, Get used to it.

      Also my partner (male – John) was a socialist. Not all were liberals you know – unless you don’t know the meaning of the term liberal, and are using it as a blanket term of abuse like Republicans do. He is a revolutionary marxist, although then in the Progressive party (which I know is liberal, but there being a lack of visible socialist parties in SA then, and ANC being made illegal by then?) growing up working class & gay in Durban…not exactly the picture you’re painting is it?

      I will be deaf if people keep using the liberal word automatically on people like my partner…cos there were far more than ‘liberals’ resisting Apartheid in SA (although those tended to be the fence-sitters and didn’t get banned so thus more visible to history). And also I doubt as an (I guess?) Afrikaner you had your car firebombed, death notices posted and your teeth knocked out? Apologies if you did, but I’m guessing from your pic you’re in your late 20’s (neither was I but I was alive then, different country though) and you weren’t even alive when these things happened in the 70’s – he was there so I tend to take his side with a little bit more veracity.

      I will go and ask him if he knew Gavin Evans and some background but we’ve discussed this era many times before. I will get his response about the liberal thing…that’d be funny.

      And I was always talking about the period of the early-mid 70’s – dunno why you are jumping forward to 1989?, it was never part of this argument – different times, and after years of attacks, necklacing and eveything else I’m really not surprised support dropped (and some left or came to the same conclusion as my partner). And I know white non-Afrikaners supported the regime,my partner’s parents and sister did without a noise. I never said the British were better, some did mutely comply with the regime and lived a life of luxury because of it. I pointed out British foreign policy is shit.

      But to suggest the anti-apartheid movement was just a nose-snub by the English against the South Africans rather than a movement against racism is rather churlish and possibly racist; if that’s what you’re doing – because it belittles those black and coloured people who lost their lives and fought against the regime? Also it suggests that the whites were leading the blacks which is also at least in part wrong – my partner left SA (and went AWOL interesting enough) because he realised whites couldn’t solve these issues, they were possibly part of the problem…which suggests there were people with more understanding of the race/political dynamic than you suggest.

      And might explain the ‘lack of ANC white support’ you suggest? Doesn’t mean all those students wanted apartheid to continue (ANC was still a banned organisation then, that sounds like me criticising someone for not joining the IRA then not being ‘pro-republican’ – not that I would, nor than I support the IRA)

      And also started reading the Gavin Adams and read how he’d gotten disenfranchised by Marxism and Lenin…this is going to be an unbiased view then 😉 The first video reminds me a lot of John’s first experiences – although obviously far more middle class, John was very much from the working class. Also Cape Town was in part a different world…

      P.S. if you’re gonna call me stupid in Afrikaans I’d like to remind you: my blog, my rules. Keep it civil. If you start insulting me you’re gonna be blocked as soon as you can say ‘Mbeki is a fool’. I doubt you’d allow that behaviour on your blog. Be warned, or don’t post here – if you’re gonna be rude, then choose the latter.

      Reply
  3. Kameraad Mhambi avatar
    Kameraad Mhambi

    As an aside, At last The Sunday Times – SA biggest paper – had a story about Die Antwoord on their front page yesterday. But guess what. They called them The Answer. Tsk tsk.

    Reply
  4. Kameraad Mhambi avatar
    Kameraad Mhambi

    OK so we broadly agree then.

    Just a note – the ANC’s popularity amongst the white population reached its zenith from 1989 to 1999.

    Question for you, do you think whites can be African?

    Reply
    1. Tim avatar
      Tim

      Yes I do in fact…my partner sees himself as African (although also wary of nationalism; I also see him as African) even though he arrived there when he was 7, it obviously changed him and his life totally…he marches around in shorts and tshirt no matter the weather! So I don’t see that anyone has a prior right to that name, be African and proud whatever your race. I would if I was from there…such a beautiful country – and another thing I agree on from your blog is that person writing about the lack of racism on show in the modern South Africa…when I was there everyone was polite and I was amazed people weren’t pulling out the guns and shooting each other over the past or holding grudges. They were just getting on with their lives.

      South Africa might have it’s problems but it dealt with it well; better than other places that did indeed turn into a war, and that’s the strength of the rainbow nation is it’s constituent parts, the fact people seem to be working for a better tomorrow and not getting into genocide or revenge.

      This was brought to my attention by Koos Kombuis’s book about Voelvry; and talking to an older Afrikaner tour guide we spent a whole day being talked (at? 😉 by…he talked about the shared black/white heritage (and blood interestingly, saying he was in part black in his DNA) and the hundreds of years history, certainly that makes him as African as any other…although I do tend to catch myself saying ‘African’ meaning black and then I clarify.

      Reply
  5. Canada avatar
    Canada

    People will enjoy them untill they realize its just a guy doing method acting and shock lyrics with a contrived image used to launch their package.

    Reply

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