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Daily Maverick
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
A discussion about the coloured community and other conversation-stoppers
Against my better judgement, I stepped into a discussion on social media. It was one of those discussions that is marked by conversation-stoppers, deflections and presentations of innocence that is so de rigueur in South African society. It was a discussion about actual or perceived marginalisation of the coloured community in South Africa. This is a country built on decades of racism, but there are no racists. It is a country where citizens compare miseries, where individuals or groups of individuals attempt, constantly, to outmanoeuvre one another in the races to show who is or has been most persecuted, whose persecution matters most, and where the country's myriad problems are explained by monocausal simplicities and convenience. None of these is, of course, unique to South Africa. Conversation-stoppers are swung about like a rapier, slashing, and killing conversations, dead. You may say, for instance, that there may be a reason why people are opposed to your (Caligulan) brutality and cruelty, and the conversation-stopper is that you harbour an ancient hatred of the cruel brute and his people caught in flagrante delicto, so you cannot, possibly be intellectually honest. You may say that someone is wilfully marginalised through some biblical punishment where the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children. The deflection is slipped in; the children have been and will always be guilty, and exploit their intergenerational privileges, which, in some ways, may well be true. As a former colleague said after I admonished her for abusing a (white) child of about six or seven running through the newsroom: 'A snake gives birth to a snake.' This logic – hard to dispute the snake-gives-birth-to-a-snake, or kill them in infancy before they kill you – has been applied to present-day conflicts where innocent children are being killed almost daily. If I have not made it clear previously, I should do it again, here: I don't particularly care for identity politics or race-based politics, and I am not a specialist of coloured politics… there are people who, I am sure, are better placed for this purpose. All of this does not make me blind to the way privileges, powers and influences are handed down to successive generations, and how later generations will conspire to protect such privileges. It is an empirically verifiable fact that power and influence, privileges and benefits (the various forms of capital, political, financial, social or symbolic) accumulated over more than 300 years do not evaporate within 30 years… it is power and privilege that is vertically segmented. We speak, in this respect, about the 'development thesis' in terms of which powers, material and otherwise (ownership of property, development of technology and knowledge production, in general), tend to develop over time and become more powerful. When these powers are under threat, or even questioned rhetorically, those who wield the power feel 'uncomfortable', or 'fragile', and egads! they cry persecution, injustice and oppression, conveniently forgetting their (historical) roles and functions in getting us to where we are. Coloured community concerns and the deflection Let's leave all that as a backdrop, and return to my brief foray into the discussion of the coloured community I mentioned above. First, I should set out those nasty racial classifications, definitions and conceptions of purity and belonging. I refer hereafter to black people to exclude those South Africans who are classified coloured, and considered to be 'not black enough' or 'non-African'. Again, my personal identity affiliations or lack thereof (political, racial, ethnic or cultural) are set aside. The conversation I refer to went something like this: A coloured guy stands up and explains that the coloured community is marginalised, especially in the Western Cape. Also in Panayaza Lesufi's Gauteng, it should be said, and all of which makes a nonsense of the non-racialism that we fought for in South Africa. Before the topic of actual or perceived marginalisation is even considered, the host of the discussion deflects and asks why the coloured community persists with their coloured identity. Absent are the facts that the Afrikaner nationalists created the vile and contemptible racial classification system, and the African nationalists have simply adopted what has always been a vile and contemptible racial classification system. Those are just the facts. The Afrikaner nationalists may tell us that they meant well. I am absolutely sure that the African nationalists have only the best interests of South Africa in mind. That's the thing about oppressive or unjust regimes: Joseph Stalin or Pol Pot did not say they were going to kill millions of people. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler did not say, up front, that they would be responsible for the death of more than 100 million people in Europe. (See this essay by my favourite 20th-century historian, Eric Hobsbawm) They meant well, no? The National Party (Afrikaner nationalist) and the ANC (African nationalists) would proclaim innocence, to be sure. Julius Malema's ethno-nationalism of a particular kind, where those people whom he considers to be non-African don't matter and don't belong. His staunchest of followers would tell you, I am sure, that he means well… Coloured community concerns and denials, and counter-accusations It's marvellous to behold. Frightening is probably a better word, but never mind. Criminal organisations or unjust regimes have at least one thing in common. Privileged people who are reminded of their ill-begotten status and the forms of capital mentioned above, have the same habit. Deny everything (we are not racist), admit nothing (we worked hard for our money) and make counter-accusations (you're racist/reverse racist). Before seriously considering the cries of the coloured community's leaders, the counter-accusation (a veritable conversation-stopper) is that coloured people are racist, and have always been racist towards black people. It does not help, of course, that very many coloured people have shimmied up to the party of white settlers, the DA, as they did to the National Party with the Tricameral Parliament. If we accept that more than one thing can be true at the same time – that the coloured community has been left behind in whatever resembles a peace and prosperity dividend of the democratic era, and that coloured people have shimmied up to the illiberal, undemocratic and unjust forces in the country – the least one can do is listen, and look at the evidence. Instead, when coloured groups raise issues of crime, disproportionate incarceration, unemployment, drug abuse (all social problems that stem from poverty and alienation), the black African response is: well, coloureds are racist, or they (themselves) reproduce myths about being coloured, when the African nationalists actually reinvoked and reapplied the vile and contemptible racial classification system – because the higher you are on the scale of racial superiority, the more money there is to be made. For instance, when the Dutch, then British, and then Settler Colonialists (during the Afrikaner nationalist era) placed and kept whites on the top rung, they reaped the benefits of everything; from the proceeds of gold and diamonds, to agriculture and education, which helps explain the development thesis referred to above. The main problem, the way I see it, is that in this great-tjank – everyone is in tears about being persecuted and we're in a state of national paralysis – claims of eternal innocence give one group a monopoly on persecution (they have been the most persecuted in history), and gives that group a free reign with meting out punishment (everyone else must suffer biblical punishment and, anyway, a snake gives birth to a snake), and nobody can be as innocent as the ones who claim eternal innocence, and nobody can be innocent enough. As a pessimist, I don't expect things to get any better for the coloured community. This is quite apart from declinism, although it is profoundly Panglossian to be positive. I will leave one example. Somewhere in the Northern Cape, somewhere between Springbok and Upington, there is a black man working on a farm. Once he got a job on the farm, he brought his family from Mpumalanga. Now, let me be clear. As much as South Africa belongs to everyone who lives in it, people are free to move around the country as they wish! Now, that man from Mpumalanga was employed after a coloured man from the area was replaced because black economic empowerment and affirmative action policies (according to the farmer) awards more points for employing a 'black African' as opposed to a coloured. The first problem with this is that the area has been predominantly coloured/Khoi/San for centuries. The ANC has had a policy of converting every corner of the country to reflect the demographics of South Africa; in other words, if, as Jimmy Manyi said when he was still in the ANC and a government spokesperson, coloureds are overconcentrated in any particular region, that had to be changed 'to reflect the demographics of South Africa'. This means that if there happens to be a street in which coloured people are in the majority, as in most of the Northern Cape, that has to change to the point where the street represents the approximately 80% of 'black Africans' in the country. It does not end on the streets of townships. I shan't complain, but I was told that I should forget about applying for an academic post at UCT as it would be futile, because the institution would rather employ a 'real African' from any of the 54 states on the continent than a coloured person. All told, the great-tjank has made us all wrestle over who has been most persecuted, who faces the most injustice and who has the right to mete out punishment, because, you know, a snake gives birth to a snake and at the extremes you must kill a baby before the baby grows up and kills you.
BBC News
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Yungblud on keeping fans safe, and his 'shirt off era'
The Netherlands, March 2025. Yungblud is leaving his hotel in Amsterdam when he's approached by a fan in floods of tears."You saved my life," she sobs."No, you saved your own life," he replies, quietly. "Maybe the music was the soundtrack, but you saved your own life, OK?"Leaning in for a hug, he adds, "Don't be sad, be happy. I love ya."It's a remarkably touching moment, full of compassion and devoid of rock star weeks later, after a video of the encounter goes viral, Yungblud is still moved by the memory."I didn't think people would see that, except me and her," he says, "but it was such a moment for me."The interaction crystallised something he'd felt for a while."I always said that Bowie and My Chemical Romance saved my life, but ultimately you have to find yourself," he says."Like this morning, I put my headphones on and I listened to [The Verve's] Lucky Man, and it made me go, 'Oh, I'm ready to face the day'."But Richard Ashcroft didn't tell me I was ready to face the day. I said that to myself. "That's what I was trying to tell that girl in Amsterdam." Self-assurance is a lesson he learned the hard the surface, Yungblud, aka 27-year-old Dominic Harrison, had it all. Two number one albums, an international fanbase, a Louis Theroux documentary and enough clout to run his own if you looked more closely, there were chinks in the armour. Those number one albums both fell out of the Top 30 after one week, a sign of a strong core fanbase, with limited crossover the first year of his Bludfest in Milton Keynes was criticised after long queues and a lack of water caused fans to pass out and miss the was keenly aware of it all. As he released his self-titled third album in 2022, he hit a low."Yungblud was number one in seven countries, and I wasn't happy because it wasn't the album I wanted to make," he says."It was a good album, but it wasn't exceptional."The problem, he says, was a record label who'd pushed him in a more commercial direction. But in polishing his sound, he lost the angry unpredictability that characterised his best work."It's funny, my-self titled album was actually the one where I was most lost," he observes."I felt like I compromised but, because of that, I was never taking no for an answer again."Nowhere is that clearer than on his comeback single, Hello Heaven, nine minutes and six seconds it achieves Caligulan levels of excess, full of scorching guitar solos, throat-shredding vocal runs, and even an orchestral coda."Do you still remember, or have you forgotten where you're from?" Harrison asks himself, as he re-ignites his song's purposefully unsuited to radio – unlike the follow-up single, Lovesick Lullaby. Released today, it's a free-associating rampage through a messy night out, that ends with epiphany in a drug dealer's Liam Gallagher's sneer with Beach Boys' harmonies, it's uniquely Yungblud. But the singer reveals it was originally written for his last album. "We were actually discouraged from doing it," he says."My advisor at the time, a guy called Nick Groff [vice president of A&R at Interscope, responsible for signing Billie Eilish], was like, 'I don't get it'."Warming to the theme, he continues: "The music industry is crap because it's all about money but, as an artist, I need to make sure that anything I put out is exciting and unlimited. "It can't be like a 50% version of me."To achieve that, he shunned expensive recording studios and made his new album in a converted Tetley brewery in Leeds. Professional songwriters were banished, too, in favour of a close group of collaborators, including guitarist Adam Warrington, and Matt Schwartz, the Israeli-British producer who helmed his 2018 debut."When you make an album in LA or London, everything is great, even if it's mediocre, because people want a hit out of it," he argues."When you make an album with family, all they want is the truth." 'Sexiness and liberation' One of the most honest tracks on the record is Zombie, a lighters-aloft ballad (think Coldplay, sung by Bruce Springsteen) about "feeling you're ugly, and learning to battle that"."I always was insecure about my body, and that got highlighted as I got famous," says the singer, who last year revealed he'd developed an eating disorder due to body dysmorphia."But I realised, the biggest power you can give someone over you is in how you react. So I decided, I'm going to get sober, I'm going to get fit, and I discovered boxing."He ended up working with the South African boxer Chris Heerden - who was recently in the news after Russia jailed his ballerina girlfriend, Ksenia Karelina."I met him before all that," says Harrison, "but he's been extremely inspirational. Boxing's become like therapy for me."If someone says something bad about me, I go to the gym, hit the punch bag for an hour and talk it out."Fans have noticed the change… drooling over photos of his newly chiseled torso, and declaring 2025 his "shirt-off era"."Maybe the shirt-off era is a comeback to all the comments I've had," he laughs."I'm claiming a freedom and a sexiness and a liberation." He's clearly found a degree of serenity, without surrendering the restless energy that propelled him to of that is down to control. In January, he created a new company that brings together his core business of recorded music with touring operations, his fashion brand and his music festival, event kicked off in Milton Keynes last summer but suffered teething troubles, when fans were stuck in long queues. "I will fully take responsibility for that," says the star, who claims he was "backstage screaming" at police and promoters to get the lines moving."The problem was, there were six gates open when there should have been 12," he says, suggesting people underestimated his fans' dedication."When Chase and Status had played [there] a day before, there were 5,000 people when the doors opened, and another 30,000 trickled in during the day."With my fans, there were 20,000 kids at the gate at 10am. So we've learned a lot for this year. There'll be pallets of water outside. It'll be very different." Dedication to his fans is what makes Yungblud Yungblud. He built the community directly from his phone and, whether intended or not, that connection has sustained his career - insulating him from the tyrannies of radio playlists and streaming a personal relationship becomes harder as his fanbase grows but, ever astute, he hired a fan to oversee his social accounts."She's called Jules Budd. She used to come to my gigs in Austin and she'd sell confetti to pay for gas money to the next city."She built an account called Yungblud Army, and she's amazing at letting me understand what are people feeling."If people are outside and security aren't treating them right, I know about it because she's in contact with them. So I brought her in to make the community safer as it gets bigger."With his new album, he wants to make that community even bigger. Harking back to the sounds of Queen and David Bowie, he says it'll "reclaim the good chords" (Asus4 and Em7, in case you're wondering)."The shackles are off," he grins."We made an album to showcase our ambition and the way we want to play. "Can you imagine seeing Yungblud in a stadium? 100% yes. Let's do it."
