The Sunday News
BY the time you read this article I don’t know whether the stormy discussion around boycotting shows featuring South African artistes will have died down or taken another turn but I am praying that by the time you read this article, dear reader, common ground will have been found among the different camps — those for the boycott and those not for the boycott.
More importantly I am praying that by the time you read this article the madness in South Africa will have died down and some senior government officials in South Africa will have broken their silence and denounced the madness we all are rightly calling xenophobia. It is a must hope again that as you read the article the South African police will also have proper figures and evidence of people arrested for attacking foreigners or for carrying or brandishing dangerous weapons and threatening peace. I don’t know much about the laws in South Africa but in Zimbabwe possessing or brandishing a dangerous weapon does get one into serious trouble with the law.
In all honesty, xenophobia is a complex issue. The madness in South Africa can actually be explained in several ways. The clever ones are even able to justify it. One person I talked to tried to justify the anger by South Africans saying it’s a result of the strain foreigners are putting on the South African economy. This lady, having stayed in SA before, even had numbers to support her argument. Well, I will not even try to simplify this madness called xenophobia. The reason why I am writing about it today is that this past week local artistes decided to plunge into the murky waters by calling for a boycott of the Big Nuz and Casper Nyovest shows in support of victims of xenophobia. “We cannot dance to SA music while our brothers and sisters are being butchered there!” That was the message.
The call for a boycott actually started as a joke before it caught fire and then spread like wild fires. For days social media was ablaze. The initial idea, if I understood it well, was to get Casper Nyovest and Big Nuz to openly and publicly denounce xenophobia. Good idea, indeed. If the artistes recognised and valued their Zimbabwean market all they had to do was send a message to their multitude of fans telling them how bad xenophobia is. While at it they would also spread the idea of peace and love for all. The initial idea was to use the boycott as a threat, just to get the artistes to denounce the madness.
And the threat worked. Within hours of the boycott news hitting social media Casper Nyovest responded and started tweeting about xenophobia! First the tweets were ambiguous but became bolder and more pronounced with each tweet. It had worked! So I thought.
Then other ideas started flooding in. March to the airport. March to the South African Embassy. Sing a song on xenophobia. Let the South African artistes march with local artistes! This and that. It became too much! The worst was when people started tweeting threats to the artistes. That, for me, is when the beautiful idea of getting the artistes involved in the anti-xenophobia campaign got stuck or got lost. Flashback to South Africa a few weeks ago.
A group of students started throwing poo at Rhodes Statue to have it removed. Their primary objective was the removal of Rhodes statue from the university campus. However, when the statue was finally removed instead of celebrating their victory some members of the group started making other demands, bigger demands, and they lost the thunder and support of many. I see the same happening with the boycott. Instead of celebrating the small victory of getting the likes of Casper Nyovest and other South African artistes publicly denouncing xenophobia there are calls for more. Get the artistes to do this and that. They are not here for that. That they have gone on social media and denounced the madness should have been enough, at least for now.
At least that’s what I think. And by the way artistes can only speak out against the madness or sing about it. Asking for more from them would really be unfair.
As of now several prominent South African artistes have spoken, and continue to speak, against xenophobia. I have seen tweets by the likes of DJ Sbu, Simpiwe Dana, Thandiswa Mazwai, Casper Nyovest and many others. If all artistes, regardless of where they are from, unite against this madness it will die a quick death. So keep speaking against this madness wherever you are. Africa is for all of us. One Africa one people.
