South African music after Apartheid: kwaito, the "party politic," and the appropriation of gold as a sign of success (original) (raw)

"Kwaito" refers to the musical genre associated with South African black youth in the post-Apartheid era. Essentially a form of dance music, in its most common form kwaito is intentionally apolitical and represents music "after the struggle." The term "kwaito" also refers to a whole youth culture complete with vernacular and fashion norms. The "values" of the kwaito generation reflect mainstream consumer capitalism. However, kwaito is infused with, and complicated by, its own unique history. Therefore, the adoption of European capitalist values by the kwaito generation does not lend itself to simple analysis. I focus on the place of gold in kwaito culture. A system of racially based exploitation ensured a stable and cheap supply of labor for the white ruling class. This system was cruel and nothing short of barbaric. I explore the tragic paradox of a "new South Africa" which has--with kwaito as its form and kwaito musicians as its leaders-appropriated gold as a sign of success and ostentatious wealth. Such a theorization is, of course, overly simple, and a much more elaborate analysis is necessary for a meaningful discourse of kwaito to emerge.

Introduction

Kwaito is the music associated with the black youth of post-Apartheid South Africa. Essentially a form of dance music, in its most common form kwaito is intentionally apolitical and represents music "after the struggle." However, the term "kwaito" also refers to a whole youth culture complete with vernacular and fashion norms. The word, in fact, describes a number of differing and, at times, conflicting ideologies; in many ways it hinders our understanding of kwaito to think of it as something consistent, or stable.

While the content in kwaito music is usually frivolous and apolitical, at other times it is politically charged. Also, while kwaito is often associated with street culture--i.e., the black youth who still live in the poverty-stricken ghetto-areas created by pre-1994 racial segregation laws--on the other hand, partly due to the packaging and commodification of the genre, kwaito also represents the emerging black middle class and elite. Difference, conflict, fragmentation, and antagonism are inherent in kwaito culture--a culture that defies (and seems to intentionally avoid) simple representation and coherency.

Often the same songs and artists are meaningful both to the poor and to the wealthier black communities (in fact, white youth are also becoming--or, some would claim that they have already become--interested in kwaito). The ways different people understand the music and culture here described are as complex as their socio-political situations.

On the one hand, the poorer black youth resent those blacks who have adopted a mainstream capitalist (and basically bourgeois) lifestyle: those people who fought with and as poor people during Apartheid, and later abandoned the (still) poor. During Apartheid, the upper class consisted almost entirely of whites. (1) But after 1994 a black middle class and elite emerged and so, on the other hand, the development of this new class structure has created a "politics of aspiration" (see the discussion on Nuttall (240) below) for the poor: as much as the poor resent the elite, they also see the possibility, however remote, of working their way into the "privileged" circle.

In this paper I trace the development of kwaito and touch on several important political and ideological elements. After having conceptualized kwaito culture, I focus on the place of gold in the kwaito generation. Gold mining shaped and developed South Africa maybe more than anything else. A system of racially based exploitation ensured a stable and cheap supply of labor for the white ruling class. This system was often cruel and nothing short of barbaric. Today, for the successful kwaito artist, the middle-class or upper-class black person, and for the "aspiring" poor, gold represents success and "wealth." The meaning of gold for black South Africans, then, has changed radically in the space of a few years. From being a symbol of turmoil and oppression, gold has become a primary symbol of success.

But, in a sense, this paper is not about gold: rather, I use gold as a metaphor to aid our understanding of the larger context of kwaito culture. To this end, my discussion of gold appears only later on in this paper. I see the discussion and representation of gold in kwaito as a particularly poignant and pointed method of apprehending the discourse as a whole.

If at times my analyses seem ambiguous or are difficult to comprehend immediately then I have succeeded. I do not wish to rob kwaito of its inherent ambiguity, nor do I wish to reduce it to a point. To begin, a brief history of kwaito, from the late '80s to the present day.

Kwaito: A History in 10 Parts

1 Preliminary Remarks

Although kwaito is a relatively new genre, it has already developed to the point where Impey has said that the word "kwaito" operates more as "an umbrella term for a variety of styles ranging from guz, d'gong, and isgubhu to swaito" (46). Also, radio DJ Nicky Blumenfeld stated that kwaito "said all it can say" and mentioned its subsequent "rebirth" (cited in Opland 18). Blumenfeld believes that kwaito has not only lived, but has been already been resurrected. Although interpretations differ, clearly kwaito is far from infancy.

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