Gayton McKenzie’s bold stance on anthem debate shakes up SA politics: Terence Corrigan - Biznews

Gayton McKenzie, the newly appointed Minister of Sports, Arts, and Culture, has sparked a powerful debate by defending the inclusion of Die Stem in South Africa’s national anthem against calls for its removal by the EFF. In his response, McKenzie emphasized the importance of embracing both past and present elements to build a united future. His stance, supported by his ANC deputy, underscores the challenge of navigating South Africa’s complex history and fostering inclusivity, aiming to rise above divisive ideologies and create a shared national identity.

Terence Corrigan

Gayton McKenzie is a man able to stir strong emotions. According to perspective, he’s a strongman, a populist, a gangster, a xenophobe, an ethno-nationalist, or a straight-shooter who is just what the country needs. Throughout the election campaign, it was a matter of speculation what his party would do – though the common assumption was that he wanted power (he’d said so), so a seat in the cabinet was definitely on his radar.

Having taken a hard line on illegal immigration, he and his party were angling for either the ministry of Police or Home affairs. The portfolio he was assigned, Sports, Arts and Culture, is invariably regarded as a distinctly junior one, more a sop to participation than genuine authority. 

Not inevitably. Any executive position provides a platform to gain attention, something that McKenzie can be expected to excel in. And the sporting and cultural life of a society is something with deep emotional resonance. Sport and culture can unite and uplift. They can also divide and degrade.

So, when Minister McKenzie fielded questions after his budget speech, it should have come as no surprise that Economic Freedom Fighters’ Fana Mokoena used the opportunity to strike at a cultural pain point – or a potential one, anyway. This was, of course, the use of part of the pre-1994 national anthem, Die Stem, in the country’s present anthem, and whether McKenzie would support removing it.

For the EFF, this is an ideological matter. It cites as one of its inspirations the thought of Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born psychiatrist and activist. His writings have been enormously intellectually influential in interpreting decolonisation and the post-colonial condition. Stressing the degradation of those who had suffered oppression, he argued for a psychological liberation; part of this would necessarily involve violence against the oppressor and the latter’s exclusion from the new society.

This helps to explain the EFF’s position. Compromise and conciliation are rejected in favour of a totalising solution. The white minority represents an alien element, the scion of “settler colonialism”. (To a significant degree, this applies to the Indian population too, as illustrated when EFF grandee Dali Mpofu once mused on “the Indian question”, a phrase with sinister historical echoes, turning a community of South African citizens into a matter to be “resolved”.)

Targeting Die Stem is all of a piece with this. A patriotic song, specifically about the connection of the Afrikaners to the country, Die Stem was written by the celebrated Afrikaans poet CJ Langenhoven in 1918, subsequently set to music by Marthinus Lourens de Villiers, sung at a public event in 1928, and adopted as an anthem (along with God Save the King) in 1938. From 1957, Die Stem, along with its English translation, were the only anthems used. 

On its own, it was never going to be an acceptable symbol of post-transition South Africa. But retaining it as a co-anthem – together with Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, an explicitly Christian hymn that had become closely associated with African nationalism – helped to signify inclusiveness and a recognition of the permanence (and, dare one say it, nativism) of the white population and its culture. It was a deeply conciliatory gesture. 

Adoption of a fused anthem comprising elements of two songs – which is, by the way, officially entitled not Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika but The National Anthem of South Africa – in 1997 was a wonderful achievement of higgledy-piggledy mix-and-matching. (The anthem omits reference to the Great Trek from Die Stem, and also the direct appeal to the Holy Spirit from Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.) There is a great deal of symbolism in the resultant song, mixing musical and lyrical styles.

This is in many respects a metaphor for post-transition South African society: it may be somewhat untidy, it may not be to everyone’s taste, but it aspires (or was intended) to provide a place and reference point for all.  

For the EFF and the political impulses it represents, this is repugnant. It suggests a vestige of legitimacy for the “settler” inheritance, something which is not to be entertained. Symbolically, the EFF sits when the stanzas from Die Stem are performed.

Minister McKenzie’s response was powerful. Die Stem, he said, was part of the past and part of the present – what South Africa has been and what it had become. Just as South Africans sang Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, they sang Die Stem.

“I can’t be part of people and nurse their egos that want to take us back to 1973,” he added, “We have moved on. There’s a new South Africa, and they can sit down. We will sing louder for their part.” This was quite masterful. Those hankering after the past need not always be looking nostalgically at an age of white baaskap; there may be considerable attraction in hankering after a time when moral binaries were clear and where revolution was a deceptively easy option to take. 

In all this, McKenzie was supported by his deputy, from the ANC, Peace Mabe.

All in all, a decent performance from the GNU. For the issue here is less about words and melodies, than about the character of South Africa: whether it is being taken down the path of parochial ideological obsession, of exclusive nationalism and a mindset trapped in a tragic history – or whether the country can negotiate and navigate its challenges, mindful of the baggage it carries but determined to build on it all. As RW Johnson once wrote, successive governments proved the folly of a country trying to operate to the exclusion of its majority; it is finding out the folly of trying to do so to the exclusion of its minorities. 

Langenhoven once asked an English interlocutor: “Why is it that my politics is always racism and your racism is always politics?” There’s profundity in that, and perhaps South Africa might aspire to a reality in which politics can become, well, just politics and racism condemned irrespective of its provenance.

A nice dream, and a naïve one perhaps. But when two songs representing rival nationalisms can be brought together, when an African choir can sing Die Stem at a rugby match, and when Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika can be rendered as Sëen ons Here God, sëen Afrika – and when political leaders are willing to make the case – well, surprising things may be possible.

Terence Corrigan is projects and publications manager at the IRR

https://www.biznews.com/leadership/2024/07/22/gayton-mckenzies-anthem-debate-terence-corrigan

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.