GWEN ANSELL

Israel’s cultural genocide in Gaza parallels that of apartheid South Africa and resistance needs solidarity from South African musical voices

“I realise that music in liberation struggles is like a mirror and a hammer,” says musician Lu Dlamini. “A mirror reflecting the truth of oppression, giving voice to the silenced and making the invisible seen. A hammer shattering complacency, fortifying the spirit of resistance and turning sorrow into strength.”

She’s reflecting on the role of music in both South African and Palestinian struggles, and whether and how the two experiences can speak to one another.

Now KZN-based, Dlamini grew up in the era of South African struggle against apartheid. “The first time I heard and sang a freedom song I was not more than six years old. My parents and their friends would congregate every evening in our small dining room and sing together. They taught each other songs and my siblings and I were encouraged to take part … This first freedom song was in Sesotho titled Morena Kekana (King Kekana). The song was a plea, asking Morena Kekana to intervene from beyond as the land of our forefathers was being taken over by the Boers.”

That song, with its roots reaching back into history, bridged time and space to acknowledge the continuum between colonialism and apartheid in culturicide against the peoples of South Africa. Culturicide (cultural genocide) is the term coined by genocide theorist Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to define one facet of that overarching crime against humanity.

There is no doubt that culturicide characterised the apartheid state.

Black identity was distorted by racist pseudo-science. The true history of the multiple independent African polities that had flourished before colonialism became the reductive stereotyping of  ‘tribes’. Traditions from family structure to community justice were re-made in the image of the patriarchies of Victorian England and Calvinist northern Europe. Cultural expressions were policed, re-shaped, devalued and censored; artists and performances were banned. All this was integrated within a totalising system of explicitly race-based repression, torture and murder.

Apartheid South Africa’s most explicit (though by no means only) public act of culturicide took place on the night of June 14 1985: the Gaborone Raid. Military vehicles of the South African Defence Force rolled illegally across the border into Botswana, where regime soldiers murdered 12 people. They destroyed homes in the capital, Gaborone, where musicians Jonas Gwangwa and Hugh Masekela had stayed (both were touring at the time). Another musician, pianist Livy Phahle, survived, traumatised, under his collapsed piano, hearing the assassins methodically shooting his brother George, sister-in law Lindi and family visitor Joseph Malaza, and checking that they were dead.

They shot visual artist Thami Mnyele in the yard outside his home, stole his paintings, and later displayed them as proof of “terrorist intent”. (These works have never been recovered.) Other targets included homes and offices associated with the cultural collective Medu, which united refugees from apartheid with other southern African cultural workers. Medu had, three years previously, hosted a conference – Culture and Resistance – that mapped the scale and significance of the arts community in the liberation struggle.  

Phahle’s mother, Hilda, told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “Livy said instead of opening the door, George and Lindi ran into his bedroom, locked the door and pushed a piano against it. Lindi threw herself face down in a corner and George placed himself over her for protection. Nothing was impossible for these murderers. After pumping them with bullets, they turned them over – face upwards – and one asked: ‘Is hulle dood?'(Are they dead?). ‘Mors dood'(stone dead) was the reply.”^[1]justice.

Today, there is equally no doubt that Israel is waging culturicide in Gaza (and against Palestinians more broadly).

This ongoing culturicide has a second front in West, not just from declared right-wingers, but from ostensibly “liberal” regimes too.

Lu Dlamini feels “What happened in South Africa cannot be compared to what is happening in Gaza today”.

She’s right. The South African censors of the 1970s and 1980s, limited to physically blue-pencilling texts, sabotaging gigs with stink-bombs,^[2]jacana and scratching out album tracks, begin to look almost comically inept in comparison with the cultural génocidaires of 2025 Israel. A relatively low-skilled Israeli functionary simply has to hit a key to call up every instance of “suspect” terminology (such as “Free Palestine!”) digitally accessible anywhere in the world. Outside its sphere of occupation, Israel targets sophisticated campaigns to discredit and de-fund. That reach and power is new.

However, much Palestinian resistance culture never accesses – or is expelled from – global platforms. To counter that, Israeli armed forces murder its makers to erase it. Only fragile human memories remain: starved and pounded into rubble.

The flimsy pretence at democracy Israel performs at home does not extend to material with identifiable Palestinian nationalist content. That is censored, deleted or suspended from digital platforms and social media. Arts projects and performances are cancelled. In 2024, recounts Palestinian hip-hop collective DAM founder, Tamer Nafar, the group had been booked for a show in Jaffa. “Over the five- or six-day event, a load of artists selected by Jewish residents played. Then on the day of [our] show, the police made excuses about security, saying they needed to increase the number of armed officers present but couldn’t arrange it in time. We found an underground venue. Instead of a 600-strong crowd, we did it to 70, on principle.”^{[3]theguardian}

In the occupied territories? Not even pretence. Among the 60 000+ (and rising) overwhelmingly civilian deaths in Gaza, even the most conservative accounts can name 60 prominent cultural workers (such as poet Refaat Alareer and close to 200 journalists. More than 30 cultural centres have been destroyed and a dozen museums.

These institutions also represent an ongoing scholasticide: all Gaza’s universities have been destroyed and more than 80% of its schools.

Music, we declared in the time of apartheid, was a weapon of struggle. Dlamini remembers “Lyrics were not meant to merely sound clever. They were crafted for you to recognise and acknowledge realities around you, and help you identify things that made people feel less than human. At the same time meanings had to be hidden, to avoid censorship.” She recalls how even ostensible pop songs made an impact on her: “I followed anyone who presented anything to highlight what was really going on in South Africa at that time. Chicco Twala’s song with the line, “Mandela, where are you?”^{[4]youtube Chicco’s song was coded to evade censorship as “We miss you Manello” – but no progressive listener could fail to grasp the meaning.} brought with it a lot of other questions. We didn’t believe we will see Mandela coming out of prison, but we increasingly saw ourselves as the young warriors who through music will carve a new reality for all. Sipho Mabuse’s Chant of the Marching album was the masterclass. Cries were not whispered in the deep anymore, people had taken to the streets.”

Music was a weapon even at the most concentrated sites of oppression. In his recent book, Robben Island Songs of Struggle: Izingoma Zomzabalazo,^{[5]skotavilleap} music scholar Neo Lekgotla Laga Ramoupi’s interviews demonstrate how political prisoners labouring in the island’s quarries used music to subvert authority and reclaim power over their situation. Lyrics the warders could not understand could mock them; slowing the pace of work songs could ease the pain of hard labour; songs could unite new arrivals across differences of age, class and origin into a community of resistance, carry news, and assert dignity and excellence through performance.

One former Robben Island prisoner, the late Neville Alexander, told Ramoupi: “One of the earliest songs that I was taught was a migrant labour song, Ndihamba ndidodwa eGoli (I go alone to Johannesburg, city of gold). It was a mixture of this modern singing, but also [a plaintive song, emotional] about migrant labour…When we got to Robben Island it had assumed a different, much more meaningful image for me (…) that notion that siyavuma [ we sing from the same sheet, as it were], togetherness. The solidarity that comes from singing together… protesting that brutality.”

As there were – and are – politics in singing, so there are in listening too: among performers on stage and between performers and audience. The Cape Town-based collective Free Music Free Palestine (FMFP) builds on the revolutionary legacy of free improvising South African jazz players in that earlier era (such as the late Louis Moholo-Moholo). They perform at and organise solidarity and awareness-raising events.

Says member Thandi Gamedze, a scholar, researcher and performer: “I think that listening is an anti-colonial way of engaging. It’s not jumping into make a thing what you want it to be, but it’s listening and figuring out how you come into it, what you can offer into that space, how you can contribute, but in a way that the thing flourishes and it gives it life rather than stamping something out to make something else.”^{[6]From a conversation among FMFP members first published in Tracing the Lines, vol.3,International Anthem, 2025}

In the same way, Dlamini actively fed her own insights and experience into the music she was hearing as well as into what she performed. Music is always interaction, and that dialogue within and around it took on fresh dimensions as her career developed and overseas touring carried her into new conversations.

“Seeing South Africa’s situation through an international perspective was such an eye-opener. Performing at festivals like Heitmaklange (Beat Apartheid) in Germany and Zabalaza (Active rebellion) in England opened our eyes as young musicians to what was really happening to us as black children growing up in a divided country.” Sometimes there was “a lot we couldn’t see because(…) it was too close. [Some say] we couldn’t really identify the struggle for what it was…those looking on from outside saw it exactly for what it was.”

Dlamini is evoking a powerful dialectical interaction between domestic struggle and international solidarity.

Then, the ANC flag was raised on overseas stages; the Amandla Cultural Ensemble sang explicitly in international tours of leaving home to join the military struggle (Sobashiya Abazali); American Little Steven incited boycotts (Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City;^[7]youtube Britons the Specials had a hit with Free Nelson Mandela;^[8]youtube anti-apartheid writers received literary awards; anti-apartheid artists found refuge in Europe.^[9]dw

For sure, it was not some untarnished golden age. Many of the Western governments that hosted anti-apartheid arts and artists were simultaneously colluding with apartheid, selling South Africa arms and training its soldiers, much as the West now assists Israel. But most knew such acts were odious, and conducted them covertly (in the company of Israel, which in 1976 invited South African prime minister and former nazi John Vorster for a state visit, helped develop the apartheid arms – including nuclear – industry, and trained South Africa’s military invading forces in Angola.^{[10]theguardian} Western governments were not proud of those dirty dealings and did not, as they do now, boast of solidarity with human rights outlaws. Nor did they, in general, criminalise any mention of the ANC and apartheid repression, as they currently criminalise allusions to Hamas and Gaza.

So Israel’s cultural second front – the enthusiastic collusion from Europe and America in killing solidarity with Palestine – has novel aspects: its global reach via digital technology, and the shamelessness of its allies. Both make culturicide significantly easier and internationalise it. Pro-Palestine art exhibitions are closed,^{[11]artnet One of the more recent instances; there are too many to list.} pro-Palestine literary prizewinners have their awards withdrawn.^{[12]For example, BDS supporter Kamila Shamsie in 2019, even before the current phase of Gaza genocide began.} At music festivals, performers raising the Palestine flag (such as Irish band Kneecap, drawing on their own nation’s liberation struggle history) or chanting anti-Israeli army slogans (Bob Vylan at Glastonbury) are censored, condemned and sometimes criminally charged.^[13]youtube

Such suppression is only partly effective. While it clearly chills outspokenness in some quarters, surveys show that many in Europe and America object strongly to their government’s support for Israel. Audiences still join the pro-Palestinian chants. But it nevertheless weakens what, for the South African liberation struggle, was an important extra source of strength.

That raises the question of why the cultural solidarity coming from South Africa for Palestine is so relatively muted. It certainly exists: formations such as FMFP and African Artists Against Apartheid^{[14]instagram} (and more) are active and vocal. Individuals, too, make music that speaks to the situation. Jazzman McCoy Mrubata, for example, has dedicated his upcoming album, Children on the Frontline, to all children suffering in conflict worldwide. “It’s definitely a reference to what’s happening in Gaza,” he says, “as well as the never-ending wars in Africa.” He’s at a point in his life, he says, where “truth is truth” and has to be spoken.

But given both our own history and the South African government’s pro-Palestine stance, shouldn’t our cultural voices be sounding louder?

For some performers with international ambitions, the motive may be fear of career damage in countries that support Israel and punish solidarity with Gaza. That’s a tangible effect of Israel’s proxy cultural war in the West. One of the most internationally successful musicians of Palestinian heritage, Swedish-Palestinian Maher Zain, who released the anthem Free, Free Palestine, has told interviewers he “would not criticise anyone for their decisions [to stay silent, but], what’s happening in Gaza now is as clear as the daylight and we should all speak up.”^{[15]instagram}

And yet finding the words can be hard. The enormity of the war crimes Israel is committing in Gaza is almost unexpressable. Dlamini recounts her own search for words to capture what she sees in news reports: she had to look “into my dictionary, hoping to find words or an image to help me explain what I understand repression to be.” Mrubata, too, says he sometimes feels “embarrassed and almost defeated to be living when I can’t do anything about what’s going on in Gaza. I’m part of almost 80% of the world’s population whose cries can’t help the people of Gaza from being subjected to deliberate starvation, displacement and genocide.”

But Dlamini also wonders about a specifically South African trauma, precisely because the parallels between the two apartheids are so close. “Looking at where South Africa is today, and how we are not able to sing about the atrocities in Gaza unfolding right in front of our eyes, I realised that we are like children who were abused by parents. Children who have no memory of the actual events, but have trouble forming relationships. And so we have no songs that can ‘mirror and hammer’ what is happening in Gaza.”

Another circumstance has also changed. Many of the structures of South African people’s culture that could have reflected and amplified support for Gaza’s resistance were – along with other organs of popular organisation – defunded or deliberately demobilised after apartheid ended. There’s an imperative today to build new ones, as the musicians of FMFP and other solidarity formations are doing.

There were times, in the darkest days of apartheid, when victory felt by no means certain. The power of the apartheid state machine, its military might, the murder of comrades and family members, all could too easily feed despair. It was in those moments that music sometimes played its most crucial role. As murdered artist Thami Mnyele told Culture and Resistance in his 1982 address:

“What does true political consciousness mean to the artist in my country? We need to clearly popularise and give dignity to the just thoughts and deeds of the people… It was in the Medu Art Ensemble where the role of an artist concretised itself: the role of an artist is to learn; the role of an artist is to teach others; the role of an artist is to ceaselessly search for the ways and means of achieving freedom. Art cannot overthrow a government, but it can inspire change.”

Effective solidarity demands constant negotiation between potentially disempowering grief and the knowledge that “truth is truth” and must be spoken. As Dlamini describes it: “As creatives we stand at a crossroads of empathy and expression. Absorbing the world’s pain while striving to transmute it into something meaningful – not just cries of horror but music that heals, mobilises or awakens. The difficulty lies in balancing raw emotional response with purposeful artistry. Too much anguish (which is what I sometimes recognise in my own songs) can paralyse; too much detachment can sterilize. I try to feel deeply without drowning, to channel grief into a force that does more than echo despair. My purpose is to ignite resilience, solidarity– even revolution.”