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6
Contents
editorial
KEVIN DAVIDSON
“Soulbrother #1”
TESHOME GABRIEL
Ruin and The Other: Towards a Language Of Memory
MLADEN DOLAR
Singing in Pursuit of the Object Voice
Theme Graham Newcater
STEPHANUS MULLER
Sapphires and serpents: In Search of Graham Newcater
ARYAN KAGANOF
Of Fictalopes and Jictology (2018)
MEGAN-GEOFFREY PRINS
Toccata for Piano (2012): The gift of newness
OLGA LEONARD
The Leonard Street Meetings (2008-2012)
ARYAN KAGANOF
Her first concert - 15 October 2011
STEPHANUS MULLER & GRAHAM NEWCATER
Interview (2008, transcribed 2010)
AMORÉ STEYN
The Properties of the Raka Tone Row as seen within the Context of other Newcaterian Rows
STEPHANUS MULLER
The Island
GRAHAM NEWCATER
CONCERTO in E Minor Op. 5 (1958)
ARNOLD VAN WYK
A Letter from Upper Orange Street, 14th June 1958
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Concert Overture Op. 8 (1962-3)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Variations For Orchestra Op 11 (1963)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Nr.1 Klange An Thalia Myers (1964)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Allegretto e Espressivo (1966)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Variations de Timbres (1967)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
String Quartet (1983/4)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Songs of the Inner Worlds (1991)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
ETUDE I For Horn with Piano Accompaniment (2012)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
ETUDE II For Horn with Piano Accompaniment (2012)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
SONATINA for Pianoforte (2014)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
CANTO for Pianoforte (2015)
LIZABÉ LAMBRECHTS
The DOMUS Graham Newcater Collection Catalogue
galleri
TAFADZWA MICHAEL MASUDI
Waiting For A Better Tomorrow
ILZE WOLFF
Summer Flowers
NIKKI FRANKLIN
Sans Visage
BAMBATHA JONES
Below the Breadline
TRACY PAYNE
Veiled
STAN ENGELBRECHT
Miss Beautiful
ALEKSANDAR JEVTIĆ
We Are The Colour of Magnets and also Their Doing
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Augenmusik & Some Tarot Cards
EUGENE SKEEF
Monti wa Marumo!
borborygmus
PASCALE OBOLO
Electronic Protest Song As Resistance Through the Creation of Sound
AXMED MAXAMED & MATHYS RENNELA
A Conversation on the Bleaching of Techno: How Appropriation is Normalized and Preserved
FANA MOKOENA
A problem of classification
PHIWOKAZI QOZA
Choreographies of Protest Performance:
MASIXOLE MLANDU
On Fatherhood in South Africa
VULANE MTHEMBU
We are ancestors in our lifetime – AI and African data
TIMBAH
All My Homies Hate Skrillex – a story about what happened with dubstep
TETA DIANA
Three Sublime Songs
LAWRENCE KRAMER
Circle Songs
NEIL TENNANT
Euphoria?
frictions
LYNTHIA JULIUS
Vyf uit die Kroes
NGOMA HILL
This Poem Is Free
MSIZI MOSHOETSI
Five Poems
ABIGAIL GEORGE
Another Green World
OMOSEYE BOLAJI
People of the Townships
RIAAN OPPELT
The Escape
DIANA FERRUS
Daai Sak
KUMKANI MTENGWANA
Two Poems
VADIM FILATOV
Azsacra: Nihilism of Dancing Comets, The Destroyer of the Destroyers
claque
ZAKES MDA
Culture And Liberation Struggle In South Africa: From Colonialism To Apartheid (Edited By Lebogang Lance Nawa)
MPHUTHUMI NTABENI
The Promise of genuine literary stylistic innovation
ZUKISWA WANNER
[BR]OTHER – Coffee table snuff porn, or...?
SEAN JACOBS
Davy Samaai The People's Champion
KNEO MOKGOPA
I Still See The Sun/ The Dukkha Economy
CHRISTINE LUCIA
Resonant Politics, Opera and Music Theatre out of Africa
ARI SITAS
The Muller’s Parable
ZIMASA MPEMNYAMA
CULTURE Review: The Lives of Black Folk
RIAAN OPPELT
Club Ded: psychedelic noir in Cape Town
DYLAN VALLEY
Nonfiction not non-fiction (not yet)
DEON MAAS
MUTANT - a crucial documentary film by Nthato Mokgata and Lebogang Rasethaba
GEORGE KING
Unknown, Unclaimed, and Unloved: Rehabilitating the Music of Arnold Van Wyk
THOMAS ROME
African Art As Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, And The Idea Of Negritude. By Souleymane Bachir Diagne.
SIMBARASHE NYATSANZA
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Making Africa visible in an upside-down World
ekaya
BRIDGET RENNIE-SALONEN & YVETTE HARDIE
Creating a healthy arts sector ecosystem: The Charter of Rights for South African Artists
KOPANO RATELE
What Use Would White Students Have For African Psychology?
NICKI PRIEM
The Hidden Years of South African Music
INGE ENGELBRECHT
“Die Kneg” – pastor Simon Seekoei in conversation.
SCORE-MAKERS
Score-making
off the record
BARBARA BOSWELL
Writing as Activism: A History of Black South African Women’s Writing
MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
MUSIC AS THE GOSPEL OF LIBERATION: Religio-Spiritual Symbolism and Invocation of Martyrs of Black Consciousness in the Azanian Freedom Songs
IGNATIA MADALANE
From Paul to Penny: The Emergence and Development of Tsonga Disco (1985-1990s) Pt.2
ADAM GLASSER
In Search of Mr. Paljas
TREVOR STEELE TAYLOR
Censorship, Film Festivals and the Temperature at which Artworks and their Creators Burn
PATRIC TARIQ MELLET
The Camissa Museum – A Decolonial Camissa African Centre of Memory and Understanding @ The Castle of Good Hope
IKERAAM KORANA
The Episteme of the Elders
OLU OGUIBE
Fela Kuti
MICHAEL TAUSSIG
Walter Benjamin’s Grave
ANTHONY BURGESS
On the voice of Joyce
feedback
FRÉDÉRIC SALLES
This is not a burial, it’s a resurrection : Cinema without the weight of perfection.
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Social Media Responses to herri 5
the selektah
boeta gee
Hoor Hoe Lekker Slat’ie Goema - (An ode to the spirit of the drum)
PhD
MARY RÖRICH
Graham Newcater's Orchestral Works: Case Studies in the Analysis of Twelve-Tone Music
hotlynx
shopping
contributors
the back page
DANIEL MARTIN
Stuttering From The Anus
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    #06
  • borborygmus

FANA MOKOENA

A problem of classification

Something has been burning me and I have spent the last few years pondering on it. So I want to share my thoughts with you. Let me start by shocking you. THERE ARE NO TRIBES IN SOUTH AFRICA. NONE!!! If you’ve been walking around telling people you’re Sotho, Zulu, Pedi, Xhosa, Tswana, Tsonga….you’ve been lying to them and to yourself. Now drink a glass of water first then come walk with me for a few minutes.

There is no scientific nor historical evidence to the existence of these 9 super groups called “tribes”. Now bear with me as I take you through this. The great King Shaka ka Senzangakhona NEVER ruled over a super group called amaZulu. The great King Moshoeshoe Moshoashoaila NEVER ruled over a super group called Basotho. The list goes on. Infact the only notion of King Shaka ka Senzangakhona (by the way he was NEVER called Shaka ZULU) was when he said he wants to build an army and it must be so great “nje ngamaZulu” (meaning “like the sky”). There is NO evidence of Moshoeshoe EVER saying the nation he ruled over were “Basotho”. He NEVER used the term ever.

What confuses people is that these two great kings, like many throughout the region, conquered many nations. The likes of Manthatisi, Mzilikazi and others are just a few who did the same (I will one day write a book about Manthatisi). But these groups they then formed were NEVER called, amaZulu, Basotho, Bapedi.

So let’s break it down further. In the so-called Basotho tribe: There are clan names, Ba Monaheng, Baphuthi, Batlokoa, Bataung, Bafokeng etc who all had their clan chiefs. At what point in our history, in what meeting did these clans agree to fall under the chieftaincy of Moshoeshoe and annul the rule of their existing chiefs?

Same with the so called amaZulu. There are ooDlamini, ooNgwenya, ooNdwandwe, ooNdlovu etc. At what point in our history, in what meeting did they agree to fall under the chieftaincy of uShaka ka Senzangakhona and annul the rule of their existing chiefs?

I use Basotho and amaZulu as a prototype, but the concept runs across all so called “tribes” in our region. In the so called Xhosa tribe, Amampondo nabaThembu will correctly tell you they are not Xhosa. Infact, there are very few people in that ‘group’ who can correctly say they are Xhosa. There are amaGcaleka, amaMfeku, amaMpondomise etc who all have a separate family tree.

Now don’t be confused. There is a difference between a tribe and a language. The two are mutually exclusive. Just because you all seem to be speaking the same language does not mean there is some genetic strain you all share. But again, language exposes the fallacy of the existence of these tribes. In the so-called Pedi tribe, there is a clan called Balobedu. What they speak can NOT correctly be called sePedi. Then there are Batlokoa ba Manthata (Manthatisi) who also speak what can NOT be called sePedi. There are at least 7 dialects of this so called sePedi that I personally know of. If you go deep into it, you find this is the same with ALL other so called tribes. They all have different dialects. Even in places like Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana.

Of course the Group Areas Act, the demarcation of the British Protectorates (Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana) have attempted to forge, unsuccessfully, some kind of a unitary dialect. But evidence still exists of the different dialects, especially in the deeper rural areas where people have stayed true to their origins. There is no unitary language called Sesotho, isiZulu, IsiXhosa, TshiVenda etc.

Here’s what we know as a scientific fact. We do have clan names and these have somehow been confused with “tribes” whereas all they are are family trees. Family names. In the so called Venda tribe, we have VhaNgona, Vhalea, VhaMbedzi etc, then you have VhaVenda. These are all family trees. How VhaNgona suddenly became VhaVenda bears no historical truth.

In the so-called Zulu tribe, we have ooDlamini, ooNzimande, ooNdlovu etc, then you also have ooZulu. These are also all family trees. How ooNdlovu became ooZulu has no roots in our authentic history.

In fact, these “tribes” only emerge in our history in the mid 1900s. As a matter of fact, their emergence tends to coincide with the emergence of Bantustans. Take Basotho for instance. What is the origin of the word Basotho. Many argue that the word is derived from “ba sootho” meaning “the brown ones”. The question then arises: Brown as compared to what? Because everyone in Southern Africa was brown. What makes the brownnesss of Basotho so special that they even had to call themselves by the color? It makes absolutely no sense. In fact, there was no culture of defining ourselves according to skin color. BUT!! A BIG BUT!!! If you then insert the presence of White People in the region, only then does it make sense to differentiate yourself as “brown”.

So if Basotho is indeed derived from “ba sootho”, it only makes sense that the word emerged after the presence of white people. And since there was no sense in us defining ourselves according to skin color before their arrival, it only makes sense that it is white people, most likely the missionaries Casalis, Abbousett et al who defined us by our color. In fact, the book The Basutos begins its first chapters describing Basotho as brown and the Korannas as pale.

I highlight these issues because we have allowed ourselves to be classified.

We have internalized these classifications and made them who we are.

To the point that this very input is probably making a few people hot under the collar because it rocks the very foundation of what we’ve come to believe of ourselves since birth. In Rwanda, this fallacy of tribes resulted in the senseless genocide of 800 000 people. Senseless because even in Rwanda there are NO tribes. When the Belgians conquered in Rwanda, they found the Hutu and the Tutsi in that region. But Hutu was a term used to define an agricultural farmer and Tutsi a cattle farmer. They were not “tribes”. Then the Belgians arrived and used the “comb test” to divide Rwandans into “tribes”. If the comb went through your hair smoothly, you were a Tutsi, if your hair was rougher, you were classified Hutu. Decades down the line, Rwandans slaughtered themselves in the most callous way based on these superficial classifications.

I will write extensively about this but perhaps I’m saying let’s begin to have these conversations about ourselves and begin to redefine ourselves. We walk around with a sense of pride based on false foundations. Foundations that foster divisions amongst us and prevent us from being one massive and formidable force. I humble myself to constructive criticism. I do not know everything, but like I say. I’m starting a conversation.

Salute

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