Oskido should remix De la Rey

For the sake of our rainbow, says Aubrey Matshiqi, Oskido should remix the now controversial song about the Boer War General.

All of us must take ownership of the De la Rey song to deny bigots the opportunity of turning it into something ugly and reactionary when it is not. I am going to buy the CD because it does warm that part of my black blood that comes from my Afrikaner ancestor, Bartman. Maybe in taking ownership of the song, we must ask someone like DJ Fresh or DJ Oskido to remix it into a house tune for a wider, nonracial audience.

Touche says Mhambi. Can't agree more.

According to Matshiqi both whites and blacks (how refreshing that he does not talk of whites and Africans) should realise that they comprise of a majority in some sense.

The challenge, therefore, is for black and white South Africans to recognise that there are times when they are part of a majority. Black people as part of a numerical majority must defend and advance the rights of numerical minorities because in doing this they will be showing the confidence and leadership that is sometimes lacking among us. White people, as part of a cultural majority, must act in ways that promote the cultural rights of their black counterparts because, in doing so, they will be displaying a sense of humility that is sometimes lacking in debates about identity and cultural rights.

Problem is Aubrey, that allot of what you think of as white culture, Afrikaners see as a bland foreign version of English or American culture, sometimes rightly sometimes wrongly.
Aubrey also says:

Since the extent to which a black person is unable to speak an African language has, to some, become a measure of their sophistication and civilisation, the day is near when we will no longer be able to blame apartheid for the marginalisation of African culture and languages.

The same could have been said of Afrikaans, 150 years ago. Today Afrikaners see the inability of black South Africans to use their own language as the same pscycological subservience they suffered from. If only Biko was still alive.

(As an aside, Afrikaners at least did not call their rugby teams, Maritizburg United, Helenic, Ajax Cape Town, Bloemfontein Celtic, nor the league the Premiership. Nor was Pretoria named, Nieuw Amsterdam or East London, or Potchefstroom Brugge or any of the other major towns named by the Voortrekkers named after a European equivalent. They were all unique to South Africa.)

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