The band NUL
For your week-end enjoyment Nul - the avant guard Afrikaans electronic /industrial band - has a new single out. It called Vloek, or curse.
Vloek is a song about a cursed farm.
Listen to Vloek by Nul.
And here is Nul's English website.
A cursed land - South African land reform
Talking of cursed farms. This week Mhambi listened to the BBC's Thinking allowed program which Mhambi cant recommend highly enough.
In this program Dr Deborah James, Reader in the Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics outlined the current status of South Africa land reform. She has just written a new book called Gaining Ground?: ‘Rights’ and ‘property’ in South African Land Reform.
Powerful symbol but reality different
In the program she makes some interesting assertions. Land is seen by all South Africans as a powerful symbol of belonging. However - few black South Africans actually want to go back to rural areas. According to her the whitey farmers are not that keen on the farms either.
Allot of white farmers are looking to get out of farming because agriculture has been suffering from bad weather and the Sa government has stopped all farm subsidies. And lastly that she does not think that black South Africans will easily do Zimbabwean style farm invasions.
And talking about land bound identity - here is an old Afrikaans folk favourite, Bo alles.
Bo alles
O boereplaas, geboorte grond
ek het jou lief bo alles
al dwaal ek heel die wereld rond
waar so gelukkig so gesond
O boereplaas, ek het jou lief bo alles
O Boer farm, birthplace
I love you above all
even if I travel the whole world
happy and healthy
Boer farm, I love you above all
Hear a rendition of Bo alles here.
And here is another Afrikaans song, Gazelle's Sorry Pappa where the theme of the farm figures.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
This farm is cursed
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4 comments:
Dankie!
ag, dis 'n groot plesier :)
Hi Wessel,
You mentioned that "she does not think that black South Africans will easily do Zimbabwean style farm invasions". Did she mention her reasoning behind this?
I fully agree that urban rather than rural land is where is the land reform efforts should be focussed. I actually think it's kind of bizarre that no one in SA (at least in the mainstream media) seems to pay much attention to SA's rapid post-1994 urbanisation. To me it seems a bit of a no-brainer that the kind of urbanisation we've seen after the end of apartheid (which naturally restricted non-whites movements) would be a huge aggravating factor in a lot of SA's problems: unemployment, crime, poverty, ineffective service delivery, etc, etc.
...well she mentions two things by implication, that the mobilisation by the Zim leadership was decisive, and that SA is more urban.
Agree whole heartedly that urbanisation is where our real challenge lies.
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