Post-Apartheid Music, Then and Now

The news that South African song lyrics have been declared unconstitutional-recently performed was a “Zulu ditty” of very recent historical provenance “with lyrics that say ‘Dubula ibhunu,’ meaning ‘Shoot the Boer,’ the Afrikaans word for farmer that is often held to refer to whites in general” (and this happened concurrently with the murder of a white supremacist)-seems as good a time as any to point you to this 1973 Jet feature on Eartha Kitt and her work both in Watts and South Africa. It goes like this: “But the one ghetto which has also found a special place in her heart is in Swaziland, South Africa. Although she was bitterly assailed and criticized last year for playing to segregated audiences there, Miss Kitt explained that she did it to turn the spot light to one of the worst crimes against Black humanity-South Africa’s racial apartheid.”