OPINIONISTA: Johnny Clegg wasn’t ‘begging to be Black’. He simply was.

Shadow men from the outlands come to townThey say he thunders too loud and his people are proudThey’ve got bullets for Bafazane – They want to gun him downThey’ve got bullets for Bafazane – And the word’s got aroundAs Jon Stewart said in his 2009 Kennedy Centre tribute to the legendary Bruce Springsteen, “Bruce doesn’t just sing, he.” The same could be said of Clegg as he sang into the division, pain and heartache of what felt like endless states of emergency and brutality of the late 1980s.

Then many of us knew as we sang along to this haunting melody that our country was in deep trouble, the “mutually hurting stalemate” tearing us apart and the nightly news spewing forth propaganda about “terrorists” and “communists”. Clegg was reminding us all that we could not say “we did not know”. But in these words, there was also the freedom Clegg seemed to display – a glimpse of a new way of being, of seeing our country and of speaking truth to power.

We had finally seen him, and our journey, like Clegg’s, seemed to come full circle in that emotional moment. Watching that again on the same day as we do former president Zuma’s somewhat pathetic Zondo Commission testimony was poignant. It speaks to how much we had dreamt of, what we had hoped for and also what we lost along the way.

Johnny Clegg was part of our collective soundtrack. No matter where in the world one finds oneself, the strain of his music provides the unmistakable tug to home for Third World Children and Scatterlings alike.African sky blue, your children wait for the dawnAfrican sky blue, will you bless my life?

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