Ludumo Magangane
Our National Anthem: How a Xhosa Hymn and an Afrikaans Poem Became South Africa’s Rallying Cry
Dr Ludumo Magangane | Our National Anthem: How a Xhosa Hymn and an Afrikaans Poem Became South Africa’s Rallying Cry | 05.16.24
- Good afternoon, good evening, and for wherever you are in the world. Hello, hello, hello, I am still Phumi Mashigo. Even though your screens might say that, I’m Gareth Cliff. Believe me, I’m not. This evening we have got an incredibly special guest who is somebody very dear and close to my heart. Dr. Ludumo Magangane is a wonderful teacher. He is a wonderful musician, having done and studied music at the University of Zululand, not only any kind of music, he actually studied choral music, which one of my favourite artists, Quincy Jones, who is one of the most Grammy nominated artist alive, called South African Choral Music, the best music he’s ever heard in the world.
And he hopes when he checks out, he hopes that the angels on the other side are singing South African choral music. And he joins us today to chat to us about a very special piece of music here in South Africa, which is our national anthem. Dr. Magangane, welcome to Lockdown University, and thank you very much for agreeing to share your knowledge with us. I don’t have you on screen. Are you unmuted? Can you hear the doctor? Yes, no? What has happened?
He needs to unmute.
You cannot.
There we go.
Is that good?
Okay, fantastic. I don’t have him on screen either. I hope everyone else does.
Well, I can see you.
I still have the lockdown university screen. Yes, the doctor is on the screen, welcome doc!
Thank you very much, and thanks for inviting me.
I think I’m going to let you start with giving us an overview about the anthem, and then I’d like us to talk a little bit about your book that you wrote about the national anthem and how you came to write about it. But 10 minutes, give us an overview about this anthem. Some of the people listening do know the anthem. I think a lot of people who watch rugby have seen us sing this anthem before we win the Rugby World Cup. So they might be a little jealous too.
Yeah, maybe let me start off from a different place. I would start off what was called then before 1994, the official South African anthem which was Die Stem van Suid-Afrika. But as we all know, the politics, I’m assuming it was sung by a section of the population, and then there was the black section that resisted having to sing it. So we went on with that situation until in 1994 when the late president Nelson Mandela said to reconcile, everybody in the country, let’s sing both Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, which was sung by the black masses at that time. And the Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika is composed by Enoch Sontonga together with the Sesotho version which is Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso.
So Nelson Mandela then said that, “Let’s sing that song together with Die Stem van Suid-Afrika . And I think as law abiding citizens of the country, we did humour the president of the time, but he again turned around and said, "No, no, no, it’s too long and boring.” So he then had to talk to the then Minister of Arts and Culture, the late Dr. Ben Ngubane, and said, “Look, put together a committee that will try and find a suitable anthem for the country.” Now, where do I come in as an individual? At that time, I had a very busy choir just called Bonisudumo
Doctor, can I ask you to try as much as you can? ‘cause I’m getting some feedback messages that the sound is a little unclear, maybe to try and be still as you possibly can.
Okay.
You’re too close to the screen now, but if you’re just as still as you can, and then let’s see if that makes it a little bit better.
Yeah, I conducted it while it was known as Bonisudumo Choristers at that time, and it took part in what used to be the Massed Choir Festival. So in my dealings, therefore with the Massed Choir Festival, I then worked with the late Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo at the Samro South African Music Rights Organisation as well And so I came across lots of information around the composition of Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika. And so a thought came to my mind. I know our anthem has got lots of musics if I’m going to use the plural, and therefore has got a history of each of those musics. So I thought that would make a very good research project for me. So I started trying to find out now, what are the songs that come together and make up this music? And at first I didn’t think about a book.
I thought about a TV documentary. So we had some meetings with somebody from National Symbol’s Office, and I sold the idea to him, and he was actually sold, and we still held a few meetings, and then some, for some reason, they fizzled out. It never came back again. So I then thought, okay, what do I do with this in information that I have about Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, about Die Stem van Suid-Afrika about Morena Boloka, and every other piece of song like the ending that we have, which is in English. I’ve got all this information now after having researched the whole thing, then only then did the idea of a book come to my mind. Now I’m talking about the first time I did this, it was in 2012, so the book was then published only in 2016. I can’t hear you now.
Unmuted. So, which was fortuitous because in 2016, I think it was 20 years since our now combined and new national anthem. So maybe if you can just take me a step back from some of your research, and I think let’s start with this thing.
Okay.
I didn’t even know that it was a poem that was put to music. Can you tell us a little bit about that poem? And the music and the words related to that poem?
Okay, for those who know South Africa or who are South African, or who got an idea of where we are in the world. I’m now going to take you now down to what we now call it, the Western Cape, but at that time it was just the Cape called.
Where Cape Town is?
Where Cape Town is, yes. And the new nation, if you may call them that, the Africans we’re having problems with the English colonisers in that area of the land. So they were trying to build up the Afrikaans language, and one of the architects, the chief architects of building up the Afrikaans language was, what was the name now? You see when you get old, then you forget. Langenhoven wrote the poem Die Stem van Suid-Afrika. And the first poem that he wrote was in three verses, but the government of the time, then even before 1910, says to Langenhoven, “Look, we like the poem that you did, but now we need a verse that will have reference to God or which would be religious in some way.”
So he then came up with the fourth verse on, and then after that was done, he also was in charge of, well, a newspaper of that time. And they had a combination to say, “Okay, how can we find people who can write an anthem for this new nation Afrikaans?” And they couldn’t get anything that was suitable. Then they opted for Die Stem van Suid-Afrika, and then de Villiers then wrote the music. He set it to music. So it then became an anthem. But for I would say a certain section of the population, as I say, when they had to move now running away from the English to come into, firstly into Port Natal, and then into the first date, and ultimately into the trans world of the time, there were other anthems that came up.
But this one seems to stay on until we went through the change of the 1910 Union of South Africa and ultimately to the Republic of South Africa. And then this anthem was by the government offered this nation party was declared the official one. But then as I said earlier on, we refused to sing. And when Mandela then came in, then he tried to make everybody try and sing both to bring those two together, but it didn’t work out. For example, in the book, those who read the book realise that they our national team, the stream books went to New Zealand just before 1994. And they made, I’ll say they made the mistake of singing Die Stem van Suid-Afrika to represent the country And because the ANC was already banned by, I mean, unbanned by that time, there was a whole lot of complaints that why sing that anthem because it does not represent everyone in South Africa. So then they had to stop singing that. And when we were in Barcelona with our Olympic team in the place of a South African national anthem, Ode to Joy was sung for our athletes.
Oh, wow, I did not know that.
Yes, that’s what happened. So only– Go on.
Please finish.
Yeah.
Please finish your thought.
Yeah, only in 1996 did the wheels start rolling towards what we see now as our nation.
That is unbelievable. I don’t remember that about the Barcelona Olympics, but I did find, when I was reading in your book, I did find it quite amazing that this Afrikaans portion of the anthem, Die Stem, was put to music by a reverend because the first part of our anthem, which which used to be, I always thought it was the national anthem because growing up black in a township was the black national anthem as it were, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, is actually a prayer.
It is.
And those two similarities for me really stood out, and I found them quite fascinating. Maybe if you can talk to us a little bit about Enoch Sontonga as composition and this prayer, which is part of the South African national anthem, but I think some other countries on the continent also have it as their national anthem.
Yeah, talking similarities, as you just mentioned. Another very huge one is the fact that both Enoch Sontonga and the composer of Die Stem van Suid-Afrika, Langenhoven, were born in 1837. Now, how’s that?
Wow. Wow.
Yeah. But anyway, to answer your question, at that time, there were differences amongst the black people. You either were a Christian or you were a non-Christian. So, because in Enoch Sontonga wrote a hymn, therefore we conclude he was a Christian, and want to think, even though we couldn’t get anything about his parents, but we want to think that the parents must have been Christian as well, because he also studied at Love Day Institution in the Cape. And he moved up to Johannesburg where he taught at a school, and he was a preacher as well in a church. So everything around him therefore says Christian. And when he wrote the song, we don’t know, we don’t have the information is what prompted him to write that one in particular.
But as a composer, a composer will write about anything. They wake up one day, look at the weather, and up comes a song, and they put it down, and the choirs are going to sing it. So he then wrote that the Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika hymn, one verse only, which did not have any Sesotho which we have now in the Anthem, because he was Xhosa. So he wrote in his native language. And later on, a Xhosa poet, name of Krune Mqhayi added seven more verses to the one verse that Sontonga had written. So very quickly then to move to how, what makes it to come into the anthem. It’s because the ANC of the time, we’re talking just beyond 1912, after the commission of the ANC, they took up this hymn as their anthem, and whenever they had meetings, they would sing it at the end of the meetings.
And that then made the hymn to reach more people within South Africa at first. And then when the ANC was banned, and it had to operate outside South Africa, they kept singing the hymn, which is why four other countries took up the hymn as their own answer. And those countries are Zambia, Tanzania, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. The only thing they did was to change the words into their African languages that they spoke. So it then proliferated into the Southern African continent and even up to Central Africa, because even right up to Malawi, they got hold of this music.
And it is still the national anthem of Malawi. And somebody has just asked in the comments if we can play it, and I am going to look for it, but I do want to talk a little bit about the lyrics of the hymn, and we’ll come back and talk about the lyrics of the Afrikaans poem. So the lyrics of the hymn Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika which is Xhosa, and means God bless Africa. And in the national anthem itself, I think we’re probably one of the only countries in the world that have a single national anthem that’s got five languages in it.
Yes, yeah, that’s correct, that’s correct.
Do you want to talk to us a little bit about why the five different languages? We’ve got 11 official languages. For some of you who might be listening and don’t know this about South Africa. We’ve got 11 official languages, and five of them are represented in our national anthem, Xhosa and Zulu, which are both Nguni languages, Sesotho, Afrikaans, and English.
Okay, let’s start with the Xhosa, it’s obvious because Nguni therefore . But when the ANC took over, the first president of the ANC John Langalibalele Dube was Zulu, and then he–
From KwaZulu-Natal.
Exactly, from Pietermaritz. And then together with his wife, Nokutela, they started what became known as Ohlange Institution, which is a boarding school for children, I think at high school level. So because he was based in Cape Natal, it was not case then it was just a KwaZulu–
Natal.
Yes. So then there was a bit of the proliferation of is it Zulu? Into the hymn, and as a result, because of the fact that the conductor of this Ohlange school, Taluza. I’m sorry, it looks like that my, oh my goodness. Are you still with me? Oh, yeah, there, now the conductor of the Ohlange Institution Choir.
As long as it’s not load shedding.
No, it’s not, no,, my laptop is acting. Then he took the song around, especially around Johannesburg for that night, and in concerts, and that popularised the hymn. So hence then you see the mixture of Xhosa and Zulu. And then history does not clearly pinpoint who brought in the Sesotho, but what we know for sure is that Maxhele, who was one of the leaders of the ANC at that time, in 1942, he then published the Sesotho version, which is the . So he then–
Can I just also say for people who don’t speak the languages, so the Zulu version, which the Kazan-Nguni version, which starts with God bless Africa, is the Sesotho version of God Bless Our Nation.
Yes, yes, so those two then I would say the Buni and Sesotho came together, brought together by the ANC of the time. And then everybody took that out even whilst the ANC was still banned, but almost throughout the country, throughout South Africa, all black people at the end of whatever gathering, I mean as a choral musician, when we finished choral competitions, we would sing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika together with , and then add an ending there, which is after singing . So all that came together, and it actually rallied the people up to say, this is our anthem as opposed to what is the official anthem of the time before 1994. So then when the late Professor Khumalo with his team put together the music for a new anthem, a number of things had to be discussed. And it was felt for each to be accepted by everyone in the country. We should then look at what could be offensive to some groupings.
The first thing was refers to the Holy Spirit, and if you’re talking about, for example, Muslims, they do not have a holy trinity where you are talking about the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit. So they felt that that’s going to put us off to sing that way because it would mean when we’re actually not doing service to our religion. That was the first one then that had to leave, go from the music. And then it was said, okay, let’s not remove Die Stem, let’s bring it in, but let’s also remove items in Die Stem, which won’t be liked by the other members of the general populace. So hymns then some of the words, if you do know Die Stem, there are certain ways that were removed so that the rest of the words would then be acceptable to the general population. Then it was–
Yeah.
I just want to say, so in the Die Stem, it’s the first four lines of the poem that was actually kept as part of the final national anthem, which which are really about this land, which are a very, I think now that I understand it a little bit more, a very beautiful description of what South Africa looks like, actually, from the sea to the mountains and everything in between.
Yeah, well, if I–
How to phone, there weren’t people there.
Yeah. If I may say something, ask choral musicians. We begrudgingly enjoyed the music in Die Stem. We just had to close out what Die Stem is about and who brought it about and just enjoy and bask in the music. So there was the taking care of the others is Sesotho and Afrikaans. Then the committee felt we need to have some new words in English that will then tie up the whole song together. And Professor Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph then came up with the words, which we now sing. And then the whole thing was combined. And we then had the new national anthem of South Africa, which we still call Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, but we know that if we have to be correct after, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika is in as composition only, but then we do say our is supposed to be that, because that’s how it starts.
And I think that that last bit, the English bit, which the lyrics are sounds, are called to come together and united we shall stand as we live and strive for freedom in South Africa our land, is such a hopeful idea to leave at the end of this. When I think about 1996 and the euphoria that South Africans had, and the hope we had for this country, it was such a, I believe, magnificent way to pull it all together. But there was a lot of political contestation, even as all of these things are happening. And even though there was a committee with musicians, with poets, with writers in there, there were still quite a lot of political hurley burly. Do you want to talk to us a little bit about that?
Well, the people then, and maybe even now, there is a party that says, this country represent us. The problems that they raised. They said, look, we need something that will properly represent us as a country. And the most of those criticisms were from the black community, very little, from the white community in that situation. And the reason at that time was that why should we be made to sing the Afrikaans version, because it represents a past that is very regretful for South Africans, but then because the then president, after he embraced it, and the very first time it was sung, it was sung at a choral festival in Cape Town. And I think there it was more of testing it out more than performing, because after that, then they had to come back.
The committee had to come back and sit down and say, okay, fine, what works, what doesn’t? So the criticism, therefore, was to say, this doesn’t actually help anybody, doesn’t represent us properly as a new nation around 1996. So there was a call that it should be packed, and then something must be done to get a new anthem. But we didn’t get to that position. And for some reason we’re still here with that anthem. And to make matters worse for people don’t like it, Time Magazine voted it the best anthem in the world a few years ago.
Oh wow.
Yes.
A few years ago? Oh, I must go and look for that article.
Yeah, they voted it best anthem.
There’s a comment, maybe question that if there are 11 official languages in South Africa, why were only five languages chosen to be part of the new national anthem? Do you have an answer for that or shall I hazard it a guess?
Let me try and answer that, why it became 11 is because I think most of the music from the history, most of the music already existed. We already had Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, which was in Xhosa, and then somewhere along the line, because of the Natal influence, issues were coming in, we already had Sesotho, the music was already there. We already had Afrikaans music. So it made things easier for the committee to say, look, we already have this music, but let’s make it acceptable to the people.
So apparently they didn’t succeed a hundred percent, then the English part had to then close it up. But the other aspect, I want to indicate is that before they chose these musics, they actually asked the population to compose new music. And some compositions did come through, but when the committee sat down and tried to sing, because if you’re going to adjudicate a composition, or in fact try to find the best composition from amongst a number of compositions, there’s no way that you can avoid having, to listen to, what , and their criticism of the other compositions was that people who wrote those had choirs in their mind. So it wouldn’t be a song that would be easy for the men in the street as you say.
Choirs would be able to do that because that’s their business, they get together and rehearse it and learn new songs and all that. But people in the streets don’t have time to be learning songs like choirs need to do, it’s only the pocket who were pushed to make sure that they know the music. So that they sing it very accurately, from 1995 coming this way. So they felt they cannot use any of those new compositions left, but they had to use what people are used to, which was easy to listen to and easy to sing.
Sure, and I suppose when you are building a nation from scratch, that is made up of people that have been separate parts of this particular nation, it’s a little bit like changing the wheels of the bus while the bus is running. I always thought, and this is what I always thought, why these five languages, because our languages are grouped as well. They’re grouped in Nguni languages, which which would be the Xhosa, the Zulu, the Eswati, and maybe the Ndebele. Yeah, they’re very similar languages. If you speak any one of those languages, the the other ones are quite easy on your ear and on your tongue, it’s easy to learn how to speak them. It’s easy to hear what people are saying. And then we’ve got the Sesotho languages, which would be the Sotho, the Pedi, the Tswana languages, which are also very similar. The kind of differences between those languages really is in some of the spellings, is in some of the pronunciations. But if you speak one, it’s easy to speak the others. I think, I can say this because I speak seven languages. So .
Yeah.
And then the English and the Afrikaans. I think even though there are only five of the languages used in the national anthem, it really does encompass everybody, everybody in the country can hear, understand at least part if not the entire song. But you were just talking about the musicality of it, and how when some of the compositions came through, they were hard because this is also a song that can be sung as a soloist. It’s a song that can be sung as a choir or as an acapella group or accompanied with music. There’s even a orchestral version of the song. So it’s also quite a versatile piece of music. But the interesting thing that I did read in your book is that it starts in one key and ends in another. And Dr. Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph has an interesting explanation for this.
Yeah. Well, okay, I must try to avoid too technical, but–
Yes, please.
Yeah. When Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika by Enoch Sontonga, it was composed in the key of G, and then Die Stem was in the key of D. But now when you do music, those keys are related. It’s not a huge thing that we’ve got to move from this here, and then move to an unrelated key, which causes problems. It just needed that South Africa, which then changes from the previous–
The bridge.
The bridge, then it gives you now the start of the new key and the notation, while the sound is the same, but the vision is different because it changes from the previous key to the new key.
Ah, oh, wow, yes. That is very fascinating. And with Dr. Jeanne, and I know she wrote the foreword to your book, when you spoke with her, and the interaction, for her, what were some of her highlights in working on this piece of music, and perhaps even some of the motivations for the choices she made, musical choices?
Well, her as a person, within the committee, I think the highlight was when she was asked first to provide the English words, because there was a different, in fact, the English words we have now where was a second set of words. There was a previous set of words, which when presented to the Parliament, they read those words, and they thought, nah, yeah, it’s in English. But it kind of gives us some jubilation. It doesn’t make us think that there is still some part of our lives, which we’ve got work towards.
And then they said, please, prof, , please, Doctor Rudolph, can you go and change the word, because we need words that will encompass what we feel now, but would also prepare us for the road ahead as a people. So she then came up with those words, which were accepted as the second set of words, which was what was singing. That’s the first highlight. The second highlight was when she was asked to actually write a symphonic version for the orchestra of the whole, and she sat down to write that, and also presented it to the plan. And it was accepted.
Just listening to you talk through all of this, it’s so exciting to think about being part of the Birth of a Nation, because this is 30 years in, we’re are not even a toddler of a nation just yet. And I think we, sometimes know what Nelson Mandela represented for us. But I think just hearing you talk about him, putting together a committee, being strong about what we need to do with this, and even parliament thinking through not just the fun, the joy, the jubilation of it, but also building this nation around a rallying call is really quite phenomenal. And it makes me think, I didn’t even quite realise the profound vision that it took to get to this place. And a lot of people are asking about us to play the song. I wish I had thought this through because I would’ve downloaded it before. And maybe we’ve got somebody at the back, maybe she can do some magic, and we can find some time to tell, to play–
If you want it played, I can try to do that for you.
Please, please.
Do you want to do that now?
Can you find it for us, we’ll play out with it when we finish.
Yes. It looks like one of the participants has found it. So whenever you want me to give a go at that, let me know.
Do you see I work with magicians. These ladies are amazing, thank you so much. Doctor–
Can I say something?
Yes, please.
Yeah, when the new Nation won the World Cup in 1995, many people are not aware that what was sung at the Ellis Park Stadium was not this anthem that we have now, although a large portion of what was sung was what we have in the anthem. We had artists, we had the , conducted by George Ubandanu, and then we also had the late . So what they did, they actually tried to kind of abridge the combination of Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika and Die Stem, which is what the late , it’s a bit too long, so they tried to make it acceptable in terms of time and all that. So there was, in 1995, it’s only then, the next following year where the anthem committee was put together. Then they started working on the new anthem. And then after the Cape Town test, then our choirs got the music, and we started reading it, and we started teaching the public, from the end of 97, coming this 1996 rather, coming this way.
So in your other life, in your previous life as the musical director of the Sowetan Massed Choir. Yes, I did some research, doctor.
I did research.
I can tell, I can tell.
As the musical director for the Sowetan Massed Choir, you were part of the singing of many variations of the nkosi sikelela part of the hymn. And can you talk us a little bit through the learning now of this new version that is these two different keys that is different words from what people may have sung all the time, both in the black communities, but also in the white communities, because the work had to be done on both sides. Can you talk with us a little bit about that experience?
Okay, your question is very interesting. I’ll tell you what, firstly to answer the question itself now, my two choirs which I indicated earlier on, I also had the Kwa Tema Youth Choir. So because of my proximity to the late Professor Khumalo, firstly in the Master Choir Festival and in various other musical activities, the two choirs actually were amongst the first to sing the new national anthem of South Africa. So I remember we were, in some occasion, I don’t know what the equation was, with whatever you inquire, but when we were asked to sing, we first send the new answer And I asked the MC to tell the audience that this is the new anthem that was singing.
And after he actually told the audience, and he was a bit annoyed, because I could see he had a smile in his face. I think it was amused that they were singing this new anthem And then we were then able to make sure that our choirs learned the music, because we are aware, this new anthem has got to be taught to the public. And it can only be taught by choirs, which have practised it properly and can sing it quite accurately, as you say, probably the white members of this population had to learn that, but what is interesting is I was in some occasion in Verts University, and then we had to sing the anthem. And there was a representation, both of black and white, almost around 50% of each. And I noticed, well, I’m a musician, so I could pick this up very quickly.
I noticed that the first part, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, , it was mostly sung by blacks, and then came to Afrikaans and English section, then you saw the white members of the audience coming in. And I asked one of the people who worked at the assembly, Mike Leev, I’ve noticed this, that when you sing the anthem, the black population sings all of it, but the white population seems almost 60% of the anthem. Then his answer, which was very honest, which I thought was honest, he said, look, we are still grappling with the languages. So please bear with us until we’re able to bite into the African languages and sing the
- It’s true. Because I also remember in those days, we had like in the newspaper, the Sunday Times, they would have a full page with all the lyrics. But if you can’t read the Zulu or the Xhusa or Sotho, it doesn’t help you to have it written down. But today, and we don’t have in our schools the kind of assemblies that we used to have before. There was an assembly at the beginning of the day, and there was prayer, and there were singing and all of that. But when I see various games, when I see soccer, international soccer matches, manana manana, women’s national team, the champions of Africa, when the game starts, you see all the girls, all the girls singing every single line. When the world sees our spring box, you see all of those guys, even little fluffy, singing every line.
But I think now we have had a long time of many proud national moments where this song has been part of it. And so we don’t have the same, and I see River Foreman has just put a note here saying that Floyd Shabambu from the Economic Freedom Fighters, which is the third largest political party in our parliament, apparently published an article several years ago, demanding the removal of English and Afrikaans. And my reply, she says, was also published accusing him and the EFF of ruling and dividing by self gain, stamping on the legacy of Madiba’s unity and diversity, which is also in our constitution. And we chose reconciliation and nation building, our anthem is part of the miracle we represent to the world. Well said River, well said, my friend.
And it really is, I think my son doesn’t know any other anthem, and this is one thing that they at school will proudly sing at the beginning of all the sports events, they sing this song. I think we’ve overcome the chasm. Do you think that there’s still some kind of contestation around these things
Apart from–
Floyd.
and his party? I think we’ve gone past that now. And the anthem’s sung, you actually can’t not feel patriotic, you can’t just not feel that, wow, I’m a proud South African. I had that same feeling, not even in the country. I was in a ship that I was saying from Brazil to Cape Town. And at some point we had the students who were in that ship had to enact something that involved delayed Bishop Tutu. And then at the end of that, then they played the South African anthem. You don’t know what moved inside of me as I was listening to it being sung or being played over the system. So that’s where we are now. And going back from there is not going to help anybody. We have to start from here and move forward.
Absolutely.
Yeah. We can have the history for our children to say, okay, this is where we come from. But then we ultimately overcame all these obstacles, and now we can see this happen together, all the other racial groups in the country.
Okay, I’m going to, I think let’s play the anthem so that, for those people who’ve never heard it, they can hear it. And then we’ll come back and we’ll read more comments and we’ll close. ‘cause we’ve got nine minutes left. Please play us the anthem. ♪ South Africa ♪ ♪ Sounds the call to come together ♪ ♪ And united we shall stand ♪ ♪ Let us live and strive for freedom ♪ ♪ In South Africa our land ♪
Thank you for that, I’m so glad it had the translation. I was afraid I’m going to have to like go back and say every single one of those lines and save the translation for everybody, and I can’t sing to save my life. So it would’ve been quite exciting for everyone else. But I do want to say this before I let you have the final word is I think that the one thing about this anthem every time, and in the back in my office here, I can’t believe I didn’t sit behind it. I have a big on the wall, the thing that says Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika and artwork. I think that the sentiment of it is also a sentiment that the whole world could do with a more of. A call for peace, a call for togetherness, a call for the end of strife and war, a coming together, a nationhood, a reverence for the place we call home. I think I agree with time. Not only do we live in the best country in the world, but that is quite an awesome, awesome song.
It is, and the fact that the rendition we just listened to now is an exotic one.
Mm.
It is a choir coming from some part of the world, but not in South Africa. But there are certain things that you can pick up which can be done by a .
Mm, wow. And for you, when you wrote your book, when you went through all of this research, what was your biggest, profound moment of all the things that you learned? I mean, I had so many going through what you shared in your book, what were for you was one of the most profound moments about this entire process.
Well, I’ll mention maybe two, or let’s say two. The first one was to actually realise that in Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika comes from a town in the Eastern Cape, which was named after a person from the Netherlands, somebody who sent him ends with an R, and to people in the Eastern Cape. It almost sounds like it scores. That’s why they then changed to Nkosi Sikelel’ is if they thought maybe it actually is an indigenous name, whereas it’s not. It’s from the Netherlands.
And the other was how, so grave was found because the late Nelson Mandela felt, the country should posthumously, have something to say and do about the of this song, and they then had to start looking for the grave. And what they came up with just to summarise the whole thing We realised that in those times, not only was there because before apartheid, there was the colonisation of the English, and they called it the Kalaba. Now the Kalaba is a graveyard, where something was built, the Kalaba was there as well. There was a section for whites only. And then for the blacks, they were differentiated in terms of these are Christian blacks and these are for the–
Wow
And they almost didn’t find the grave with the help of a number of people, who I mentioned in the book. But they also found out that the black people who were buried, there, their particulars did not have their surnames. So for a long time they were looking for so long, so long, and they couldn’t find it until somebody, and a white person who was helping to find this grave said, “Let’s rather, instead of using the surname, let’s look for the name, look for Enoch.” In fact, I think maybe he may have even said, don’t look for the black name, look for the Christian name. So by looking for Enoch, it’s only then that they found it. So when I read that, I thought, wow, this is our past.
Mm, wow, wow, wow. I think that that is a fantastic place to stop this, because this, there lots of messages here saying, thank you so much, Dr. Magangane, what a wonderful presentation. And Denise is actually crying. I hope Denise these are tears of joy. at the beauty of this amazing piece of art. That’s more than a prayer. But truly, I think, and every time I hear it, I always think, I hope that these united voices are indeed reaching the heavens from our mouths to God’s ears. That we can live and strive for peace and freedom, and be united, not just here in South Africa, but all over the world.
Thank you so much, doctor. Thank you for your time, thank you, thank you. Thank you also for having had in you, that moment of reflection that says, this story needs to be told. And putting it in a book, putting it in a book which people can find everywhere. You can find it on Amazon, you can find it everywhere. The book is amazing. And the foreword is written by Dr. Zaidel-Rudolph. And it’s a fascinating, fascinating read. Just like South Africa is a fascinating, fascinating country. Doctor, thank you very much. Thank you for your time, and your passion, and your energy, and your knowledge. And thank you to each and every one of you who joined us this evening. And I hope you enjoyed this presentation as much as I did. And you’re going to tell all your friends to listen to it. And you can find so many versions of our national anthem on iTunes. You can find it on YouTube, you can find it everywhere.
So please go back, listen to it, and now that you’ve heard this story, listen to it with a different ear, and understand it to be, I think probably for Nelson Mandela, even as he was thinking, this is what he wanted, a prayer that he had for the nation that we have. Thank you very much. Goodnight everybody. Oh, I’m not going to see everyone on Saturday. Tomorrow’s Shabbat, everybody that will be celebrating, have a good Shabbat. I’m not going to see you on Saturday, I’m travelling to Israel. But yes, thank you for being with us, thank you so much.