In spite of the AAM’s trouble of navigating the music industry and engaging with the newly emerging layer of groups influenced by the Soweto uprising and the murder of Steve Biko, events in the early 1980s played towards the groups
established tactic of boycotting South Africa. The issue of the cultural boycott first returned to prominence when the United Nations General Assembly passed
125 Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson, Johannesburg,Gil Scott-Heron (Arista, ARISTA 23, 1976)
[7” single].
126 Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1461, Margaret Lsing to Gil Scott
Heron, 1 March 1976.
127 On this occasion the AAM simply received a generic press release from Scott-Heron’s record
label Arista, which to all intents and purpose was a dismissal of the AAM’s request.
Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1461, Namjac Records to AAM, 6 April 1976.
Resolution 35/206, which made the cultural boycott, first called for by Huddleston in 1954, official UN policy.128 As a result of this the UN began to annually publish
a register of those who had travelled to South Africa to perform. The AAM both enthusiastically printed the UN list in issues of its monthly paper Anti-Apartheid News and also sent the compilers of the register detailed information on any musician or entertainer who dared to travel to South Africa.129 Denselow has
argued, that the resolution and appearance of the UN register ‘suddenly forced’ apartheid on the ‘pop agenda’, elevating the campaign and creating a greater campaign than had existed previously.130
However the cultural boycott would move even higher up the agenda with the controversy generated by a series of concerts by British artists such as Rod Stewart, Shirley Bassey and Queen at the Sun City Superbowl venue throughout the early 1980s. Sun City had been built in the supposedly ‘independent homeland’ of Bophuthatswana , and many who were booked to play were assured that it was completely independent from South Africa and as a result not covered by the cultural boycott.131 As the Bantustans had not been recognised by any other country
and had been specifically condemned in the same UN Resolution which had affirmed the cultural boycott, this was a clear lie. An internal AAM briefing note from 1984 argued the motive of the South African government was to break the ‘cultural isolation’ and to represent the arrival of international groups as approval of South Africa.132
128 United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 35/206, ‘Policies of Apartheid of the Government
of South Africa’ (1980). <http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/35/a35r206e.pdf> (8 October 2013)
129
Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1464, AAM ‘British Singers, Musicians and Other Artists who entered South Africa or Namibia in 1982’, December 1982.
130 Denselow, When the Music’s Over, p.187.
131 Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1462, Cate Clark to Queen, 26 July
1984.
132
Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1462, Tom Jones Press Clippings, 13 September 1983.
For those well versed in the politics of music inside South Africa, the very existence of Sun City and the drive to attract western artists there, spoke to the way in which attempts to culturally isolate South Africa had succeeded. Speaking to Barry Hoskyns in a March 1984 interview for the NME Masekela argued that Sun City was inspired as a ‘propaganda’ exercise that ignored ‘indigenous talent while paying millions of dollars to overseas artists’.133 That the South African
government put so much effort into attracting high profile international musicians both confirmed the AAM’s suspicions and appeared to vindicate the tactic of the cultural boycott.
The emergence of Sun City and its challenge to the boycott therefore required an escalation of the cultural boycott campaign. Immediately a letter writing campaign began with the AAM writing directly to all of the groups that had agreed to play concerts at Sun City. The content of the letters varied little between artists, usually using the same stock quotes from South African based campaigners and the musician Eddy Amoo, a member of the band The Real Thing who had been ‘disgusted’ by what they saw during a residency at Sun City.134 Although the letters
still tended towards dense economic arguments against apartheid, they also displayed a greater awareness of the music industry than previous efforts, such as the attempted correspondence with Scott-Heron. The letters also suggest that a greater degree of research had been done by the AAM’s staff. For instance, in the letter sent to the group Queen, references are made to the groups past activities and
133 Barry Hoskyns, ‘Hugh Masekela, Blazing in the Bush’, NME, 31 March 1984.
<http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/hugh-masekela-blazing-in-the-bush> (11 September 2015).
134
Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1462, Cate Clark, Cate Clark to Queen, 26 July 1984, p.2.
in particular the bands participation in ‘a benefit concert for the people of Kampuchea’.135
This new letter writing campaign also varied in a few other important ways. Firstly letters to individual acts and their management became not one off events but often the beginning of long and persistent campaigns which aimed to force the offending musicians into contrition. For example a whole series of letters to Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones, which often ended with threats to picket British concerts, were responsible for both eventually apologising for their trips to Sun City.136
Perhaps even more importantly was the way in which the organisation of the AAM had continued to develop and expand. Specifically the presence of strong local AAM groups, in cities and regions such as Sheffield, Tyneside and Wales, meant that campaigning was increasingly a practical and provincial affair. For example, the Tyneside AAM group pro-actively picketed and leafleted a number of concerts by boycott breakers, such as David Essex and Leo Sayer.137 Meanwhile the local
AAM group in Sheffield made a high profile protest against the appearance of Cliff Richard, a frequent and unrepentant boycott breaker, at an evangelical
conference.138 This new boycott campaign, driven by people such as Terry and
others who had been schooled in the radical student politics of the early 1970s, represented not just a revival of the boycott of the 1960s but also a renewal of many of the ideas that had lay at its heart originally.
135 Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1462, Cate Clark, Cate Clark to
Queen, 26 July 1984, p.2.
136 Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1462, Tom Jones Press Clippings,
13 September 1983.
137 Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1462, Tyneside Anti-Apartheid
Movement, ‘Say No Leo’/’Don’t Entertain Apartheid’ campaign materials, 1987.
138
Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1462, Sheffield AAM ‘Cliff Richard and South Africa’, 27 June 1985.
Furthermore, the AAM’s internal briefings from this period also
demonstrate the way in which the emphasis and methods behind campaigning were beginning to change within the organisation. Increasingly discussion documents on the cultural boycott noted sentiments such as ‘culture is a weapon that we can use against the apartheid regime’.139 Specifically the conclusion of a 1984 report on the
success of the cultural boycott concludes;
Although from time to time the issue of the cultural boycott becomes a matter of considerable interest and debate, much more consistent work needs to be done by the AAM and its supporters in the cultural field. In particular there is a great need for educational work... to counter South African Propoganda [sic].140
Significantly the document concludes with news that there was ‘discussions on forming a ‘performers against apartheid’ group... to publicise and support the freedom struggle.’.141
In many ways this decision to actively participate in the production and promotion of explicitly anti-apartheid music represents a turning point in the strategy of the AAM. This is in turn reflected by the ways in which the boycott campaign had escalated beyond the petitioning of general secretaries of performers and associated technical unions to the increasing use of localised grass roots direct action. We can therefore see that by the early 1980s, the approach that had guided the AAM up until this point, to support the 'national liberation struggle', through boycotting and putting pressure on campaigning groups, Trade Unions and politicians, was increasingly seen as not fit for purpose in and of itself and was increasingly augmented or even replaced by more active campaigning.142
139Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1463, AMM, ‘Briefing on Cultural
Boycott’, 1984.
140 Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1463, AMM, ‘Briefing on Cultural
Boycott’, 1984.
141
Ibid.
In many ways the AAM's move towards harnessing music and culture more generally, as a means of facilitating protest against apartheid, reflected similar developments in many other protest organisations. Influenced by the work of the Black Consciousness Movement and the proliferation of protest songs during the Soweto uprising, the ANC itself also began the 1980s keen to make use of music as a means of protesting apartheid.143 Under the newly adopted slogan of 'culture is a
weapon of struggle', the ANC undertook a variety of different musical projects, from the promotion and growth of their banned Radio Freedom service, where songs inspired by Soweto began to feature prominently amongst the usual anti- government broadcasts, and even more obviously in the use of the Amandla Cultural Ensemble, a touring musical group which sought to promote and raise funds for the ANC.144 In the main these schemes proved to be broadly successful at
increasing support for the ANC both within South Africa and internationally. Broadcasting on shortwave from a number of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) training camps throughout Southern Africa, Radio Freedom, gained a loyal following amongst the urban black youth within South Africa throughout the 1980s.145 In the 2002 documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony,
multiple interviewees suggest that listening to Radio Freedom, often secretly, led to them becoming radicalised and in some instances joining MK.146 Internationally,
the Amandla Cultural Ensemble effectively became the 'popular ambassadors for the ANC' with extensive tours of Europe and even a small degree of chart success
143 Shirli Gilbert, ‘Singing Against Apartheid: ANC Cultural Groups and the International Struggle
Against Apartheid’, Journal of South African Studies (33:2), 2007, p.422.
144 Ibid., pp.421-422.
145Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony (Dir. Lee Hirsch, 2002). 146 Ibid.
in Sweden and the Soviet Union.147 Led by the exiled musician Jonas Gwangwa,
the former pupil of Archbishop Huddleston, who had achieved cult success in 1960s America, Amandla mixed traditional South African music and dancing, with worked up interpretations of current South African protest songs and even original compositions by Gwangwa, who bought a musical sophistication to a group mostly consisting of MK recruits.148 In fact the group’s use of styles such as the
pennywhistle led kwela and mbaqanga, the ‘African jazz’ style that had emerged out of the townships in the 1950s, arguably prefigured the stylistic footprint of world music projects such as Paul Simon’s Graceland.
The arrival of the Amandla group in Britain for a 1985 tour, an arrangement that had required a herculean amount of planning and negotiation, was met by rave reviews. Reviewing the first night of the tour in the New Musical Express, Bob Flynn praised the ‘purity and freshness of the music’ and noted that ‘if there are some blatantly political moments then they are justified and needed. This is an oppressed culture attacking one of the most obscene political situations on the planet’.149
Yet the question that is raised from this is, if the Amandla Cultural
Ensemble was such a success and received so much contemporary coverage, then why has the group been largely ignored by both critics and musicologists in the years that have ensued. Despite being one of the first groups to have performed in styles such as kwela, mbaqanga and isicathimiya, in the west, styles which would
147 The minutes of the AAM committee that arranged for Amandla to tour Britain in 1987 reveal that
there was an attempt to record a single and album during the trip for release in Britain. However due to time constraints and Jonas Gwangwa's objection to the sound quality of the initial recordings the project was abandoned
Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1470, IDAF, ‘Minutes of the Amandla Committee’, Friday 22 November, 1985.
148 Gilbert, ‘Singing Against Apartheid’, pp.432-433. 149
Bod, Archive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, MSS.AAM.1470, AMM, Press Cuttings Amandla Tour, November 1986.
later be key components of world music, Amandla have never been fully discussed by musicologists such as Steven Feld, Timothy D. Taylor or Bob W. White. Even the 2002 documentary of the same name, fails to explicitly discuss the work of the group, failing to differentiate the group by name from the wider cultural strategy of the ANC.150 In one of the only extended discussion of the role of Amandla, Shirli
Gilbert has suggested that by the end of the 1980s, the Amandla project was out of step with the approach of the ANC towards cultural work, which was moving towards envisioning a new South Africa and away from the narratives of
struggle.151 Tied to the strict party political line and wider strategy of the ANC, the
Amandla group found itself both unable to take advantage of the growing interest in world music and constrained by the strictures of its tightly defined role. For this reason, Amandla were never able to grow from acting almost exclusively as a ‘showpiece’ for the ANC.152