Apartheid .... Music

 I was brought up in Apartheid South Africa, however my mother and father never brought us up to believe that anyone was beneath that, and we never distinguished people by colour.  We learnt that from people in school or in the streets.  

Our "maid" who was more like a mother to me because my mom worked was just the lady who lived in the back room and cleaned our house, she watched TV with us and even went on holidays with us when we were much younger.    She was really well educated and knew about 9 different languages including English and Afrikaans.  She would help us with our homework and even helped the neighbors kids with Afrikaans especially as their parents did not speak it.

My mother always spoke to our Nanny in Afrikaans thinking that my father did not understand it little did she know. 

At school there may not have been so called "black" people but there were people of every race, colour and creed.  Unlike in other countries like Ireland where my friend said that 99% of pupils were white, catholic or white protestant.  We had refugees from Mozambique, in my class alone, there were Lebanese, Portuguese, Greek, Irish, English, all kinds of mixes i.e. Mother was French father was British etc.  It was a bit like the United Nations is now. 

I never knew about race classification until I started working, as I was in HR / Payroll when someone joined the Bank they had to be classified.  ABCD (That was maybe a PC way of doing it) A-Asian B-Black, C-Coloured and D-White.   I worked for a British bank and they employed people of every Race equally. 

I remember back in the 80's when we had a referendum to allow the A's and C's to vote and of course the younger generation voted YES why should anyone not be allowed to Vote, so luckily 10 years later the B's were allowed to vote and it was the end of apartheid! It took our generation to realize what kind of government we had! Even when my father said to me - always vote for the National Party or don't bother coming home ... lol well he is probably turning in his grave now! 

So why I started this post was because my first multi-culture band I saw in Concert was Mango Groove in Sun City, when my friends overseas were listening to Soft Cell, Prince etc, we had some brilliant South African Music. 

Jaluka, e-void, Mango Groove, MarcAlex, Bright Blue, Margaret Singana, Ladysmith Black Mambazo  - unfortunately not many of them got overseas hits, I mention their names in Ireland and the only name that anyone recognizes is Ladysmith Black Mambazo. 

It was like when the movie came out "Searching for Sugarman", about a musician called "Rodriguez", during the 70's we grew up on his music, especially as most radio stations banned the song "I wonder" the song and Album became more popular, then back in 2012 when the movie came out, because I was the only South African in my company, everyone was asking me if I knew of Rodriguez, I felt a bit like a Rock Star because I could tell them about him.  No-one in Ireland, the UK or America had ever heard of him.  

So I just realized how fortunate I was growing up in South Africa in the 70's, 80's & 90's the 3 decades that made me who I am today.