{"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.14288\/1.0442014":{"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#departmentOrSchool":[{"value":"Arts, Faculty of","type":"literal","lang":"en"},{"value":"Music, School of","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/dataProvider":[{"value":"DSpace","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#degreeCampus":[{"value":"UBCV","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/creator":[{"value":"Lawrence, Amanda","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/issued":[{"value":"2024-04-29T20:00:24Z","type":"literal","lang":"en"},{"value":"2024","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/vivoweb.org\/ontology\/core#relatedDegree":[{"value":"Master of Arts - MA","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"https:\/\/open.library.ubc.ca\/terms#degreeGrantor":[{"value":"University of British Columbia","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/terms\/description":[{"value":"In this thesis, I offer an intersectional study of Brenda Fassie (1964-2004), a leading popular musician in South Africa in the 1980s to early-2000s. Previous studies have focused separately on aspects of race, gender, sexuality and politics in her life and music in apartheid and post-apartheid years. This study looks at multiple aspects of her identity and develops a critical approach that intertwines them.\r\nFassie was a popular musician who grew up during the racial segregation of apartheid (1948-1990s) and both witnessed and participated in the birth of South African democracy (1994). As a black and queer woman, Fassie\u2019s identity deeply impacted the way she produced her music and how it was received by audiences and critics. A discussion of three songs, \u201cWeekend Special\u201d (1983), \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) and \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999), demonstrates how each facet of her identity (race, gender, sexuality and cultural) is presented in her music and how this reflection can be used to offer a better understanding of Fassie, her music, and the socio-political culture in South Africa. \r\n\tThe first part of this thesis offers a brief introduction to Fassie\u2019s life. It demonstrates how intersectional approaches to identity offer a more well-rounded representation of Fassie. It also explores the literature on black female musicians, South African music and history, and Fassie. The three subsequent chapters each analyze a specific song through close readings of the lyrics and music. By analyzing the three songs and the socio-political conditions they were produced in, this thesis reveals how understandings of Fassie\u2019s gender, sexuality, racial and cultural identities were shaped by preexisting gender and societal norms, and how she interacted with these identities. Fassie questioned, and legitimized these aspects of her identity through her music, and in her personal life.","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/www.europeana.eu\/schemas\/edm\/aggregatedCHO":[{"value":"https:\/\/circle.library.ubc.ca\/rest\/handle\/2429\/88092?expand=metadata","type":"literal","lang":"en"}],"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2009\/08\/skos-reference\/skos.html#note":[{"value":" THE QUEEN OF AFRICAN POP: REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER, RACE, AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN BRENDA FASSIE\u2019S MUSIC by  Amanda Lawrence  B.Mus., Stellenbosch University, 2019 M.Mus., The University of British Columbia, 2022  A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF  MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Music \u2013 Musicology)  THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver)  April 2024  \u00a9 Amanda Lawrence, 2024 ii  The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled:  The Queen of African Pop: Representations of Gender, Race, and Cultural Identity in Brenda Fassie\u2019s Music  submitted by Amanda Lawrence in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Music \u2013 Musicology  Examining Committee: Hedy Law, Associate Professor of Musicology, School of Music, UBC Supervisor David Metzer, Professor of Musicology, School of Music, UBC Supervisory Committee Member   iii  Abstract In this thesis, I offer an intersectional study of Brenda Fassie (1964-2004), a leading popular musician in South Africa in the 1980s to early-2000s. Previous studies have focused separately on aspects of race, gender, sexuality and politics in her life and music in apartheid and post-apartheid years. This study looks at multiple aspects of her identity and develops a critical approach that intertwines them. Fassie was a popular musician who grew up during the racial segregation of apartheid (1948-1990s) and both witnessed and participated in the birth of South African democracy (1994). As a black and queer woman, Fassie\u2019s identity deeply impacted the way she produced her music and how it was received by audiences and critics. A discussion of three songs, \u201cWeekend Special\u201d (1983), \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) and \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999), demonstrates how each facet of her identity (race, gender, sexuality and cultural) is presented in her music and how this reflection can be used to offer a better understanding of Fassie, her music, and the socio-political culture in South Africa.   The first part of this thesis offers a brief introduction to Fassie\u2019s life. It demonstrates how intersectional approaches to identity offer a more well-rounded representation of Fassie. It also explores the literature on black female musicians, South African music and history, and Fassie. The three subsequent chapters each analyze a specific song through close readings of the lyrics and music. By analyzing the three songs and the socio-political conditions they were produced in, this thesis reveals how understandings of Fassie\u2019s gender, sexuality, racial and cultural identities were shaped by preexisting gender and societal norms, and how she interacted with these identities. Fassie questioned, and legitimized these aspects of her identity through her music, and in her personal life. iv  Lay Summary Brenda Fassie (1964-2004) was black and queer female musician who proved a seminal figure in the South African popular music industry in the late and post-apartheid years. This thesis explores how situating her life and music within multiple identity frameworks, including race, gender, sexuality, and cultural identities, offers a better understanding of how her music was influenced by musical and social culture in South Africa and her subsequent influence on her listeners. I analyze the music, lyrics, reception, and influence of three of her most popular songs from different periods in her career: \u201cWeekend Special\u201d (1983), \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) and \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999).  The songs reveal how the multiple facets of her identities intersect in her music and how these identities shift at varying stages of her life, and provide a nuanced understanding of her music and of the socio-political and musical culture in South Africa between the 1980s and early-2000s.  v  Preface This thesis is the original, unpublished, and independent work of the author, Amanda Lawrence. vi  Table of Contents  Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary ............................................................................................................................... iv Preface .............................................................................................................................................v Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 1.1 Intersectional Approaches to Identity Work ................................................................... 4 1.2 Literature Review ............................................................................................................ 9 1.2.1 Understanding Categories of Race and Racial Segregation During Apartheid .... 10 1.2.2 Recent International Research on Black Female Musicians ................................. 12 1.2.3 A Historical Overview of Politics and Race in South Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries .............................................................................................................. 19 1.2.4 Afro-Euro Fusion and Identity in South African Popular Music .......................... 29 1.2.5 Published Literature on Brenda Fassie (1964-2004) ............................................ 41 1.3 Chapter Outline ............................................................................................................. 46 Chapter 2: \u201cI\u2019m No Weekend Special\u201d: Sex, Sexuality and Race in Brenda Fassie\u2019s Debut Single .............................................................................................................................................49 2.1 Bubblegum\/Afropop in Context ................................................................................... 52 2.2 An Intersectional Approach to Interpreting Lyrical Content in \u201cWeekend Special\u201d ... 55 2.3 Objectification and the Male Gaze in Audio\/Visual Aspects of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d .. 65 Chapter 3: \u201cLet Us Sing\u201d: Musical Activism in \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) ............................71 vii  3.1 The Significance of Music in Anti-Apartheid Activism ............................................... 75 3.2 Anti-Apartheid Rhetoric and Socio-Political Commentary in the Lyrics and Music of \u201cBlack President\u201d ...................................................................................................................... 81 3.3 Black Feminism in Fassie\u2019s Musical-Political Activism .............................................. 88 Chapter 4: South Africa\u2019s \u201cKwaito Queen\u201d: African Pride and Cross-Cultural Reconciliation in \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999) ...................................................................................92 4.1 Shifting Understandings of Identity in Post-Apartheid Music and Politics .................. 97 4.2 \u201cNomakanjani\u201d as an Example of a New South African Music Tradition ................. 103 Chapter 5: Conclusion ...............................................................................................................110 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................113 Discography ................................................................................................................................117 Appendices ..................................................................................................................................124 Appendix A : \u201cWeekend Special\u201d (1983) by Brenda and the Big Dudes .............................. 124 Appendix B :  \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) by Brenda Fassie .................................................... 126 Appendix C : \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999) by Brenda Fassie ......................................................... 128 Appendix D : Chronology of Major South African Political Events (1948-1996) ................. 130     viii  Acknowledgements   I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Hedy Law. I am so grateful that I decided to take her Women in Music seminar in 2020, while pursuing my master\u2019s in flute performance. Dr. Law\u2019s continuous and enthusiastic support of my interest in women\u2019s music history inspired me to take a risk and pursue further studies in Musicology. Without her guidance, I would have never discovered this passion, and for that I am eternally grateful. Thank you, Dr. Law, for always knowing when I needed a push and making sure that I always give my best.   A special thank you to my committee member, Dr. David Metzer, whose constant encouragement and enthusiasm throughout the thesis-writing process has been so deeply appreciated. Dr. Metzer has been a constant source of inspiration, and I am immensely grateful for his unwavering support and guidance. Thank you to Dr. Vellutini who, although not on my committee, has played a huge part in my approach to, and respect for, music scholarship, and has been a wonderful role model throughout this degree.   To my mother, Jennifer Lawrence, my father, Redvers Lawrence, my sister, Natalie Lawrence, and my grandparents, Maureen and Neville Deudney: thank you for your unconditional support throughout my entire music career. You have cheered me on across oceans and continents, even when you had no idea what I was doing. Though you may be on the other side of the world, I carry your love with me every day. You mean everything to me.  Lastly, I wish to thank my incredible friends who have made my time in Vancouver and at UBC so special. To Kaylee Therieau, I couldn\u2019t have done this without our many library dates, ix  late night Lucy\u2019s dinermissions and couch study sessions. I would also like to thank Adele Marsland, Alex Tanizawa, Alexander Comninos, Amelia Walker, Anna Bosgra, Cherrie Yu, Chloe Comninos, Echo Davidson, Ella, Buonassisi, Eric Li, Graeme Lister, Isabella Wark, Jegan Ganesan, Julian Franco, Nathan Bernacki, Sasha Kow, and Seth Walker. Words cannot express my love and appreciation.  1  Chapter 1: Introduction In 1983, a nineteen-year-old black South African singer named Brenda Fassie (1964\u20132004) released her debut album with her band, Brenda the The Big Dudes, titled Weekend Special. The album quickly became popular with young South Africans of colour, understood in the South African context as \u201cnon-white\u201d. It sold over 200 000 copies in its first year. In the following years, she massed a huge national following as she released hit tracks such as \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) and \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999). As South Africa moved towards a democratic future with the dissolution of apartheid in 1994, a political process of reunification began, which had immediate impact on the popular music scene. Fassie\u2019s popularity began to increase with white South Africans looking to engage with more local South African music styles, and as the lines between white and non-white music began to blur, so too did the parameters of music-making and genre. Towards the end of apartheid and in the immediate years after, artists like Fassie and her contemporaries such as Arthur Mafokate and Lebo Mathosa famously began to incorporate more traditional African elements with their international popular music styles, such as indigenous languages and traditional instruments. The result was an Afro-European fusion that appealed both to the indigenous African communities and the white settlers who hoped to integrate into Nelson Mandela\u2019s vision of a \u201crainbow nation.\u201d  Fassie was a controversial figure in the music industry. She was a known drug user and struggled greatly with her identity as an HIV-positive queer woman while simultaneously situating herself as a sexually liberated woman. In many of her songs and their music videos, she used lyrics and visual imagery to simultaneously construct and challenge her multifaceted gender and sexual identity. Her explicit exploration of her identity garnered international media attention. Fassie had a big reputation to live up to due to media sensationalism. In TIME 2  magazine, a reporter notes that fans nicknamed her \u201cMadonna of the townships\u201d as a compliment to the enormity of her talent.1 In her 2004 obituary in the The Guardian, Liz McGregor referred to her as South Africa\u2019s \u201cfirst black female pop star.\u201d2  Two decades after her death, Fassie\u2019s legacy lives as demonstrated by the still-active comments sections on her post-mortem official YouTube channel.3 However, despite a wealth of repertoire, numerous awards such as the South African Music Award (SAMA) for Best Female Artist and Song of the Year (1999), Best Song of the Decade (2004) and Lifetime Achievement Award (2005), and a continuing post-mortem legacy, there is surprisingly little published scholarship on Brenda Fassie. Published scholarly work typically frames her within the narrative of the kwaito music genre (i.e., as an example of Afro-Euro fusion of musical styles)\/ or within the framework of gender studies.4 The majority of existing research examines one aspect of Fassie\u2019s identity at a time: either her personal life and gender identity, or her musical identity. Yet, in order to offer a fuller understanding of each of these identities, they need to be explored in relation to the others. Herein lies a gap in which the multiple facets of Fassie\u2019s identity (queer, HIV-positive, woman, black, African, mother) have not adequately been explored in relation to each other in order to provide a more well-rounded understanding of her social and cultural impact on the post-apartheid South African music industry and society.   1 Desa Philadelphia, \u201cThe Madonna of the Townships,\u201d TIME Magazine, Fall 2001. https:\/\/content.time.com\/time\/magazine\/article\/0,9171,1000782,00.html.  2 Liz McGregor, \u201cBrenda Fassie Obituary,\u201d The Guardian, May 11, 2004. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/news\/2004\/may\/11\/guardianobituaries.southafrica.  3 Brenda Fassie Official, YouTube channel, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCGKxphO1563QUeYzHZndAjA.  4 Livermon, Kwaito Bodies; Gavin Steingo, Kwaito\u2019s Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Martina Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d The World of Music 50, no. 2 (2008); 51\u201373; Stephanie Rudwick, Khathala Nkomo and Magcino Shange, \u201cUlimi Iwenkululeko: Township \u2018Women's Language of Empowerment\u2019 and Homosexual Linguistic Identities,\u201d Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, no. 67 (2006): 57\u201365; Nicol Hammond, \u201cNational Mothers: Singing a Queer Family Romance for the New South Africa,\u201d Women and Music 19 (2015): 77\u201385.  3   In my research on Fassie, I have identified three major areas that constitute her public identity: race, gender, and culture identity. First, as a black African born during the legal racial segregation in South African known as \u201capartheid,\u201d Fassie\u2019s racial identity was hugely significant to how she was represented in a racially segregated music industry, and how she was perceived by her white audiences versus audiences of colour in South Africa. Furthermore, her use of multiple languages, such as English, Xhosa and Zulu, appealed to a wide array of listeners both in South Africa and surrounding countries such as Mozambique and Lesotho, where shared language families allowed listeners to understand at least some of the music. Second, as a queer woman of colour, her gender, sexuality, and ethnicity were inseparable from her music\u2013 \u2013 making both through representations of these identities in her lyrics and in the reception of her music, as evidenced in music criticism, album reviews, and tabloid articles. The third process of identity formation is that of nationality. During apartheid (1948\u20131994) the right to call oneself \u201cSouth African\u201d was largely reserved for the white descendants of colonizers, while indigenous Africans were stripped of their citizenship. Fassie\u2019s identity as a black African withheld her from the legal right to call herself a citizen of the country \u201cSouth Africa.\u201d Her Africanness was in direct opposition of an official nationalism that was explicitly denied from her. Much of her music, such as the album Black President (1990), demonstrated political themes, whether they are overtly mentioned in the lyrics or implied.  Understandings of Fassie\u2019s gender, racial, and cultural identities are coloured by preexisting notions of gender and societal norms, both publicly performative and internalized. In this thesis, I seek to investigate how Fassie interacted with, questioned, and legitimized these aspects of her identity. Furthermore, how did she engage identities of her listeners through her music?  4  In order to answer these questions, I have identified three of her most pivotal songs which represent the two most significant decades of her career: \u201cWeekend Special\u201d (1983), \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) and \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999), each of which will be discussed in a chapter of this thesis. \u201cWeekend Special\u201d, which features on her debut album of the same name, has long been regarded as a staple of the queer community in South Africa, despite the fact that Fassie was not yet \u201cout\u201d at this point. It also serves as an anthem of female bodily autonomy\u2014a reclamation of the self in refusing to be considered a weekend-only girlfriend. \u201cBlack President\u201d explores Fassie\u2019s relationship with her racial identity in a racially segregated apartheid-state, and her support of black politics as the niece of future South African president, Nelson Mandela. \u201cNomakanjani\u201d points to a pivotal moment in black music-making in South Africa, as artists began to turn away from Euro-centric popular music genres and languages, instead developing new genres that celebrated black South African identities, music, and languages.  This thesis will argue that a well-rounded representation of each facet of Fassie\u2019s identity and by extension her positionality, will provide a better comprehension of her work. Simultaneously, situating her works within multiple identity frameworks better culturally situates her music-making in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. I posit that all aspects of Brenda Fassie\u2019s identity are intrinsically linked to, and represented by, her music which, in turn, has greatly influenced musical and social culture in South Africa between the 1980s and early-2000s.   1.1 Intersectional Approaches to Identity Work Identity work is an invaluable part of the process of understanding the cultural and historical frameworks in which artists exist and produce their works. Social theorist Patricia Hill Collins suggests that categories of identity such as gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality 5  \u201creference important resistant knowledge traditions among subordinated peoples who oppose the social inequalities and social injustices that they experience.\u201d5 Collins notes that \u201cthere is not yet one agreed upon way of doing intersectionality.\u201d6 Rather, approaches vary depending on specific contexts. In the context of Brenda Fassie, a black, queer female South African musician, I approach the topic of intersectionality as one that provides a new frame of reference for how race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity can be understood in the context of one another, in order to provide a more nuanced and complex understanding of the conditions of Fassie\u2019s life and music career. The analysis of the three songs presented in this thesis offers a critical approach to the intersections of these identities. Theorizing these aspects of Fassie\u2019s identity intersectionally offers new perspectives on how she was shaped by the cultural and socio-political conditions she was situated in as a queer woman of colour during apartheid, and how she helped shape new music traditions in the early post-apartheid years. Furthermore, because the positionality of this research lies within a South African musician and the South African music industry\u2014particularly popular music\u2014it demonstrates how constructions of identity are specific to the different societies they are produced within and the importance of intersectional understandings of those constructs within their unique contexts. According to Judith Butler, gender identity is one such social construct. Because one exists in society from the moment they are born, gender identity is both inescapable and inherently performative\u2014performative because according to Butler, \u201cgender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed\u2026 identity is  5 Patricia Hill Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019), 10. 6 Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory, 9.   6  performatively constituted by the very \u2018expressions\u2019 that are said to be its results.\u201d7 In the case of a performing artist, gender is performed both onstage and offstage\u2014onstage as a sort of character and offstage as a \u201ctruer\u201d reflection of the self. Judith Butler\u2019s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (1993), provide the basis for gender analysis in the songs discussed in this thesis. Butler\u2019s theory of gender performativity, which rejects the gender binary and suggests that gender is the result of a series of acts that are \u201cperformed\u201d rather than an internal reality or inherent condition of existence, is particularly significant in the analysis of performed and performing arts (music or otherwise). According to Butler, gender is constructed through \u201cthe repeated stylization of the body\u201d8\u2014that is to say that gender is not something one is born with but rather a process9. If a specific characteristic is ascribed to a specific group of people, it is not because the characteristic is intrinsic to their most basic nature but because external forces have demanded it. Hence, it is constructed. Though not explicitly stated yet by Butler, many scholars have suggested that the idea of identity construction that they apply to gender can also be ascribed to constructions of race. This is of particular importance as Fassie navigated the space between constructions of gender and race as a black woman in a place and time where blackness was viewed as \u201cless than\u201d whiteness and black and other women of colour in South Africa were perceived differently to white women.   Returning to gender as an act of \u201cdoing\u201d, Butler states that \u201cgender proves to be performance\u2014that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be.\u201d10 In this respect, gender is  7 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990): 34. 8 Butler, Gender Trouble, 45.  9 Butler, Gender Trouble, 34. 10 Butler, Gender Trouble, 34. 7  not inherent and unchanging, nor is one free to choose whichever gender or aspects of gender they wish to associate with. Instead, the construction of gender is determined by the specific societal context in which it is constructed. Butler posits that if gender is indeed constructed, then it could be constructed differently. Butler\u2019s emphasis on language focuses specifically on the controversy surrounding the terms \u201cpolitics\u201d and \u201crepresentation\u201d. They suggest that, although it is important for feminism to develop a language that represents women, it has proven rather difficult, as the very category of \u201cwoman\u201d\u2014what constitutes a \u201cwoman\u2014is not entirely clear. Conceptions of gender are not universal, having been constructed differently across history and a variety of cultures.  The construction of gender identities, then, hinges on an agreed upon linguistic understanding. As previously discussed, the divide between women of colour and white women in the racially segregated apartheid state meant that even how they were perceived as women was different. Although situated in the same broad national culture, the discrepancy of ethnic identities (and, by extension, languages) in South Africa and the validity of these identities as ascribed by the government (white supremacy, black subjectivity) influenced the very notion of what constituted a \u201cwoman\u201d based on the colour of their skin. While representational democracy can extend a legitimacy to women as political subjects, it is important to note that is can also create a barrier or a qualification that must be met in order for the subject to be fully represented. In this context, I use Butler\u2019s theory of gender performativity to consider how Fassie negotiated space in the South African popular music industry as a black woman.   In Bodies That Matter, Butler asks what it would mean to consider performativity not just through a heterosexually gendered lens but also through a \u201ccomplex set of racial injunctions 8  which operate in part through the taboo on miscegenation.\u201d11 During apartheid, laws were passed to prohibit sharing sexual experiences between white and non-white South Africans and thus the gendered body and the raced body could not be separated. In my thesis I consider Butler\u2019s question of \u201cHow is race lived in the modality of sexuality? How is gender lived in the modality of race? How do colonial and neo-colonial nation-states rehearse gender relations in the consolidation of state power?\u201d12 Considerations of racial difference are (or should be) of equal importance to gendered difference and thus the raced body becomes intertwined with the sexed body. Furthermore, if one is to consider the intersections of race and gender, one should also include parameters for queerness. As Butler notes, \u201cif to identify as a woman is not necessarily to desire a man, and if to desire a woman does not necessarily signal the constituting presence of a masculine identification, whatever that is, then the heterosexual matrix proves to be an imaginary logic hat insistently issues forth its own unmanageability.\u201d13   As a queer black woman living in apartheid segregation, Fassie was constantly exposed to racist legislation that affected her personal life, music career, and industry relationships. In order to effectively analyze her impact (and how she was impacted by) the South African music industry, one must understand the role of race and ethnicity in the construction of her identity in relation to the socio-political landscape that she lived and worked in. Sociologist Ali Meghji views such a perspective as part of critical race theory (a termed coined by Roy L. Brooks in the 1990s), a framework within which racism is not an individual act but rather is a structural power relation.14 This approach to understanding race demonstrates that it is categorized differently in  11 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993), 122. 12 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 78. 13 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 183. 14 Ali Meghji, The Racialized Social System: Critical Race Theory as Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press), 5.  9  relation to individual societies and thus must be considered intersectional with other issues such as sex\/gender discrimination, sometime also referred to through symbolic interactionism\u2014the idea that people \u201corient to the world around them according to the meaning it has for them; they consider that meaning arises from interaction, and they view interpretation as a process that is ongoing in interaction.\u201d15  1.2 Literature Review In order to discuss the impact of gender, racial, and cultural identities on pop singer Brenda Fassie (1964-2004) and her subsequent influence on South Africans and South African music in the late-\u2013 and post-apartheid years, one must first address current literature at these specific intersections. I first offer an understanding of race and racial categories in South Africa during apartheid. I then turn to contemporary scholarship on reception of black musicians in the twentieth- and twenty-first century. In this section, I explain the ways this body of scholarship contextualizes intersectionality of identities and how they interact with music-making. I then offer a broad historical-anthropological overview of settler-colonialism in southern Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This research demonstrates how colonization shaped cultural, social and religious changes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The next section turns to scholarship on interactions between white and non-white identities in South Africa, with an emphasis on cultural fusions of these identities in music. I will identify published work that focuses on the incorporation of European-settler music styles into indigenous African musics,  15 Dirk vom Lehn, Natalia Ruiz\u2013Junco, Will Gibson, The Routledge International Handbook on Interactionism (New York: Routledge, 2021), 7.  10  and vice versa, in the twentieth century. The last section of this literature review addresses existing scholarship on Fassie, and identifies  gaps in research on her life and music.   1.2.1 Understanding Categories of Race and Racial Segregation During Apartheid Music in South Africa plays a large and important role in shared cultural and social identities. Specific genres are often associated with certain racial groups, and language in music can be used to unify or exclude certain people from certain narratives. In 1948, the National Party\u2014an Afrikaner nationalist group\u2014came to power. During their rule from 1948 to 1993, South Africa was a severely racialized country. The racially divided state is captured in a 1962 court statement titled pointedly \u201cBlack Man in a White Court\u201d that documents an exchange between the future president (1994\u20131999) Nelson Mandela and the magistrate in a trial session: Mandela:  What sort of justice is this that enables the aggrieved to sit in judgement over    those against whom they have laid a charge? A judiciary controlled entirely    by whites and  enforcing laws enacted by a white parliament in which Africans    have no representation \u2013 laws which in most cases are passed in the face of    unanimous opposition from Africans. Magistrate:  After all is said and done, there is only one court today and that is the White    Man\u2019s court. There is no other court.16  According to the 1996  census, which was the country\u2019s first official democratic census, 77% of 40.58 million people living in South Africa at the time self-identified as black\/African, 11% white, 9% coloured, and 3% Indian\/Asian.17 23% of people spoke Zulu as their first language, 18% Xhosa, 14% Afrikaans and 9% English. Roughly 58.5% of the white population and 82% of  16 Nelson Mandela, \u201cBlack Man in a White Court,\u201d (court statement, 28 October 1962), ANC 1912, https:\/\/www.anc1912.org.za\/trials\u2013black\u2013man\u2013in\u2013a\u2013white\u2013court\u2013nelson\u2013mandelas\u2013first\u2013court\u2013statement\/.  17 Statistics South Africa, The People of South Africa Population Census, 1996, https:\/\/apps.statssa.gov.za\/census01\/Census96\/HTML\/default.htm.   11  the coloured population spoke Afrikaans (the official language of apartheid) as their first language, while 29.5% and 23% of the black population\u2019s first language was Zulu and Xhosa, respectively. Note that only five racial categories exist in this census: Black\/African, Coloured, Indian\/Asian, White and Other\/Unspecified. During apartheid (from 1948 to the early 1990s), non-white South Africans such as black, coloured and Indian people were racially persecuted and segregated from white South Africans. This segregation, which forced non-whites into townships and ghettos, poorly managed educational institutions, stripped them of many of their social rights, came to be known as \u201capartheid\u201d (literally means \u201cseparateness\u201d). 18 It was defined as a \u201cpolicy of racial segregation and discrimination against South Africa\u2019s non-white majority by the country\u2019s white minority government.\u201d19  During apartheid, music was so racially segregated that non-white (black and \u201ccoloured\u201d) groups had their own radio broadcasts and separate music production labels. It is important to note that in the context of South Africa and South African ethnic groups, the term \u201ccoloured\u201d has a vastly different understanding than that in North America. In the context of South Africa and South African racial dynamics, \u201ccoloured\u201d refers to a specific group of people whose ancestry is of mixed race. This term was legislated in the Population Registration Act No. 30 of 1950, which classified South Africans into distinct racial categories: Native, Coloured, Indian and White.20 The term \u201ccoloured\u201d was also codified in the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act No. 72 of 1949 which prohibited marriage between whites and non-whites (note that the cited document is a  18 Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Apartheid, Democracy (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), 5. 19 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. \u201capartheid (n.),\u201d September 2023, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/OED\/9402307403.  20 Act No. 30 of 1950, Population Registration, June 1950: 277. https:\/\/www.sahistory.org.za\/sites\/default\/files\/DC\/leg19500707.028.020.030\/leg19500707.028.020.030.pdf.  12  copy produced in 1985, as the original document could not be found).21 The qualifier \u201ccoloured\u201d, then, could refer to people who have one black parent and one white parent, but more frequently the term is used to refer to people who come from multiple generations of mixed-race families as an initial result of white owners procreating with their enslaved blacks in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Consequently, their \u201ccoloured\u201d children developed their own traditions and culture through multiple generations.22 Therefore, in this context, the term \u201ccoloured\u201d is not used as an offensive catch-all for people of colour as it is in North America but refers to a distinct community of people with a shared cultural and racial heritage specific to South Africa.23  1.2.2 Recent International Research on Black Female Musicians  Before looking to South African popular music and black South African musicians, I offer a brief analysis of four recent books on black musicians (mostly women) and their music: Liner Notes for the Revolution (2021) by Daphne Brooks, Tania Le\u00f3n\u2019s Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life (2021) by Alejandro Madrid, Black Diamond Queens (2020) by Maureen Mahon, and Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (2020). These four books provide a broad scholarly context within which to understand how identities and labels\u2014specifically black, queer, woman\u2014have conditioned music creation. While these books specifically focus on women active in the US, they will provide relevant  21 Act No. 27 of 1949 in Government Gazette of the Republic of South Africa, June 1985: 2\u20134. https:\/\/www.gov.za\/sites\/default\/files\/gcis_document\/201504\/act\u201372\u20131985.pdf.  22 Mohamed Adhikari, Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2005), 2\u20133, 25.  23 Evan Liebermann, Until We Have Won Our Liberty: South Africa After Apartheid (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2022), vii.  13  insight into how black musicians in popular music industries have historically been undervalued due to their race.  Despite different geopolitical contexts from South Africa, these books address how racial and gender identities intersect and ascribe meaning to music and performance, whether intentional or not. The Butlerian concept of \u201cgender performativity\u201d is based on the idea of sex as two different concepts: sex as a person\u2019s anatomically born identity, and sex as a construct, the result of different influencing factors, such as the time period, culture, and social spaces, and can change over time\u2014one learns to \u201cperform\u201d specific roles in accordance with society\u2019s perception of specific genders. Gender identity, then, can be understood as inherently performative, yet the strict boundaries in which many societies operate can be used by the mainstream groups against the others to confine the opportunities an individual might create and the boundless possibilities that constructions of gender introduce to societies.  The way one dresses, talks, the things they enjoy can all be examples of performative gender.24 The idea of how value is ascribed to a person and their artistic expression\u2014in this case, music\u2014in accordance with performative labels, and the way in which their intentions can be misconstrued, is a focal point for Daphne Brooks, which leads to the next foundational text for this thesis.   In Liner Notes for the Revolution (2021), Daphne Brooks explores how black women in the United States of America have historically been underappreciated and undervalued in the popular music industry in the U.S. and under-estimated by critics and scholars.25 Brooks approaches this research first by outlining the significance of black women music critics\/scholars  24 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990): 11. 25 Daphne Brooks, Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021), 2, 16-17. 14  and performers (such as Rosetta Reitz, Ellen Willis, Beyonce and Esther Mae Scott) in their contributions to popular music.  She claims that popular music culture would be drastically changed (if not cease to exist) without these contributions. Brooks notes how a lack of documentation of black women\u2019s efforts has resulted in a lack of historical recognition, thus creating a false understanding of their place in the history of popular music in the U.S. She points to writers such as Toni Morrison and Pauline Hopkins as insurgents, that is, as examples of how to read black women\u2019s histories as a means of intellectual revolution.26  Furthering this point, Brooks looks at the history of popular music criticism and its marginalization and even exclusion of black women\u2019s music, pointing to white critics such as Leonard Feather and Ralph J. Gleason as examples of those tasked with ascribing more or less value to music, and offers an alternative, more nuanced criticism of black women\u2019s music while taking note of their \u201cradical triumphs and lifelong labours.\u201d27 The idea of the body as an archive is central to this book. Brooks suggests that \u201cBlack women artists have played crucial roles as archives, as the innovators of performances and recordings that stood in for and as the memory of a people.\u201d28 Simply put, because traditional music archives, including objects preserved in physical archives (e.g., letters, scores, recordings), music criticism and scholarly publications, have historically failed to sufficiently documents black women\u2019s contributions to music, the black women artists have had to be taken by scholars as \u201carchives\u201d of their own creative practices. In this regard, the body itself becomes a site of knowledge, and therefore an \u201carchive\u201d or a physical representation of black female histories of sound.  26 Brooks, Liner Notes for the Revolution, 9. 27 Brooks, Liner Notes for the Revolution, 6-7. 28 Brooks, Liner Notes for the Revolution, 4. 15  Brooks reads a wide variety of sources for her book\u2014including black scholars\u2019 work, feminist studies, ethnographic surveys of songs and different musics, interviews and music criticism\u2014to offer an analytical perspective of black women\u2019s music history by exploring the \u201cintellectual labour\u201d of black women and traditions of black feminist scholarship.29 These key cultural factors that Brooks identifies demonstrate how women, particularly black women, have been excluded from music history. Her reframing of the narratives surrounding them and their embodied histories allows a better understanding of artists, particularly women of colour, must grapple with. Her argument shows how their identities intersecting race and gender interact with and influence their art. However, in the process of constructing and portraying identities through specific categorizations (whether of race or gender), one must ask not only how these categorizations can positively create space for shared experiences, but how they could also possibly detract from them. Alejandro Madrid asks these questions in Tania L\u00e9on\u2019s Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life (2021), which focuses on composer and conductor Tania L\u00e9on\u2019s desire to not be labelled as a \u201cblack\u201d composer or a \u201cfemale\u201d composer, but to simply be listened to without ascribing anything \u201cextra\u201d to her or her music.30 \u201cI am not a feminist, am not a black conductor, and am not a woman conductor. I am nothing that people want to call me. They do not know me,\u201d says L\u00e9on.31 According to Madrid, L\u00e9on rejects identity labels that allow audiences to form preconceived notions of her and her music, and that L\u00e9on is in the process of \u201cbecoming\u201d: a continuous evolving of her personhood and womanhood that is a direct result of every  29 Brooks, Liner Notes for the Revolution, 59-61. 30 Alejandro Madrid, Tania Le\u00f3n\u2019s Stride: A Polyrhythmic Life (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2021), 3. 31 Madrid, Tania Le\u00f3n\u2019s Stride, 169. 16  experience, memory, and interaction she has had throughout her life.32 By this logic, then, Le\u00f3n balks at the labelling of \u201cwoman\u201d or \u201cblack\u201d as a reductive approach to identity, as she considers herself and her life experiences to be beyond a one-word labelling of identity that only serves to make her the other of a stable, essentialized identity.33 Madrid scrupulously recounts Le\u00f3n\u2019s childhood, musical achievements, and personal relations on the grounds that all of these elements, combined, are essential to her journey of becoming. No one label, no one experience defines a person\u2019s entire identity; rather, these millions of individual experiences make up a greater whole.  This sentiment is shared by gender theorist Judith Butler who, in their book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), claims that because gender comes from expressions, shaped by physical representations designated by external objects (such as that Barbies are for girls and trucks are for boys; or ballet is for women and football is for men) and repetitive acts (such as girls wear skirts and wear make-up). Gender is thereby considered a performance. And that performance, inherently, is a collective experience shared by billions of people who are lumped into these binaries, despite not always wanting to or being able to fit into them. It is understandable that Le\u00f3n would prefer to have her music relate to individual experience instead of representing any one group identity such as \u201cwoman\u201d or \u201cAfrican-American\u201d (when she is, in fact, also Cuban). However, one can also acknowledge the importance, relevance, and significance of identity (particularly marginalized ones) and this  32 Madrid, Tania Le\u00f3n\u2019s Stride, 169. 33 Madrid, Tania Le\u00f3n\u2019s Stride, 174. 17  identity is expressed performatively through such collaborative and community-building mediums as music.  Ritual is another prominent theme in Tania Le\u00f3n\u2019s life. Growing up in Cuba, Le\u00f3n was exposed to and complicit in the culture and music of her people. Her exposure to Santeria drumming and its particular rhythms and compositional structure would have a lasting impact on her later career.34 However, she was also received training in Western art music. These seemingly conflicting aspects of her identity were both significant to her musical process, as they create the foundation for a multifaceted angles of identity that has made Tania Le\u00f3n who she is. She was not born \u201cTania Le\u00f3n;\u201d instead, she became her performatively through constructing a self through a series of life events, family and cultural influences, and the ways in which she was perceived understood by her peers, critics, family and collaborators both her personal and professional lives.  Tania Le\u00f3n\u2019s desire to not be known by and referred to as the mere label of \u201cwoman\u201d or \u201cAfrican-American\u201d, neatly categorized but ultimately lacking, was also evident in post-apartheid South Africa after 1994 (post-apartheid) and early 2000s, when group identity regarding racial and gender was heavily promoted as fostering new relations between groups in a new nation.35 In my thesis, I investigate how decades of governmental oppression of non-whites based on racial identity categories as designated by laws such as the Population Registration Act of 1950 created a desire to move away from ready-made categorizations, yet also provided a sociopolitical context for the performativity of identity for South Africans to decide whom or  34 Madrid, Tania Le\u00f3n\u2019s Stride, 25. 35 Carol Anne Muller, South African Music: A Century of Traditions in Transformation (California: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004), 239, 243. 18  what to look up to. Certainly, in the case of Fassie, who was hailed as South Africa\u2019s \u201cfirst black female pop star,\u201d36 identity politics were a hugely important aspect of fostering a new musical tradition in the 1990s in the aftermath of the segregation of apartheid rule.37  The sentiment that labels can be both harmful or uplifting to the people they are ascribed to is shared by Black Diamond Queens (2020) author, Maureen Mahon, who demonstrates how labels can negatively affect women (particularly women of colour) when unwarranted. Mahon points to Santi White, who was often incorrectly classified by the media as an R&B singer. According to the singer, this misrepresentation was in large part due to her racial stereotyping as she was actually a rock and roll artist, which indicated a white, male-dominated genre.38 The racial and gendered profiling of genres is an interesting one to consider. What makes a musical genre \u201cblack\u201d or \u201cmale\u201d? If an artist who exists outside these stable classifications engages with that music, in what ways can that outsider change it and influence the way the listener engages with this genre?  The period from the 1990s through the early 2000s in South Africa was largely about collaborating across racial lines, but it was also about black youths forging their own, free identities performatively in the aftermath of apartheid. How did that political climate affect the way music was perceived and the labels ascribed to it and its artists? One aspect of identity that often seems to be neglected in the historical recounting of music and musicians, particularly in popular music, is religion, as popular music has long been characterized as secular. Yet, religion in South Africa is as multifaceted as its demographic. It is a predominantly Christian nation with  36 Liz McGregor, \u201cBrenda Fassie Obituary,\u201d The Guardian, May 11, 2004. 37 See the chronology of major South African political events. 38 Maureen Mahon, Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 1-2. 19  a large culture of African spirituality that co-existed within the Christian church. Alisha Jones explores gender identities within the black church (in the U.S.) in Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (2020). Jones suggests that the performative masculinity in church music is carefully constructed by practitioners such as pastors and choir directors so as not to appear too feminine.39 Jones\u2019s argument helps to provide an analytical framework for this thesis. The conservatively gendered music roles and gendered presentation in American churches can serve as pertinent references to explaining the black music culture in South Africa. How did gender identity in religion factor into the music of black women like Brenda Fassie who, even if not outwardly religious, were affected by the mainstream societal and religious beliefs held by the large majority of the population? How did younger audiences and artists question or even subvert the masculine\/feminine dichotomy?  1.2.3 A Historical Overview of Politics and Race in South Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries The books discussed above present classic and recent research on gender and black music studies. I now to turn another four books by anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff, which provide a historical-anthropological context for the societal foundations on which South African popular music was built. Their research, which focuses on European colonialism and the development of African Zionism in southern Africa, charts important cultural, social and religious changes from the early 1800s to mid 1900s.   39 Alisha Jones, Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 5, 11. 20   Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. 1: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (1991), by Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, provides an in-depth historical-anthropological analysis of the role of organized religion in colonialism and the colonization of indigenous southern Africans. Professors of Anthropology and African-American studies at Harvard University, the Comaroffs aimed to write a \u201chistorical anthropology of colonialism in southern Africa that take account of all the players in the game.\u201d40 What this expression means is that they have investigated South African history from both the perspectives of the colonizer and the colonized, or the European missionary and the \u201csavage\u201d native, in order to create a more comprehensive understanding of the relationships between races and subsequent racial, economic and social inequalities.  Of Revelation and Revolution makes no claim to provide a comprehensive history of every colonial encounter in southern Africa; nor does it attempt to follow any chronological history. Instead, they offer an understanding of how and why the British sought to civilize the \u201csavage\u201d Africans and \u201cmake history\u201d for the people whom, they thought, lacked it.41  In this first volume, Jean and John Comaroff approach the anthropological history of Western religion and European consciousness imposed on Africans in a profound and extremely sensitive manner that provides a detailed understanding of colonialism and evangelical enterprise. The dual approach to narratives of both the colonizers and the colonized particularly compelling, as it allows the reader to understand the savior complex of what the Comaroffs call \u201chumane\u201d imperialism, while also providing insight into how Africans absorbed and  40 Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. 1: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), 9. 41 Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution Vol. 1, 11. 21  appropriated elements of European culture and subsequently produced their own ideas of what it means to be civilized.42   In their second volume on this topic, Of Revelation and Revolution, Vol. 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (1997), the Comaroffs build on their work in first volume by considering how colonial ideologies and indigenous African traditions fused to form new cultural practices. Addressing multiple aspects of identity \u2013 race, gender, religion \u2013 they demonstrate how different peoples reacted to and resisted colonialism from their specific positions. Some Africans accepted and willingly joined the church, while others outright rejected it or appropriated only some elements of it.43 The ideas proffered by the Comaroffs on how colonial ideologies and indigenous ideologies became intertwined offer an interesting entryway into a consideration of how Fassie\u2019s cultural and racial identity as a black South African intersected with the popularity of American music genres in South Africa.   From my standpoint, I find that the narrative the Comaroffs paint in this book extremely relevant to the understanding of the events of late and post-apartheid South Africa. Though the events of these two volumes take place in what is now known as Botswana (which borders South Africa), with the shared history of colonization and likely geographical overlap with South Africa, the history of European colonialism and the fusion of European and indigenous African cultural practices are shared across the continent. These volumes, offer a critical understanding of a socio-political landscape that ultimately would lead to the formation of the South African apartheid state in 1948. Simultaneously, the Comaroffs attention to the \u201cgive and take\u201d of shared  42 Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution Vol. 1, 309-311. 43 Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution Vol. 2, 57. 22  cultural practices between Europeans and Africans can also speak to the post-apartheid amalgamation of black and white music, fashion, local slang and dance.  When the apartheid regime started gaining power and segregationist ideologies became more prominent in the early-to-mid twentieth century, social practices in fact became even more Africanized, as the separation of black and white citizens fostered a deeper desire amongst indigenous peoples for an African nationalism.44 Published six years before Of Revelation and Revolution, Jean Comaroff\u2019s 1985 book, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People by uses the Tshidi people as a case study demonstrating how precolonial sociocultural structures of the early 1800s were appropriated by indigenous Africans who their own socio-cultural beliefs and value-systems with that of the West.45 She demonstrates that modern religion in southern Africa is the result of a \u201cprocess of simultaneous reproduction and transformation\u2026set in motion by the engagement of a particular indigenous system and a specific extension of European colonialism\u201d and suggests that African Zionism created a middle ground between tradition and modernity, which provides a successful sociocultural structure that still exists in South Africa today.46  Similar to her later collaboration with John Comaroff in On Revelation and Revolution (1991 & 1997), Jean Comaroff draws on a relationship between history and anthropology to provide a comprehensive, well-rounded understanding of the socio-political landscape of the Tshidi people and the establishment of a long-lasting culture of Zionism in South Africa. In my view, Comaroff demonstrates how European hegemony forced new affordances for the  44 Comaroff, Body of Power, 40. 45 Comaroff, Body of Power, 22-25. 46  Comaroff, Body of Power, 252. 23  expression of African consciousness. This claim specifically relates to my thesis as I consider the impact of the apartheid regime and continued imposed whiteness on black people and, in particular, black women musicians like Brenda Fassie, even in post-apartheid South Africa.  The most recent of the four included Comaroff books, Ethnicity Inc. (2009), tackles what the authors call \u201cethno-talk,\u201d which means ethnic and cultural identity, and the societal value ascribed to ethnicity.47 The Comaroffs pose the idea of identity as a commodity to be marketed and sold, questioning the role of neoliberalism in the incorporation of identity.48 Notably, Chapter 4, \u201cCommodifying Descent, American-style\u201d, poses a particularly relevant question of how ethnic groups become brands. I highlight this chapter as it most apropos of my thesis. The authors develop their argument initially in the context of indigenous Americans whose identity became a legal matter in the incorporation of laws such as the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act before discussing the South African context.49 Of course, their point resonates well with South Africa\u2019s laws such as the Coloured Persons Communal Reserves Act of 1961. Yet the Comaroffs are quick to note that the identity economy in South Africa is not purely oppressive, it can also be a liberating force, as it allows minority groups to create ethnic value by marketing themselves. To my mind, Ethnicity Inc. demonstrates that while minority identities have historically been used to label and further disenfranchise groups, in the modern era the commodification of the identities can serve as an economic foundation for reclaiming a group\u2019s autonomy. Much of my thesis focuses on the commercialization and commodification of black South African identities in popular music. In the context of post-apartheid South Africa, however, this  47 Jean and John Comaroff, Ethnicity Inc. (Chicago: Chicago University Press,  2009), 1. 48 Comaroff, Ethnicity Inc., 141. 49 Comaroff, Ethnicity Inc., 61. 24  ethnopreneurialism helped foster relations across the racial divide, as black musicians marketed themselves to white audiences and white audiences became involved and supportive of black music.   In order to better understand this concept of an \u201cidentity economy\u201d introduced in Comaroff and Comaroff\u2019s Ethnicity Inc., I now turn to another leading expert on identity construction in South Africa. In the book chapter \u201cSouth Africa and South Africans: Nationality, Belonging, Citizenship\u201d (2011), South African historian and University of Cambridge professor Saul Dubow notes an increasing scholarly interest in intersectional considerations of nationalism, race and identity in regard to nation-building and belonging in modern South Africa. Dubow aims to understand how South Africa, as an idea and as a physical space, was conceived and developed both within and outside the nation. What makes a South African \u201cSouth African\u201d? According to Dubow, despite the existence of South Africa as a geographical marker (what would be referred to as southern Africa today), the region was so unfamiliar in Britain that journals and newspapers would simply refer to it as the \u201cCape colonies\u201d instead.50 It was not until the 1870s when intellectuals, such as Anthony Trollope, visited South Africa and wrote about it in scholarly articles and books. Notably, Trollope was quick to express concern over the black majority population, as he realized that indigenous populations would not succumb to colonization as easily as in Canada or New Zealand.51 Thus, it became increasingly important to integrate indigenous peoples into white colonial structures and they became a collective, racialized \u201cother\u201d under imperial rule.   50 Saul Dubow, \u201cSouth Africa and South Africans: Nationality, Belonging, Citizenship,\u201d in The Cambridge History of South Africa, edited by Robert Ross, Anne Kelk Mager, and Bill Nasson, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 2: 18. 51 Dubow, \u201cSouth Africa,\u201d 2: 20. 25   Dubow poses an important question regarding African identity in opposition to white supremacy: namely, when did they [Africans] begin to see themselves first and foremost as South Africans?52 In 1882 a black political organization seeking to fight for Africans\u2019 rights, the Imbumba Yama Nyama, was formed. According to Dubow, this marked a shift in African nationalism as they negotiated space against the oppressing Afrikaner nationalism of the Boers and English imperialism.53 As tensions heightened, prime minister Cecil Rhodes initiated in the 1894 Glen Grey Act, which essentially segregated indigenous Africans and restricted them to specific geographical areas. This \u201cNative Bill for Africa\u201d was, as Dubow notes, a way of unifying the white nation while addressing the concerns of the \u201cnative problem\u201d.54 The South African War (or the Anglo-Boer War, as it is most typically referred to by current-day South Africans) of 1899 ultimately added to a clearer definition of \u201cSouth Africans\u201d as a collective identity made up of Anglo-Boers settlers who viewed themselves as separate from Europe. By 1910, this sentiment coupled with the previously discussed segregation of indigenous Africans, codified a white South African nationalist framework into the Union of South Africa.55 However, at the same time, the missive of Pan-Africanism (that all black people are connected, regardless of where they live or come from) was spreading between African communities.  In the years leading up to apartheid in the 1940s, African nationalists began to draw attention to the fact that a racial minority held majority political power and called instead for a majority (i.e., African) rule.56 When power did eventually transfer to majority rule in the 1990s,  52 Dubow, \u201cSouth Africa,\u201d 2: 47. 53 Dubow, \u201cSouth Africa,\u201d 2: 29-30. 54 Dubow, \u201cSouth Africa,\u201d 2:  32-33.  55 Dubow, \u201cSouth Africa,\u201d 2: 34. 56 Dubow, \u201cSouth Africa,\u201d 2: 48, 56.  26  ideology surrounding nationalism in South Africa needed to be reframed to recognize people of all ethnicities as South African citizens. As Dubow notes, the Black Consciousness Movement that emerged in the 1960s created a sort of \u201ctransnational\u201d black nationalism that extended to all black people, not just those within South Africa\u2019s geopolitical borders. At the same time, it refocused activism on black activists instead of their white allies.57 This argument poses an interesting consideration as narratives surrounding the legitimacy of black Africans as South African citizens were previously considered from white allied perspectives, rather than the black intellectuals at the forefront of their movement. Ultimately, Dubow provides a compelling insight into the construction of South African identity and the role of conflicting racial ideas of nationalism in the process of building a South African collective nationalist identity. In \u201cResistance and Reform\u201d (2011), Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies Tom Lodge looks at the power of protest and anti-apartheid rebellion in South Africa between 1973 and 1994. Specifically, Lodge considers how organized resistance led to the passing of a set of harsher government policies which, in turn, sparked even greater revolution.58 In 1973, Zulu king Goodwill Zwelethini initiated a wave of brick-and-tile factory strikes across Durban that would span over two months. As news spread, African workers in other fields such as engineering, textiles and clothing joined the strike in hopes that their working conditions and wages would improve. According to Lodge, the strikes led to the formation of official African trade unions. However, instead of protecting workers, these unions would largely protect the employers, which led to the formation of unofficial\/underground trade unions.  57 Dubow, \u201cSouth Africa,\u201d 2: 62. 58 Tom Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform, 1973\u20131994,\u201d In The Cambridge History of South Africa, edited by Robert Ross, Anne Kelk Mager, and Bill Nasson, vol.2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011): 409. 27   Public attention shifted however from the union issue in 1976, when black students in Soweto marched against the use of Afrikaans (the language of the oppressor) as the primary medium of instruction in their schools. On June 16th, nearly fifteen thousand student protestors were met in the streets by armed policemen. They opened fire on the children (some of whom were as young as ten), killing over one hundred students with some estimates suggest as many as six hundred.59 While the maximum force displayed by police was intended to curtail further insurrection, Lodge notes that it ultimately did the opposite. Waves of revolt spread across the country in the weeks following the Soweto Uprising, with many black South Africans expressing increasing frustration with their lack of freedom and a large number of white South Africans calling for the removal of governmental restrictions on black citizens. Returning to the issue of trade unions, Lodge refocuses on the implementation of illegal black trade unions in 1979. According to Lodge, the formation of illegal black trade unions came at a time when Africans were attempting to establish collective identity in way that would help organize mass mobilization against oppressive forces. The United Democratic Front (UDF), a group of over four hundred unions, was formed to express grievances regarding anything from affordable housing, education, poor working conditions, and feminist issues. As Lodge notes, the UDF provided much support for the African National Congress and advocated for a socialist future.60 In 1984, the African National Congress (ANC) began attempts to increase guerrilla operations but as these attacks became more frequent, so too did civilian casualties (particularly white  59 Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform,\u201d 420.  60 Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform,\u201d 445. 28  civilians). Larger police presence in black homelands caused tensions to heighten and over 160 guerrillas were captured or killed in 1986-1987.61   Concluding his reflection on apartheid resistance and government and cultural reform, Lodge turns to the last four years of apartheid rule. Building on Dubow\u2019s critique of conflicting and reconciliatory notions of nationhood, Lodge notes that by 1990 there was at least a somewhat unified understanding of South African nationhood.62 That is not to say that all conflict was immediately resolved. Lodge is quick to note that bloodshed continued well after the 1994 election, with an estimated sixteen thousand casualties. Most violence was a result of differing opinions on retribution and reconciliation between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC and subsided as new policies were implemented in the new, democratic South Africa. In his concluding statements, Lodge suggests that \u201cending violence in South Africa was easier because neither the \u2018national liberation struggle\u2019 nor white society was heavily militarised.\u201d63 Lodge\u2019s use of a direct comparison between anti-apartheid protest\/guerrilla activism and social\/government reform demonstrates the constantly shifting nature of law, governance and belonging in the politically unstable and oppressive era of apartheid. It is important to consider how forms of protest were directly able to influence government structures (even if not always for the better), which in turn further mobilized anti-apartheid groups and ultimately led to the dissolution of apartheid in South Africa.   61 Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform,\u201d 462.  62 Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform,\u201d 482.  63 Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform,\u201d 486. 29  1.2.4 Afro-Euro Fusion and Identity in South African Popular Music As demonstrated in the previous section white European settlers in Africa brought their European culture and traditions with them. Over time, the combination of white settler\u2019s promoting their European heritage in Africa (in this thesis, specifically South Africa) and the global reach of American culture in the twentieth century had an influence on the development of popular music in South Africa. In this section, I offer an analysis of existing scholarship on cross-racial musical collaborations and the subsequent development of Afropop and other Afro-Euro music fusions. Until the late twentieth century, the arts in South Africa were largely segregated by race, and that it was black creative arts that suffered most under this division. In \u201cModernity, Culture and Nation\u201d (2011), South African scholar Tlhalo Raditlhalo suggests that black literature was a by-product of Christian mission work and the translation of the bible into African languages.64 Conversely, African writers also began to translate African texts into English and as schooling and the Church became more central to their lives, the previously oral traditions of African tribes transitioned into a text-based one.   As Africans became literate, they began to publish their own journals and newspapers which, in turn, allowed them a space to express themselves and share cultural and political ideas and opinions on colonialism. In South Africa, even some white authors began to veer away from Euro-centric writing in an attempt to create more South Africa-centric works.65 White Afrikaans authors such as Pauline Smith and William Plomer focused on South African society, while  64 Tlhalo Raditlhalo, \u201cModernity, Culture, and Nation,\u201d In The Cambridge History of South Africa, edited by Robert Ross, Anne Kelk Mager, and Bill Nasson, vol.2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 2: 573-74. 65 Raditlhalo, \u201cModernity, Culture, and Nation,\u201d 577. 30  poets like Eugene Marais cemented the use of Afrikaans in poetry and literature. As Raditlhalo recounts, the renowned poet Uys Krige even translated Shakespeare into Afrikaans. Fusions of European and African music and dance styles also began to take root. According to Raditlhalo, isicathamiya (call-and-response) choirs and gumboot dancing became increasingly popular in black communities. Traditional songs would be blended with European and American styles as they sought to define a new art style.     In 1955, the Union of Southern Artists formed to protect black artists rights in South Africa, but as free expression for black people became more perilous, more artists began to choose exile in other countries and left the country.66 The loss of prolific musicians such as Abdullah Ibrahim and Hugh Masekela hugely impacted South African music culture, not just as a loss of black musicians in South Africa, but also in a gaining of new styles and understandings of music outside of South Africa. As musicians in exile continued to play and perform, they became more familiar with African American jazz styles which were ultimately brought back to South Africa.   However, the Publications and Entertainment Act of 1963 allowed government regulation of theatrical and musical performances under the guise of promoting the arts but ultimately allowing for a total control over which works could be performed. As Raditlhalo notes, in the first decade of this Act alone, over a dozen Afrikaans plays were produced in attempts to promote Afrikaans identity and Afrikaner nationalism, while black theatre that addressed injustice were often banned.67 Towards the dissolution of apartheid in the 1990s,  66 Raditlhalo, \u201cModernity, Culture, and Nation,\u201d 586-87.  67 Raditlhalo, \u201cModernity, Culture, and Nation,\u201d589. 31  however, black literature began to shift away from exposing inequalities to themes of reconciliation, healing the painful past, and other issues such as women\u2019s rights. As Raditlhalo highlights, South African arts began to move towards a \u201chybrid\u201d approach to indigenous African and settler art styles, while still remaining politically and culturally relevant.68 Raditlhalo\u2019s final question (which he echoes from the writings of Njabulo Ndebele) of what South Africans might write about in the aftermath of apartheid is certainly intriguing, as one considers the confluence of group identities and the reflection of new South African ideals regarding nationalism and reconciliation in the arts.    As far back as the 1920s, when American jazz began receiving international attention, the fusion of black American jazz sounds with African indigenous traditions has led to the creation of new styles such as marabi and mbaqanga. David Coplan\u2019s \u201cPopular Styles and Cultural Fusion\u201d (2001) argues that South Africa\u2019s popular music is influenced by European\/American musical styles that have been synthesized with African music and instruments.69 Marabi was a genre that stemmed from the Johannesburg slums. It was a violent, dangerous and working-class genre that was mostly found in illegal shebeens.70 Mbaqanga (also referred to as African Jive), on the other hand, became the dominant popular music style in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s.71 It made use of African drumming rhythms and call-and- 68 Raditlhalo, \u201cModernity, Culture, and Nation,\u201d 596. 69 David Coplan, \u201cSouth Africa, Republic of,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000043028?rskey=ge7WJn&result=2  70 Christopher Ballantine, \u201cMarabi,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051496?rskey=BXSuy2&result=1  71 Lara Allen, \u201cMbaqanga,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051740?rskey=oGk2d6&result=1.  32  response type vocals in the vernacular, coupled with electric guitar, bass and other electric instruments. Mbaqanga is widely accepted as the first South African music developed for mass audiences via recording, instead of live audiences.  The evolution of mbaqanga and mass-produced popular music led to the creation of what was called urban township music, which often used lyrics to comment on the political-social climate of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa.72 From this township music rose the bubblegum genre, also referred to as township pop, which was performed by and for black youth who used indigenous languages \u2013 predominantly Zulu and Xhosa (though some songs were in English) \u2013 and indigenous music characteristics.73 As recording technology evolved so too did township pop, ultimately resulting in kwaito: a mid-90s blend of house\/pop\/hip hop that became extremely popular with youths of all racial backgrounds, though it was predominantly performed by black musicians.74   The bridging of the racial divide through cross-collaborative music-making formed a fundamental part of protest against the apartheid regime. Artists of different races fused genres, developed new slang, and shared musical performance spaces. By subverting essentialized racial expectations (i.e., certain genres such as rap or hip hop were inherently black music, or that pop was white) in music performance through cross-cultural collaboration and the fusion of indigenous music with popular music styles, listeners and performers alike engaged in the act of  72 David Coplan, \u201cSouth Africa, Republic of,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000043028?rskey=bavcg3&result=2#omo-9781561592630-e-0000043028-div1-0000043028.1.  73 Lara Allen. \u201cBubblegum,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051494?rskey=bavcg3&result=1.  74 Lara Allen. \u201cBubblegum,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051494?rskey=bavcg3&result=1.  33  protest through playing, singing, dancing to, and listening to music. The same argument can be made for subverting gendered expectations in South Africa and within the music industry, as women in the 80s and 90s began to thrive in a previously male-dominated industry, subverting the patriarchal power relation that had dominated the popular music industry.   Marginalized groups, such as black people (and specifically black women) in South Africa had to look for new ways to express themselves against dominating white cultural scene of apartheid, but as previously mentioned, some white artists also sought to situate themselves in a more local musical space. In Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa (2013), French\/South African socio-musicologist, Dennis-Constant Martin, offers a compelling insight into how music in Cape Town has historically interacted with, influenced, and been influenced by white non-white identities. Martin points to the use of Western popular music genres by black South African musicians, and their fusion with traditional African instruments, tunes, and even language or local slang. According to Martin\u2019s account, Cape Town was one of the most significant sites of popular music development in South Africa in the twentieth century and thus Martin focuses his research on this area, straying only so often as necessary as to demonstrate the reach of Cape Town\u2019s popular music scene on the rest of the country, such as in the cities of Durban and Johannesburg, and the Soweto township.75  Martin separates his book into two parts: \u201cThe Emergence of Creolised Identities\u201d and \u201cThe Dialects of Separation and Interweaving\u201d. He explores concepts of group and individual identity and how the relationship between the self and other in marginalized groups has historically been commodified, packaged  75 Dennis-Constant Martin, Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa (Somerset West: African Minds, 2013), viii. 34  and marketed in order to drive specific political, religious or social goals. That is to say, how minority persons see themselves as individuals versus their perceived identity as a group minority by the group majority.  The relationship between identity and music is demonstrated through an understanding of how musical tastes and the creation of musical traditions can be viewed as a marker of social identity either within or as a way of subverting one\u2019s racial, gender, or social categorization. Throughout his book, Martin argues the significance of music in the narrative of reconciliation in South Africa: \u201cthe potential of musical traces for recognizing can be actualized as part of a project of identity reconfiguration aiming at creating the conditions of a new living-together.\u201d76 A cornerstone of Martin\u2019s research, the narrative of reconciliation proves important as a lens through which to understand cross-collaborative efforts between white and non-white South African\u2019s in the aftermath of apartheid in the 1990s. It demonstrates reconciliatory efforts through collaboration, blending of genres and the influence of black music on white youths and vice versa.  The idea that identity (group and individual) is the driving force behind artist creation is one that appears across much scholarship on music. Certainly, music can be used to create, or even segregate, certain groups within different contexts. In Composing Apartheid: Music for and Against Apartheid (2008) editor Grant Olwage and contributors look at the music that was produced in South Africa both as a product of, and as an act against, apartheid. Consequently, this collection of essays asks how music had a direct influence on the creation of the apartheid regime. The book, which contains chapters by authors such as South African musicologist Grant  76 Martin, Sounding the Cape, 49.  35  Olwage and former University of Witwatersrand fellow Lara Allen , explores different narratives (white South Africans, people of colour, women, pro and anti-apartheid supporters etc.) regarding racial segregation, gender, interracial music-sharing, appropriation of music genres by and for different identity groups and even critically reflects on music scholarship that was produced in South Africa during apartheid. Lara Allen\u2019s Chapter 4, \u201cKwela\u2019s White Audiences\u201d, is particularly relevant to this thesis, as it looks at the production of black music in formats such as the LP,  which was almost exclusively available to white audiences, thus demonstrating one example of how music was used as a unifying force.77 Allen\u2019s critical examination of kwela\u2019s commercial success with white audiences demonstrates the importance of a \u201cshared identification and common aesthetic appreciation\u201d in crossing barriers between racial groups in a way that largely undermined the apartheid ethos of racial segregation. 78   Chapter 5, \u201cPopular Music and Negotiating Whiteness in Apartheid South Africa,\u201d by Garry Baines in the volume edited by Olwage follows a similar narrative to Allen in that it situates whiteness in pre-1994 South Africa as a \u201cpositionality of power and privilege, and not some fixed, immutable essence.\u201d79 Through the lens of music performance, Baines questions the changing nature of white identities in South Africa between 1960-1990, and how individual listening habits cumulated in an \u201cawareness of shared experience\u201d with other white-identifying groups outside of South Africa in a sort of transnational national identity (i.e., a white identity).80  77 Lara Allen, \u201cKwela\u2019s White Audiences: The Politics of Pleasure and Identification in the Early Apartheid Period,\u201d in Composing Apartheid: Music for and Against Apartheid, ed. Grant Olwage (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008): 79.  78 Allen, \u201cKwela\u2019s White Audiences,\u201d 95. 79 Gary Baines, \u201cPopular Music and Negotiating Whiteness in Apartheid South Africa,\u201d in Composing Apartheid: Music for and Against Apartheid, ed. Grant Olwage (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008): 99.  80 Baines, \u201cPopular Music,\u201d 110.  36  Baines\u2019s exploration of white nationalism and the difference between the white Afrikaner and white English person in South Africa leaves open the question of how much racial identity interferes or conflates with national identity within the musics of such diverse and conflicting nations such as South Africa. In a majority minority country, where white people make up a minority of the population yet hold the majority of power and people of colour make up the majority of the population but hold little power, the further divide between white identities becomes significantly more important. As white Afrikaners viewed themselves as true South Africans, the apartheid national identity was built around Afrikaner identity and, while white English speakers still benefited from white privilege, their cultural and language differences were largely excluded from the narrative.   In the same volume, the chapter, \u201cDecomposing Apartheid\u201d, by Ingrid Byerly pertains to the relationship between musical markers and social histories. Byerly suggests that musical markers can have such a significant impact on individuals and communities that they can \u201cdefine and transform social histories.\u201d81 The importance of language and religious ceremony in music is highlighted by Byerly, who suggests that music is an important way of sharing tradition and beliefs between generations and those within a shared cultural community. Yet, it is precisely in the overcoming of these boundaries that Byerly places her theory that fusion music helped to forge a path for a new South Africa that transcended these boundaries. If the goal of apartheid was to separate, then the goal of anti-apartheid protestors was to unify South Africans of all races. Through music, anti-apartheid protestors were able to collaborate in the creation of a new  81 Ingrid Byerly, \u201cDecomposing Apartheid: Things Come Together. The Anatomy of a Musical Revolution,\u201d in Composing Apartheid: Music for and Against Apartheid, ed. Grant Olwage (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008): 256. 37  sound that resonated across the racial divide and thus \u201cdecompose\u201d apartheid.82 The idea of \u201cdecomposing\u201d apartheid is an interesting one in that it denotes power in the act of music-making. If music is a political act, which means in this context by performing in genres and languages that subverts the political goal of apartheid, then it can, in a sense, de-compose the structures put in place by this oppressive regime. Particularly in the years following the end of apartheid rule, music became a focal point in the creation of a multiracial nation, a point of great significance to this thesis as it explores black South African music in the 1990s to 2000s and the reception of this music in an evolving political climate.   Similar sentiments of cross-collaboration in efforts to subvert apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism are echoed in the collection of essays, Composing the Music of Africa (2018). In the chapter called \u201cKeeping Our Ears to the Ground,\u201d Hans Roosenschoon examines the significance of the role played by South African composers (both white and of colour) in rejecting apartheid structures during and after the apartheid period and working to change the biases of a nation through music.83 Roosenschoon questions where and within which traditions South African composers rooted their music in. A Western definition of nationalism and national music cannot be so easily ascribed to South Africa, where so many cultures and traditions were conflated and blended with varying ideas of patriotism and anti-apartheid narratives. Roosenschoon\u2019s attempts to rationalize the collaboration between Western art music and indigenous African musics (or the appropriation of these musics) offers an interesting reading of the legitimacy of blended traditions.  82 Byerly, \u201cDecomposing Apartheid,\u201d 259. 83 Hans Roosenschoon, \u201cKeeping our Ears to the Ground: Cross-Culturalism and the Composer in South Africa, \u2018Old\u2019 and \u2018New\u2019,\u201d in Composing the Music of Africa: Composition, Interpretation and Realisation, ed. Malcolm Floyd (New York: Routledge, 2018), 265. 38   It is worth noting that, to date, while there are often accusations of appropriation with regard to the use indigenous African musics with Western art models, this argument is inapplicable to popular music fusion. Indeed, the adjective \u201ccollaborative\u201d appears more than anything else, and the use of African languages, instruments and cultural references in black South Africa music that also engaged with white audiences was hailed as a medium through which reconciliation could occur. In his monograph Kwaito Bodies, Xavier Livermon argues that kwaito, both as a music genre and cultural movement, gave young South Africans in post-apartheid years the opportunity to explore shifting political and cultural boundaries. He acknowledges the importance of intersectional black feminism and black queer theory in legitimizing kwaito as a fundamental musical and cultural contribution to South African resistance politics.   A similar argument is made in Gavin Steingo\u2019s monograph Kwaito\u2019s Promise (2016), which focuses on how political change is reflected in music and how music can be used as a form of protest that can ultimately lead to political change. Steingo draws attention to the extreme inequality between white and non-white South Africans as a continued repercussion of apartheid.84 Looking specifically at Soweto as a case study for the origin of this South African popular music genre, he notes that the undercurrents of nationhood prevent a sense of \u201cauthentic locality.\u201d What is meant by this statement is that because there was a prevailing sense of African nationalism or Pan-Africanism in the face of white oppression, black communities could lack more site-specific identities. Drawing on the writings by Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, Steingo looks at the  84 Gavin Steingo, Kwaito\u2019s Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 10-11. 39  relationship between aesthetics and politics, drawing connections between a \u201cSouth African musical experience\u201d and a \u201cpromise\u201d, or hope, for a true democracy and a free South Africa.85  One of the way in which to foster a \u201cSouth African musical experience\u201d was to return to the traditional music of indigenous Africans. Barbara Titus\u2019s book on Maskanda (2021), delves into the genealogy of music in South Africa, specifically referring throughout to maskanda, the Zulu word for music which was derived from the maskanda Zulu folk music, and appropriated by the popular music industry in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Titus looks to the modern practice of performance and research creation as a mutually reinforcing duality, rather than independent forces. She acknowledges her position as an academic who ascribes to Western models of research in an attempt to reconcile it with a performance-based research approach more commonplace in ethnomusicological fields. Titus views her research as a \u201csocial, culturally situated and performative practice\u201d, whereby music analysis can be used to contextualize musical traditions as social, culturally situated performative practices.86 By exploring how maskanda musicians rely heavily on oral musical traditions of the past while simultaneously making use of distinctly contemporary, North American models such as jazz and R&B, Titus argues that the fusion of traditional and contemporary models allows the musicians to observe and experience multiple subject positions simultaneously.87  The fusion of African music traditions with black American genres is further explored in the collection of essays Hip Hop Africa: New African Music in a Globalizing World (2012), which focuses on music genres such as rap, reggae, urban drumming and the birth and spread of  85 Steingo, Kwaito\u2019s Promise, 212. 86 Barbara Titus, Hearing Maskanda: Musical Epistemologies in South Africa (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 8-9. 87 Titus, Hearing Maskanda, 209. 40  rap culture in the African diaspora. In the chapter \u201cA Capsule History of African Rap,\u201d Eric Charry muses on the fact that, while popular in their home countries, African rap artists struggle to achieve international fame the way that North American- and U.K.-based rappers do. Charry turns to the 1970s as a turning point in rap for two reasons: the popularization of recordings and concerts featuring rap music.88 These conditions brought rap to the attention of Africans in Africa, where artists could put a more traditional Africa spin on a heavily Westernized black music experience. This is not an uncommon phenomenon, as seen with jazz that has made its way back to Africa, and popular music such as bubblegum, which was co-opted by South African musicians such as Brenda Fassie in the 90s. The appropriation of black American culture into black African music traditions, Charry argues, creates an illusion of a sort of centrality or universality of the black youth experience, forging a mega-community that transgresses geographical borders. However, Charry also points to the distinction between cultures via vernacular languages and local social commentary in the lyrics of the music, a distinction that can be attributed to a strong need for socio-political commentary, which can be seen across multiple musical genres in countries such as South Africa. One such musician was Fassie, who was noted as South Africa\u2019s first black pop star and often hailed for her cross-cultural musical influences and, in particular, her choice to sing in indigenous African languages such as Zulu and Xhosa.    88 Eric Charry, \u201cA Capsule History of African Rap,\u201d in Hip Hop Africa: New African Music in a Globalizing World, ed. Eric Charry (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2012), 2.  41  1.2.5 Published Literature on Brenda Fassie (1964-2004) The 1980s marked a significant time in South African popular music, reflecting both the international influence of American hip-hop, and the desire for a more \u201cSouth African\u201d music. In 1983 the South African music group, Brenda and The Big Dudes, released their debut album, Weekend Special. The titular single, sung by Fassie, quickly dominated the South African music charts and even made it onto the international scene. At the forefront of this newfound popularity was a young girl who would go on to be dubbed by The Guardian as South Africa\u2019s \u201cfirst black popstar.\u201d Yet, as shown in published scholarship, she was so much more than just that. In the article \u201cBrenda Fassie and Busiswa Gqulu: a Relationship of Feminist Expression, Aesthetics and Memory,\u201d Siphokazi Tau notes the importance of struggle in the black South African community, and the solidarity that Fassie displayed through the cumulative audio-visual platform of both her song lyrics and music videos.89 Tau suggests that Fassie\u2019s choice to break the rules and reject the expectations placed on her as a black woman was, in itself, a performative role that she took on in order reject the expectations of black femininity in South Africa.90 Tau\u2019s exploration of the intersection of Fassie\u2019s gender and racial identities is a fascinating one, yet lacks the element of queerness that was so central to Fassie\u2019s identity. At the precipice of a new South Africa, Fassie would have had to navigate newly emerging narratives on the black female body. Tau hints at some helpful themes regarding the intersection of racial and gender identities in apartheid and early post-apartheid South Africa, such as the role of labour and the lived experience of black women as depicted in Fassie\u2019s music videos. These themes posit interesting  89 Siphokazi Tau, \u201cBrenda Fassie and Busiswa Gqulu: a Relationship of Feminist Expression, Aesthetics and Memory,\u201d Social Dynamics 47, no. 1 (2021): 26.  90 Tau, \u201cBrenda Fassie,\u201d 27-31.  42  questions regarding the essentializing of those bodies, but without the explicit element of queerness, further investigation is invited.   An intersection of sexuality and gender or a queered gender narrative is, however, explored in Nicol Hammond\u2019s \u201cNational Mothers\u201d, which paints Fassie as \u201cthe rebellious daughter\u201d of a new South Africa.91 Nicol suggests that \u201cthe notion of national mothers is sometimes used to celebrate women\u2019s contributions to the New South Africa and sometimes to sustain heteronormative gender relations.\u201d92 According to Nicol, Fassie\u2019s queer identity and her struggle with drugs painted her as an \u201cunfit\u201d mother \u2013 in the sense of an idealized woman \u2013 , and as such was a representation of the alternative freedom available to those who rebelled against a heteronormative society. As the forebearer of a new musical genre, kwaito, Fassie could not escape the role of mother. However, Nicol suggests by Fassie subverted and expanded the limiting traditional association of \u201cmother\u201d, and reinvented the term in a new way that was \u201cdefined by individual freedom, political voice, and relationality, rather than marginality and biogenesis.\u201d93 Hammond\u2019s article advances the conversation on queer South African musicians, but does not extensively address music itself. Focused on Fassie\u2019s life and personal relationships, Hammond does not account for how identity is portrayed in the lyrics she sung and musical performance and how the music stands as a subversion of the national mother archetype. Herein lies an issue of a binary assumption (either focusing on the material body or the representative self through music).   91 Nicol Hammond, \u201cNational Mothers: Singing a Queer Family Romance for the New South Africa,\u201d Women and Music 19 (2015): 78.  92 Hammond, \u201cNational Mothers,\u201d 81.  93 Hammond, \u201cNational Mothers,\u201d 84.  43   In an article published in 2016, Senayon Olaoluwa deconstructs anti-Apartheid messages in Fassie\u2019s song lyrics to rationalize her popularity across racial lines in a particularly racially tense era in South African history.94 Olaoluwa\u2019s suggestion that this was possible due mostly to Fassie\u2019s extraordinary voice discredits the importance of political-protest music in South Africa. In the brief and superficial analysis of Fassie\u2019s Weekend Special, Olaoluwa reduces the song lyrics to a woman\u2019s simple renouncement of an unfaithful man. In my reading of the song in Chapter Two, I offer alternate readings that ownership over one\u2019s own body. While pursuing a narrative of peacemaking and interracial community building in post-Apartheid South Africa, Olaoluwa almost entirely neglects any gender trouble in Fassie\u2019s life or music. In the article, Fassie\u2019s entire identity is reduced to that of representing an idealized black nation without ever acknowledging that the \u201cblack nation\u201d itself was divided into hundreds of smaller factions, or the creative labour that went into this representation, such as the use of vernaculars in her songs at a time when English and Afrikaans remained largely at the forefront of music-making languages.   The importance of language to group-identities in South Africa is, however, explored in the article \u201cTownship \u2018Women\u2019s Language of Empowerment.\u2019\u201d There the co-authors theorize a lower-class vernacular language called \u201cisi-Tsotsi\u201d as a tool for empowerment in queer black music-making in South Africa.95 Though not explicitly considered an \u201cexclusively gay register,\u201d their analysis of isi-Tsotsi in song lyrics (including Fassie\u2019s) reveals the queer African woman as a site of power, who indicates sexual and political liberation by living \u201ctheir life 'in the way they  94 Senayon Olaoluwa, \u201cSinging Peace, Harmonizing Discordant Tunes: Tracking a Transnational Trajectory of Peace,\u201d Peace & Change 41, no. 4 (2016): 497.  95 Stephanie Rudwick, Khathala Nkomo and Magcino Shange, \u201cUlimi Iwenkululeko: Township 'Women's Language of Empowerment' and Homosexual Linguistic Identities,\u201d Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, no. 67 (2006): 62. 44  want', because they chose to speak in the way they want.\u201d96 The suggestion that political power can be gained through language is a powerful one, given that language is one of the strongest markers of racial identity in apartheid. The emancipation of vernaculars from these stigmas of the uneducated created a site of validation for the interlinked political and queer identities through song lyrics.  Although Fassie wielded some political power through her music, it is also important to consider her own body as a political site. Martina Viljoen paints Fassie as an unpredictable, genre-defying rebel who struggled with drug and sex addiction yet at the same time Viljoen ignores the body as a site of sexual power and gender expression. Fassie\u2019s sexuality and sexual exploration (both in her personal life and in her music) is quickly glossed over in the article. It was mentioned only twice in relation to a failed marriage and the accidental drug-overdose of her lesbian lover.97 While the article explores South African identities, it mostly discusses Fassie in relation to the burgeoning new musical genre of kwaito and her journey from bubblegum pop. Viljoen paints a picture of Fassie as a rebel but also as an unpredictable pop princess with a severe drug problem. Yet, there is no explanation for the why of any of her actions or how the black female body was perceived other than as a vehicle for catchy songs that bridged racial divides.  Viljoen acknowledges the body as political but does not delve any further into using the body for a musical performance as a means to political ends.   The idea that Fassie constructed a character that could push boundaries that she, as an ordinary South African black woman, could otherwise not, is one that pervades much of the  96 Rudwick, \u201cTownship \u2018Women\u2019s Langauge of Empowerment,\u2019\u201d 62-63. 97 Martina Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d The World of Music 50, no. 2 (2008): 60-61.  45  scholarship on her. Though some of the above scholars have hinted at this construction, Philippe Gervais-Lambony draws attention to this dichotomy of a \u201cbad girl\u201d character (similar to the \u201crebellious daughter\u201d trope explored by Hammond) who could subvert expectations, and the real Fassie, a black woman who existed in a space catered predominantly to white men.98 To illustration her crossing of these two worlds, Gervais-Lambony offers an analysis of her 1994 song, \u201cNot a Bad Girl\u201d, which navigates the space between trying to give audiences what they want and staying true to herself in the face of massive public interest in her life. While Gervais-Lambony considers how racial, cultural and gender boundaries shifted as Apartheid ended, he does not ground his analysis in theoretical foundation. Like many scholars mentioned above, Gervais-Lambony does not consider the larger-scale on which Fassie\u2019s boundary-pushing impacted gender and racial perceptions in South African music as an artist who herself was in a \u201cspace of crossing\u201d.99  Though Brenda Fassie could still be considered a household name even twenty years after her death, there has not yet been any substantial research presented on her legacy. While scholars have theorized her queerness, her blackness, or her gender, there is a distinct lack of intersectional analysis in this research. To fill this gap, I employ intersectionality as an analytical tool in this thesis. In order to theorize black female body politics in the context of a country and music industry undergoing massive political-racial change, I propose considering all these identities\u2014racial, gender, sexuality, cultural\u2014in relation to each other and the musical output through which these identities manifest. Such a combined consideration has not yet been  98 Philippe Gervais-Lambony, \u201c(I\u2019m) Not a Bad Girl,\u201d ACME 16, no. 1 (2017): 89, 95.  99 Gervais-Lambony, \u201c(I\u2019m) Not a Bad Girl\u201d, 95. 46  undertaken in published scholarly work, and this gap in the research can be bridged by analyzing how Fassie\u2019s music represented her own self-exploration, which simultaneously gave a voice to marginalized demographics in a late- and post-Apartheid South Africa.  1.3 Chapter Outline This first part of this chapter provided a short introduction to Brenda Fassie and her significance in South African popular music and has demonstrated that, despite her importance, the intersectional nature of racial and gender identities and the cultural impact of apartheid on her life and music has not been extensively explored. In this light, I offer an intersectional approach to research on gender, race, and cultural identity that can be used to contextualize my research on Fassie. The second part of this chapter has identified the most relevant existing scholarship on race studies, gender studies, South African cultural and political history, and South African popular music. The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of the scholarship that is necessary to the analysis of Fassie\u2019s music, providing the theoretical foundations on which her music will be analyzed. Furthermore, the synthesis of this research demonstrates an intersectional understanding of how gender and race structures (both social and governmental) are imposed on Fassie and her music.  My research is presented through the lens of three selected songs: \u201cWeekend Special\u201d (1983), \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) and \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999). Chapter 2 analyzes \u201cWeekend Special\u201d (see appendix A), which appears on Fassie\u2019s debut album of the same name and released in 1983 when she was just nineteen years old. The song, performed in English, depicts a casual sexual relationship with a man who does not respect her and only comes to visit her on Friday nights. However, Fassie rejects this situation claiming that she is not a \u201cweekend special.\u201d 47  I have selected this song as the first point of entry into Fassie\u2019s music because it is overall relatively accurately representative of her early musical style. To date, the official music video on Fassie\u2019s YouTube account has amassed over one million views and the recording of the live performance of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d at Ellis Park Stadium in 1985 has eight hundred thousand views.  Chapter 3 analyzes \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990), which foreshadows Nelson Mandela\u2019s 1994 inauguration as the first black president of South Africa. Overtly political, the lyrics of the song never explicitly state Mandela\u2019s name, but the cultural context of the lyrics \u201cthe people\u2019s president\u201d dictates that the song is about him. This song was selected for its politicalness and because it demonstrates Fassie\u2019s interaction with South African race relations and opens an interesting avenue for the consideration of political protest in popular music.  Chapter 4 analyzes \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999), one of several songs that Fassie wrote and recorded in Zulu. \u201cNomakanjani\u201d is particularly significant because it was released at the same time the new \u201crainbow nation\u201d ideology that promoted intercultural relationships between white people and people of colour was coming into effect. In the music industry, this meant that white audiences were largely gaining interest in African popular music (Afro-pop) genres such as kwaito, bubblegum and township pop. At the same time, to release a song in an African language that most white audiences would not understand could be seen as a reclamation of cultural identity.  In the conclusion, I consider how intersectional approaches to understanding how race, gender, and cultural identity in Brenda Fassie\u2019s music reflects changing ideologies surrounding South African politics at the time, and can offer new perspectives on South African music-making at a crucial time in the country\u2019s political history. By situating her works in an 48  intersectional identity framework, a clear narrative of musical and social change in the late-  and post-apartheid years emerges.  49  Chapter 2: \u201cI\u2019m No Weekend Special\u201d: Sex, Sexuality and Race in Brenda Fassie\u2019s Debut Single I first heard Brenda and the Big Dudes\u2019 \u201cWeekend Special\u201d in 2010, at a dance held at my all-girls high school in Cape Town. It was not inside the dance that I heard the song, however, but in the school courtyard where some older students were listening to music being played through small Bluetooth speaker connected to someone\u2019s phone. This was years before Spotify would become popular or Apple Music even existed. Based on the crackling, distorted quality of the music it was likely they had pirated the song. Some of the girls laughed and chatted while watching the boys dance and mess around. It was almost exactly the same scene one might have expected of the bubblegum, Afropop song when it was released in the 1980s if you replaced \u201cschool dance\u201d with \u201cclub\u201d or shebeen (popular illegal bars in townships). The lyrics, \u201cI\u2019m no weekend special\u201d were lost on most of us, being too young to understand what a \u201cweekend special\u201d is, not to mention the gendered and sexual subtexts that make the song risqu\u00e9. However, it would not have been lost on our parents, many of whom grew up listening to Fassie\u2019s music in its original context\u2014whether as white or \u201cnon-white\u201d listeners\u2014which was the same politically and racially divided apartheid country that Fassie grew up in and became a musical icon of.   In 1983, six young black artists came together in Johannesburg to form a band called Brenda and the Big Dudes. Brenda Fassie, Rufus Klaas, Desmond Malotana, Job \u201cFats\u201d Mlangeni, Dumisane Ngubeni, and David Mabaso released their debut album titled Weekend Special just a few months after they formed their group and quickly rose to fame amongst black South Africans. The album, which featured songs such as \u201cI Wanna Be Single\u201d, \u201cTouch 50  Somebody\u201d, and \u201cIt\u2019s Nice to be with People\u201d,  went multi-platinum by selling over 200 000 copies in its first two years.100 While it is not clear the exact demographic of lsiteners, it can be assumed that the album was primarily marketed for and consumed by black and coloured (i.e. non-white) South Africans, though it would not have been restricted to them and it is likely that some white South Africans also found the music appealing. Fassie\u2019s debut single, \u201cWeekend Special\u201d, written by songwriter Melvin Matthews, became extremely popular in clubs in the black townships. It was also a staple at community street parties, with local DJs often remixing the song and sharing it with their fanbases.  In this chapter, I  will discuss how gender, sexual experiences and sexuality are explored in Brenda Fassie\u2019s single \u201cWeekend Special.\u201d How did Fassie work her own lived experience into her music and what did this mean for her fans who were dealing with similar experiences and grappling with parts of their identity (sexual or otherwise) and the ways that they engaged with her? What was the reception to the song and how did the reception change over time What makes the song still relevant to Fassie\u2019s fans today, years after she passed away? These research questions point to not just the impact and legacy of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d, but also its relationship to Fassie\u2019s career and sexual identity. Furthermore, what role did the male gaze (specifically white male) play in the sexualization of Fassie\u2019s and other black women\u2019s bodies in the popular music industry? These are some of the initial questions that arise when considering not just the impact and legacy of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d but also its relationship to Fassie\u2019s career and sexual identity, and its role in the popular music scene in South Africa.  100 Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d 58. 51   The socio-political context of 1980s South Africa was extremely important to the creation of art. The South African Broadcast Channel de facto banned many songs that were sung in African languages, such as Zulu and Xhosa. Songs could also be banned for being too sexually provocative or encouraging relations (whether sexual or platonic) between races.101 The first section of this chapter will explore the social, political and cultural contexts in which Fassie emerged as both an artist and a black woman, in order to better understand how she navigated her career in the racially segregated apartheid era. Furthermore, although Fassie had not yet come out as a queer woman, she was struggling with her sexual identity at the time, in addition to gender and race identities, which would have added layers to her performance and identity both on-stage and off-stage.102  The second section of this chapter delves into the lyrics of Fassie\u2019s \u201cWeekend Special.\u201d Although the lyrics were actually written by songwriter Melvin Matthews, I argue that through Fassie\u2019s performance they can be interpreted in at least three ways:  1. Fassie is speaking to her lover, a male lover by default, as she was not yet out as a lesbian singer, who does not acknowledge her except on the weekends when they have arranged to meet. Perhaps he is married or has a girlfriend and Fassie is his mistress. Or perhaps he is simply not ready to commit to her.  2. Fassie could be referring to a white male lover who, due to the laws in place at the time stipulating that black and coloured people could not have engage in sexual relations with whites, could only sneak out to meet her on Friday nights.   101 Martin, Sounding the Cape, 143\u2013145. 102 Njabulo S. Ndebele, \u201cStill Thinking of MaBrrr,\u201d in I\u2019m Not Your Weekend Special, ed. by Bongani Madondo (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2014): 98. 52  3. Although not explicitly stated in existing scholarship \u201cWeekend Special\u201d is understood in queer communities in South Africa to be referring to a secret lesbian lover (I cite my own, lived knowledge, as a member of the South Africa queer community). Though Matthews likely would not have written it along these lines given that, at this point, Fassie was not yet \u201cout\u201d as bisexual or as a lesbian it is interesting to consider the queer connotations.  The third section of this chapter turns to the music itself. My research questions are as follows: How did Fassie\u2019s performance style and vocals create meaning in the song? How did the instrumentation and her band contribute to popularizing the bubblegum\/Afro-pop genre in South African townships and ghettos? How did music videos and broadcasts of live performances contribute to evolving narratives around sex and sexuality in apartheid? Specifically, how\/did perceptions of black women\u2019s bodies change when disengaged from the male gaze? Fassie\u2019s suggestive lyrical content, risqu\u00e9 dance moves, and ambiguous representations of black femininity and queer sexuality can be interpreted multiple ways depending on the listener\u2019s experience, which significantly impacted perceptions of desire surrounding black women\u2019s sexuality. In this chapter, I posit that \u201cWeekend Special\u201d offers an intersectional exploration of the limitations placed on the black female body\u2014both queer and heterosexual\u2014during apartheid in South Africa, and a growing desire to change these narratives both in music and on a larger political scale.  2.1 Bubblegum\/Afropop in Context Globalization and the spread of European and American music in the African diaspora in the 1980s gave rise to Afro-American fusion genres that blended traditional African styles with popular Western styles. Mbaqanga (African jive), for example, was the result of an American 53  jazz\/African indigenous fusion that first grew popular in the townships and slums of Johannesburg in the 1960s, before becoming one of the most popular musical styles in South Africa among young people of all races. This was particularly significant as most musical styles in South Africa had previously been as segregated as the country until this genre that white, black and other South Africans could find mutual enjoyment in appeared.103 As Brenda and the Big Dudes rose to fame in the early to mid-1980s, they became a part of this culture of fusion by producing music in these genres and listening to them. The evolution of genres like mbaqanga in the 1960s and 1970s led to the popular \u201ctownship music\u201d which infused political hopes and social commentary into lyrics.104 Township music, in turn, led to the popular genre of bubblegum music, or township pop, in the 1980s. Bubblegum pop was a light, unserious dance style that originated in the US, but it was popularized in South Africa by black musicians like Fassie, who appropriated the use of repetitive, simple lyrics propped up by dance beats and suggestive music videos or live performances. Western bubblegum pop was popularized by fictional bands such as the Archies or Josie and the Pussycats\u2014animated bands in cartoon shows. Real bands, such as the 1910 Fruit Gum Company also achieved success with the genre in the 1960s.105 Unlike Western bubblegum which was largely unserious, however, some South African bubblegum artists did not shy away from political or sensitive topics, although they were still packaged and presented in a fun and upbeat manner.   103 Lara Allen, \u201cMbaqanga,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo\u20139781561592630\u2013e\u20130000051740?rskey=JQVcLm&result=1.  104 David Copland, \u201cSouth Africa, Republic of,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo\u20139781561592630\u2013e\u20130000043028?rskey=Ak09Fw&result=2.  105 Jonas Westover, \u201cBubblegum (USA),\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo\u20139781561592630\u2013e\u20131002240316?rskey=OPOV7i&result=1  54   Bubblegum was popular with many young black people as a type of dance music that offered a reprieve from much of the intense, political music that dominated the South African music scene in the 1980s. However, while \u201ctownships were held in thrall by the bright, light dance styles of local bubblegum\u201d, Fassie and other artists were well-known for covertly slipping socio-political commentary into their songs.106 They would use a mix of African languages such as Xhosa and Zulu with \u201cIscamtho\u201d or \u201cTsotsitaal\u201d (slang derived from combinations of multiple languages) and English to represent events and tensions developing in the country at large, and within the smaller communities of the artists specific townships. One of the greatest appeals of this type of music was the synthesis of American trends with more locally accessible vernaculars and themes. Bubblegum was just broad enough as a genre that it could capture a global essence and make use of elements of jazz, R&B and American hip hop while still representing local identities.107   That South African bubblegum was able to fuse elements of American and South African music was a particularly pertinent observation given that most young people of colour in South Africa in the 1980s would have been far enough removed from their tribal ancestry that their indigenous musics alone did not provide any relevant meaning to their lived experiences. One of the main goals of the apartheid government was to dissolve Indigenous African practices, culture, and history, but the cultural genocide of Africans had been occurring since the involvement of missionaries in African education.108  Artists instead looked to African-American  106 Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d 58. 107 Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d 63. 108 Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution Vol. 1, 11; Roosenschoon, \u201cKeeping our Ears to the Ground,\u201d 266. 55  reclamations of racial identity through genres such as hip hop and jazz.109 Hip hop music, in particular, used lyrics to reaffirm cultural identities and create meaningful narratives. Along those lines, bubblegum (and its subsequent evolutionary form, kwaito, to be discussed in later chapters) embraced a need to reclaim cultural identities in the wake of Afrikaans hegemony. Through the genre mixtures of Bubblegum, artists like Brenda Fassie became voices for a disenfranchised, disgruntled black youth who existed within township culture, yet yearned for something bigger.  2.2 An Intersectional Approach to Interpreting Lyrical Content in \u201cWeekend Special\u201d Bubblegum, township pop, house music, kwaito. Whatever the genre, it was easy to dismiss the lyrics of these dance music genres as unimportant in comparison to the beats and grooves that made them so popular.110 These genres were often trying to emulate \u201cAmerican\u201d sounds and so the music itself would have been held in higher regard than words, as comes across in the constantly repeating choruses and sparsely composed verses of songs like \u201cWeekend Special\u201d (see Addendum A for the complete lyrics). However, a consideration of how these lyrics is presented and interpreted is still beneficial, particularly when it enables multiple interpretations.  The first interpretation I offer is, perhaps, the most obvious one: that Fassie is directly addressing her lover, who only comes into contact with her once a week at their prearranged meeting. Perhaps the most widely accepted interpretation, due in large part to the title of  109 Eric Charry, \u201cA Capsule History of African Rap,\u201d in Hip Hop Africa: New African Music in a Globalizing World, ed. Eric Charry (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2012), 2. 110 Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d 57. 56  \u201cWeekend Special\u201d which is derived from weekend grocery sales and used in this context to signify a casual sexual relationship, is that Fassie is secretly meeting with a man that does not want her in his day-to-day life and wants to keep their affair private. The first stanza claims: You don't come around To see me in the week You don't have the chance To call me on the phone  In these opening lines, Fassie directly addresses the \u201cyou\u201d she is referring to, never naming, or attaching a specific person from her life to the song, likely because these words were not written by her, but by Melvyn Matthews. However, based on the period (1980s) it would not be unwarranted to assume that it is a heterosexual man, by default. The slightly accusatory opening instead creates a sort of one-sided dialogue between accuser (Fassie) and accuss\u00e9e: You don\u2019t come around\/ to see me in the week. The unknown \u201cyou\u201d is not an everyday fixture in Fassie\u2019s life. The line \u201cyou don\u2019t have the chance\/ To call me on the phone\u201d implies that he is too busy to talk to her.  Yet, this person still plays some role in Fassie\u2019s life, as depicted in the following stanza: \u201cBut Friday night, yes I know\/I must be ready for ya, just be waiting for ya.\u201d This lyric suggests that even though he is too busy to visit her during the week, he will be seeing her on Friday. \u201cWaiting\u201d would suggest that he is coming to her. After a repeat of this stanza, the chorus is presented for the first time: \u201cI\u2019m no weekend special.\u201d The term, \u201cweekend special\u201d is used with inferred knowledge that listeners will understand that it means a casual sexual relationship that typically takes place on the weekend. What is particularly interesting in the chorus is the 57  rejection or refusal to be viewed as a weekend hookup, yet the previous lyrics would suggest that she is exactly that.  Certainly, the following stanza also serves to confirm this imagery:  Another lonely night On my own again How I long for your love I need your touch Yes I do  The line \u201canother lonely night on my own again\u201d could be interpreted in several ways. The first and perhaps most obvious one would be any one of those weeknights when her lover does not come around. The second could be the Friday night after he has visited her and has gone home. This would certainly reinforce the notion of a casual relationship if her lover did not stick around after their tryst. \u201cHow I long for your love\u201d would suggest that she certainly does not view this relationship as casual, but instead hopes for something more. The longing is felt throughout the song and gives a new depth to the chorus of \u201cnot your weekend special\u201d, suggesting that not only does she no longer wish to be casual, but is wanting something more out of this arrangement. Yet the desperation of \u201cI need your touch, yes I do\u201d could also suggest that she will continue with the current arrangement because she is so invested in this man (as we assume him to be). After several repetitions of the line \u201cI\u2019m no weekend special\u201d in the chorus, Fassie states: \u201cYou don\u2019t love me no more.\u201d This lyric is particularly interesting as it implies that the antagonist did, at some point, love her (or she thought\/assumed that he did). This idea is not taken up anywhere else in the song, and it feels strange to introduce the concept of love into a song about a casual relationship right towards the end. It is also interesting to note that at no point does Fassie claim to love this man. She wants his touch and there is certainly longing in 58  these lyrics, but when it comes to love, it is suggested that he has now fallen out of love with her. The song ends with the repeating words \u201cI\u2019m no weekend special\u201d, which fade to silence as the song comes to an end. While I argue that there are multiple, open possible interpretations of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d, existing scholarship largely accepts the face-value interpretation I have offered as my first point of entry, without presenting any further analysis. In the article \u201cSinging Peace,\u201d diaspora and transnational studies professor, Senayon Olaoluwa, calls \u201cWeekend Special\u201d no more than a \u201ccritique of male adultery sung as a [female] lament about an unfaithful boyfriend.\u201d111 Similarly, in the article \u201cGod Rock Africa,\u201d anthropologist David B. Coplan calls the song, \u201cpolitical only in the sexual sense of protesting the subordinate romantic status of the \u2018weekends-only\u2019 girlfriend of the philandering African man.\u201d112 To my mind, however, these accounts fail to consider that the simple act of a black women navigating such a topic so publicly is, itself, inherently politically subversive. By only considering face-value lyrical analysis, three large assumptions are made in this critique expressed by these two scholars: first, the song holds no more depth than a simple critique of non-committal men; second, the person Fassie addresses is indeed a man, and, lastly, this man is black. While it would be highly likely, based on the time and location of the production, that this was the standard interpretation for many listeners, a closer reading of the text offers several alternative interpretations.  One such interpretation is that the lyrics might refer to the unfairness of racial segregation, and the secrecy that interracial couples had to commit to.  In \u201cOn the Margins of  111 Senayon Olaoluwa, \u201cSinging Peace, Harmonizing Discordant Tunes: Tracking a Transnational Trajectory of Peace,\u201d Peace & Change 41, no. 4 (2016): 498. 112 David B. Coplan, \u201cGod Rock Africa: Thoughts on Politics in Popular Black Performance in South Africa,\u201d African Studies 64, no. 1 (2005): 12.  59  Kwaito,\u201d Viljoen does suggest that the lyrics of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d could point to the \u201cso-called apartheid \u2018pass system\u2019 that forced couples into separation.\u201d113 However, the point is not elaborated upon. It an interesting argument and while (to my knowledge) neither songwriter Melvyn Matthews nor singer Brenda Fassie ever made any suggestions that this song implicitly pointed to the pass laws of apartheid, that is not to say that a deeper meaning was not interpreted by its young, black fanbase. Pass laws (as discussed in Chapter 1) were a group of laws intended to segregate black and coloured South Africans from whites, and restrict their movement, employment and living to designated areas. These pass laws also forbade the intermingling of people of different races and prohibited sex between races. Specifically, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act No. 55 made interracial marriage\u2014and therefore interracial romantic relationships\u2014illegal.114 However, while interracial relationships were uncommon because of their illegality, they did still occasionally occur. Comedian and talk show-host Trevor Noah details his life as the illegal child of a black mother and white father during apartheid in his autobiography, Born a Crime.115 Interpreting Fassie\u2019s \u201cWeekend Special\u201d as the product of one of these illegal affairs would certainly place the song in a more politically subversive light. While Fassie was by no means a documented political activist on the frontlines of the anti-apartheid movement, as a black musician living under an oppressive white government, she was congenitally involved in political music-making. Ethnomusicologist Gavin Steingo has suggested that \u201cBrenda Fassie\u2019s music did not comment upon, reflect, or produce the social conditions in which it was created and heard. It bore no direct relation to its \u2018actual\u2019 social  113 Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d 58, 62.  114 Laura Moutinho, \u201cCondemned by Desire: Miscegenation, Gender, and Eroticism in South Africa\u2019s Immorality Act,\u201d Social Dynamics 49, no. 1 (2023): 130\u201331. 115 Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Canada: Anchor Canada, 2019).  60  conditions,\u201d and that \u201clike the music of her songs, Fassie\u2019s lyrics typically suspended any direct relationship with the conditions of 1980s South Africa.\u201d116 Yet, many of her songs contained overtly political themes, such as her 1990 hit \u201cBlack President\u201d (see Chapter 3 of this thesis), which details Nelson Mandela\u2019s arrest, the 1963 Rivonia Trials, and his eventual release from prison in 1990. In the song, Fassie proclaims \u201cFreedom for my black president\u201d [emphasis mine]. Even Fassie\u2019s post-apartheid decision to stop singing in English and instead embrace a more African-centric music style using Xhosa and Zulu languages were her political choices. Although Steingo\u2019s claim about on her earlier music of the 1980s, such as \u201cWeekend Special,\u201d might be true in the sense that there were no obvious social commentary evident in her songs. It would, however, be inaccurate to suggest that political commentaries are altogether absent in these songs. Certainly, two of the most important aspects of music (classical and popular music alike) are audience interpretation and analysis. While I do not suggest that anyone can completely reinterpret music produced under apartheid through an ex post facto historical lens, one can imagine how contemporary listeners might have perceived and understood the subtilties of Fassie\u2019s subtext. In that regard, the song \u201cWeekend Special\u201d could be interpreted as an illicit affair between two people of different races under apartheid segregation.  If one were to take the \u201cWeekend Special\u201d lyrics at face value, another possible consideration is the need for light-hearted, fun music that could offer some joy against the otherwise bleak backdrop of township life. In a different journal article Steingo writes: \u201cIt is true in some sense that the 1980s was a decade of violent struggle. However, it is also true that the struggle often  116 Steingo, Kwaito\u2019s Promise, 41. 61  took on the form of frenzied \u2018fun\u2019.\u201d117 Steingo offers an explanation of what he calls a \u201cpolitics of refusal\u201d \u2013 the idea that political movement does not only occur in serious protests and riotous action but also through what he calls \u201cchaotic enjoyment\u201d in the face of governmental oppression.118 Taking this idea in the context of Steingo\u2019s other suggestion that Fassie\u2019s music did not relate to the social conditions of South Africa, one might consider that even her \u201cnon-political\u201d music might have reflected social conditions in other ways. Removed from the suggestions of mixed relationships one could return to my original, surface level consideration of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d as exactly that, namely, a tale of a woman who no longer wishes to participate in a weekend dalliance without the promise of a deeper relationship. However, it would be a fallacious argument to suggest that there is then no further meaning that can be inferred by listeners and critics alike. If to simply exist as a black woman during apartheid is political, then to deliberately create light-hearted entertainment in the form of superficial dance music in the face of that oppression is inherently subversive. In the preface to his book, Kwaito\u2019s Promise, Steingo writes: \u201cIt is a truism in music studies that talking about \u2018the music itself\u2019 is not only wrong but also problematic and even \u2018dangerous.\u2019 We all know that music does not exist in a vacuum and that it is always connected to society, culture, gender, politics, power, and so on.\u201d119 The fact that Fassie existed and performed as a black woman within the societal and cultural conditions that she did ultimately situates her music as both a site of production within and a product of these conditions.   117 Steingo, \u201cHistoricizing Kwaito,\u201d 85.  118 Steingo, \u201cHistoricizing Kwaito,\u201d 85. 119 Steingo, Kwaito\u2019s Promise, x.  62  Another interesting reading of this song that is yet to be theorized is that of a queered one. While commonly accepted by listeners and critics that \u201cWeekend Special\u201d deals with a heterosexual relationship, I posit an alternative understanding that even though Brenda Fassie was not \u201cout\u201d as a queer person when she released \u201cWeekend Special,\u201d she was still a queer woman at that time. After her coming out as bisexual in the late 1980s and then lesbian\u2014though she used this term mostly for its shock value, as she continued to engage in sexual relationships with both men and women\u2014Fassie performed her repertory as a queer woman. Thus, when analysing sexual and gendered themes in this song, one can retroactively consider it within a queered context. Offering a queer reading of Fassie\u2019s heterosexually themed songs reclaims the typically erased black queer identities in house and kwaito music. In Queer Voices in Hip Hop, musicologist Lauren Kehrer suggests that \u201cthe particular intersections of blackness and queerness are so often subsumed under either race or sexuality\u2014that is, black or gay, not black and gay.\u201d120 Popular music spaces in South Africa that focused on \u201cinternational\u201d music styles such as disco, hip hop, R&B or bubblegum were notorious for promoting music through a heterosexual lens, regardless of the artists\u2019 sexuality, musical content or any other perceived connections to queer communities. Particularly in the case of black artists, who were already held to a higher standard of conformity than their white counterparts would have, if the choice was to recognize an artist as black or queer, they would largely have been placed within that black framework instead of a queer one.   120 Lauren Kehrer, Queer Voices in Hip Hop: Cultures, Communities, and Contemporary Performances (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2022), 24. 63  In this regard, the need for an intersectional approach to identity becomes imperative. Fassie was black, and a woman, and queer. To consider one aspect of her identity without the others offers a shallow understanding of who she is as a complete person. Social theorist Patricia Hill Collins suggests that intersectional research can bring together \u201cideas from disparate places, times, and perspectives, enabling people to share points of view that formerly were forbidden, outlawed, or simply obscured\u2026 because they inform social action, intersectionality\u2019s ideas have consequences in the social world.\u201d121 In Fassie\u2019s case, the need to contextualize her as black, queer, woman stems from the fact that each of these facets of her identity were marginalized. By sharing these points of view intersectionally, one not only gains a clearer understanding of how South African apartheid society worked, but also how spaces were created for progress. It therefore comes as no surprise that as a queer black woman, little consideration has been given to Fassie\u2019s earlier music as a part of a queer South African music canon. After all, without an intersectional approach to interpretation, \u201cWeekend Special\u201d is widely accepted as a default heterosexual work and there is little argument that the person referred to in the song might be someone other than a man.  Kehrer notes that genres like hip hop (one of the Western influences that kwaito was derived from) were typically considered \u201cmasculinized\u201d spaces that rejected both women and non-heterosexual experiences.122 However, there is much ambiguity in the lyrics of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d. Note the lack of pronouns that signify a gender, any references to names or socially regarded \u201cmasculine\u201d traits, and a complete lack of racial connections beyond Fassie\u2019s own skin. These ambiguities allow a queering of the song, making it eligible for  121 Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory, 2. 122 Kehrer, Queer Voices in Hip Hop, 40\u201341.  64  a space both in a post- factum queer BIPOC music narratives, and in its contemporaneous south African context. Even the songwriter, Melvyn Matthews, explained that \u201cthe song tells the story of a woman who complains about being treated by her lover as second-best\u201d without the use of any gendered pronouns that might give insight into the deliberately ambiguous sexual dynamics in the song.123 One of the main criticisms that often arise in queer interpretations of supposedly heterosexual works (or vice versa) is a misinterpretation of the artist\u2019s intention\u2014in the case of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d however, the lack of overt gendering in the song or in the artists\u2019 discussions of it makes this issue moot. However, the implication of a heterosexual default remains problematic. In Gender Trouble, Butler suggests that \u201cThe replication of heterosexual constructs in non-heterosexual frames brings into relief the utterly constructed status of the so-called heterosexual original. Thus, gay is to straight not as copy is to original, but, rather, as copy is to copy.\u201d124 In this regard, that Fassie as a queer woman continues to be reduced to a heterosexual stereotype (i.e., the \u201ccopy\u201d Butler refers to) demonstrates that even in the case of non-heterosexual situations (such as a queer female using non-gendered language in her song), heterosexist assumptions (defaulting to male-female categories) are pervasive. As Butler makes clear, the issue of constructing heterosexuality even where the case is not explicitly apparent demonstrates how heterosexuality is never the \u201coriginal\u201d state, but only a repeated imitation. Butler\u2019s critique of heterosexual constructs demonstrates the importance of not defaulting to an  123 Bongani Madondo, I\u2019m Not Your Weekend Special: Portraits on the Life + Style & Politics of Brenda Fassie (Johannesburg: Picador Macmillan, 2014), 59. 124 Butler, Gender Trouble, 43. 65  \u201coriginal\u201d when approaching identity intersectionally, and instead challenging existing social orders in order to contextualize, criticise and ultimately rectify social inequalities.   2.3 Objectification and the Male Gaze in Audio\/Visual Aspects of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d If lyrics were considered secondary to the music (i.e. instrumentation and beat) of dance music genres (as discussed in the previous section), then an analysis of the music both independent from, and in conjunction with, the lyrics is warranted. \u201cWeekend Special\u201d opens with a synth keyboard solo, accompanied by plucked chords on electric guitar, a simple bass line, and a consistent drum (high-hat) beat in the back. Immediately, listeners are presented with a simple 4\/4 beat, electronic instrumentation and a tempo situated somewhere around the tempo of a quarter note = 120. The music is simple, fun and repetitive, and it is easy to see why so many fans, critics and scholars alike might be so quick to dismiss it as a shallow dance song.  Even the imagery in the official music video on Fassie\u2019s official YouTube channel would suggest that this song is just five minutes of grooving: it opens with a ceiling shot featuring a spinning disco ball before panning to Fassie, alone in the middle of a dance floor. Fassie, who dons a sparkly blue and white jumpsuit with high slits up the legs, sways back and forth to the beat provided by her instrumentalists, smiling brightly at the cameras. Panning to the band, the screen shows smiling, grooving musicians before movie back to a wide angle of Fassie, structing around the dance floor and showing off some dance moves. The whole time that Fassie is singing, she smiles and dances and almost appears to flirt with the camera. Even as Fassie denounces her role as a \u201cweekend special\u201d in her relationship, singing the chorus \u201cI\u2019m no weekend special\u201d several times over, she remains smiling and dancing while her band reacts similarly. As Fassie moves into the second verse, stating \u201canother lonely night, on my own 66  again\u201d, her face gets slightly more serious. No longer smiling, she continues to move around the dance floor to the beat of the song. However, the overall vibe of the song remains upbeat and unserious. Throughout the video, it is clear that dance plays a very important role in this song. Fassie\u2019s provocative moves when she states \u201cjust be waiting for you\u201d\u2014bending her legs and running her hands down the exposed skin from the cut out in her jumpsuit\u2014indicate some element of sexual connotation in the song. In the lyrics to \u201cWeekend Special,\u201d Fassie both refutes and acknowledges her objectification by her lover, for whom she would appear only to be exploited as a female body, devoid of any emotional attachment. Yet, if one were to argue that the objectification of women is prevalent in this song, both as performed by Fassie and as interpreted by the listener, the argument would more likely be made in favor of the official music video found on her  YouTube channel.125 In \u201cVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,\u201d media studies scholar Laura Mulvey posits that the \u201cmale gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly.\u201d126 The woman is viewed as a sexual object in the eye of male desire. In the \u201cWeekend Special\u201d music video, Fassie is the sole focus, the only female band member, and the only one gyrating on the dance floor while the rest of her (all male) band remain in one location in the background. Furthering the analysis of the male gaze, Communications and Media Studies professor Mark Flynn suggests that \u201cwomen are the most frequent targets of objectification within music lyrics, and female artists are more likely than male artists are to objectify  125 Brenda Fassie, \u201cWeekend Special,\u201d YouTube video, 4:43, uploaded 26 November 2021, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VjQD\u2014fgCFM.  126 Laura Mulvey, \u201cVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,\u201d in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, ed. by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford UP, 1999): 837. 67  themselves.\u201d127 Because the sexualization of female bodies is so common in both visual media like music videos and lyrical-musical content, women often objectify themselves without even consciously realizing they are doing so. Furthermore, when female artists are so openly objectified, it often affects how female listeners and viewers perceive themselves. In short, \u201cindividuals [women] may internalize media and other external perspectives in the process of defining their physical selves.\u201d128 In dance music genres such as house or kwaito, in particular, women are held to a different standard than men, and objectified either in their own performances or as background entertainment in male artists\u2019 music videos.  Black women\u2019s centrality to the kwaito genre, and their impact on black popular music in South Africa has historically been undervalued due to perceived notions of sexual promiscuity and bodily performance that do not align with a male-dominated industry. Female artists, particularly black women like Fassie, faced these stereotypes and double standards on a daily basis, yet today it is her name that is commemorated when discussing the formative years of kwaito in the 1980s. Some scholars, such as Xavier Livermon, point to artists like Fassie and her female successors like Lebo Mathosa (1977\u20132006), as artists who \u201cpushed against the sexism embedded within kwaito, the larger South African music industry, and South African society to create a space for imagining gender and sexuality outside of societal norms.\u201d129 Fassie would have faced a particularly layered type of sexism that focused on black women and their bodies under apartheid rule. While all women have felt some degree of sexual discrimination at every point in history, everywhere in the world, black women certainly would have faced a more  127 Mark A. Flynn, Clay M. Craig, Christina N. Anderson, and Kyle J. Holody, \u201cObjectification in Popular Music Lyrics: An Examination of Gender and Genre Differences,\u201d Sex Roles 75, no. 3\u20134 (2016): 164. 128 Flynn et al., \u201cObjectification in Popular Music Lyrics,\u201d 165. 129 Livermon, Kwaito Bodies, 123. 68  reductive and othered approach to sexism than their white counterparts. In this regard, then, Fassie would have been confronted with the paradoxical task of embracing her black femininity and reimagining the black woman\u2019s body in performance without being completely reduced to the hypersexual black woman stereotype. As Livermon notes, \u201cthe cult of femininity is enacted through performances that require women to \u2018exhibit traditionally feminine traits, in other words, that as powerful as women are at work, they submit to the [hetero]patriarchal cult of femininity elsewhere\u2019.\u201d130  Historically, white\u2013 dominated heteropatriarchal societies have viewed black women not just as inherently more sexual beings than white women but as perpetrators of sexual deviance. While Fassie would have dealt with these perceptions, it is also clear through her performance of \u201cWeekend Special\u201d that she both embraced her own feminine, sexualized body (e.g., touching herself in front of the camera) while simultaneously rejecting the accepted conventions of femininity in order to exert some residual agency. My argument begs the question of how Fassie disidentified from stereotypes of, and attempted to reinvent, black femininity in her music in general, and in \u201cWeekend Special\u201d in particular. Arguments could be made that Fassie leaned into the so-called \u201ccult of femininity\u201d by participating in sexual performativity, that is, by acknowledging herself as a sexualized woman in her music and in her personal life. I, though,  offer the counterargument that her awareness (whether conscious or subconscious) of how black woman were perceived in South African apartheid society and her subsequent refusal to give power to those stereotypes became an important, authentic representation of black women\u2019s\u2019 sexuality without reducing it for a (white) male gaze.   130 Livermon, Kwaito Bodies, 126.  69  Fassie\u2019s reclamation of her sexuality from the male gaze can be heard in her refusal to be a \u201cweekend special\u201d but, perhaps more importantly, it can also be seen in the situated lens-based performance of the music video. A specific camera style was adopted by township pop\/early kwaito musicians whereby the camera \u201cfeels part of the circle \u2013 it never feels intrusive\u201d because the performance is for the camera, but also for the community that the music belongs to. Rangoato Hslane calls this style \u201can evocation of unfolding narrative in which the camera is both a participant and a witness.\u201d131 In the case of \u201cWeekend Special,\u201d one can immediately notice this style of cinematography. The space between the camera and Fassie feels almost intimate, and it never strays far from her for long. It also fits with Hslane\u2019s narrative that \u201cit is not unusual to find a kwaito song that is perceived as social commentary employing a video that looks banal.\u201d132  In my opening analysis of both lyrics and the music\/video, I note the simplicity of the musical style, and of having Fassie alone on a dance floor for the entire song. However, a consideration of the visual representation of feminine pleasure through this situated lens-based performance shows that, for many viewers, the subject of both lyrical content and video is desire, sexualized or otherwise. In my view, it is Fassie\u2019s desire to be more than a weekend special in the lyrics that invites both her and the viewer\u2019s possible sexual desire in the somewhat risqu\u00e9 dance moves displayed in the video. Either way, the song is rooted in desire (heterosexual or otherwise) and \u201cfeminine\u201d sexuality that discloses the limitations imposed on the black female  131 Rangoato Hslane and Bhekizizwe Peterson, \u201cMatters of Kwaito and Why Kwaito Matters,\u201d in Routledge Handbook of African Popular Culture, ed. Grace A. Musila (London: Routledge, 2022), 355. 132 Hslane and Peterson, \u201cMatters of Kwaito,\u201d 356. 70  body. These limitations, I argue, frame Fassie\u2019s desire to change these narratives not just within the black music community, but also the sexual politics of the apartheid regime at large.     71  Chapter 3: \u201cLet Us Sing\u201d: Musical Activism in \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) In the years following Brenda Fassie\u2019s 1983 hit \u201cWeekend Special,\u201d the young pop star enjoyed immense success both internationally and in South Africa. Some of her most memorable performances include her first international performance at Zenith concert hall alongside Johnny Clegg, Via Afrika and Hotline,133 and the 1988 Standard Bank Miss Black South Africa pageant, which at the time was the only major black beauty pageant in South Africa.134 Following a brief affair with fellow Big Dudes bandmate, Dumisani Ngubeni, she gave birth to her only child, Bongani Fassie, in 1985. Two years later Brenda and The Big Dudes announced the band was splitting up and she continued her career as a solo artist with the release of her first individual album, Ag Shame Lovey, in 1987. In 1989 she was married to Nhlanhla Mbambo in a small, private ceremony but the two also went on a large and expensive wedding tour across South Africa that flaunted the extreme wealth Fassie had accumulated over her short career so far, totaling over ZAR300,000 (around ZAR2.8 million or USD146,000 today) in comparison to the average yearly income of black person which, in 1989, was on average less than ZAR25,000.135  As Fassie\u2019s career picked up momentum, she began to carry more weight in both South Africa and international music scenes in Europe and the US, allowing her to be more outspoken about the apartheid political landscape. In the early days of her career in the mid 1980s, she claimed that: \u201cWhen the interviewers asked questions concerning politics. I said that with the  133 Emily Boulter, \u201cThe Unforgettable Concert that History Somehow Forgot,\u201d The Forward, May 18, 2021, https:\/\/forward.com\/culture\/469773\/the\u2013unforgettable\u2013concert\u2013that\u2013history\u2013somehow\u2013forgot\/.  134 Mmabatho Selemela, \u201cTouch\u2026 Touch Me Baby: Soundtrack to My Sowetan Childhood,\u201d in I\u2019m Not Your Weekend Special, ed. Bongani Madondo (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2014), 113.  135 Janet Smith, \u201cLittle Red Corvette,\u201d in I\u2019m Not Your Weekend Special, 94; Mike McGrath and Merle Holden, \u201cThe 1989\u201390 Budget,\u201d Indicator SA 6, no. 1\u20132 (1989): 32. 72  State of Emergency, it would be dangerous to say anything\u2026 it would put me in real trouble.\u201d136 By the late 1980s, by contrast, she felt emboldened to share her views with the media, claiming that \u201cas a black woman I am very political. I eat politics, I sleep politics. Everything in my life is political because I can't run away from it.\u201d137 Not only was she political because she was a black woman living through apartheid, but\u2014importantly\u2014she was also the niece of the apartheid activist and the first black president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Fassie\u2019s family ties to South Africa\u2019s most famous activist, combined with the fact that she was in fact a black woman no matter how popular she became with white audiences, made almost every action she took or opinion she made political by default.  Regardless, one of her most direct contributions to political activism was made through her music. In 1990, Fassie released a studio album, Black President, which featured tracks with provocative titles such as \u201cI Won\u2019t Run\u201d, \u201cShoot Them Before They Grow\u201d, and the titular \u201cBlack President\u201d. The album was largely inspired by Nelson Mandela\u2019s twenty-seven-year imprisonment (1964\u20131990) and the international outcry for this release. However, due to restrictions imposed by government censorship, the album could not explicitly be named after Mandela.138 Instead, Fassie used metonyms such as the catchy \u201cmy black president\u201d and \u201cthe people\u2019s president\u201d in the lyrics indicating phrases commonly associated with him, for audiences familiar with South African politics. The \u201cBlack President\u201d single was launched on February 9th,  136 Smith, \u201cLittle Red Corvette,\u201d 93. 137 Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d 62.  138 Duma Ndlovu, \u201cBrenda Fassie\u2019s Crossroads,\u201d in Not Your Weekend Special, ed. Bongani Madondo (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2014), 132.  73  1990, just a few days before Mandela was pardoned and released from prison, and it became a popular soundtrack to the end days of apartheid and the dawn of a free South Africa.  The immense popularity of \u201cBlack President\u201d with both black and white audiences raises several thoughtful questions: What role did Brenda Fassie\u2019s music play in bridging the divide between the black communities who fought for justice (particularly for black women in South Africa, who were often excluded from justice movements), and the white allies who helped expose said injustices? As she established an international reputation, especially with her growing success in the US, how did musical activism contribute to a sense of African nationalism and black identity that belonged to a community beyond the geopolitical borders of South Africa? And finally, how did \u201cBlack President\u201d and Fassie\u2019s outspoken behaviours towards the end of apartheid help create a soundscape of national identity and belonging for black South Africans and, in particular, black women?  In this chapter, I offer an analysis of \u201cBlack President\u201d against a number of contexts:  the socio-historical lens of late-apartheid music-making, musical activism, and Fassie\u2019s identity, her public persona and her roles within the South African and international (mostly US and UK) music scenes. In these contexts, the importance of an intersectional research approach becomes evident. During the dissolution of apartheid in the 1990s, understandings of racial and national identities began to shift. Collins suggests that \u201cIntersectionality offers a window into thinking about the significance of ideas and social action in fostering social change.\u201d139 Musical activism was instrumental in fostering social change throughout apartheid. Particularly, the confluence of musical protestors of all races (discussed in the next section of this chapter) to promote new  139 Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory, 286. 74  ideas for a new, post-apartheid South Africa. As discussed in Chapter 1, black South Africans during apartheid were not recognized as citizens of South Africa. As apartheid came to an end, questions emerged regarding which groups had the right to call themselves \u201cSouth African\u201d and how best to foster a new, inclusive sense of national pride in the aftermath of decades-long legislated segregation. In this way, an understanding of the intersection of ideas revolving around nation and race are particularly significant.  The first section of this chapter, following the introduction, explores the impact of apartheid activism\u2014and shifting understandings of nation and race\u2014on music and musical activism. In response to their harsh treatment under apartheid, black South Africans turned to African nationalism to overcome oppression by creating solidarity amongst black South Africans, regardless of tribal, geographical or other political affiliations, and to create a broadened, more inclusive sense of community.140 One of the ways in which they achieved these goals was through art and music, first in the form of musical-political activism, and then later as a tool for reconciliation. The second section of this chapter evaluates both implied and explicit political commentary in \u201cBlack President.\u201d Additionally, I explain how the lyrics of Fassie\u2019s \u201cBlack President\u201d inspired listeners to reject apartheid ideals and work towards racial equality, and how the lyrics subverted the expectations associated with black dance music. Section three looks at how her political music-making empowered specially women: by performing this music, she was not just a witness to history but an active participant in making it and ultimately inspired other black women to voice their demands for freedom. By using her fame to combine serious political commentary with the perceived less serious dance music she was known for, I posit that  140 Comaroff, Body of Power, 40. 75  Brenda Fassie\u2019s \u201cBlack President\u201d demonstrates musical activism in fostering African pride and bridging the divide between black and white communities and exemplifies black women\u2019s music-making at a time when it has largely been considered insignificant to historical-political narratives in music scholarship.  3.1 The Significance of Music in Anti-Apartheid Activism The colonization of Indigenous populations in South Africa dates back to the seventeenth century. As in other colonized lands, when South Africa received its first settlers in the 1600s, a clear narrative emerged that the culture of the West through the colonizers was inherently superior to that of the natives and, therefore, the sense of Western superiority justified the natives\u2019 subordination. Much of this colonialist way of thinking was demonstrated in the writings of nineteenth-century historiographers who, according to musicologist Olivia Bloechl, \u201cdesignated certain nations and races as possessing history in\u2026and others who did not.\u201d141 In the context of the colonization of African nations, the darker-skinned natives were denied their history and were instead subject to the Western settlers who believed themselves superior and behaved accordingly. Certainly, in the case of South Africa one can see the execution of this colonializating logic and institutionalization process in official nationalism of the country (encouraging white Afrikaner pride and denied people of colour), which formed the political condition for its music. The prevailing thought regarding European art music in the 1800s was that it was vastly \u201cbetter\u201d than that of the ethnics. National histories of music were reserved for  141 Oliva Bloechl, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d in Rethinking Difference in Music Scholarship, ed. by Olivia Bloechl, Melanie Lowe and Jeffrey Kallberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 11.  76  notated forms of music which were considered a higher art form than those of the oral tradition, while folk musics and popular musics were excluded from serious consideration by music critics unless they were appropriated into more cultivated categories. For this reason, one must consider how much music played a role in politics and how the act of music-making could itself become a political act by subverting Western hegemony by rejecting these conventions.   In studies of cultural musical histories and the musics of cultures who have been subjected to Western colonization, it is important to acknowledge how these cultures and their identities interact with and have been influenced by Western thought, whilst simultaneously acknowledging that \u201cDifferentiation affects musical dispositions and capacities as well as choices and actions, such as creation, listening, or judgment. Viewing identity via a critical concept of difference involves conceiving it temporally and contingently, as a particular understanding of a self, another person, or a group that is formulated relative to others.\u201d142 Identity is always expressed in companionship or opposition to something else, which could be rooted in linguistic, emotional, or social identification in oppositional terms (i.e., us versus them) or historical ties such as ancestry (i.e., us and our ancestors). Studies of exoticism and Orientalism have used these constructs to understand \u201cforeign\u201d musics through the lens of Western scholarship.143  To understand the significance of the nation, nationalism and nation-ness, one needs to consider how they have \u201ccome into historical being, in what ways their meanings have changed over time, and why, today, they command such profound emotional legitimacy.\u201d144 In this context, the  142 Bloechl, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d 5.  143 Bloechl, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d 32. 144 Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London & New York: Verso, 2006), 4. 77  nation is defined, \u201can imagined political community\u2026 imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.\u201d145 In this context, then, nationalism refers to the process of creating that community, while nation-ness expresses one\u2019s belonging to it. It would be interesting to consider how these concepts apply (or do not apply) to colonised countries (such as South Africa) and colonised people (such as indigenous Africans) beyond the European continent where these concepts of nationalism were first applied. In the case of apartheid South Africa, black people from different tribes, geographical locations and cultural backgrounds were all forced into one umbrella category framed by the white government. By denying black Africans any sort of official nationalism (i.e., the benefits afforded to citizens of a country) and differentiating them from white South Africans, the apartheid government in effect forced black Africans to create an oppositional community\u2014an assembly of Africans from various backgrounds (that otherwise might not have been so receptive to working together)\u2014that is now understood as African nationalism or Pan-Africanism.146 This comradery was fostered by segregated black people beyond politics, including arts and music-making, and numerous facets of life. During apartheid, the restrictions on black music-making were severe. In 1945 the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) proposed radio programmes exclusively for black listeners to promote European culture as superior to Africans\u2019 and apartheid ideologies presented in native languages. The vernacular radio initiative was named \u201cRadio Bantu,\u201d referring to the  145 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6. 146 Benyamin Neuberger, African Nationalism (London & New York: Routledge, 2023), 5\u20136. 78  languages spoken by indigenous Africans.147 The later principals of separate development in the 1960s, which materialized in large part due to the distinction of Bantu (black), Coloured and White South Africans in the Population Registration Act of 1950, also paved the way for what scholars such as Grant Olwage have called \u201cmusical citizenship.\u201d148 Consequently, Afrikaner music was heavily promoted by the apartheid government while black music was regarded as inherently \u201clesser-than\u201d and, therefore, excluded from South African musical citizenship. However, the separate development of music and Radio Bantu also allowed black music and musicians to create their own, new styles and write music that served their own purposes and listening agendas.  In the 1970s the SABC had seven broadcast channels (Radio Zulu, Sesotho, Setswana, Xhosa, Lebowa, Tsonga and Venda) with around five million Radio Bantu listeners.149 However, there was no way to stop listeners from tuning in to different services and by the mid-1980s nearly half of Springbok Radio\u2019s (a white service that often played European or \u201clight\u201d\/white South African music) listeners were black, meaning that black South African musicians were simultaneously cultivating vernacular music styles for Bantu radio, and mixing it with the popular European music styles (e.g., Fassie\u2019s early music such as \u201cWeekend Special\u201d discussed in Chapter 2). Music became an important tool for promoting a homogeneous white Afrikaner identity, but it was also used oppositionally to establish a sense of community and cultural identity for black South Africans. As the production of protest music was popularized (due in  147 Charles Hamm, \u201c\u2018The Constant Companion of Man\u2019: Separate Development, Radio Bantu and Music,\u201d Popular Music 10, no. 2 (1991): 157, 169. 148 Grant Olwage, \u201cApartheid\u2019s Musical Signs: Reflections on Black Choralism, Modernity and Race\u2013Ethnicity in the Segregation Era,\u201d in Composing Apartheid: Music for and Against Apartheid (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008), 39. 149 Hamm, \u201cThe Constant Companion of Man,\u201d 167. 79  part to the rise of rock \u2019n roll politics in the West, and in part because of the political climate of South Africa), the apartheid government became even more restrictive regarding public music spaces, music production and radio broadcast. Historically protest music has offered a creative space to express resentment toward oppressive states, demand change, and share information about their cause with international sympathizers. 150  In South Africa, indigenous protesters imbued their performances with their identity\u2014either through spoken (lyrics) means or through more surreptitious evocations of specific imagery or cultural references\u2014a politics of recognition that granted agency to protestors who were not recognized by the colonial institution.  The rise of popular protest music in South African can be seen to originate around the 1980s and perhaps one of the most significant shifts in South African music during apartheid was the establishment of white, Afrikaans musicians who publicly decried racial segregation and demanded the fair treatment of black citizens in their music. Historian Maria Suriano suggests that a counterculture of white anti-apartheid music began to appear in the Yeoville neighbourhood of Johannesburg in the 1970s. According to Suriano, Yeoville was \u201cone of the first urban spaces in apartheid South Africa where the Group Areas Act of 1950 began to break down.\u201d151 This counterculture meant that people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds began to work together as allies and create together long before the official dissolution of apartheid segregation laws. Consequently, it also meant that these allied groups collaborated interracially to spread awareness to other South African citizens and international supporters about the horrors black people were facing.   150 Erik D. Gooding, Max Yamane, and Bret Salter, \u201c\u2018People have Courage!\u2019: Protest Music and Indigenous Movements,\u201d Comparative American Studies 18, no. 3 (2021): 383.  151 Maria Suriano and Clare Lewis, \u201cAfrikaners is Plesierig! Vo\u00eblvry Music, Anti\u2013Apartheid Identities and Rockey Street Nightclubs in Yeoville (Johannesburg), 1980s\u201390s,\u201d African Studies 74, no. 3 (2015): 404.  80  White Afrikaans protest music, coined Vo\u00eblvry (directly translating to \u201cfree bird\u201d), emerged in South Africa in the 1980s\u2014a social and musical movement that constituted a satire-based, punk-influenced rock music sung in Afrikaans. Due to the breakdown of racial segregation in Yeoville, Afrikaans musicians were able to \u201cexpress oppositional identities in sharp contrast to the hegemonic Afrikaner identity that had been constructed and was closely guarded by the Afrikaner nationalists and the [National Party]\u201d152 without the same fear of repercussion white activists in other communities faced. Of course, white Afrikaners were just one among many demographic groups producing anti-apartheid protest music at this time. Though it was far more dangerous for black artists to do the same, white Afrikaners too were expressing their dissatisfaction with the apartheid regime through music.  At this point in her career, in the late 1980s to early 1990s, Fassie was living in a neighbourhood called Fleurhof, not too far from Yeoville and certainly close enough to witness the effects of the Vo\u00eblvry movement. In 1992 Charl Blignaut\u2014a white journalist working for the progressive Afrikaans newspaper, Vrye Weekblad\u2014was visiting Yeoville where he was introduced to Fassie\u2019s music. He quickly fell in love with her style and documented his fascination with her popularity in the multi-author memoir Not Your Weekend Special (2014).  He requested an audience with Fassie, which she accepted, and he recalls of the meeting that \u201cBrenda Fassie was the most liberated South African I\u2019d met \u2013 black or white.\u201d153 This remark came two years after Brenda had released her most politically subversive album, Black President, of which the title track became one of the most popular protest songs of late apartheid.  152 Suriano, \u201cAfrikaners is Plesierig!\u201d 404\u2013405.  153 Charl Blignaut, \u201cIn Bed with Brenda: A White Moffie Falls for a Black Vixen,\u201d in Not Your Weekend Special, ed. Bongani Madondo (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2014), 72. 81  The album was different to her earlier pop success in that the music was more emotional and far more explicitly political. Her Black President coproducer and cowriter, Sello \u201cChicco\u201d Twala, claimed that she \u201cbecame the Winne Mandela of song\u201d by creating an anthem that reflected the demands of \u201cyoung people\u2026in the streets every day challenging a system that had incarcerated their fathers and sent their brothers and sisters to prison. Everyone, including white liberals, was calling for the release of Nelson Mandela.\u201d154  3.2 Anti-Apartheid Rhetoric and Socio-Political Commentary in the Lyrics and Music of \u201cBlack President\u201d The official music video for Brenda Fassie\u2019s \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) opens with the famous lines declared by Nelson Mandela in a 1961 interview regarding peaceful versus violent protest: \u201cThere are many people who feel that it is useless and futile to continue talking about peace and non-violence against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenceless people.\u201d155 Ironically, the African National Congress (of which Nelson Mandela was a key member) established its armed forces known as Umkhonto we Sizwe in December of the same year in which that speech was made.156 The serious, but hopeful speech is followed by music, which consists of a poppy drumbeat (hand drum in the original, added drum set in the radio edit) with tambourine and subtle choral-like harmonies in the background. The first stanza follows:   154 Ndlovu, \u201cBrenda Fassie\u2019s Crossroads,\u201d 132; 134. 155 Brenda Fassie, \u201cBlack President,\u201d 21 October 2021, YouTube Video, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aRkSi3tJDlE.  156 Mia Swart, \u201c\u2018The Road to Freedom Passes Through Gaol\u2019: The Treason Trial and Rivonia Trial as Political Trials,\u201d in The Courtroom as a Space of Resistance: Reflections on the Legacy of the Rivonia Trial, ed. Awol Allo (London: Routledge, 2015), 162.  82  The year 1963 The people's president Was taken away by security men All dressed in a uniform The brutality, brutality Oh no, my, my black president  The opening verse, which is set to a poppy drumbeat (hand drum in the original, added drum set in the radio edit) with tambourine and subtle choral-like harmonies in the background. While it does not consist of similar high-energy pop style of \u201cWeekend Special,\u201d it is a surprisingly cheerful melody for a topic as serious as the incarceration of Nelson Mandela, but not entirely unexpected considering Fassie\u2019s typical upbeat dance music style. The verse is referring to the Rivonia Trial, which began in 1963 after several anti-apartheid activists were arrested for conspiracy and sabotage against the ruling National Party.157 Nelson Mandela had actually been caught and arrested a year before the activists\u2019 farm hideout was discovered and raided, yet he was put on trial alongside his fellow ANC conspirators who were labelled \u201cterrorists\u201d in accordance with the Unlawful Organizations Act, which allowed the National Party to effectively ban any group activity they considered a threat to public (white) safety.158  Found guilty, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison and remanded to Robben Island Prison, where he would spend the first eighteen years of his twenty-seven years of imprisonment, from 1964 to 1982.  Fassie was born in November 1964, meaning that she would have had no first-hand memories of her uncle as a free man. The imagery she depicts in this first verse was likely passed  157 Shana L. Redmond, Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora (New York: NYU Press, 2013), 246.   158 Act No. 34 of 1960, Unlawful Organizations Act, 7 April 1960. https:\/\/disa.ukzn.ac.za\/sites\/default\/files\/pdf_files\/leg19600407.028.020.034.pdf.  83  to her through family members\u2019 accounts, documentation in news sources and perhaps a dash of urban legend, as Nelson Mandela\u2019s notoriety as an anti-apartheid leader grew as she grew up. What is most interesting to note in the song opening is that at no point does she explicitly state Nelson Mandela\u2019s name, yet it was immediately recognized amongst South African listeners that the song ought to refer to him. The insinuation of the 1963 Rivonia Trial, as in the first verse \u201cThe year 1963,\u201d might have provided important contextual clues, but it is the next verses\u2014\u201cthe people\u2019s president\u201d and \u201cmy black president\u201d\u2014that point to Mandela, as these expressions served as aliases commonly associated with him when his name was banned from all media, including songs, in attempts to quell black resistance.159 Continuing to carefully avoid any direct mention of Mandela or other freedom fighters, Fassie cleverly weaves a story that is open to multiple interpretations\u2014either literal or metaphorical\u2014that allow the listener some added agency in the listening process, creating a more engaging and participatory listening experience. The next two stanzas of the song are as follows: Him and his comrades Were sentenced to isolation For many painful years For many painful years Many painful years Of hard labour  They broke rocks But the spirit was never broken  159 Redmond, Anthem, 236. 84  Never broken Oh no, my, my black president  The second and third stanzas describe the life of Nelson Mandela and his fellow political prisoners on Robben Island. Though never explicitly stated, Fassie\u2019s lyrics depicting \u201cmany painful years of hard labour\u201d breaking rocks suggest the years Mandela and other prisoners on the island working as hard laborers, extracting materials from a lime quarry as part of their punishment.160 The highlight of these verses are the words \u201cthe spirit was never broken.\u201d This is the first indication that this song is not simply lamenting a past full of suffering but is also one of empowerment and even joy that emerge from forced labour. What is particularly interesting to note is the phrase \u201cthe spirit\u201d instead of \u201chis spirit.\u201d Left open to multiple interpretations, one could argue that \u201cthe spirit\u201d is that of the anti-apartheid resistance, a collective resistance shared by many instead of his personal resilience. According to this song, the spirit of resistance could not be broken as readily as the rocks in that quarry were, though difficult for them to be broken as they presumably were.  Alternatively, perhaps, the definite article \u201cthe\u201d refers here also to the spirit of the political prisoners whose rebellious spirit remained unbroken despite years of hard physical labour, abuse, emotional, verbal, and mental sufferings they must have faced at the Robben Island prison. This group would, of course, include Mandela, which would be corroborated by the final line of this stanza \u201coh no my black president.\u201d As I discuss in Chapter Two, the use of suggestive language and indeterminate references leaving the lyrics open for interpretation is not  160 Fran Lisa Buntman, Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 49\u201350. 85  unusual for Fassie. In \u201cWeekend Special,\u201d she never explicitly states the gender or race of her lover. Thus, she must have been fond of lyrical guesswork. Open-ended references give informed listeners a sense of autonomy in the listening process. They open a space for multiple interpretations according to their familiarity of the sociopolitical contexts at hand.  Like the previous stanza, the next one can also be interpreted openly, depending on the listener. This time, however, Fassie does not lament the past, but envisions a future (that would come about a few days after the song\u2019s release):  Now in 1990 The people\u2019s president Came out from jail Raised up his hand and said \u201cViva, viva, my people\u201d  The first verse of this stanza fast-forwards the history from 1963 to 1990. The Black President album was released by CCP Records on the 9th of February 1990. Two days later, Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The album was by no means prophetic, as talks of his release had been in the works for some time already. Negotiations for the release of political prisoners began in 1989 and on February 2nd, 1990, the newly elected president of South Africa F.W. de Klerk announced that previously prohibited organizations (such as the ANC) would be legalized, and that all political prisoners who were innocent of inciting violence would be freed.161 This group included Nelson Mandela, who was released unconditionally. Fassie had obviously no idea of what he would actually say upon his release. The lyrics \u201cviva, viva, my people\u201d can be  161 Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform,\u201d 481.  86  interpreted in two ways: as an exclamation of black resilience throughout apartheid and Mandela\u2019s imprisonment, or as a symbol of the forthcoming unity of South Africans of all races (in this instance, long live \u201cmy people\u201d could refer to South African citizens as a whole, including all racial groups). This verse does anticipate his first speech after his release broadly. His first words to the public as a free man were as follows: \u201cComrades and fellow South Africans, I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all. I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.\u201d162 In a sense, both Fassie\u2019s \u201cviva, viva my people\u201d and Mandela\u2019s \u201ccomrades and fellow South Africans\u201d inspire a similar sense of unity and hopefulness for the future. This stanza of \u201cBlack President\u201d then serves as an important musical connector, not just to the suffering and significance of apartheid activism, but to fruits of those labours. Continuing in the linear narrative style that Fassie has employed up until this point, one might expect her to continue envisioning a future beyond the present-day 1990 she arrived at in the previous stanza. Notable by this point is that unlike most pop\/dance songs, \u201cBlack President\u201d lacks a chorus in the traditional sense of a song form, which would be repeated several times after a section of verse. Instead, it employs analogous phrases such as \u201cmy black president\u201d at the end of each stanza, functioning as a sort of structural anchor for the different historical markers, locations, and feelings she evokes throughout the song, in place.  This formal anomaly might indicate Fassie\u2019s intent to present a linear narrative of historical events from 1963 to 1990  162 Nelson Mandela. \u201cText of Nelson Mandela Speech,\u201d The Associated Press, 12 February 1990, https:\/\/advance.lexis.com\/api\/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:3SJJ\u2013H7D0\u20130038\u201372RC\u201300000\u201300&context=1516831.  87  where the use of a chorus would structurally disrupt a sense of linear narrative. However, if one were to look for some musical focal point, as it were, in the music (as a refrain would typically present), one could use the stanza in which Fassie calls for the celebration of Mandela\u2019s freedom and the support of his presidency: \u201clet us rejoice for our president\/let us sing for our president.\u201d In these two verses, the music is joyful: the crescendo sung by Fassie and her backup singers, with intensified drumming and celebratory handclapping, contribute to the effect of jubilation.  Note that the majority of the 4 minute 30 second of the song focuses on Mandela. The song mentions the first-person pronoun \u201cmy\u201d only at the end of each stanza to acknowledge a South African subject\u2019s relation to him. This distribution of uneven attention reaffirms the temporal locus on the hero: Although Mandela may not be the current president of South Africa, when the song was released, he is the president Fassie and so many other South Africans envision for the future. This vision is further reified in the final stanza of the song (\u201cI will die for my president\/I will sing for my president\u201d), when Fassie changes the focus of the song for the first time in the song from the Mandela and other freedom fighters to herself, declaring unequivocally her singing as a political act in support of Mandela as her president. As shown in this shift, Fassie emerges as a singer and a political subject by pledging her allegiance to the anti-apartheid cause and declaring through singing the dawn of a new South Africa. The juxtaposition of being willing to \u201cdie\u201d for Mandela versus wanting to simply \u201csing\u201d for him in the next line is stark. To my mind, the two desires\u2014a willingness to sacrifice for Mandela and a craving to use her sing for Mandela\u2019s presidency\u2014demonstrates both the extremes of anti-apartheid activism and the importance of music as an act of political protest. As South African poet Duma Ndlovu put it, \u201cnot only did Brenda and Twala join the masses who were constantly marching and calling for a change to the oppressive regime, they put their money where their mouths were and 88  started singing, not for the masses, but with the masses.\u201d163 Through singing, recording, and releasing the song \u201cBlack President\u201d at the threshold of a critical political moment in the history of South Africa, Fassie was able to acknowledge not just the suffering of black people during apartheid, but also their hopes for a new democracy, presenting them as intertwined elements of an anthem that would be heard across the nation.   3.3 Black Feminism in Fassie\u2019s Musical-Political Activism At first consideration, the political messaging of \u201cBlack President\u201d appears only to address the racial injustices of apartheid, crying out for a future where a black man will be president. While there is no content in \u201cBlack President\u201d that specifically addresses feminist issues, it is important to explore and understand the role that women of colour have played in music-making, politics, and arts activism. The Black President album illustrates a shift not just in Fassie\u2019s work, but also in the role of popular musicians and women musicians in political protest and musical activism in the late apartheid years. In Chapter Two I discuss how Brenda Fassie was a kind of \u201cmother\u201d of the kwaito-style music that began to emerge in the 1980s. However, some scholars, such as Viljoen, have argued that only in the 1990s when kwaito was cemented as a genre in the South African music canon.164 The period from the 1980s through the 1990s marked a particularly poignant time as black musicians began to make their mark in the late anti-apartheid struggle and imagine their future as the apartheid system would be dismantled.165 Women, particularly women of colour, made significant contributions to this field of musical  163 Ndlovu, \u201cBrenda Fassie\u2019s Crossroads,\u201d 134.  164 Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d 58. 165 Coplan, \u201cGod Rock Africa,\u201d 14. 89  activism, and regardless of whether their musical content explicitly dealt with feminist issues (as in this case, it did not) the representation it gave women in the anti-apartheid movement is valuable.  Much of the output of protest music in the anti-apartheid movement was exclusionary in some way, whether intentional or not. \u201cNkosi Sikelel\u2019 iAfrika\u201d (1897\/1927) for example, which was the anti-apartheid anthem of the ANC and future national anthem of South Africa), consisted of quotes of choral hymns or old folk songs in indigenous languages that the majority of white South Africans and international sympathizers did not understand. On the other side, the Afrikaans Vo\u00eblvry music informed Afrikaans sympathizers, but did little to inspire black listeners who unfavorably regarded Afrikaans as a colonizer language or international listeners who simply did not understand the words.  Fassie\u2019s political music was popular because it depicts details of townships and the black freedom struggle as they were happening, in English, using the stylizations of American popular musics that were internationally familiar.166  Understanding her music\u2019s place in the protest movement is important because, although many women were involved in anti-apartheid resistance, their contributions and struggles have largely gone undocumented in scholarship. Historian Kalpana Hiralal uses the same Rivonia trial that features in \u201cBlack President\u201d as evidence of male political activists receiving more media attention than women activists: \u201cIn the 1960s well known political activist Dorothy Nyembe was sentenced to 10 years in Kroonstad prison. During this time the Rivonia trials received world attention\u2026 Dorothy\u2019s imprisonment on the other hand, received scant attention.\u201d167 Although  166 Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d 58. 167 Hiralal, \u201cNarratives and Testimonies of Women Detainees in the Anti\u2013Apartheid Struggle,\u201d Agenda 29, no. 4  (2015): 35.  90  Fassie herself was never a political prisoner in any legal sense, she was bound physically and mentally by a different kind of imprisonment, as she had to follow an industry standard different from that of male musical activists such as Hugh Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim, or Lucky Dube. Some of this may have had to do with the musical genre that these songwriters used. The bubblegum pop that she had become so well-known for was \u201cinfluenced by \u2018pre-packaged\u2019 globalized cliches.\u201d168 The aforementioned musicians enjoyed a certain prestige due to their more \u201cserious\u201d pursuit of genres such as jazz and reggae, in opposition to the mass-produced pop industry. Yet, as Fassie\u2019s bubblegum style evolved with the early kwaito movement, her work did shift noticeably to address more broadly issues of African identity, local pride, and political resistance rather than women\u2019s experiences. One might consider that the combination of \u201cglobalized cliches\u201d (i.e., her American hip hop, house, and pop influences) with serious localized issues allowed her to connect nationally with her South African audience whilst simultaneously fostering an awareness of South African issues on a global stage. Unlike more complex music whose nuances were not widely understood or enjoyed, by participating in an international popular music culture, Fassie was able to engage with a broad audience both in South Africa, and internationally. When attempting to historicize Fassie\u2019s contributions to South African protest music and the late years of the anti-apartheid movement, I find it important to recognize that black women were often considered a threat to societal hierarchies.169 Notions of black femininity were inextricably linked to ideas that women, especially women of colour, should be quiet and  168 Viljoen, \u201cOn the Margins of Kwaito,\u201d 65.  169 Livermon, Kwaito Bodies, 125\u2013126. 91  obedient. As Fassie pushed back against the heteropatriarchal constructs of black women in Africa, she proffered a great deal of representation for the groups who felt excluded from the anti-apartheid movement. In her musical world (both onstage and offstage as a carefully constructed public persona), she performed the physical labour of a musician, but she also performed the invisible labour of a black woman who was constantly subject to scrutiny by a racist and sexist industry within a similarly racist and sexist country.  Her work thus offered black women a way to reconstruct perceptions of their identities and their places not just in the music industry, but across black communities. Reading and listening to her \u201cBlack President\u201d from an intersectional analytical framework, I argue that her music offered a promise of a new era of democracy in South Africa as apartheid began to be dismantled.           92  Chapter 4: South Africa\u2019s \u201cKwaito Queen\u201d: African Pride and Cross-Cultural Reconciliation in \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999) The years following Nelson Mandela\u2019s release from prison in 1990 were tumultuous. While the National Party\u2019s ideals of Afrikaner nationalism were slowly being dismantled and the ANC was unbanned, political violence continued. In the four years between Mandela\u2019s release his and his 1994 inauguration as the first black president of South Africa, around four thousand casualties of armed conflict between the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and ANC supporters were reported.170 While the IFP and ANC\u2019s anti-apartheid stances initially aligned in the 1970s, by the late 1980s the IFP\u2019s Zulu-centric vision was in contention with the ANC\u2019s multicultural vision for the future. IFP leaders claimed that the ANC was targeting them in attempts to make them appear ungovernable, while the ANC claimed that Inkatha was the main instigator and perpetrator of the violence. Rumours that the IDF was colluding with the apartheid government to discredit the ANC ultimately led to a decline in public support and strengthened support for the ANC.  When apartheid finally ended and a new era of democracy dawned, South Africans needed to look toward a more inclusive future where people of all races could live in harmony in a new, united society coined in 1994 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and adopted by Nelson Mandela as \u201cthe rainbow nation.\u201d171  In 1994, a precarious peace was settled between the indigenous Africans who had been persecuted for so many years and their white Afrikaans oppressors who had considered themselves the \u201ctrue\u201d South Africans even before apartheid. While racial tensions were still high  170 Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform,\u201d 481; 483.  171 Carolyn Holmes, The Black and White Rainbow: Reconciliation, Opposition, and Nation-Building in Democratic South Africa (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020), 45. 93  in the aftermath of apartheid, the National Party agreed to share power with the ANC, while the ANC agreed that social reforms would be \u201cincrementally gradual, rather than radically redistributive.\u201d172 The looming question of the new South Africa was: what did it mean to call oneself South African? Indeed, the preamble of the new 1996 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa reads: \u201cWe the people of South Africa, recognize the injustices of our past; honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.\u201d173  The inclusion of the statement that South Africa belongs to \u201call\u201d who live in it, with the indication of a diverse demographic is significant. From one side, it included South Africans of colour who had previously not been regarded as citizens, and from the other side it included the white South Africans of European descent  who questioned their place in the new South Africa.174 The hope was to foster a common sense of nationhood amongst black, white, and other South Africans of colour and to elicit a homogenous sense of South African pride. South Africans of all races realized an opportunity to reconstruct a South African identity they could be proud of. Brenda Fassie is one such person who sought to reconstruct the parameters of South African pride, and black South African identity. In a 1992 interview, journalist Charles Blignaut asked her if she was the black Madonna. She replied, \u201cYes. I\u2019m also the black Brenda.\u201d175 It was  172 Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform,\u201d 485. 173 Preamble to the Consitution of South Africa, 1996. https:\/\/www.gov.za\/documents\/constitution\/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-preamble-07-feb-1997#:~:text=We%2C%20the%20people%20of%20South,it%2C%20united%20in%20our%20diversity.  174 Gavin Steingo, \u201c\u2018I am Proud to be South African Because I am South African\u2019: Reflections on \u2018White Pride\u2019 in Post-Apartheid South Africa,\u201d African Identities 3, no. 2 (2005): 198-199. 175 Blignaut, \u201cIn Bed with Brenda,\u201d 75.  94  clear that while she did not disagree with comparisons to the internationally famous Madonna, she also wished to be recognized as herself: a black South African musician. Later in the same interview, Blignaut asked: \u201cYou don\u2019t want to go overseas and try and break into the pop market there?\u201d She did not. \u201cI must break it here first. People must go crazy for me here first. Boer of nie boer nie [Afrikaner or not], black or white. They must go Brenda Fassie! Brenda Fassie! As much as they go Michael Jackson! Or Madonna! This is my country and I have to prove myself here first.\u201d176 The statement had a twofold meaning: Brenda declares South Africa as her home, yet she still felt the pressure of needing to prove herself not just to the black communities with whom she shared history, but to the whites (specifically the boer [Afrikaner]) who occupied her ancestral lands and had oppressed her people and her culture for centuries.  Shortly after this impassioned interview in 1992, Fassie\u2019s musical relevance began to decline. To be clear, she remained a household name and continued producing music, but her next few albums, such as Umuntu UyaShintsha (1995) and Now is the Time (1996) were met with only moderate success compared to her previous releases like Black President. The once vibrant popstar was struggling with drugs and alcohol and, the death of lover, Poppy Sihlahla, in 1995 from accidental drug overdose.177 After that, Brenda was admitted to a rehabilitation facility. In the years following Poppy\u2019s death, she found herself struggling to find her place in the post-apartheid world, going in and out of drug addiction. Young South African were less fascinated with American sounds than they had been in the past, as the 1990 lift on the arts ban and growing accessibility to the internet made international music genres Fassie had drawn from  176 Blignaut, \u201cIn Bed with Brenda,\u201d 80. 177 Staff Reporter, \u201cWeekend Special Bites Back,\u201d Mail & Guardian, December 1, 1995, https:\/\/mg.co.za\/article\/1995-12-01-weekend-special-bites-back\/.  95  more accessible than ever and therefore less exotic. Instead, black South African pop artists began working to turn kwaito into a more local genre with less of the outside influence cultivated by its bubblegum and hip-hop predecessor like Fassie. It was not until 1998 that she made a true come back with the album, Memeza, which produced one of the biggest hits of her career, \u201cVulindlela\u201d (Open the Way). This was her cultural resurgence, and the start of a five-year streak winning best-selling album of the year at the South African Music Awards (SAMAs).178 Perhaps one of the most interesting points when considering \u201cVulindlela\u2019s\u201d success is that the song was sung entirely in Zulu and Xhosa with some other Nguni colloquial expressions that would have been identifiable to listeners proficient in these languages. It was not Brenda\u2019s first song to be sung in an African language, but it was the first to receive a recognition such as a SAMA and the popularity of a song using indigenous languages was unprecedented. The hit was followed up by what many fans consider to be the climax of Brenda\u2019s career, namely, the album Nomakanjani (1999). South Africa cultural theorist Bongani Madondo called the 1999 album a \u201ccollection of \u2018bonus\u2019 or \u2018hidden\u2019 tracks for Memeza.\u201d179 It was also her first album to go triple platinum, a feat that had media outlets hailing her as \u201cSouth Africa\u2019s Kwaito Queen.\u201d180 The titular song, \u201cNomakanjani\u201d, remains a staple in the South African pop music canon. Its popularity amongst South Africans of all races, as well as its reach into surrounding countries such as Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia, raises several questions. What prompted the increased white interest in Afropop music? How did the meaning change when this song was  178 Lara Allen, \u201cChocolate Ice Cream Tests & Other Tough Loves,\u201d in Not Your Weekend Special, ed. Bongani Madondo (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2014), 125. 179 Bongani Madondo, \u201cShut Up and Play,\u201d in Not Your Weekend Special, ed. Bongani Madondo (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2014), 240. 180 Allen, \u201cChocolate Ice Cream Tests,\u201d 125.  96  sung in languages these white audiences did not use? Did white listeners use \u201cNomakanjani\u201d to identify more closely with an \u201cauthentic\u201d African culture as they came to terms with the new, multicultural South Africa? When considering black listeners, how\/did \u201cNomakanjani\u201d help foster African pride? How could this song be seen as a reclamation of cultural identity? Is there an intersectional approach to understanding how Brenda used this music to deconstruct the social hierarchies of apartheid? In this chapter, I propose that \u201cNomakanjani\u201d served two purposes (whether intended by Fassie or not) in bridging the divide between races around in the early post-apartheid years in two ways. First, by using indigenous languages in tandem with the more recognizable conventions of popular South African music, Fassie was able to appeal to listeners of all races, regardless of their language proficiencies or level of comprehensive of certain indigenous languages in the lyrics. Second, by normalizing the use of and listening to indigenous languages within popular music genres, she contributed to a growing sense of African cultural pride that younger generations could connect and identify with. Thus \u201cNomakanjani\u201d simultaneously serves as a musical example of reconciliatory efforts in post-apartheid South Africa, the desire to build African pride and a sense of nationhood, and the possibilities for distinctly South African popular music. The second section of this chapter explores how perceptions of cultural and racial identities shifted in the early post-apartheid years. Specifically, how cross-cultural and cross-racial listening experiences contributed to a process of remediation. Looking at how changing understandings of identities affected and were reflected in the South African popular music scene, I offer a situated explanation for the ways popular music began to move away from attempts to mimic international styles, and instead began to use traditional African music elements (primarily language, but also instrumentation and compositional style) to create more 97  \u201clocal\u201d sounds for South Africans. The third section offers a textual and stylistic analysis of \u201cNomakanjani\u201d based on the contexts outlined in the first two sections. I argue that Brenda Fassie serves as an example of the influence popular music had on building new, and repairing old, cultural identities in post-apartheid South Africa.   4.1 Shifting Understandings of Identity in Post-Apartheid Music and Politics On April 26, 1994, Nelson Mandela won the first free, democratic presidential election held in the Republic of South Africa and on May 10 he was officially inaugurated as the country\u2019s first black president. Mandela\u2019s inauguration was a momentous event attended in-person by thousands of South Africans of all races, international dignitaries, royalty from around the world, and millions more viewers watching the live international television broadcast. In his presidential speech Mandela proclaimed: \u201cWe enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.\u201d181 The idea of a \u201crainbow nation\u201d, wherein people of all races and cultures were accepted and could live together in harmony, would become widely romanticized in post-apartheid South Africa, despite continued racial tensions.  In reality, however, the mid-to-late 1990s saw a steady increase in unemployment and the disparity between the wealthy white minority and the poor black majority continued to increase.182 The apartheid government was not overthrown quickly. White citizens had feared  181 Nelson Mandela, \u201cInaugural speech,\u201d from Full Nelson Mandela Inauguration on 10th of May 1994, posted May 8, 2015, 59:51, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=t3OrcQ18JtY&t=200s.  182 Steingo, \u201c\u2018I am Proud to be South African\u2019,\u201d 195.  98  mass retaliation from the formerly oppressed black masses and a drastic reallotment of resources, but in actuality the new constitution allowed the majority of white South Africans to keep their properties even if located on stolen lands, and the lack of mandated wealth distribution ensured that many whites did not have to make any financial reparations. South African scholar Gavin Steingo suggests that in the transition from apartheid to democracy there was an \u201cabsence of a radical rupture with the past \u2013 the transition was merely a negotiated change and not a revolution in the classical sense.\u201d183 The lack of abrupt radical change left many black citizens feeling disempowered and unhappy with the gradual dispersal of social reforms rather than \u201cradically redistributive.\u201d184  The socio-political need to bridge the racial divide between South Africans in the early post-apartheid years was also reflected in the music industry. Until 1997, South Africans needed to look no further than their own national anthem to see the disparity between races and the lingering discrimination of apartheid. The national anthem of apartheid, Die Stem (1958-1993), referred to South Africa as the \u201cfatherland\u201d of Afrikaners and called them the true \u201cchildren of South Africa.\u201d185 In an attempt to represent the black majority, a second official national anthem called Nkosi Sikelel\u2019 iAfrika (Lord Bless Africa) was introduced in 1994 and would be performed alongside Die Stem at all events requiring the singing of a national anthem. Nkosi, which was originally penned by African musician and pastor, Enoch Sontonga, in 1897 with several added versus by Xhosa poet Samuel E. Mqhayi in 1927, had been adopted by the ANC and the anti-apartheid movement as a musical symbol of both black consciousness and indigeneity. Its  183 Steingo, \u201c\u2018I am Proud to be South African\u2019,\u201d 196. 184 Lodge, \u201cResistance and Reform,\u201d 485. 185 David B. Coplan and Bennetta Jules-Rosette, \u201cNkosi Sikelel' iAfrika and the Liberation of the Spirit of South Africa,\u201d African Studies 64, no. 2 (2005): 302. 99  inclusion as an anthem alongside Die Stem was an attempt at unification. However, that goal could not be achieved under the irreconcilable ideologies represented by these two anthems: black liberation and white Afrikaner supremacy. It was only in 1997 that a new idea was eventually proposed to combine the two anthems into one. In the new anthem, the first two verses were taken from the Sontonga-Mqhayi version of Nkosi with the first verse sung in Xhosa and Zulu, and the second verse translated into Sesotho. The third verse was lifted from Die Stem and sung in Afrikaans, while the fourth verse contained a newly composed English part by South African composer, Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph.186 Government officials hoped that the linguistic mix of the new anthem would better foster a sense of national pride for all citizens in the wake of continued racial and political tensions engendered by the remnants of apartheid ideologies that left citizens questioning their identity in the new South Africa. However, some citizens maintained that it was disrespectful to include a song of black liberation alongside one of the oppressors, while others critiqued the descriptor of a rainbow nation as inaccurate, for it suggests all past atrocities had been forgiven and where all races now lived in harmony.187  The new national anthem was just one example of how music was being used by the government to curate multiracial and multicultural sites of reconciliation. In Johannesburg, a new culture of black youths who \u201capproach[ed] identity as something malleable and fluid, which may actively be created through various cultural resources, including clothing and music\u201d was emerging.188 Dubbed \u201cY culture\u201d (youth culture), these young black South Africans believed that  186 David Coplan and Bennetta Jules-Rosette, \u201c\u2018Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika\u2019: Stories of an African Anthem,\u201d in Composing Apartheid: Music for and against Apartheid, ed. by Grant Olwage (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008), 201-202. 187 Coplan and Rosette, \u201cNkosi Sikelel' iAfrika,\u201d 302. 188 Mary Robertson, \u201cThe Constraints of Colour: Popular Music Listening and the Interrogation of \u2018Race\u2019 in Post-Apartheid South Africa.\u201d Popular Music 30, no. 3 (2011): 456.  100  music played a crucial role in self-construction and that race itself was largely a social construct that each individual identified with in their own way. While the idea of race as a social construct might seem rather obvious today, in 1990s South Africa races were considered \u201creal, natural entities; thus race-thinking remained entrenched, and a non-racial future simply meant that the future would be \u2018multiracial\u2019: at best a co-existence free of racism.\u201d189 The \u201cY culture\u201d desire to disengage from essentialized understandings of race, and to deconstruct these identifications was extremely forward-thinking for the time. In \u201cY culture,\u201d notions of the self and race were reflected in popular music, especially the kwaito genre of which Brenda Fassie was a progenitor. Since the first European colonies settled in the 1600s, and throughout apartheid (as discussed in Chapter 1) traditional African music-making had been discredited and considered \u201cless than\u201d white music and the use of Afrikaans and English as the medium of instruction in black schools had even further removed Africans from their musical-cultural heritages. One way of reclaiming this lost culture post-apartheid was by incorporating indigenous languages and musical influences into popular music. According to kwaito artist Arthur Mafokate, kwaito \u201ccame about in the sense that we, as the youth of South Africa [felt] that there's a lot that we need to say that hasn't been said before through a music format\u2026we felt we need to express ourselves in a way that would be more appropriate for ourselves.\u201d190 The traditional music-making practices specific to certain tribes or regions were no longer as relatable to modern black South Africans, but the desire to connect with their heritage and reclaim their identity required some reconciliation with these roots. The struggle was not  189 Christopher Ballantine, \u201cRe-thinking \u2018Whiteness\u2019? Identity, Change and \u2018White\u2019 Popular Music in Post-Apartheid South Africa,\u201d Popular Music 23, no. 2 (2004): 106. 190 Gavin Steingo, \u201cHistoricizing Kwaito,\u201d African Music 8, no. 2 (2008): 86. 101  about liberation from an oppressive government, but rather a struggle of the self and identity construction in the face of freedom. By incorporating traditional African languages and even the occasional fusion of traditional instruments and musical styles with the international popular music genres young people enjoyed (as discussed in Chapters 2 and 3), kwaito musicians and listeners alike were able to participate in the reclamation of their cultural heritages.  Kwaito also signified a departure from the traditionally media and arts production in South Africa owned by whites. Because much of the professional music industry had been monopolized by white South Africans during apartheid, kwaito became one of the first opportunities for black artists to seek identity and self-expression in the dissemination of commercial music made for and by black people. One of the most popular language styles used in kwaito was tsotsitaal, a South African vernacular that combines words from several languages, including Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and some English.191 The word tsotsi loosely translates to \u201ccriminal\u201d, and the language was primarily considered to be that of the uneducated and poor.  Because of the negative association with the word, linguist Sizwe Satyo suggested that the word tsotsitaal be replaced with \u201ckwaito-speak\u201d because it better \u201creflects the dynamism of language.\u201d.192 Kwaito-speak was a result of the post-apartheid youth\u2019s desire to remove themselves from the restrictive environments they had grown up in. In the aftermath of Afrikaans language requirements in black schools and bans on indigenous languages during apartheid (see Chapter 1), kwaito-speak became a tool for reinvention.   191 Ellen Hurst, \u201cTsotsitaal, Global Culture and Local Style: Identity and Recontextualization in Twenty-First Century South African Townships,\u201d Social Dynamics 35, no. 2 (2009): 245. 192 Sizwe Satyo, \u201cA Linguistic Study of Kwaito,\u201d The World of Music 50, no. 2 (2008): 91. 102   However, it was not just black music-making that was undergoing significant change. White listeners also engaged in the creation of new music more representative of the post-apartheid nation. The Afrikaans protest-rock music of the Vo\u00eblvry movement as discussed in Chapter 3 was no longer relevant to this period, but the progressive whites who had participated in the movement still desired further integration. Some white artists, such as Johnny Clegg, appropriated black aesthetics and styles such as mbaqanga and kwela into their white music. Clegg was famously referred to, paradoxically, as a \u201cwhite Zulu\u201d for his immersion in Zulu culture and use of Zulu music styles and even the Zulu language in his music.193 Moreover, many white youths also listened to urban black music genres, such as kwaito, in an attempt to cross racial divides. By listening to black artists who sang in indigenous vernaculars, musicians and listeners alike participated in a process of post-apartheid reconciliation and unification.  One of the most prominent musical artists in the 1990s who brought together indigenous languages with popular music stylings was Fassie. Her albums, Memeza (1998) and Nomakanjani (1999), featured songs in Zulu and were met with major success. As she matured as an artist, she began to incorporate township vernaculars with Nguni languages (specifically Zulu and some Xhosa) in a way that could make her music almost unrecognizable to most white South Africans and older black South Africans, but identifiable to those young people who kept up with the latest township lingo. Yet, a lack of linguistic understanding often did not dissuade these listeners, who celebrated the increased popularity of uniquely South African music. Her  193 Barbara Titus, Hearing Maskanda: Musical Epistemologies in South Africa (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 27-28. 103  use of African languages and lingo, in combination with a cross-country tour schedule, allowed her to create \u201ca sense of South African musical space familiar to millions across the land.\u201d194  In the early post-apartheid years, a clear narrative began to emerge: many South Africans of all races looked towards a future where diversity could be celebrated. One of the ways this desire appeared in the music industry and music-listening trends was a shared listening experience of music genres that were unique to South Africa, such as kwaito. Regardless of whether listeners could understand the languages presented in the songs or not, they welcomed the development of a new, distinctly South African sound for the new era of democracy.    4.2 \u201cNomakanjani\u201d as an Example of a New South African Music Tradition  \u201cNomakanjani\u201d opens with a vibrant synthpop beat. In the background, excited male vocalizations are heard before Fassie comes in with the opening words in Zulu:  [Zulu]     [English translation] Nomakanjani we dali wam\u2019    No matter what [,] my darling [,]  Ngeke ngikushiye   I will never leave you  Siyofa silahlane   Till death do us part  The first verse is sung in unison by Fassie and an uncredited male singer as a duet. The vocalizations continue in the background, at least three voices overlapping each other. The vocalizations are reminiscent of the ululations one can hear at almost any event in South Africa. Sometime ululations signify a celebration\u2014I recall the many ululations heard at my 2019 undergraduate graduation ceremony\u2014or to express a moment of grief. In this case, the mood is  194 Allen, \u201cChocolate Ice Cream Tests,\u201d 102-104.  104  undoubtedly positive. Starting the song with lyrics in Zulu (see Appendix C for translation) with \u201cno matter what my darling\/ I will never leave you\/ Till death do us part\u201d, Fassie shows no indication of whom she might be singing to or about. She also does not give any context for not intending to leave this unidentified \u201cdarling.\u201d Nevertheless, she repeats the opening verse for a second time. The repeated verse suggests an almost conversational setting. She seems to suggest that she is not singing about someone, but rather to someone through her song.   The next verse takes a surprising turn:  Noma bekuthuka   Even if they insult you          Bathi awugezi    They say you don\u2019t wash Unuk'umlomo    Your mouth stinks Ngikuthanda unjalo    I will love you as you are  Nomakanjani       No matter what  \u201cNomakanjani\u201d is clearly a love song: the opening part a duet with the next verse directed from Fassie to her partner. However, love is presented in an unexpected way by focusing on her partner\u2019s physical shortcomings, rather than positives. Certainly, listening to this song for the first time, one would not expect it to turn in this direction. Yet, the message remains clear with the repeated titular message of \u201cnomakanjani,\u201d which means \u201cno matter what\u201d. Up until this point, the verses have been sung over a consistent background of synthesizers, bass and the continued background vocalizations. The end of this verse, however, introduces new thematic musical material.  The introduction of drum kit signifies the next stage of the song. If one were to analyse \u201cNomakanjani\u201d as a typical American pop song, it might be considered an instrumental pre-chorus interlude. However, instead of introducing a chorus verse, Fassie returns to the opening 105  lyrics of the song (Nomakanjani we dali wam'\/ Ngeke ngikushiye\/ Siyofa silahlane). As mentioned above, the opening verse comes across as abrupt. The repetition of that first verse, suggests that it is actually the chorus. This suggests that Fassie composed a beginning that departed from the standard song form. Instead of following the verse-chorus structure, as is typical of song form, she opens the song with the chorus. This atypical structure is confirmed by a second repetition of the chorus.   After the chorus, she introduces a new point of view. This time, the male singer who accompanies Fassie in the chorus becomes the focal point of the verse. He sings:  Noma bengithuka   Even if they insult me  Bethi nginuk'umlomo   Or say my mouth stinks    Ehh dali wami ungithanda unjalo  My darling you love me as I am  Unjalo Ehh Unjalo   Just like that ehh just like that  Ungithanda unjalo                              You love me as I am  Nomakanjani    No matter what  The song has taken a sort of call-and-response form, with the male singer responding to Fassie\u2019s previous lyrics. Interestingly, the male part offers no new material for the song. Instead, it simply repeats Fassie\u2019s earlier lyrics, but presents a male voice suggesting a male perspective. Fassie\u2019s voice is powerful, overwhelming her duet partner and the background ululations that has continued throughout the song. The music itself is relatively simple: no major key changes, a straightforward instrumental part and lyrics that do not offer nearly the same depth that her more political music like \u201cBlack President\u201d did. The instrumental music is presented cyclically, repeating over each new lyrical stanza. Indeed, its simplicity might be one of the reasons it was so popular, as no in-depth musical understanding was required of the listeners. In this case, it 106  appears that the significance of the song does not lie in the complexity of its lyrics or music, but rather in its association with a new era of music-making.   This new era was specifically signified in music through the kwaito music genre, in which \u201cNomakanjani\u201d falls, simultaneously exemplified indigenous music-making and cross-cultural listening experiences. There are several possible reasons for \u201cNomakanjani\u2019s\u201d success. The first is perhaps the most obvious: it is sung in Zulu. While this is not the only outstanding reason that the song did well, the use of Zulu did offer a wide appeal to many South Africans of different racial backgrounds who hoped to connect with music that felt more local. While Fassie herself was Xhosa, her time in Johannesburg had heavily influenced her use of the language. Not only is there a large Zulu culture in Johannesburg, but it is common even for non-Zulu black people to speak the language as a lingua franca both in South Africa and in surrounding countries such as Mozambique and Lesotho.195 The use of indigenous African languages like Zulu was a prominent characteristic of kwaito music as a way of reclaiming musical spaces from white dominance, but it also points to the desire for a deeper connection to the cultural roots that young black people had been denied their entire lives.196 A second explanation for \u201cNomakanjani\u2019s\u201d popularity is that it took influence from multiple different African music styles and might help foster a wide appeal to black South Africans of different backgrounds. While the afro-fusion stylings of Fassie\u2019s earliest music took influence from black American genres of hip-hop and house music, the local marabi and mbaqanga genres as discussed in Chapter One might contribute to its appeal. The cyclic nature  195 Livermon, Kwaito Bodies, 33.  196 Byerly, \u201cDecomposing Apartheid,\u201d 33. 107  of both the music and lyrics in \u201cNomakanjani\u201d, whereby repetitive music is used to unify sections, is typical of marabi. The structure whereby only one chord change occurs across each measure, which is also typical of Western popular music, is another prominent feature of marabi .197 While marabi is most closely linked to the roots of South African jazz, one can also hear its influence in the work of other kwaito artists such as Arthur Mafokate, Lebo Mathosa, and Mandoza. Whether Fassie intentionally drew inspiration from marabi is unclear, as she never verbally credited its influence on her music. Yet, the stylistic traits are apparent in the song. She might have picked up on it when listening to township music in her youth or from her parent\u2019s generation. Moreover, \u201cNomakanjani\u201d employs a simple I\/IV\/V\/IV four-chord progression\u2014similar to the simple progressions associated with American popular music\u2014but is also common of both marabi and mbaqanga.198 The song\u2019s phrases are often short, repetitive, and in a call-and-response style between the soloist and chorus, which suggests mbaqanga music. Fassie does not employ the call-and-response style in that way, as the there is no chorus. However, similarities are found in the back-and-forth of the duet\u2014whereby almost the same words are called out by Fassie and then responded to by the male singer. A third explanation for its initial popularity in 1999 and its continued prominence in South African popular music is that it gained immense popularity with white audiences, too. The use of Zulu lyrics and African-influenced styles suggest that it was intended for a black African  197 Christopher Ballantine, \u201cMarabi,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051496?rskey=B40vI5&result=1.  198 Christopher Ballantine, \u201cMarabi,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051496?rskey=B40vI5&result=1; Lara Allen, \u201c\u201cMbaqanga,\u201d Grove Music Online, 2001, https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/display\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051494?rskey=bavcg3&result=1.  108  audience, if not for the emerging white interest in a more local sound. Many young white South Africans who had pushed away from the racial segregation of apartheid and towards a future of multiculturalism were looking for a more authentic (i.e. African) musical experience as they negotiated their whiteness in the new age of democracy, and found that in the multilingual, genre-crossing musical stylings of kwaito music and artists like Fassie. Artists like the \u2018White Zulu\u2019 Johnny Clegg had helped to popularize African cultures amongst white citizens. His desire to share a \u201ca personal journey to try and discover my place as a white African\u2019, \u2018to explore what it is for me as a white person to be an African\u2019\u201d reflected a changing attitude towards indigenous African culture, music and identity.199 While Clegg was fluent in the Zulu language, most white South Africans were not. Despite the language barrier, however, they demonstrated a desire to understand and connect to the music. While some of the appeal in listening to music like \u201cNomakanjani\u201d was its use of the Zulu vernacular, for non-Zulu-speaking listeners it was more about the confluence of stylistic elements that simultaneously made the music seem more authentically local than white South African music, but still exotic particularly to white listeners who had not grown up familiar with the township pop music of apartheid. Cross-cultural listening experiences satiated this desire for new experiences that crossed racial and ethnic identities.200 Ultimately, the result of Fassie\u2019s transition from singing in English to singing in Zulu, Xhosa and tsotsitaal creoles was twofold: first, it allowed both her and her listeners to reaffirm and reconstruct their blackness in a post-apartheid context by bringing their previously  199 Gary Baines, \u201cPopular Music and Negotiating Whiteness in Apartheid South Africa,\u201d in Composing Apartheid: Music for and Against Apartheid ed. Grant Olwage (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008): 106. 200 Titus, Hearing Maskanda, 33-34. 109  discredited indigenous heritages and African languages into a new era. Second, it offered an opportunity for reconciliation and cross-cultural sharing by transcending the boundaries of black versus white music, resulting in a unique blend of cultural experiences that all South Africans could participate in.  110  Chapter 5: Conclusion  \u201cWhen Brenda Fassie sang, South Africa stopped and danced.\u201d201  In the years following the acclaim of Fassie\u2019s Nomakanjani, both her health and musical success began to decline. While her first albums of the 2000s, including Amadlozi (2000) and Mina Nawe (2001), continued to win the South African Music Awards for Best Selling Album, it was clear to fans that she was no longer the vibrant popstar they had fallen in love with.202 Fassie\u2019s worsening struggles with drug addiction caused several close friends, including her lover Gloria Chaka, to express serious concerns for her health. On April 26, 2004, Fassie was rushed to hospital where she remained in a coma until she passed away on May 9, 2024, at just thirty-nine years old.203 While initial news reports suggested that she had suffered from a fatal asthma attack, it was later suggested that she had died from a crack-cocaine overdose. Regardless of the exact circumstances surrounding the young star\u2019s life death, one thing remains certain even two decades later: Fassie was one of the most significant South African popular musicians of the late 1900s \u2014 black or white, man or woman, heterosexual or queer.   In the introduction to this thesis, I posited that research on Brenda Fassie and her music should be situated within multiple identity frameworks, including gender, race, and cultural identity. Her gender, sexuality, race, and cultural heritage played a significant role in  201 Ndlovu, \u201cBrenda Fassie\u2019s Crossroads,\u201d 129. 202 Allen, \u201cChocolate Ice Cream Tests,\u201d 125. 203 Donald G. McNeill, \u201cBrenda Fassie, 39, South African Pop Star, Dies,\u201d The New York Times (May17, 2004). https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/05\/17\/arts\/brenda-fassie-39-south-african-pop-star-dies.html  111  understanding how both artists and listeners used popular music to foster cross-cultural and transracial collaboration, to break down gendered barriers in society and the music industry, and as a site of self-exploration. As a black female musician who rose to prominence despite the racial oppression and segregation of South African apartheid, Fassie, as Bongani Madondo has shared, \u201ckicked down barriers for the entire African female and African male species. But also\u2026 her own life and behaviour released me from having to carry an imaginary black race on my shoulders. From the night I saw her, I knew that I didn\u2019t have to make sense to anyone anymore and that\u2019s OK.\u201d204 Both her artistic output and public persona (through good times and in times of struggle) inspired black South Africans to explore their own multifaceted identities.   In this thesis, I have considered Fassie\u2019s music within the context of both Fassie as the individual artist and as the public persona. In all discussions of Fassie\u2019s music, language has emerged as one of the most significant ways in which to express these identities \u2014 whether by expressing sexuality through lyrics, expressing political discontent and hopes for a better future, or by fostering African pride through singing in various indigenous languages. By navigating the different possibilities of language, Fassie\u2019s music becomes a vehicle for multiple interpretations of identity expressions, creating a sense of agency that defies the socio-political expectations ascribed to black women during apartheid. Another prominent narrative that appears throughout the course of this research is that of Fassie\u2019s sexuality. While Fassie on several occasions refers to herself as a lesbian, throughout my research it has become apparent that the term \u201clesbian\u201d is used loosely.  While Fassie enjoyed sexual experiences with women, she continued to have  204 Madondo, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d 3. 112  heterosexual experiences long after calling herself a lesbian. Finally, through Fassie\u2019s music I have demonstrated how she bridged divides between listening  Scholarship that refers to Fassie\u2019s music either in the context of the kwaito music genre, political music of apartheid, or gender studies has mostly neglected intersectional approaches to identity in the musical works and life of Brenda Fassie. Therefore, I have offered a complex and nuanced understanding of how multifaceted aspects of Fassie\u2019s identity interact and subsequently have demonstrated the multiple positionalities that she inhabited as a black, queer female musician within a late and post-apartheid framework. The research presented in this thesis is by no means exhaustive. While I chose these three specific songs because I felt they best represented the diversity and intersectionality of Fassie\u2019s music, any number of her songs could be included in further analysis. This thesis has developed a critical approach to intersectionality in Fassie\u2019s music, and offers the opportunity for further research on Fassie\u2019s repertory and lasting significance in South African popular music. However, it also provides a foundation for intersectional approaches to studying other musicians who participated in and were influenced by socio-political change and existing gender and race norms in late and post-apartheid South Africa, or\u2014on a broader scale\u2014any multi-dimensional, interdisciplinary studies of popular musicians in South Africa. As intersectionality becomes of increasing importance in creating well-rounded, representational music scholarship, my research has demonstrated how it can be used to reevaluate and provide new depth and nuance to already-established musicians in the popular music canon, and beyond that scope presented in this thesis.   113  Bibliography Adhikari, Mohamed. 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Get Up!  Are You Ready   Cool Spot (1984), Brenda & The Big Dudes206  It\u2019s Nice To Be With People  If I Hurt You Little Boy  Love Action  Mirror Mirror  Let\u2019s Stick Together (1984), Brenda & The Big Dudes207  Gimme Gimme Your Love  Let\u2019s Stick Together  Could We Do It?  Do It Now  Can\u2019t Stop This Feeling  I Wanna Be Single  Someone To Love (1984), Brenda & The Big Dudes208  Someone To Love (Maxi Version)  Someone To Love (Radio Version)  Someone To Love (Instrumental Version)  Higher And Higher (1985), Brenda & The Big Dudes209  Higher  Sugar Daddy  Promises  I\u2019ll Find You  Touch Somebody (1985), Brenda & The Big Dudes210  Touch Somebody  Bongani  205 Brenda & The Big Dudes, Weekend Special, EMI Records, 1983.  206 Brenda & The Big Dudes, Cool Spot, CCP Records, 1984. 207 Brenda & The Big Dudes, Let\u2019s Stick Together, CCP Records, 1984. 208 Brenda & The Big Dudes, Someone To Love, CCP Records, 1984.  209 Brenda & The Big Dudes, Higher And Higher, CCP Records, 1985. 210 Brenda & The Big Dudes, Touch Somebody, CCP Records, 1985. 118   Dizzy Love  Thrilling Love  No! No! Sen\u00f3r \/ Amalahle (1986), Brenda & The Big Dudes211  No! No! Sen\u00f3r (Single Version)  Amalahle (Single Version)  No! No! Sen\u00f3r (LP Version)  Amalahle (LP Version)  Brenda (1987), Brenda Fassie212  Izolabud  Jah Man  High Class  Don\u2019t Deny Me  Mr. No Good  Our Love Is A Celebration  Nobody Loves You Like I Do  Ag Shame Lovey (1987), Brenda Fassie213  Ag Shame Lovey  I Can\u2019t Stop Loving You  The Lord Is My Shepard  Party Time \u2013 Kuya Ngothuki Ungubani  Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu (1988), Brenda Fassie214  Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu  The Wedding  Eloyi Lamasabathani  Goeie More More More  Why Did You Lie  Going Crazy  Too Late For Mama (1989), Brenda Fassie215  Too Late For Mama  Jail To Jail  Baxakekile Oo'Xam  Don't Follow Me I'm Married  Good Black Woman  Orphan  211 Brenda & The Big Dudes, No! No! Sen\u00f3r, CCP Records, 1986.  212 Brenda Fassie, Brenda, CCP Records, 1987.  213 Brenda Fassie, Ag Shame Lovey, CCP Records, 1987. 214 Brenda Fassie, Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu, CCP Records, 1988. 215 Brenda Fassie, Too Late For Mama, CCP Records, 1989. 119   Black President (1990), Brenda Fassie216  I Won\u2019t Run  Bump Bump  Stay Away (From My Man)  Heroes Party  Shoot Them Before They Grow  Black President  Street Girl  Bump Party Time  (I\u2019m) Not A Bad Girl (1991), Brenda Fassie217 Tracklist:  (I Am Not) A Bad Girl  Ngiyakusaba  Big Stuff  Maybe  Solve The Problem  Expression  Romantic World  Malibongwe  Yo Baby (1992), Brenda Fassie218 Tracklist:  Yo Baby  I-Straight Le Ndaba  Call Me Up  Boipatong  Buti-Lo  Give Love To The World  Natural Instinct  I-Straight Le Ndaba (Club Mix)  Mama (1993), Brenda Fassie219 Tracklist:  Ama-Gents (Club Mix)  Siyajola  Higher And Higher  Mama  Lonely  216 Brenda Fassie, Black President, CCP Records, 1990.  217 Brenda Fassie, I Am Not A Bad Girl, CCP Records, 1991.  218 Brenda Fassie, Yo Baby, CCP Records, 1992. 219 Brenda Fassie, Mama, CCP Records, 1993. 120   Ama-Gents (Hip-Hop Mix)  Abantu Bayakhuluma (1994), Brenda Fassie220 Tracklist:  Kuyoze Kuyovalwa (Until Closing)  Abantu Bayakhuluma  Shame  Ungishaya Ngaphakathi (Inner Feeling)  Tata Mxolele (Forgive)  Phansti  You Give Me Joy  Let It Be  Kuyoze Kuyovalwa Remix  Shame (Radical U.K. Club Dub)  Umuntu Uyashintsha (1995), Brenda Fassie221 Tracklist:  Sgaxa Mabhanti (Maestro Mix)  Ngeke Unconfirm  S'enza Sonke  Ngeke Unconfirm  Umuntu  Sgaxa Mabhanti (Club Mix)  Now Is The Time (1996), Brenda Fassie222 Tracklist:  Uwile  Kutheni  Se Pasta  Kiriya  Antique  Ngiyakuthanda Papa Wemba  Tonight Is The Night   Mina Ngithanda  Poppy  No Yana  Rastafaria  Paparazzi (1997), Brenda Fassie223 Tracklist:  220 Brenda Fassie, Abantu Bayakhuluma, CCP Records, 1994.  221 Brenda Fassie, Umuntu Uyashintsha, CCP Records, 1995. 222 Brenda Fassie, Now Is The Time, CCP Records, 1996. 223 Brenda Fassie, Paparazzi, CCP Records, 1997. 121   Akushesh' Akusheshe  Paparazzi  Generation  Akungcon' Ugoduke (Remix)  I'll Meet U One Day  Sungxama  Ukungcon' Ugoduke  What's The Matter  Thula Vicky  Kharilitshe  Akusheshe (Remix)  Sorry  Memeza (1998), Brenda Fassie224 Tracklist:  Qula  Sum' Bulala  Vuli Ndlela  Msindo  Memeza  Vuli Ndlela (Remix)  Qula (Remix)  Sum' Bulala (Remix)  Nomakanjani (1999), Brenda Fassie225 Tracklist:  Nomakanjani  Jiva  Moya  Mpundulu  Mingi Mingi  Kenang Bohle  Nomakanjani (Come What May Mix)  Soon And Very Soon (99 Remix)  Mpundulu (Gruff Mix)  Jiva (Sparse Vocal Mix)  Amadlozi (2000), Brenda Fassie226 Tracklist:  Thola Amadlozi  Nakupenda (I Love You)  224 Brenda Fassie, Memeza, CCP Records, 1998. 225 Brenda Fassie, Nomakanjani, CCP Records, 1999. 226 Brenda Fassie, Amadlozi, CCP Records, 2000. 122   Monate  Ngizobuya  Monate (Kwaito Remix)  Oxamu  Shoot Them Before They Grow  Thola Amadlozi (Remix)  Mina Nawe (2001), Brenda Fassie227 Tracklist:  Mina Ngohlala Ngi Nje  Wewe (African Wedding)  Vuma  Lekwaito  Ubani Ozokufa  Uyang'Embrasa  Mina Ngohlala Nginje (Home Mix)  Wewe (Wedding Mix)  Mina Nawe  Life Is Going On  Myekeleni (2002), Brenda Fassie228 Tracklist:  Sgubu Se Zion  Duma Duma  Baxakekile Oxam  Shikhebe Shamago  Kesiyile Bana Baka  Hintoni  They All Want Me Down  Duma Duma (Gospel Mix)  Come Duze  Mama I'm Sorry  Sgubu Se Zion (Zion Mix)  Thixo Ongiphile   Mali (2003), Brenda Fassie229 Tracklist:  Ponci Ponci (Pontjie Pontjie)  Mali   Ntsware-Ndibambe  Ngwanona  227 Brenda Fassie, Mina Nawe, CCP Records, 2001. 228 Brenda Fassie, Myekeleni, CCP Records, 2002. 229 Brenda Fassie, Mali, EMI Records, 2003. 123   Undikolota Malini  Siyobonana  My Baby  Ngizilahlela Kuwe  Ponci Ponci (Guitar Man Mix)  Ngwanona (Dub Mix)  Ponci Ponci Pinda (Club Mix)  Gimme Some Volume (2004), Brenda Fassie230 Tracklist:  Gimme Some Volume \"Matshidiso  Malibongwe  Hake Batle Sepe  Thule Baby  Zam' eNext Door  Ong Shapa Kamogare  Umfazi Uyazimela  Tell Me  Ngi Nje  Brenda & Sbu's Party   230 Brenda Fassie, Gimme Some Volume, CCP Records, 2004. 124  Appendices Appendix A  : \u201cWeekend Special\u201d (1983) by Brenda and the Big Dudes231 You don\u2019t come around To see me in the week You don't have the chance To call me on the phone   You don\u2019t come around To see me in the week You don't have the chance To call me on the phone, yeah  But Friday night Yes I know I know I must be ready for ya Just be waiting for you    Friday night Yes I know I know I must be ready for ya Just be waiting for you   I'm no weekend, weekend special I'm no weekend, weekend special   I'm no weekend, weekend special I'm no weekend, weekend special   I\u2019m no weekend (daddy\u2019s home), weekend special I\u2019m no weekend (daddy\u2019s home), weekend special  Another lonely night On my own again How I long for your love I need your touch, yes I do  You don't come around To see me in the week You don't have the chance To call me on the phone, yeah  231 Brenda & the Big Dudes, \u201cWeekend Special,\u201d track 1 on Weekend Special, CCP Records, 1983.  125   But Friday night Yes I know I know I must be ready for ya Just be waiting for you  But Friday night Yes I know I know I must be ready for ya Just be waiting for you  I'm no weekend special I'm no weekend special I'm no weekend special Daddy\u2019s home  I'm no weekend, weekend special I'm no weekend, weekend special  I'm no weekend, weekend special I'm no weekend, weekend special  Don't love me no more You don't love me no more You don't love me no more  You don\u2019t love me no more I know  (I'm no weekend) I am your weekend special (I\u2019m no weekend) weekend special  (I'm no weekend) I am your weekend, weekend special (I\u2019m no weekend) yes I am your weekend special  (I\u2019m no weekend) I am your weekend special) I am your weekend special     126  Appendix B  :  \u201cBlack President\u201d (1990) by Brenda Fassie232 The year 1963 The people\u2019s president  Was taken away by security men All dressed in a uniform The brutality, brutality Oh no my- my black president  Him and his comrades Were sentenced to isolation For many painful years Many painful years Many painful years Of hard labour  They broke rocks But the spirit was never broken Never broken Oh no my- my black president  Let us rejoice for our president Let us sing for our president Let us pray for our president Let us sing, let us dance For Madiba, Madiba\u2019s freedom  Now in 1990 The people\u2019s president Came out from jail Raised up his hands and said Viva, viva, my people  He walked a long road Back, back to freedom Back to freedom Freedom for my black president  Let us rejoice for our president Let us sing for our president Let us pray for our president Let us sing, let us dance  232 Brenda Fassie, \u201cBlack President,\u201d track 6 on Black President, CCP Records, 1990.  127  For Madiba, Madiba's freedom  (vocalizing) Madiba (vocalizing) Madiba  I will die for my president I will sing for my president  I will stand and say Viva, viva, viva, viva, viva, viva my president                            128  Appendix C  : \u201cNomakanjani\u201d (1999) by Brenda Fassie233 (translated from Zulu to English by Amanda Lawrence, assisted by Likhona Tokota) Nomakanjani we dali wam'  (No matter what, my darling)                                     Ngeke ngikushiye (I will never leave you)                                                                                Siyofa silahlane (Till death do us part)                                                                                          Noma bekuthuka  (Even if they insult you)                                                               Bathi awugezi (They say you don\u2019t wash)                                                           Unuk'umlomo (Your mouth stinks)                                                           Ngikuthanda unjalo  (I will love you as you are)                                                 Nomakanjani     (No matter what)                                                         Nomakanjani we dali wam'  (No matter what, my darling)                                     Ngeke ngikushiye (I will never leave you)                                                                                Siyofa silahlane (Till death do us part)     Noma bengithuka (Even if they insult me)                                                     Bethi nginuk'umlomo (Or say my mouth stinks)                                                Ehh dali wami ungithanda unjalo (My darling, you love me as I am)                             Unjalo Ehh Unjalo  233 Brenda Fassie, \u201cNomakanjani.\u201d track 1 on Nomakanjani. CCP Records, 1999. Translation from Zulu to English, Amanda Lawrence, 2023. 129  (Just like that, just like that, ehh, just like that)                                        Ungithanda unjalo                                                    (You love me as I am) Nomakanjani (No matter what)                                                                                                                                                                  Sondela sthandwa sami (Come closer my love)                                            Sondela sweety lami (Come closer sweety)                                                 Ohh ngisho ngayo ikhanda yami ey'khulu yo  (Ohh I say this with my big head)           Nomakanjani we dali wam'  (No matter what, my darling)                                     Ngeke ngikushiye (I will never leave you)                                                                                Siyofa silahlane (Till death do us part)               Nomakanjani                                                     (No matter what)           130  Appendix D  : Chronology of Major South African Political Events (1948-1996) 1948  May 26 The National Party wins the General Election (widely observed as the     beginning of apartheid).  June 4  D.F. Malan becomes the new Prime Minister   1949  July 1  The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act is passed, making marriage between    whites and non-whites illegal.  1950  April 27 The Group Areas Act is passed, segregating neighborhoods based on race and    only allowing whites to live in the most developed areas. Many people of     colour were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to ghettos.   May 1  18 black protestors affiliated with the African National Congress (ANC) are    killed by police for protesting.   unknown Henrik Verwoerd (the \u2018architect of apartheid\u2019) becomes the Minister of Native    Affairs.    The Population Registration Act is passed, classifying all citizens as white,    coloured, black or Indian.       The Immorality Act makes sex between whites and non-whites a criminal     offense.   1952  April 6  The Defiance Campaign (lead by the ANC, South African Indian Congress    and Coloured People\u2019s Congress) begins.  1954  October 11 D.F. Malan announces his retirement.  1955  131  June 25 A multi-racial organization called the Congress of the People (later known as    the Congress Alliance) is formed in Soweto.  1956  March 16 The Riotous Assemblies Act is passed, forbidding any gatherings deemed a    threat to public peace.   December 5 Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli are arrested on charges of treason.  1958  September 2 Hendrik Verwoerd becomes Prime Minister.  1960  March 21 Sharpeville Massacre - police opened fire on and killed 69 peaceful protestors    in a black township. April 8  The Unlawful Organizations Act is passed and the government bans the ANC    and Pan-African Congress.  April 9  Attempted assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd.  1961  May 31 South Africa leaves the Commonwealth, becoming the Republic of South     Africa.    Unknown The military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe, is formed.   1962  August 5 Nelson Mandela is arrested and charged with organizing illegal strikes and    leaving the country without travel documents, and for his involvement with    Umkhonto we Sizwe.  1963  July  The Sabotage Act removes free speech and allows anyone who opposed the    National Party to be arrested for sabotage. Burden of proof no longer applied    and all were considered guilty until proven innocent.   July 11 Police raid a farm and arrest high-ranking members of Umkhonto we Sizwe.   October 6 The Rivonia Trial begins. 132   November 6 The United Nations calls for sanctions and many countries begin boycotting    South Africa.    1964  June 12 Nelson Mandela, Dennis Goldberg, Walter Sisulu and other freedom fighters    are sentenced to life in prison on Robben Island.    1966 September 6 Hendrik Verwoerd is assassinated.  1967  June 12 The Terrorism Act is passed, allowing prisoners to be detained for 60     days without trial.   August 4 Military conscription is enforced for all white males over the age of 16.  1970  Unknown Assigned all black people to Bantustans (homelands) and stripped      them of their South African citizenship.    1974  May 6  The government imposes free, mandatory education for black children.  1976  June 16 Soweto Uprising \u2013 10- 20 000 students protest the implementation  of     Afrikaans in black schools. Police open fire and are estimated to have     murdered anywhere between 180 and 700 children with thousands more     injured. This day is now called \u201cYouth Day\u201d in remembrance.  1977  September 12 Anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko is beaten to death by police while in their    custody.   1978  October 9 P.W. Botha becomes Prime Minister.  1980 133   April   Over 60 coloured schools and the University of the Western Cape begin     boycotts & hundreds of students are arrested.   1984  September 14 P.W. Botha becomes the first State President of South Africa.   1985  March 21 47 people are murdered by police at the Langa marches commemorating 25    years since the Sharpeville Massacre.    1989  September 20 F.W. de Klerk becomes State President.  1990  January 16 F.W. de Klerk announces the beginning of the transition to end apartheid.   He unbans the ANC, PAC and Communist Party.  February 11 Nelson Mandela is released from jail.  1991  February 1 F.W. de Klerk signs national peace accord promising to end apartheid.   1994  April 26 The first general election in South Africa takes place.  May 10 Nelson Mandela becomes the first black president of South Africa.   1996  April 15 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is established.  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