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Tomorrow in South Africa Thabo Mbeki will be inaugurated for a second term as president. The day will also mark ten years since democracy was born in South Africa, and apartheid died.
It's a milestone for many South Africans. For the old and young, it's a time to reflect on how far the country has come. It's also a time to think about the future.
Today and tomorrow, we'll hear about the past and the future of the country through the thoughts of two generations of South African musicians.
Joseph Shabalala: We don't want to look back, we want to look forward, because we still have something to do.
For Americans, there may be no better known musical voice in South Africa than that one. That's Joseph Shabalala. He's the band leader of Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
The group recorded with Paul Simon on his ground-breaking album Graceland in 1986. In the apartheid years, Shabalala and Ladysmith were part of a larger group of black musicians in South Africa. They were considered militants simply for being black artists who expressed their pain through song. More than that though, they lifted the spirits of people oppressed by government-mandated segregation.
Now that apartheid is over, Shabalala says his ensemble still has a role to play.
Joseph Shabalala: In South Africa it's beautiful. It's called this place now, it's for us all. There's a song now "Selingelethu Sonke" it says this place now is for us all. But we need friends to come and help us, we need friends to come and build houses or factories. It's OK, the atmosphere is OK, but we need friends.
Marco Werman: And is it the job of Ladysmith Black Mambazo to help create those friends?
Joseph Shabalala: Exactly. We help create people's hope because we have eyes to see, we see better than other people.
Today South Africa is a democracy, but it's still trying to bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots. The expression goes that you can't eat freedom. South Africa still suffers from sky-high black unemployment and crime has increased.
Joseph Shabalala knows that painfully well. An assailant gunned down his wife Nellie two years ago outside her home near Durban. The killer was never caught. The reason it happened isn't clear, but Joseph Shabalala says people in South Africa are hungry. And a man might do anything for a few rand if he's desperate.
Joseph Shabalala: If you just go to him and say, please kill Joseph, here's 200 rand, he can take that 200 rand because he's hungry. Nothing else. Freedom is there, but it needs us to work very hard to feed ourselves.
Shabalala's grandsons wrote and recorded a track on Ladysmith Black Mambazo's latest album. The track is simply called Tribute. It's a tribute to Shabalala's late wife. Shabalala says his grandsons surprised him with the song.
Joseph Shabalala: I don't know nothing. They said 'grandpa, we have a composition, do you want to listen?' And I sensed something, I said 'OK I want to listen.' And they sang I was just laughing and crying and I said 'OK I'm going to take this and 'wash it' and make it. They were surprised, they didn't know I was going to record it. These days they told me: 'we have another one.' I said 'OK we'll talk about it...'
In Shabalala's own family these days, young voices singing hip-hop contrast with the more traditional backdrop of Ladysmith's apartheid era music. The next generation is advancing to the forefront, and Joseph Shabalala knows it. He's optimistic about what the country's young musicians can do, and he's close to many of them.
Joseph Shabalala: They work with me, they dance with me and I think the nation will absorb to something beautiful. Black and white indians and colored we will come together one day. So far things are hesitating, are not very good, but we're working very hard to make it first class.
Tomorrow we'll hear more from South Africa's new crop of musicians.
04/26/04 >> go there
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