Riot
I do not remember learning about Apartheid in K–12. An informal office poll revealed the same for other coworkers near my age (28 and 39, respectively). I find that disturbing for several reasons. It is a pretty glaring omission in terms of world events, as it spanned a 40+ year period. Additionally, while the Holocaust was a primary focus of my tenth grade Interdisciplinary Studies class (and touchstone in our cultural memory), its imperative, “never again,” has clearly failed us. How many people take the education and news they consume for granted who would endorse Trump’s policies that Afrikaners be prioritized for asylum to the exclusion of everyone else (i.e., people actively being displaced and persecuted)?
There is no argument to be had. Apartheid was upheld through violence and intimidation by a white minority. Worse still is the racist fearmongering over a Black majority that exists to this day. The “threat” some Afrikaners are experiencing is more akin to moral panic, much like MAGA itself and “Great Replacement” conspiracy theorists. Socioeconomic conditions are blatantly worse for the Black and Coloured—as they are known there—people of South Africa because of the legacy of Apartheid. It is not that present-day Afrikaners, many of whom were young children at the end of Apartheid, are culpable for its horrors. It is that they have been falsely characterized as victims in the reckoning that has followed.
Hugh Masekela was a trumpetist who began playing during the early years of Apartheid. He founded the Jazz Epistles in 1959, which was the first African jazz group to record an album. After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, the government made it illegal for people to gather in groups of more than three, and travel was restricted for non-white people. Masekela’s and other jazz outfits were criminalized, and he took the opportunity to leave the country for creative pursuits. Of this time, he reflected: “Music became an even more important weapon in the struggle as any possibility of open legitimate protest had come to an end” (Schumann). Later compositions like “Bring Him Back Home” (1987) and “Soweto Blues” (1977) are much lauded, but “Riot” stands out to me as an early classic in his resistance anthem canon. I love the ease of the guitar and life-affirming blare of his trumpet. It is like golden hour. One wonders whether he was inspired by the tumult and growing social consciousness of America at the time or life back home.
For further reading, I recommend the 2012 Guardian article on the controversy surrounding Paul Simon’s Graceland album, a tour that Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba joined; James Alexander Dun’s history lesson on white refugee narratives; and the appropriation of “never again” in today’s conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
Randall, Dave. “Obituary of anti-apartheid jazz legend Hugh Masekela (1939-2018).” Counterfire, 29 Jan. 2018, https://www.counterfire.org/article/obituary-hugh-masekela-1939-2018/. Accessed 14 June 2025.
Schumann, Anne. “The Beat that Beat Apartheid: The Role of Music in the Resistance against Apartheid in South Africa.” Stichproben - Vienna Journal of African Studies, vol. 14, no. 8, 2008, pp. 17-39. https://www.africabib.org/htp.php?RID=316131423.