As I write this, Channel Four News is showing footage of the devastation wrought by Robert Mugabe’s thugs in Zimbabwe, formerly the bread-basket of Africa and now it’s most tragic failure. There are authenticated reports of eighty-four year-old women being beaten up simply for voting for the opposition, as well as torture and the burning of villages. In this terrible context, the power and moral strength of Sinini ka Ngwenya’s ‘Getjenge Republic’ shines all the brighter.
The catastrophe and terror that has befallen Ngwenya’s native country informs much of the record, most notably on its centrepiece, entitled simply, ‘Zimbabwe’. In the form of an open letter to Mugabe, Ngwenya lambasts the cronyism, corruption and barbarity that has become synonymous with that despairing land:
“We hate your politics, appointing your own mates to destroy the state…how can I be calm when you left us to die?”
Thabo Mbeki, arch-trimmer and appeaser, the Neville Chamberlain of the current crisis, is satirised economically. His much-vaunted ‘quiet diplomacy’ policy is searingly rendered as ‘silent diplomacy’ and reminds us of the universal truth that evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
Turning to musical matters, on this song and others Ngwenya raps in a mixture of English, Zulu and Kalanaga (his mother tongue). The alternation is rapid (sometimes in the course of a sentence) and somewhat discomfiting to a British listener, but the general sense usually remains clear. But it is when he starts singing , in an effortless tenor, about the defenceless people back home that all resistance disappears. Tears are the only appropriate human response.
Quality abounds elsewhere on the record, which is something of a pot-pourri of African music. The most immediate track is ‘Ubuntu’ (togetherness), a hip-hop tune of some originality. Over a baroque, Michael Nyman-inspired backdrop (ably provided by producer John Blanchard), Ngwenya raps and sings of the joys of African life. Lines like ‘Spirit of Ubuntu, stay still… it’s the culture, the language, the dance and the big smile’ seem incongruous both in the context of the shivery minor-key backing track and the horror ably described elsewhere on the record, but it’s as if Ngwenya is consciously reminding himself and us of the good times in the past and better days to come, even while enduring the corrosive atmosphere of the present.
Other memorable numbers include the lovely pastoral ‘Rain in our land’, which features a silky chorus sung by the immaculate Haula Nakakembo, and the fine a capella ‘3 Lil Words’, in which Ngwenya captures the spirit and sound of Ladysmith Black Mambaza all on his own. Although these tracks testify to the man’s astonishing versatility and talent, it is the political songs on which Ngwenya touches greatness. On ‘Angimboni’, a low-key reggae groove (which nevertheless supports ensemble singing of amazing sophistication) gives way to the bleakest of closing lines:
“I gotta move, my name is on the list
You will never know who they coming for when the nights falls
Maybe you, your mum, your gal too, who knows?”
There are those who despair of Africa, the Conradites who talk only of its horror and unknowability. But Ngwenya’s superb work insists on the universal values of freedom, love, decency and brotherhood. In the current crisis he is not alone ; they are reflected in the magnificence of the South African dockworkers who refused, in the face of their government’s paralysis, to offload a shipment of Chinese weaponry which would undoubtedly have been used by Mugabe against his own people. Extremely enjoyable as much of this record is, Ngwenya’s triumph is as much moral as musical.
It deserves to be the soundtrack to a revolution.