3.
Savuka has already had more trouble with the police than Juluka had, but the band has been quite successful both a home and in Europe. And after the band's first tumultuous tour of South Africa and England, EMI International (Capitol in the U.S.) was impressed enough to offer Clegg a worldwide record deal.
"The Third World Child lp that you got in the states was actually a compilation of my solo album, the first South African Savuka lp and a couple of new tunes we did especially for international release, including 'Asimbonanga,' a song to honor some of the movement's martyrs, people like Victoria Mxenge, a black civil rights lawyer who was murdered, Neil Agett and Steven Biko who both 'died' in political detention, and Nelson Mandela, who has been in prison for more than 25 years," Clegg said. "We just finished mixing down a new album (Shadow Man) and while it isn't as overtly political as Third World Child, we're still addressing the same problems. Graceland proved there's an audience that's willing to listen to things that may have been considered a bit foreign when we (as Juluka) last came to the States.
"I've had to work hard to sell this music to people, but I believe in it, and in what it represents the future. Since we're white and black South Africans working together it shows that it is possible to cooperate, even in a seemingly impossible situation."
Shadow Man continues Clegg's long struggle to instruct his country and the world. Tunes like "Dance Across the Centuries," "Human Rainbow" and "Siyayilanda" combine Zulu proverbs, township jive and a driving rock beat to provide listeners with scorching political commentary, hopeful visions of the future and music that uplifts and nourishes the spirit.
Since Clegg has played all over Europe and the U.S. in an interracial band, I closed the conversation by asking him if the "less-racist-than-thou" stance that the U.S. press often takes when reporting about events in South Africa bothered him.
"The one-to-one racism between individuals is a worldwide problem that you find everywhere, even in the so-called 'Free World,'" Clegg replied. "When Juluka was in the States in 1984, Sipho and I watched a tv news program on a Chicago station. A black family had been terrorized out of a block of flats by the white people in the neighborhood. There was a confrontation between white and black community members in the street, with the police standing between them. Everyone was shouting and it looked quite ugly. Sipho said, 'This is hard for me to understand, because this is the land of the free.' But that one-to-one racism is everywhere. The attitudes are more refined in American, but that way racism can have an even more insidious effect.
"There are also different levels to racism in South Africa. There's the one-to-one racism and there's the kind of anonymous sanctioned racism that's legislated. When you grow up with it, you don't really feel responsible for it. If you're white, you're born into a system of privilege that you're unaware of until you see some massive attack on the system or have a personal shock of some kind to wake you to the reality of the situation.
"Like the United States, we have our own regional political dynamics. There are rednecks, but there are also progressive people, mostly in the urban areas, who are trying to change the system. And, in spite of everything, I do have hope that we can work out a solution for ourselves. Although there's a powerful white economic minority that wants to see apartheid continue and strengthen, there are also lots of young people who are much more free, open and aware. Their relationships with their black colleagues in school are far more open and intimate than anything I saw when I was growing up.
"It's hard to explain the contradictions [to someone who doesn't live here] or even tell you why I feel hopeful, but there's a resilience to the people that you can feel on the streets, and in the workplace or in the church. I suppose it's the nature of the human race. We all know we're involved the struggle, even if we perceive the problems and solutions differently. "Even though we all go to work on separate buses, we all arrive at work at the same time and we've all got to work together.
"I do come from a horrid backward country, which I acknowledge, but the holier-than-thou attitude of some people bothers me," Clegg concludes. "Black people want to get on with the job of dismantling the faceless structures that keep us apart because they know, just as the progressive whites do, that at the end of a working day all we want is to sit down to a meal and have a drink and talk it through."
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