Solidarity

Meet Bittereinder (Bitter-enders).

What is it with me and the South African hip-hop? Seriously, I follow a little too closely for my own sanity Afrikaner alterna-bands on Radio 5FM (SABC) and UCT Radio 104.5fm from the University of Cape Town.

I mean, it's not like I'm going to South Africa anytime soon (still tapped out from Europe, don'tcha know), and my progress in learning a few key phrases in Afrikaans is slower and lower than my muddling, middling French. And the men, which normally might be a tangential draw, really don't do it for me. Too many braais, too much blond hair out of a bottle, as far as I can tell.

(Special note to all interested parties: I would make an exception for Stefan Ludik. Who is from Namibia and thus probably of German, rather than Afrikaner, ancestry. So there.)

Perhaps it's childhood nostalgia calling (Radio RSA, the Voice of South Africa, and all that--Ver in die wêreld, Kittie? Indeed). Or maybe the exotic other, which I am always entranced by, like a mosquito to a bug zapper on a hot summer night. In Mozambique.

There's a bit of the underdog about it all--whither Afrikaans and Afrikaner culture in a post-Apartheid era, where everyone has to fend for themselves without so much state support and brutal enforcement? Is it that weird, racist, Southern "lost cause" mentality at play? Or do I simply enjoy being different and immersing myself in some world other than my own?

But yes, alas, it's got a good beat and is easy to dance to, oh so often my motivating force. Get up and boogie. Don't stop the dance. Slave to the rhythm am I.