Clegg banned from playing in Britain

Press, 13 July 1988, Page 22

Clegg banned from playing in Britain

By

NEVIN TOPP

Johnny Clegg and Savuka are about to have a big fight with the British Musicians’ Union because the South African-based artist and . group are banned from playing in Britain. Clegg, who is now touring France, has been banned from playing in Britain because he has played in South Africa. He was born in Rochdale, near Manchester, and holds a British passport. The union ruling is that British musicians who play in South Africa are barred from performing in Britain. It is a position that Clegg finds intolerable. In a telephone interview from Vendin le Vieil, in France, he needed no prompting to explain that he has been fighting what he considers to be the inequities of the South African apartheid system for years, first through Juluka and now Savuka, both multi-racial bands. "Fortunately, antiapartheid organisations and other interested groups are coming to my aid to support my fight against the union.” He predicts a big explosion.

Clegg was born in 1953, and raised in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, until the age of six, when his family emigrated to South Africa.

His early interest in African music was encouraged by his mother (a cabaret singer who worked in promotions for CBS in South Africa), and his stepfather, a South African journalist who had a passion for Kwala music. Clegg learned to speak Ndebele before he could speak English. In his teens he began to learn to play the guitar, and it was through this that he met Mntonanazow Mzila, a Zulu flat cleaner, who played street music near Clegg’s home. For two years Clegg learned about Zulu music and Inhlangwini dancing. Mzila and Clegg began to play in hostels and

shebeens (illegal drinking places for blacks, the equivalent of the American speakeasies during Prohibition) and it was in this activity that Clegg said he first began to fight apartheid because he was often arrested for being on Government property or in black areas without the necessary permit. Clegg soon developed a reputation as a fine street musician and it was from this reputation that he met Sipho Mchunu, a migrant Zulu worker. Clegg was challenged to a guitar competition, and it was this challenge that led to the friendship between the black man and the white man, and the formation of Juluka (Zulu for “sweat”).

The irony is that although Juluka and now Savuka (Zulu for “we have risen”), two multiracial groups, are popular in South Africa, there are still difficulties in getting airplay on official channels.

"The music is still heard at street level, although some songs and videotapes have been banned from being broadcast by the South African Broadcasting Corporation,” Clegg said.

But the increasing popularity of Johnny Clegg and Savuka round the world is presenting problems f<sr the South African establishment. The band has made its mark in Europe. Their latest album, “Shadow Man”is slotted in at No. 2 on the charts in France, behind their latest album, “Third World Child,” and both LPs are also high in the charts in Switzerland and Belgium. “We’ve burst through in the international scene so a lot of our people are proud of what we’re doing. But because of our strong anti-apartheid message there are those in power who are reluctant to give us the publicity at home.”

Clegg said that he did not necessarily get better treatment from the liberal English press than the conservative Afrikaans press in South Africa. “The Citizen,” the conservative Johannesburg daily, had published a number of good articles about the band, but it was now starting to misquote what Savuka was about.

“I’ve made it clear that I don’t do anything outside South Africa that I would not do inside.” In

the case of “The Citizen,” Clegg said he had asked his publicists in South Africa to correct the misrepresentations. In South Africa, Clegg finds that he and Savuka attract a wide cross-sec-tion of that country’s society. He knows, because when he speaks on stage about the “evils of apartheid,” those on the extreme Right yell comments such as “terrorist.”

“They come backstage and say: ‘I like your music, but why do you say those terrible things about the evils of apartheid’.” Clegg believes that on stage the music puts up a kind of safe barrier which allows the audience to enjoy the music, but when he speaks that safety is broken and “they (on the Right) are quite shocked by that?’ Clegg is aware of the increasing popularity of music from southern Africa, such as that of the influential Ladysmith

Black Mzambo, but he is unable to say what has caused it, except that'it is a new trend. He fully supports the move by Paul Simon to have Ladysmith Black Mzambo on the “Graceland” album, stating that the members of the black group were happy about their collaboration with the American singer.

The collapse of the three-day Neon Picnic rock festival at Pukekawa, near Auckland, in January, a matter of hours before the event was meant to get under way, has not affected Clegg’s thoughts on New Zealand. Savuka were meant to

play there. Clegg said that negotiations were under way for a tour of Australia later this year and he thought that the package would include New Zealand.

Besides Clegg, the other members of Savuka are Dudu Zulu (percussion, guitar), who also dances on stage with Clegg, and Derek De Beer (drums), both of whom came from Juluka, Steve Mavuso (keyboards), Soloy Letwaba (bass), and Keith Hutchinson (saxophone, flute).

Clegg spoke Ndebele before English

‘Music puts up a kind of safe barrier’