Afrikaansmusic 2017

African Sun Media
SUN PReSS
Chapter Title: Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid
Book Title: On Record

Book Subtitle: Popular Afrikaans Music & Society, 1900–2017
Book Author(s): S.D. VAN DER MERWE
Published by: African Sun Media, SUN PReSS. (2017)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1nzfxjh.10
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Chapter Six
Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid
Some autobiography
I was born in Uitenhage in 1975. We lived on the edge of a typical white middle-class
suburb. In front of our house there was an open field and a small hill, behind which
lies Langa, meaning “Sunrise” in isiXhosa. Langa was close enough for me to hear the
fiery political speeches – and violence – that became a regular evening background
noise growing up. Although this is not the better known township close to Cape Town,
it is the site where, on 21 March 1985, 20 people were gunned down by police during
a funeral procession. That was just more than a kilometre from our house. One of the
earliest documented cases of “necklacing”1 followed two days later with the killing of
Benjamin Kikini. According to history books, Enoch Sontonga, the Xhosa missionary
who wrote Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika in 1897, was born in Uitenhage c. 1873 and although
the exact location is unknown, it must have been close to where I grew up. The hospital
where I was born is around the corner from our house and about 200 metres up the
street. Like many state hospitals during apartheid, there was a ‘European’ ward, and a
‘Non-European’ ward. All the injured and sick residents of Langa who needed medical
attention had to cross the field and walk past our house. I often saw blood trails crossing
the street and going around the corner and up the hill to the ‘non-European’ entrance
1 The practice of executing someone by putting a tyre around their neck, filling it with petrol and lighting it.
119
(on the left) of the hospital. During the mid-1980s our street was constantly patrolled
by Casspirs (armoured military vehicles). At one time, there were four snipers stationed
on the roof of the hospital, thus having a clear sight of the field in front of our house in
case some of the township violence spilled over into the white suburbs. In the mornings,
the sun rose from behind the hospital so that it cast their shadow onto our lawn.
By mere coincidence, it turned out that the location of my parents’ house made it
impossible for me as a young boy not to be aware of the political reality of South Africa
during the last years of apartheid. Growing up on the border of white suburbia looking
outwards politicised a large part of my formative years. The “onluste” (riots) during the
state of emergency in the mid-1980s were not out of sight and out of mind. One day, in
1989, a friend gave me a bootleg tape with a mix of Voëlvry and Piekniek by Dingaan
songs. Suddenly, I heard music that related directly to what I saw every day. The fault
lines they exposed (and the lines they drew in the sand) also resembled our street on
the edge of town. It had a significant influence on me as a thirteen-year-old boy. I
learned all the lyrics. I also learned to play Johannes Kerkorrel’s songs on the piano
and Koos Kombuis’s songs on the guitar (which were easier). From then on, thanks
to a mix of hormones and teenage rebellion, my friends and I would often challenge
teachers in the classroom on their staunchly nationalist politics (we were given extra
courage by a rumour going round – which was never actually confirmed – that it was
illegal for schoolboys to be caned for their political views). Somehow, a group of white
schoolboys in the Eastern Cape became politicised (at least on a basic level) by the
music of the Voëlvry movement. We also took great joy in mocking the conservatism
of the society we grew up in, just like other teenagers around the world. In a sense, then,
my personal connection with Voëlvry makes me sympathetic to the claims by some
that it was a monumental, ground-shifting, cultural-political movement. However, I
am also cognisant of the fact that the small group of friends at school who listened to
Voëlvry music from 1989 onwards was just that: small. A few years later, in either 1992
or 1993, Anton Goosen and his Bushrock band – which included Piet Botha – came to
perform at our school. It was the first live band I had ever seen and it was in Afrikaans,
and fantastic. However, for me, Voëlvry remained the most seminal.
Voëlvry
He [Johannes Kerkorrel] is busy overrunning South Africa with a shit-hot Afrikaans
rock band, to dodge here and duck there, but everywhere he pops up with his
message of protest, of dissatisfaction, of rising up against the status quo. Everywhere
he goes he releases people from the demons of Calvinistic feelings of guilt and
Nationalist racism, he opens them up to new emotions, he knows exactly how
to weave his web of nationwide mutiny, he preaches the truth loud and clear, he
preaches the gospel that the youth have been yearning for up to now.2
2 K.A. Kombuis, Die tyd van die Kombi’s (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2009), p. 130, translated from original.
120 On Record
During April and May 1989, three alternative Afrikaans acts – poet/singer André Letoit (who
later changed his name to Koos Kombuis), Bernoldus Niemand’s Swart Gevaar and Johannes
Kerkorrel’s Gereformeerde Blues Band – toured South Africa (and visited Namibia for one
show) to liberate the Afrikaner youth with Afrikaans rock ’n roll. It was called Voëlvry (“feel
free; free as a bird; outlaw; free penis; free love”3) and was a deliberate attack on the pillars of a
conservative Afrikaner society that was facing an uncertain future as the apartheid regime’s rule
was drawing to an end.
The tour attracted a lot of interest because it was markedly different from anything that had
gone before in Afrikaans music. As the preceding chapters illustrate, there was scant prior
antagonism toward the state in the Afrikaans music sector. By the end of the penultimate decade
of the twentieth century, it was extremely easy for these alternative Afrikaans artists to shock
Afrikaner society. The suffocating conservatism of the Church, the politics of the National
Party regime, and their musical rivals in the form of mainstream Afrikaans artists (especially
the sentimental crooner Bles Bridges), were all easily identifiable as part of a single enemy.
Conservative family upbringings were also to blame:
We did not merely dislike our parents; we despised them, loathed them, we
wanted to torture and hurt and discredit them utterly. We had come to that
terrible place in a neglected child’s life when he loses the final vestige of respect
for abusive elders.4
Politically, it was the fifth year of P.W. Botha’s state of emergency, troops had been deployed in
the townships across the country to contain widespread black political uprisings, international
pressure against apartheid was reaching critical levels and the economy was suffering. By
January 1989 Botha had suffered a stroke, resigned as leader of the National Party in February,
but refused to acknowledge F.W. de Klerk’s election by the Party as new State President the
following month. He eventually resigned in August and F.W. de Klerk came to power on 20
September 1989. By this time, almost half of the white Afrikaans-speakers had left the National
Party.5 The term of duty in the army was reduced to one year while the defence budget was
halved, which signalled the government’s reluctance to fight against political change.6 In 1990,
de Klerk also unbanned the ANC and other black political organisations and released Nelson
Mandela, a momentous and much publicised event in South Africa’s history. In the same year,
the ethno-political definition of Afrikaner was compromised by the inclusion of ‘non-whites’
into the National Party.
Although Voëlvry never became part of the mainstream, the body of academic work it has
attracted bears testament to its significance as a movement. It has also bestowed on Voëlvry
the label of the most definitive example of politicised Afrikaans music of the apartheid era. As
subject matter, Voëlvry has offered an attractive opportunity to explore the various intersections
of changing Afrikaner identities and political unravelling at an almost apocalyptic time for white
Afrikaners. In contrast, the work of other Afrikaans music artists who expressed their political
3 P. Hopkins, Voëlvry: The movement that rocked South Africa (Cape Town, Zebra Press, 2006), p. 14.
4 Koos Kombuis, afterword in Hopkins, Voëlvry, p. 235.
5 H, Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2003), p. 580. Ibid., p. 597.
6 Ibid.
Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid 121

identities in more subtle ways has attracted less attention. The less obvious, more understated
approach by Musiek-en-Liriek, was, in general, far more popular among the broader Afrikaans
public, but too mild for those directly involved in the Voëlvry movement. In the words of
Max du Preez:
We had a general fuck-you attitude, and didn’t believe the 1980s was a time for
subtlety and good manners.7
There are other traces of critical, counter-hegemonic Afrikaans music performance that pre-date
Voëlvry, like David Kramer’s use of musical form as a means of subverting racial hierarchies,
“Hou my vas Korporaal” in 1983 and Amanda Strydom’s black power salute in Stellenbosch in
1986. Cabarets like Met Permissie Gesê in 1981 were also subtly critical of the state. However,
by the end of the 1980s, it was time for a much more radical approach which was given strong
momentum with the cabaret Piekniek by Dingaan. It premiered at the 1988 National Arts
Festival in Grahamstown and featured the music of Johannes Kerkorrel and André Letoit, and
was an openly subversive political text that defied the dominant narratives of the National
Party and apartheid. According to the philosopher Johan Degenaar, Piekniek by Dingaan was
the quintessential post-modern Afrikaans text of the 1980s since it contravened the schism
between what was considered “high art” and “popular art”. Literary scholars Elize Botha and
P.H. Roodt wrote:
[Piekniek by Dingaan] slaughtered holy cows with a slight touch, deconstructed the
values of the establishment, reversed hierarchies, gave back to words the ability to
sting, and illustrated the inter-textuality between the language and the body.8
This statement illustrates clearly how radical this new strain of Afrikaner protest was and how
it differed fundamentally from Musiek-en-Liriek and the cabaret shows associated with it.
The latter just did not achieve such a level of disruption. In Piekniek by Dingaan, old favourite
Afrikaans songs (like Sonja Herholdt’s “Waterblommetjies” and Randall Wicombs’s “Dans met
die rooi rok”) were re-worked and given either political or sexually explicit lyrics. It was highly
controversial and antagonistic, but also very liberating for Afrikaners stuck in conservative
middle-class society. The link between Piekniek by Dingaan and Voëlvry was strong – not only
did it feature the music of Kerkorrel and Letoit, but the Gereformeerde Blues Band members
Willem Moller and Jannie van Tonder were also in the cast. When the Voëlvry tour kicked off
less than a year later, it took the message and ethos of Piekniek by Dingaan to the next level and
exported it beyond the theatre to thousands more across the country. These concerts, especially
in the countryside, served as meeting points for likeminded Afrikaners. Arriving in Clarens
in the Eastern Free State, the tour found a crowd of people from different surrounding towns
waiting outside the concert venue who, for the first time, were meeting and exchanging phone
numbers with other Afrikaans people who felt the same as they did.9 In this way, new networks
of liberals in the conservative rural towns were established. It is almost impossible to trace these
connections that started there, but – as a node that attracted people – this was significant in new
7 M. Du Preez, in Hopkins, Voëlvry, p. 6.

8 E. Botha and P.H. Roodt, “Die Tagtigers en die Tydskrif vir Letterkunde – was daar ’n Tagtigerbeweging?”, Tydskrif
vir Letterkunde 43:1 (2006), p. 59, translated from original.
9 Personal communication with Willem Moller and Jannie van Tonder, March 2017.
122 On Record
ways that did not function like Musiek en
Liriek, with their access to TV and Radio,
or their arch enemies, the mainstream.
Voëlvry was true underground and
meaningful because it harnessed the
energy of years of frustration. As a result,
Voëlvry occupies a special place in the
memories of those who witnessed it.
Arguably even more important than

Piekniek by Dingaan’s connection is the
influence of Shifty Records, the small
independent record company that was
the first to release albums by Bernoldus
Niemand, André Letoit (as he was known
at the time) and Johannes Kerkorrel.
Lloyd Ross, the founder of Shifty Records, Shifty Records’ Voëlvry compilation of various alternative
first joined the Radio Rats, an influential Afrikaans artists, 1988 (SHIB 29).
punk band in the late seventies, and was
exposed to the underground punk scene in and around Johannesburg and Springs,10 where he
met James Phillips (Bernoldus Niemand). His chance meeting with another punk musician,
Ivan Kadey of the multi-racial punk band National Wake, led to the establishment of Shifty
Records. Later he teamed up with Warrick Sony of the outspoken political band the Kalahari
Surfers.11 As not many other record companies in South Africa were willing to record protest
music at this time (early to mid-1980s), Shifty attracted politically conscious artists.12 It released
an eclectic collection of albums that ranged from Lesotho band Sankomota, Jennifer Ferguson,
The Genuines, Vusi Mahlasela and Urban Creep, to the “People’s Poet” Mzwakhe Mbuli, the
Fosatu Worker Choirs and compilations in support of the End Conscription Campaign, like
Forces Favourites.13 In 1988 Shifty released an album called Voëlvry, featuring various alternative
Afrikaans artists,14 including Niemand, Kerkorrel and Letoit. The fact that the Voëlvry artists
were part of this stable is noteworthy.
However, Voëlvry had no direct link to international anti-apartheid music movements associated
with exiled black and coloured South African artists. Abroad, popular music concerts played
an important role in harnessing support for the anti-apartheid struggle. A prime example is
the 1988 Free Mandela concert at Wembley Stadium that attracted a crowd of 72 000 people,
and featured a number of international stars like Peter Gabriel (who sung his hit “Biko”) and
exiled South African artists like Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela. The concert was a major
international event, broadcast to sixty countries and viewed by almost one billion people.
10 Hopkins, Voëlvry, p. 81.

11 Ibid., pp. 81-82, 87.
12 Ibid., p. 87.
13 Ibid.
14 Koos, Randy Rambo en die Rough Riders, Pieter van der Lugt, The Genuines, Die Kêrels, Khaki Monitor and The
Genuines, a coloured ghoema punk group from Cape Town.

Significantly, no Afrikaans artists were included in the line-up.15 This fact puts into perspective
statements like the following by Koos Kombuis:
We wanted the same thing as freedom fighters – to be free. In that respect we

knew about them and they knew about us. But our contribution to their cause
must not be underestimated, because at a crucial point in history we took from
government its greatest power base, the youth. Never in their wildest dreams did
the Bothas expect their own kids to turn against them and spit in their faces – and
not with the gentle “loyal protest” envisaged by NP van Wyk Louw, mind you, but
with real hatred, with all the pent-up rage our young hearts could muster.16
Here, Kombuis embodies, perhaps unintentionally, one extreme pole in the discourse on
Voëlvry. His assertion – which he shares with many of those who took part in the tour – that
they “took from government its greatest power base”, is a good example. As is his assertion that
they contributed to “their cause”. It is hard to imagine white Afrikaans artists as comrades of
ANC freedom fighters during the 1980s, or even to think that they had any impact on black
society in South Africa at all. Albert Grundlingh has even pointed out that the movement lacked
wider social purchase within white Afrikaner society itself.17 That Voëlvry “spat in the face of
the state”, however, is not in dispute. Such rebellion against the political system today is not as
straightforward. Francois van Coke, lead singer of Fokofpolisiekar, which gained a very strong
following among disaffected Afrikaner urban youth since their inception in 2003 and now
represents the next generation of Afrikaans rockers of the 2000s, has admitted that, as Afrikaners,
they are wary of criticising the government in case they come across as racist.18 Considering
the complexities of post-apartheid South Africa, and because of Voëlvry’s re-emergence in the
public sphere more than twenty-five years on, a re-assessment of the “Movement that rocked
South Africa”19 is due.
Reconsiderations
In April 2014, at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK), a panel of Afrikaans music
experts consisting of writers, journalists and musicians gathered to discuss the significance of
the Voëlvry tour in celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary. Earlier, in February, three of the
surviving members of the Gereformeerde Blues Band – Willem Moller, Gary Herselman and
Jannie “Hanepoot” van Tonder – appeared together onstage at the Fiesta awards, broadcast live
on television, also as an appreciative nod to the movement. This was the first time in more than
two decades that all three of them were in the same room. Even though it also lay mostly dormant
for almost two decades, Shifty Records celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in September 2014
with “Shifty September”, an array of offerings from its archives including the screening of live
footage of performances by politically subversive South African music artists during the 1980s.20
15 http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/british-anti-apartheid-movement-hosts-concert-mandela, accessed 20
January 2014.
16 Kombuis, cited in Hopkins, Voëlvry, p. 19.
17 Grundlingh, “Rocking the boat?”, p. 17.
18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_XekcXPBQs, accessed September 2014.
19 To quote Hopkins, Voëlvry, (Cape Town, Zebra press, 2006).
20 https://www.facebook.com/shiftyseptember?ref=ts&fref=ts, accessed September 2014.
124 On Record
Serendipitously, it also coincided with the Voëlvry anniversary, and a number of panels and
discussions took place in celebration and contemplation of this milestone. Direct connections
were drawn between Voëlvry and post-1994 alternative Afrikaans music culture, specifically the
Oppikoppi rock festival and rebellious Afrikaans rock group Fokofpolisiekar.21
One of these panel discussions attracted criticism and the accusation that what was an
opportunity for “non-racial musical culture turned out to be not much more than a bastion for
Afrikaner Bohemia and a liberal pathology for denial”.22 Tolsi and Gedye are certainly correct in
their observation that the discussion was a white affair. Whatever subversion there was among
the political Afrikaans writers, musicians and playwrights of the 1980s, they very seldom used
the sharpest tool available for undermining a racist regime: collaboration with black artists
(there are, of course, exceptions, like Jannie van Tonder of the Gereformeerde Blues Band who
joined the multi-racial African Jazz Pioneers in 1986). The most likely explanation is that they
simply did not move in the same circles as black artists, one of the intended results of a racially
segregated society.23 Other, major exceptions include David Kramer and his collaboration with
Taliep Petersen, and Anton Goosen, who collaborated with black artists such as Lucky Dube
and Margaret Singana and even joined the ANC in 1992. Regardless, the criticism of the racial
make-up of the discussion group relates to only a fraction of what Voëlvry represented. As Gary
Herselman, bass player of the Gereformeerde Blues Band mentioned in one of the discussion
panels, it wasn’t an inter-racial movement, but rather an act of standing up to their own parents
and the society and politics which they represented, and saying “Fuck, man, there must be
a better way.”24 Grundlingh has suggested that their very success depended on them being
Afrikaans, but that this had to be a broader definition, or a different mould, of Afrikaans in line
“with the pressures of the time”.25
Laubscher’s deconstruction of Johannes Kerkorrel’s music on an identitary level offers an

insightful glance into the unravelling of the hegemonic horizon of the late-apartheid era and
puts into perspective the ferocity with which the Voëlvry artists attacked the status quo.26
Despite the open hedonism, it was by no means limited to scatological expressions of rebellion.
Koos Kombuis, for instance, was already a published author when Voëlvry commenced and
openly confesses that his artistic background lies in literature, not music.27 Kerkorrel made his
stage debut in a 1986 cabaret, Met ander woorde.28 Both were involved in Piekniek by Dingaan.
The significance of this is that, regardless of the punk ethic that accompanied many aspects of
the Voëlvry movement, it was artistically very rich. Many of the songs penned by the Voëlvry
artists have become Afrikaans classics, such as Kombuis’s “Lisa se Klavier” (Lisa’s Piano) and
Kerkorrel’s “Hillbrow”. Kerkorrel was also posthumously awarded a lifetime achievement

22 N. Tolsi and L. Gedye, www.theconmag.co.za/201/09/12/white-noise-and-lost-irony/, accessed 15 September 2014.
24 Ibid.
26 Laubscher, “Afrikaner identity and the music of Johannes Kerkorrel”, pp. 308-330.
27 http://www.oulitnet.co.za/mond/kkramer.asp, accessed 05 June 2013.
28 I. Roggeband, 50 Stemme: Die grootste name in Afrikaanse musiek (Cape Town: Delta, 2009), p. 135.

award for his contribution to South Africa’s music heritage at the 2013 SAMA awards.29 Prior
to his suicide in 2002, he had won three SAMA awards. While artists like Laurika Rauch,
Anton Goosen and David Kramer had achieved commercial success with their fresh offerings
in Afrikaans, Bernoldus Niemand in particular represented a subversive undercurrent that
influenced Kerkorrel and Kombuis. Unfortunately, Niemand’s musical legacy was cut short with
his death in 1995 from injuries sustained in a car accident during the National Arts Festival
in Grahamstown. His work, however, is very highly appraised by music critics, even though
he never had any commercial success. Although their music differed significantly, as a whole,
Niemand, Kerkorrel and Kombuis constituted a formidable and divergent assault on the status
quo, a fact recognised by Kerkorrel:
I was intensely aware at the beginning of the movement that it would have to be a
collaboration of a range of diverse artists to survive against the power of the state
and censorship.30
The Voëlvry artists, along with other alternative Afrikaans bands like Joos Tonteldoos en die
Dwarstrekkers, Die Kêrels and Randy Rambo en die Rough Riders represented an extreme new
perspective in Afrikaans music. The latter’s 1990 album Die Saai Lewe (The boring life) was
banned in its entirety and not one song from the album could be broadcasted or distributed.
It was deemed so subversive that it was illegal to have the album in one’s possession, the only
Afrikaans album ever to achieve this status.31 Randy Rambo was the stage name of Die Beeld’s
music critic Theunis Engelbrecht, who strongly supported the Voëlvry artists.
Another factor to consider is that the Voëlvry artists mostly came from respectable middle-
class backgrounds – a fact that bears some resemblance to the artists connected to the social
movements of the 1960s in the US.32 This contrasted sharply with other movements, like punk
in Britain in 1976/77. Clearly distinguishable as an expression of working-class interest, punk
hit the establishment hard.33 Although the initial movement did not last very long, since it
immediately lost its legitimacy when it became part of the mainstream,34 it proved very influential
in establishing many offshoots like new wave, post-punk and ska. The South African punk scene
of the late 1970s and 80s, on the other hand, did not display such a clear class-consciousness. The
dynamics of South African punk also differed from Britain’s in various ways, just as the politics
of apartheid South Africa differed vastly from politics in Britain.35 Although there is a loose
connection between these punk bands and Voëlvry, mainly through James Phillips’s musical
past as part of bands like Corporal Punishment, Voëlvry’s music had more similarities with
rock music. Two decades prior to punk, rock music had a global impact, with varying different
responses and motivations. Journalists were the first to respond and to initiate discourse on
this impact, often commenting on rock music’s ability to serve as a vehicle for voices of dissent,
29 C. Leonard, “Johannes Kerkorrel: The wise fool who left the fray”, Mail & Guardian, 10 May 2013.
30 Johannes Kerkorrel, in Hopkins, Voëlvry, p. 231.
31 http://www.roekeloos.co.za/ritme/die-saai-lewe.html, accessed 06 March 2015.
33 S. Frith, “Rock and the Politics of Memory”, Social Text 9:10, (1984), p. 61.
34 Ibid.
35 For an in-depth analyses of the South African punk scene of this era, see the documentary directed by K. Jones and
D. Maas, Punk in Africa (Pelogrosso: Meerkat Media, 2012).
126 On Record
particularly among the youth. In South Africa, rock music attracted much the same kind of
response in the press,36 and over the next few decades journalists would become intimately
involved in the development of music movements, either as participants, or as commentators.
The role of journalists

Voëlvry’s highly subversive slant was quickly noticed by the Afrikaner left, who responded with
articles in publications like Vrye Weekblad, which became a sponsor of the tour.37 While the
more liberal press gave the tour regular coverage, virtually nothing was reported in Die Burger
until mid-May, when the Voëlvry artists were banned from performing on the Stellenbosch
University campus by the then Rector Mike de Vries. This led to a rare sit-in by more than 1
500 students, with some staff joining the protest.38 Whereas Die Matie (Stellenbosch University
student newspaper) reported the event as a protest in support of free speech, Die Burger focused
on a smaller march by students in support of the Rector.39 A review of the concert, held at an
alternative venue off-campus, was at least very favourable.40 Almost exactly a month before the
protest and subsequent concert, Die Matie ran a poll on music preferences among students
on campus. Interestingly, 40% did not listen to any Afrikaans music (which is reminiscent of
earlier polls in the 1970s among the Afrikaner youth), while 22% listened to it sporadically.
Among the remaining 38% that did listen to Afrikaans music, the most popular artists were
pop singers like Anneli van Rooyen, Rina Hugo, Carike Keuzenkamp and Gé Korsten, while a
small minority listened to David Kramer, Koos du Plessis and Jannie du Toit, who was part of
the Musiek-en-Liriek movement.41 Bles Bridges, possibly the most popular Afrikaans singer of
the 1980s, was very unpopular among students, with 72% despising him. Only 16% listened to
“alternative Afrikaans” music, with a further 40% who had never heard of it.42 This is significant,
given the size of the sit-in a month later. Although one campus poll does not necessarily stand
up to methodological scrutiny, it did bear some resemblance to polls done on other campuses.43
Ultimately, the more liberal Afrikaans publications had a much smaller readership than the
mainstream Afrikaans press. As with Musiek-en-Liriek, newspaper journalists were the first to
describe Voëlvry as an Afrikaans music movement. This tendency by print media to be the first
to recognise, identify and even create new music “movements” is a common and vital element in
commercial music industries. Music artists globally have long benefited by being associated with
the cutting edge of new music styles. Often, hype is created for an upcoming release and adds
to a product’s commercial possibilities. The efforts by sympathetic journalists at mainstream
dailies, like Theunis Engelbrecht at Die Beeld, did much to publicise the Voëlvry movement,
but did not – as was the case with Musiek-en-Liriek – give them access to the main channels of
distribution. This could have been one of the reasons Voëlvry remained a marginal group until
36 C. Hamm, “Rock ’n Roll in a Very Strange Society”, Popular Music 5:1 (1985), pp. 159-174.
37 Du Preez, foreword in Hopkins, Voëlvry, pp. 6-8.
38 P. Joubert, “Protes vir vrye keuse”, Die Matie, 11 May 1989.
39 “Talle Maties steun konsert-verbod”, Die Burger, 11 May 1989, p. 3.
40 E. Joubert, “J. Kerkorrel en sy Blues Band maak vriende”, Die Burger, 15 May 1989.
41 V. Brand and L. Eloff, “Afrikaans musiek onbekend by student”, Die Matie, 13 April 1989, p. 6.
42 Ibid.

after the tour. Koos Kombuis and Johannes Kerkorrel became relatively successful, but James
Phillips’s albums were commercial failures.44 At the other end of the musical spectrum, the
Afrikaans pop mainstream could not have been more different and the chasm quickly spilled
over into open animosity in the press.
“Music wars”
It was really with the unravelling of apartheid that the media began to question the efforts
of the different Afrikaner nationalist organisations to use light Afrikaans music as a political
tool. In this sense, the Voëlvry movement succeeded in exposing the banalities of mainstream
Afrikaans music. Their music provided a sharp contrast to the music sponsored by the FAK,
ATKV and SABC. This contrast was lyrical, musical and political. Hopkins pointed out that the
lekkerliedjies of the mainstream were politically motivated and claims to the contrary by those
who performed them were disingenuous. Even though this type of Afrikaans music remained
the most popular, by the late 1980s, the enthusiasm for the lekkerliedjie had dissipated enough
to open the door for more subversive artists.45 This polarisation made it very clear: mainstream
Afrikaans pop music was deliberately superficial and compliant with the ideologies of the
apartheid state, while the “alternative” Afrikaners provided Afrikaans music that for the first
time contained overt socio-political comment and criticism of Afrikanerdom. Many Afrikaner
youths discovered in these rebels a new legitimacy in Afrikaans music, something which had
been lost decades ago, specifically because of the influence of the Afrikaner cultural bosses.
Several articles in Insig and Die Vrye Weekblad juxtaposed the light Afrikaans music (given the
term “LAM” by music critic Theunis Engelbrecht – which can also be read as “Lamb”, or “Lame”)46
artists with the “alternatiewe” (alternative) Afrikaans music artists.47 Alternative Afrikaans
artists experienced intimidation by intelligence officers and the police, while light Afrikaans
artists enjoyed the support of the SABC on expensive TV programmes like Teletreffers, and in
conservative newspapers like Die Transvaler.48 When Anton Goosen sharply criticised the FAK’s
involvement in Afrikaans music during a television interview on Goeiemôre Suid-Afrika (Good
Morning South Africa), the SABC and SATV banned him for six months.49 Bles Bridges even
assaulted Goosen in 1990 after he alluded on national television to Bridges’s much-publicised
affair.50 Light Afrikaans music represented the establishment in all its banality. The FAK and

45 Ibid., p. 68.
46 T. Engelbrecht: “Babapap vir bleeksiele”, Beeld, 10 August 1988, in Arnold, “Pomporrels, plaasromans en popmusiek”,
Insig, December/ January 1990, p. 43.
47 See A. Arnold’s column “Boere-ritmes” in Insig, “Muurmusiek, potjiekos, Karoo-soul, techno-pop, en rou
underground op een plaat”, January 1989, pp. 33-34; “Veertien uur se rock by Houtstok”, May 1990, p. 37; “Kwêla
laat die mure val!” September 1990, p. 39; “Pomporrels, plaasromans en popmusiek”, December/January 1990/1991,
p. 43; “Om van te lag … of te huil: Afrikaanse plate plesiérig bekend gestel”, May 1991, p. 34; “Boem-boem, raai-
raai, en sedes waai: niks skort met Afrikaanse sangers se seksdrif al sing hul ook van blomme”, June 1991, p. 33;
“Worsmasjien van kits-emosies maal voort” Feb, 1992, p. 39. Also see H. van Staden, “Afrikaanse Musiek: Voëlvry
of op hok? Die bytjies, die blommetjies en big brother”, Vrye Weekblad, 6–12 March 1992, pp. 13-15; and A. Vinassa,
“Die boere het nie hul huiswerk gedoen nie”, Vrye Weekblad, 6–12 March 1992, pp. 17-18.
48 Van Staden, “Afrikaanse Musiek: Voëlvry of op hok?”, p. 14.
49 Ibid.
50 Interview with author, Gansbaai, 29 April 2013.
128 On Record
SABC sponsored music competitions, with the winning entries providing ample ammunition
for the argument that mainstream Afrikaans music had become utterly superficial. Nonsensical
lyrics proliferated:51
Come grab the feeling that wiggles and (moves?) in a new jacket. Come grab the
feeling that sounds and buzzes. Come grab it now, little friend, and you’re in, you’re
in. Come grab the joy that makes conversation flow, that makes for super hours.
Come grab the joy that shines and teases and plays in crazy ways and you’re in,
you’re in. For the little mouth, for the awake wild bull, for the grab it generation,
grab it quick and scream. Come grab the roar that makes your toes curl and sounds
over kilometres. Come grab the roar that fills evenings, loosen your tie and laces
and you’re in, you’re in.
In another example, Brendan Jury summed up a typical narrative of what he called “trite and
banal” Afrikaans pop songs:52
She looks deep into my eyes. She gives me another look. Then it looks as if she
looks as if I look different to her. My arm is around her shoulders. I say: I want to talk
to you. Tonight we must say goodbye. Tomorrow I’m a soldier. She says: Right, you
have your orders, go do your army thing. Go roll around in the dust and sweat.53
The FAK attempted to regain legitimacy among the Afrikaner youth by reworking popular
Afrikaans folk songs in a more modern idiom:
In 1985, Oom [Uncle] Dirkie de Villiers again reworked several popular songs for
the Tweede FAK-lekkersingliedjies [Second FAK nice singing songs]. The titles of the
songs speak for themselves. “Sproetjies”, “ta’ Mossie se sakkie-sakkie boeredans”
“Waterblommetjies”, “Jantjie kom huis toe”, “Die trein na Magersfontein”, “Kinders
van die wind”, “Kaalvoet in die reën”– again music for the broadest layer of the
population.54
As in 1976, Dirkie de Villiers was the FAK’s go-to arranger. Interestingly, most of the songs
mentioned here were composed by either Anton Goosen or Koos du Plessis, both connected to
Musiek-en-Liriek of only five and a half years earlier. These efforts by the FAK were ultimately
unsuccessful, and alternative Afrikaans musicians would play a larger role in giving Afrikaans
music a legitimate voice among the youth. Goosen and other Musiek-en-Liriek artists were
heavily criticised by the Voëlvry artists, and Dirkie de Villiers’s reworked versions of their
songs contributed to this divide. Max du Preez mentions that Goosen was criticised because
he believed the system could be changed from within, while Voëlvry wanted to destroy it all.55
51 Arnold, INSIG, June 1991, p. 33. Translated by author. The writer of the song is unknown and it is uncertain
whether it was ever recorded and released.
52 Jury, “Boys to Men”, p. 100, from the song “Omkeer” by Louise du Toit Smit, who came second in a songwriting
competition jointly hosted by the SABC and the ATKV. The lyrics can also be read as propaganda for military
service.
53 Hopkins, Voëlvry, p. 50, from the song “Omkeer”, by Louisa du Toit Smit. Translated by author.
54 A. le Roux, Handhaaf, April/May, 1988, p. 5. Translated by author.

While this statement clearly differentiates the two camps of alternative Afrikaans musicians,
which loosely combined to represent an alternative to the superficial pop mainstream, it is also
reminiscent of the intellectual critique posited by André Du Toit in Die sondes van die vaders.
Here, the legitimacy of in-group criticism of the Afrikaner establishment was questioned on the
basis that the whole system was morally corrupt and needed fundamental change.56 However, by
the time of Voëlvry and the first Houtstok concert the following year, Goosen had become much
more politically outspoken than he had been at the end of the 1970s.
The animosity between the FAK, its affiliated cultural and religious organisations, and the
alternative Afrikaans music artists was serious enough to prompt June Goodwin and Ben Schiff
to refer to it as “music wars”.57 The borders between both camps were well demarcated: The
FAK, SABC, Decibel record company, and artists such as Bles Bridges, Danie Botha and Innes
and Franna Benade on the one hand; and artists like Johannes Kerkorrel, Anton Goosen and
Koos Kombuis, and publications like Die Vrye Weekblad on the other. The first group (LAM)
represented much more than just a different music genre. They were portrayed as regime-
friendly, utterly superficial and totally out of sync with the reality of South African politics.
Furthermore, they were accused of actively and deliberately writing, producing, promoting
and broadcasting Afrikaans music of such low standards that it had badly damaged Afrikaner
culture. Not making a political statement became a political statement in itself during the state
of emergency of the 1980s, as can be seen in the following 1988 statement from Bles Bridges:
I don’t need to contaminate my nation’s brain with political information in my

songs. I want to sing about the pretty things. Sing about the positive things. Because
a positive nation is a nation that is productive, and is a nation that can mean
something to someone.58
LAM artists dominated the mainstream of Afrikaans music and were well connected with
influential conservatives in the media, the church and government, and used their influence to
intimidate their opponents. They sent transcripts of offensive lyrics to conservative newspapers
to incite public outcry against alternative Afrikaans artists. Anton Goosen noted that the offices
of the FAK, the Broederbond and Brigadiers were all in the same building.59 David Kramer
criticised mainstream Afrikaans music packaging on television a few years earlier in 1985 when
he expressed disgust at “… the cabaret-style artist in the Liza Minnelli aspiration mould …
concentrat(ing) on trying to produce semi-spectacular shows based on the American model
walking down 50 steps, sequins, glitter”.60 Liberal journalists were unflinching in their criticism
of LAM. In an article in Vrye Weekblad, journalist Hanneli van Staden provides the following
insights into how Afrikaans music could be “cured” of its anaemia:
56 A du Toit, Die sondes van die vaders (Cape Town: Rubicon Press, 1983).
57 J. Goodwin and B. Schiff, Heart of Whiteness: Afrikaners face black rule in the New South Africa (New York, Scribner,
1995), pp. 174-183.
58 L. Ross, Voëlvry: the Movie, Shifty Studios, DVD 2006.
59 Interview with author, Gansbaai, 29 April 2013.
60 “Kramer – the man no one (except) SATV can ignore”, The Friend, in M. Slabbert and D. de Villiers, David Kramer
’n Biografie (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2011), p. 197.
130 On Record
[T]he SABC can play a leading role, but for some questionable reasons they favour
only certain artists and companies – markedly Decibel. … [T]here is no hope
for organisations like the FAK and the ATKV. They are irrelevant in the transition
phase South Africa is in. Furthermore, they have done Afrikaans culture enough
damage by dumping it into a laager and treating it as if it was a terminal patient.The
monopoly of MFP and Decibel must end.61
Houtstok vs FAK
The animosity between the alternative Afrikaans press and their associated artists and the
Afrikaans pop mainstream culminated on 31 May 1990:
The occasion was dubbed Houtstok – Woodstock in Afrikaans – taking its

name and inspiration from the American rock festival that symbolized youthful
liberation in 1969. Houtstok offered the Afrikaners present a joyful repudiation of
their inherited image as a conservative people intolerant of racial differences and
resistant to progress.62
The festival was held on the Le Château estate outside Pretoria and was intended as an
alternative to the FAK’s Republic Day music festival held on the same day, not too far away at
the Voortrekker Monument.63 At the monument, the most sacred of Afrikaner sites, a different
crowd of Afrikaners gathered to celebrate 39 years of the South African republic. The FAK’s
festival was not without controversy. The organisers required the artists to mime to recordings
of their music to avoid sound problems when the concert was televised.64 This was apparently
no secret, as one audience member from Pretoria remarked:
“I want to look the singers in the eye. And it doesn’t matter that they don’t really,
really sing.The faces are there at least,” while her husband stated: “This is our Volk’s
people. I am here for Gé Korsten.65
The identification of Gé Korsten as part of the “volk’s people” resonates with the volkseie/
volksvreemde construct. The difference in audiences at the two events was as marked as the
different artists who performed. Johannes Kerkorrel did not perform at Houtstok since he was
touring Belgium and the Netherlands at the time, but also displayed a level of reluctance to
participate, for which he was heavily criticised by the festival organisers.66 Apart from personality
clashes, this also indicates that the alternative Afrikaans music movement was not hegemonic.
There is little doubt that Voëlvry served as the inspiration for this concert, but the resulting live
double album of the concert only features one song from a Voëlvry artist (Koos Kombuis’s “Ou
61 Van Staden, “Afrikaanse Musiek: Voëlvry of op hok?”, Vrye Weekblad, 6-12 March 1992, p. 15., translated from
original.
62 New York Times, 4 June 1990, qouted in S. Hofmeyr: Mense van my Asem (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2008), p. 121.
63 A. Arnold, “Veertien uur se rock by Houtstok”, Insig, May 1990, p. 37.
64 Ibid.
65 M. Ley, “Mimiekmusiek by die monument”, Die Burger, 2 June 1990, translated form original.
66 B. Hough, “Vir die ‘Orgel” sê mens nie ‘Sit dit af ’ nie!”, Rapport, 17 June 1990, p. 5.

Tannie Blues”), while the rest represent a much
wider array of alternative Afrikaans and English
artists.67
Somewhat surprisingly, one of the most popular

acts at Houtstok was Die Briels – with Tant (Aunt)
Sannie Briel performing with her two children for
the first time in decades.68 Sannie Briel’s presence
at the concert seems anomalous, since Houtstok
was a strictly “alternative” music festival that
featured artists representative of the liberal new
wave of Afrikaans music artists, with whom Die
Briels had no direct association. Yet when tant
Sannie, her son Frans and daughter Anita walked
onto the stage, a crowd of 20 000 kept chanting Houtstok live album (Gallo HOUT 1).
“Ouma Sannie, Ouma Sannie” (Grandma Sannie,
Grandma Sannie). Die Briels were no rockers and
at one stage even had the crowd singing along to
“How much is that doggy in the window”. They
did not even appreciate Koos Kombuis’s rude
language.69 Yet Johannes Kerkorrel, when asked
about his absence at the festival, did not portray
any regret other that the fact that he missed Die
Briels, of whom he apparently was a great fan.70
Sannie Briel was not even listed among the artists

listed to play Houtstok (Kerkorrel was) in an
article in Insig.71 Perhaps Die Briels were added
to the line-up as a caricature of the 1950s and
Houtstok live album tracklisting.
1960s although, at the height of their success, and
as mentioned before, Die Briels offered a rare, working-class alternative to the European-styled
operatic Afrikaans pop of singers like Gé Korsten. To the Houtstok crowd, Die Briels probably
represented a mixture of comic relief, a form of acceptable Africana, outcasts like themselves,
and perhaps also just a strange anomaly at such a concert that was received in good spirits. They
might have also played in on a type of nostalgia that stood free of the baggage of apartheid,
which was in stark contrast to the type of nostalgia invoked at the FAK concert that day. This
play of nostalgia is an important part of post-apartheid Afrikaans music which will be discussed
in chapter seven.
67 See Figure 19.

68 T. Engelbrecht, “Kranse dreun, maar Ouma Briel kom weer”, Die Burger, 2 June 1990.
69 Frans Briel, interviewed by Engelbrecht, “Kranse dreun, maar Ouma Briel kom weer”, Die Burger, 2 June 1990.
70 Hough, “Vir die ‘Orgel” sê mens nie ‘Sit dit af ’ nie!”, Rapport, 17 June 1990, p. 5, trans.
71 Arnold, “Veertien uur se rock by Houtstok”, Insig, May 1990, p. 37.
132 On Record
Houtstok was a risky venture at a time when militant right-wing Afrikaner organisations were
at their most dangerous. A disaster was averted when police defused two limpet mines placed
under the stage by right-wing Afrikaners.72 As Anton Goosen remembers, the security police
were also never far away at such shows:
It was still seriously going on with Houtstok. Now Houtstok was after the Voëlvry
thing. I mean Voëlvry had already by then picked up trouble, and if they had by now
added a lot of hype to it or not, there was trouble. There was definitely trouble.
And up to and including Houtstok, because Houtstok was a direct confrontation
between the new Afrikaner that feels like that, and the old one at the Voortrekker
Monument who is celebrating on the same day for Republic day [31 May 1990].
The FAK, backtracks, lollipops, uhm eating candyfloss, family fun and etc. Shiny
shoes, which you mustn’t forget. And we beat them. There were 22 000 people at
Houtstok and there were 16 000 people at theirs.73
Goosen could not have given a more succinct summary of the tensions between the new wave
of Afrikaans music and the old guard. On stage at the concert, he sang his song “Wit Kaffers
van Afrika” (White Kaffirs of Africa).74 The title of the song alone undermines so effectively the
racial and class principles on which Afrikaner society was based, that the message is wholly
unambiguous: a group of young Afrikaners have broken away – they now self-identify as
“African”/“other”.
Steve Hofmeyr, who would become one of the most popular Afrikaans singers of all time, played
at both the Houtstok concert and the FAK concert. However,Hofmeyr was accused of placating
both sides after he “married” Bles Bridges on the television program Debuut,as well as the fact
that the FAK dubbed him as “alternative” before a big concert in 1991. The latter strategy was a
deliberate ploy to gain legitimacy for the concert among a younger generation of Afrikaners, but
it only succeeded in placing Hofmeyr in the camp of the light Afrikaans singers75, something for
which he would become grateful. As he later explained:
… but later I was grateful that the Afrikaans light music world would come off
mostly unscathed from the institutionalised, politically correct threats and petty
attitudes76
Indeed, mainstream Afrikaans pop continued to sell well and continues to do so today,77 while
more alternative Afrikaans groups struggle to sell a fraction as many albums. Of course, as will
be discussed in the next chapter, the conservative attitudes of the Afrikaans mainstream carry
with them different significations and challenges in post-apartheid South Africa. Houtstok 2
was held in 1992 and again attracted a large crowd. Hofmeyr did not perform at this one, but he
did at that year’s FAK concert. Even though the post-apartheid years loom large in studies on
72 Anton Goosen, Gansbaai, 29 April 2013, confirmed by Peter Pearlson, sound engineer at the concert, Strand, 11
April 2014. See also T. Engelbrecht, Houtstok: Die verhaal agter die verhaal, (Melville: Musiek SA, 1990), p. 4.
73 Goosen, Gansbaai, 29 April 2013, translated.
74 Ibid., the song also appears on the live recording of the concert.
75 Arnold, “Kom gryp die gebrul wat jou tone laat krul”, Insig, July 1991, p. 34.
76 Hofmeyr, Mense van my asem, pp. 119-120, translated from original.
77 See chapter seven.

Afrikaner identity, from a music perspective, the tensions between censors, the FAK (and the
artists they supported) and the artists who challenged them indicate deep divides in Afrikaner
society towards the end of apartheid. Voëlvry and Houtstok represented the last phase of
political Afrikaans music that, although exclusively white, was aligned with the ideals of a new
South Africa. Post-apartheid political Afrikaans music almost invariably creates tension when
it criticises the government. As a privileged minority group with a difficult past, more liberal
Afrikaans artists like Fokofpolisiekar avoid political comment lest they be seen as racist, and
distance themselves from those artists who openly engage with race and politics, often with
political implications. This latter group – headed by Steve Hofmeyr – is often accused of hate-
speech which brings into question the acceptable limits of artistic freedom in a multi-cultural
society. Voëlvry’s South Africa was changing fast, and their criticism of Afrikaner society
welcomed (or at least shared) by the greater South African public. Their political antagonism
was a colourful voice amidst the unravelling of apartheid, but Afrikaner political resistance
more than twenty years after apartheid has a very different dynamic and meaning.
134 On Record

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Chapter Title: Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid

Book Title: On Record

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Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid 121

7 M. Du Preez, in Hopkins, Voëlvry, p. 6.

Arguably even more important than

10 Hopkins, Voëlvry, p. 81.

Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid 123

We wanted the same thing as freedom fighters – to be free. In that respect we

Laubscher’s deconstruction of Johannes Kerkorrel’s music on an identitary level offers an

21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_XekcXPBQs, accessed September 2014.

Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid 125

The role of journalists

Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid 127

44 Hopkins, Voëlvry, p. 214.

Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid 129

I don’t need to contaminate my nation’s brain with political information in my

The occasion was dubbed Houtstok – Woodstock in Afrikaans – taking its

Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid 131

Somewhat surprisingly, one of the most popular

Sannie Briel was not even listed among the artists

67 See Figure 19.

Alternative Afrikaans music towards the end of apartheid 133

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