‘Simunye,We are not one’: Ethnicity,Difference and the Hip-Hoppers of Cape Town

1 I prefer to use the term hip-hopper as opposed to rapper since most of my informants are skilled in all aspects of hip-hop.

2 The term ‘coloured’ is controversial due to its association with apartheid. I reject the term, but use it here to position a particular racial group. I use the term ‘black’ as a historical and cultural category.

3 Under the leadership of Steve Biko, the Students’ Association of Africa (SASO) emerged in 1968 as an alternative to the white liberal student organisation, the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). In the ideology of black consciousness, the colour ‘black’ referred to all oppressed people: Africans, coloureds and Indian-descended people. Although black consciousness covered a number of different tendencies, its main focus was a rejection of white domination in all its forms.

4 For centuries prior to and after the first European colonialists had settled in Cape Town in the seventeenth century, all the indigenous people there were Khoi San. Centuries of sexual relations between the settlers, their slaves and indigenous peoples resulted in a group of people that the apartheid government labelled ‘coloured’. Black people started migrating from other parts of South Africa to Cape Town at a much later stage. The result is that until the early 1990s, most of the people in Cape Town were either coloured or white.

5 The influx of people from rural towns added to the rapid growth of townships and informal settlements on the Cape Flats.

6 Jeffrey Louis Decker , ‘The state of rap: time and place in hip-hop nationalism’, in Andrew Ross and Tricia Rose (eds), Microphone Fiends: youth music and youth culture (London, Routledge, 1994), pp. 99–121; Clarence Lusane, ‘Rap, race and politics’, Race & Class (Vol. 35, no. 1, 1993), pp. 41–56.

7 Adam Haupt , ‘Stifled noise in the South African music box: Prophets of Da City and the struggle for a public space’, South African Theatre Journal (Vol. 10, no. 2, 1996), pp. 51–61.

8 Martin Stokes (ed.), Ethnicity, Identity and Music (Providence, RI, Berg, 1994), p. 6-6.

9 Grave Diggers’ Productions, Slow Death, cassette (Cape Town, Independent).

10 Khayelitsha is a sub-economic township for black people situated far from the city centre.

11 Ashley Montague , Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: the fallacy of race (California, Altamira, 1997), p. 82-82.

12 Grave Diggers’ Productions, Fragmentation, cassette (Cape Town, Independent).

13 James Clifford , ‘Diasporas’, Cultural Anthropology (Vol. 9, no. 3, 1994), pp. 302–338.

14 Decker, ‘The state of rap’, op. cit., p. 104.

15 Black Noise , ‘Who taught you to hate yourself’, Rebirth, cd (Cape Town, Making Music Productions, 1995).

16 POC , ‘Ons Stem (Our Call)’, Boom Style, cd (Cape Town, Polygram, 1997).

17 Personal letter.

18 The Black Noise song, ‘So-called coloured folks’, expresses the dual identities which many coloured people experience.

19 Johanna Wyn and Rob White , Rethinking Youth (London, Sage, 1997), p. 26-26.

20 Robert Thornton , ‘The potentials of boundaries in South Africa: steps towards a theory of the social edge’, in Richard Werbner and Terence Ranger (eds), Postcolonial Identities in Africa (London, Zed Books, 1996), p. 142-142.

21 Paul Gilroy , There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: the cultural politics of race and nation (London, Hutchinson, 1987), p. 156-156.

22 Many South Africans of Indian descent call themselves the ‘sandwich filler’. Being neither black nor white, they feel excluded from the previous and present domains of political power.