Go Dad!

A Discussion on Johnny Clegg and Ethnographic

Show Business

Assignment 2
CAS4004
Philip Broster
BRSPHI002

It all started during a concert I went to with my family, a Johnny Clegg concert. It was a
fantastic show, the music the vibe I was really enjoying myself. People around me
exclaimed at how much he knew about the Zulus, there was plenty of reverence offered
to what he said about different cultural practices, a certain solemnity about how much he
knew. It was clear that a lot of learning was taking place, except for those people who had
been to a Johnny Clegg concert before and so knew something about Zulu people. I was
moved by what he was saying, I took it in, found it fascinating, not frightening like the
time we went to the Zulu Kingdom tourist centre and the chief tried to buy my sister for
ten cows. Something happened however which got me thinking. Johnny began to dance,
he danced well, I think, at least he said that this was the way Zulu men dance, chest
puffed out like an ox or buffalo, some animal anyway. He had on stage with him a troupe
(or is that troop) of authentic Zulu dancers, from Zululand. He told the audience that
this was the first time that this dance group had appeared before such a large crowd and
that they were shy and we should encourage them, which we did by shouting and
whistling, obviously. They danced and kicked for the audience, and I felt satisfied that
Johnny had got it right, in fact he might even have taught them, he did have a PhD, in
Anthropology after all.

It was at this moment when my love affair with all things Johnny began to turn for the
worse. I became aware that I was standing amongst a group of family and friends who all
began to try and simulate the intricate, meaningful dance steps they were witnessing on
stage. What did this then involve? Well it was no Johnny Clegg; it didnt even look like
his dancers. It was more like a full bodied dry heave set to music, limbs flailing, arms

akimbo, feet kicking up dust. Go Dad!! My brother shouted, after which I think my
father tore something.

I looked beyond our group of dancers and noted to my increasing horror that the entire
audience was doing the same thing, thousands of white Capetonians trying desperately to
kick themselves in the face. It dawned on me that this was actually why they had come,
for a moment of Africaness, true authentic Africaness where they could show each other
and themselves that they were of this continent, that they loved it, that their souls
somehow resonated with the beat of Johnnys drum and guitar and step. Here in
Kirstenbosch with our expensive tickets, security, BMWs being guarded we could safely
experience Africa!

This was not the last time I experienced this. At my sisters wedding the DJ played Johnny
Cleggs track Impi resulting in much the same amount of kicks and gesticulating as
before. Johnny wasnt even there this time, but we were so rooted in Africa, it was so
much a part of us that we could summon up the Zulu dance steps as if it were second
nature. Again I was horrified and did not enjoy what I saw, firstly because it just looked
like they were all injured in some way. However there was something else that troubled
me, there was a kind of mockery taking place, almost a derision of something they knew
very little about yet had claimed for themselves as their own to use. It left me unsettled
and uncomfortable. Had they claimed it because Johnny had offered it to them? Was it
now ok to abuse what they had claimed? With my wedding occurring the following

February I needed to make a decision as to whether I wanted Johnny at my wedding. I

didnt, but I needed a good reason.

It seems to me that Johnny Clegg has become for a section of white South Africa a
chance to safely venture into the realm of the noble savage. It has progressed further than
merely a tourists passing interest into a cultural aspect of a group of people. Johnny is
now telling us the story and so the ear with which it is listened is different. Johnny gives
us explanations, it is because he allows us in that we go and when we are there we take,
for our own purposes, manifested in the mimicry of the Zulu dance.

This is not new and I feel confident that I can trace this type of behaviour back to what is
known as Ethnological show business or the displaying of foreign peoples for
commercial and/or educational purposes (Lindfors 1999:vii). This form of theatre began
after Europeans began setting out around the globe, conquering and plundering. Lindfors
writes about Eskimo families being exhibited in Bristol as early as 1501. These
biological curiosities continued for centuries and while for some it was meant to be
about authentic representation of the uncivilised, for others it was an opportunity to
display the unusual freakish side of the inhabitants of far off lands. By the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries these ethnographic shows were largely African in their configuration,
not always necessarily their origin (Lindfors 1999). Such was the fascination, obsession
with Africa that many shows under the guise of being African were in actual fact
performed by non-Africans, having been recruited to behave as Africans, a kind of
staged authenticity. These shows exaggerated what was truth in order to increase sales

and satisfy an increasingly curious and gullible public. Some performances were
complete fabrications and continued to allow for beliefs regarding the inferiority of
Africans to be perpetuated. The shows were typified by a common sense understanding
that the Africans brought to be viewed were in actual fact more animal than human. In
essence is was a continual reinforcement, of what was already thought and allowed for
the continual reassurance that Europe was actually the seat of civilisation.

It highlights in particular one of the fundamental flaws with what is known as the contact
theory. This basically postulates that the longer peoples of different social groups are
brought together, positive change (defined here as prejudice reduction) is likely
(Schneider 1976). Contact enables people to discover commonalities and the mere
exposure to new and different things for extended periods of time leads them to be liked
or welcomed. However it has been shown through some studies that the more one comes
in contact with the other, the more prejudiced one becomes, and the assumption that
contact always lessens conflicts and stresses between ethnic groups seems naive. As
Lindfors writes; Ethnological show business thus promoted and perpetuated racism,
pushing whites and blacks further apart by placing them in closer proximity. Africans
were put on stage in order to distance them from the rest of humanity (Lindfors
1999:xii). Contact theory failed here because the shows were constructed as reality but
were in actual fact to dehumanise the star. Audiences never met, saw the truth, the
original, but rather what the show masters wanted them to see. They went as far as
displaying poster on the show explaining what the audience will see and exactly how to
interpret what they see (Strother 1999). The power lay in the hands of the show master

and they directed the thoughts of the audience. It is claimed that this might also have
been done in response to a real fear that the artists and their show would not speak for
themselves, that the obvious barbarity would not be so obvious, so theyd better tell the
audience so (Strother 1999). This process of normalisation merely strengthens the
discourse around the other.

No better example of the abuse of the ethnographic show was our very own Sarah
Baartman whose body experienced all types of exploitation, from the so-called freak
show she soon became the perfect type of Hottentot. The authentic Hottentot and she
was viewed and used as a sort of educational tool, to see her is see the Hottentot, the
innocence, the nearly animal. Throughout and still, Sarahs voice is silent. Even when
some good Christian men seek to free her they speak for her, filled with assumptions and
assertions (Strother 1999).

You might be asking yourself what relevance this has today in our modern world where
everyone respects different cultures, that these sorts of demeaning shows stopped at the
beginning of the century. They did not and they continue just in different forms. Seeing as
I am looking at choices I need to make for my wedding I thought I might keep things in
the family a bit longer. My fathers aunt, Joan Broster, wrote a series of books and coffee
table hard covers on various aspects of the Xhosa peoples of South Africa. In her first
book, Red Blanket Valley, she aims to convey to those who know little of the area, a
description of the peoples the character, atmosphere, and background of this beautiful
and much loved territory (Broster, 1967: vi). The book is an eye-witness account by a

woman who moved to an isolated trading station in the Transkei Bantustan with her
husband, and how they came to know and understand the peoples they came in contact
with (Broster, 1967: vi).

She is telling what we will see and how we must interpret it.

There is still a strong sense that the culture she is attempting to understand and describe is
one that could and should develop further, all these people are capable of becoming
useful and progressive citizens (Broster, 1967:3). This theme of a people who are
resisting natural or progressive change around them is common in her opening
passages and she refers often to the communities inability to understand the need for
increased civility, not only of religious beliefs but a change in all they know and believe
if we wish these primitive people to become an integral part of our nation then
agricultural, educational, social and economic reforms are of the utmost urgency
(Broster, 1967:6).

She maintains the discourse of European normativity and African barbarism.

Broster, in her attempt to unravel the mysteries of Xhosa beadwork, is seemingly

unaware that her investigation could very well be a useless task, in Brosters work there
is a persistence that does not listen to the voice of the studied.
Why do you wear this necklace? slowly she says, Mandithi (let me say) a
long pause and I encourage her to continue, and finally she answers, Let me say
that I like to wear this necklace. I say, Yes, I like it too, but why do you wear it?

and straight away she answers, Why do you want to know? I say Because I
want to learn about the meanings of the beads. Her fingers fly to her lips and she
says Tyho! Tyho! Tyho! Lomfazi! (Goodness me, this woman!)
And the meaning?
Mandithi, another pause while I wait expectantly, Ayithethi nto. (It tells
nothing) (Broster 1967:19).

She fabricates what is not there so that it still resonates with her perception of the other.

OK, so it happened in the sixties, but that was along time ago, what has this to do with
Johnny Clegg and my wedding? His shows and his music are ethnographic show
business. It is precisely the fact that once again we rely on a European person to tell us
what we will see and how we should interpret that makes it troublesome. Do I maintain
that Johnny is to blame, that he is the same as the ethnographic show business masters of
before? No, I am comfortable that Johnny Clegg has a genuine affinity and respect for the
people he works with but I have trouble in the way it is used by large parts of his
audiences. The lessons he gives on Zulu culture and dance are, in my opinion, only
respected because he tells us. If a black Zulu person had to say the same things, I believe
the reactions, beliefs would be different. Johnny gives us permission to once again laugh
at the somewhat bizarre practices of the other, to wonder at the differences of these
peoples. We might listen but we also abuse. The comical kicking in the air of every able
bodied person at the sound of any Johnny Clegg tune is never done out of respect, never
with grace, it is a show, we do for ourselves so that we feel comfortable staying at the
head of the table.

I dont want Johnny at my wedding

References:

1. Broster, J (1967). Red Blanket Valley Juta

2. Lindfor, B (1999). Introduction and Charles Dickens and the Zulus. In
Lindfors, B (ed.) Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business.
Bloomington & Cape Town. IUP pp 62-80
3. Schneider, D. (1976). Social Psychology Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
4. Strother, Z (1999). Display and the Body Hottentot. In Lindfors, B (ed.)
Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business. Bloomington & Cape
Town. IUP pp 1-61