Songs of Africa

Lestie Hughes, SA Music Teacher Extraordinaire

We are VERY fortunate to have Lestie Hughes as our South African music professor.  She has coaxed us to play the marimbas and to learn several Nguni songs.  We even have a recording of us singing one.  Called Shosholoza, this song is about the train that took men away from their families to go to work at mines, farms, or cities - often for months at a time.  Shosholoza is the sound that the train made as it puffed away.  (Remember there is not a music major among us, but we are not too shabby.)

CSBSJU students and Connie singing Shosholoza

Though billed as a music class, Lestie uses music to teach us about history, several sub-cultures (for example, Nguni, Afrikaans, hip-hop) and the "small" things that made a huge difference as this country moved to become a democracy in 1994.

Yesterday, her class covered the South African National Anthem.  We learned that the national anthem is actually an amalgamation of two separate songs with very different histories, although interestingly, both started out as hymns.

The first song, Nkosi Sikelel 'iAfrika, was written by a Methodist school teacher in 1897, and asks God to protect Africa.  In 1927 additional verses were added by Solomon Mqhayi, a poet and a founding member of the African National Congress (ANC).  The verses ask God to "bless all of Africa's children and end all conflict."  A popular church hymn, it became an unofficial national anthem of the oppressed.  It was often sung as an act of defiance at political meetings against Apartheid.  Singing it was banned by the government.   The second song, Die Stem van Suid Afrika, was a poem written in1918 in Afrikaans, and set to music by Rev. deVilliers in 1921.  Die Stem was the national anthem of Apartheid South Africa.

When Nelson Mandela became the first President of the fledgling democracy, he was urged to make Nkosi the national anthem.  Instead, he issued a proclamation on April 20, 1994, that both would be combined into a new national anthem to show that the "new" South Africa was for all its people.

In class, we learned to sing it - and it has stanzas sung in four of the country's 11 official languages: Xhosa, Sesotho, Afrikaans, and English.  I don't have a recording of us singing the anthem, but here's a Youtube version.  See if you can tell when it switches from Nkosi to Die Stem.  (Hint:  It changes key.)
South African National Anthem