This was my last guest appearance on the national broadcasting channel way back in 2010. The radio DJ, Eric Alan, sadly passed away in 2022. On this particular day I decided to record the interview before departing for Beach Road Studios in Seapoint, Cape Town. The interview had been cancelled for 2 weeks in succession prior, due to late night soccer taking a preference to Eric’s show, ‘Jazz Rendezvous’. The day before the interview Eric called me at my home to ‘confess’ the real reason for the previous cancellations — the South African Broadcasting Corporation had developed a problem with regard to me appearing as a guest in their studios. He said they claimed I was not an African jazz musician and therefore not eligible to appear. Eric said he went online, looked up the definition of African jazz and read it out loud to them: “Jazz from the continent of Africa”. He explained that seeing as I had lived in South Africa all my life, I was an African jazz musician. They eventually agreed to me appearing as a guest on the show but said Eric was not allowed to play my music to listeners on air. Eric continued to argue on my behalf, stating that the show was all about African jazz musicians and their music—what was the point of having me on the show if he was disallowed from playing my album? The debate raged on for 2 weeks and the studio eventually reluctantly agreed to have me as a guest on condition that I answer some political questions in the interview that pertain to recent adjustments of labour law in South Africa and how it affects musicians. If I agreed, Eric would have permission to play some of my material.
By this stage the interview is fairly strained and lacking in spontaneity for both Eric and I. Looking back, I should have told them to shove it (in an appropriate place) but part of me was slightly shocked in disbelief — imagine not being eligible for an interview in the country you’ve lived in all your life as a fully fledged citizen? The pettiness and silliness of it was simply mind-boggling? I knew exactly how people in countries, who’ve been “sidelined” by their government’s society-shaping policies, felt.
Though this was many years ago, similar type events are still taking place in South Africa to remove whites from positions of visible, public leadership. It’s malicious, deliberate and designed to reduce white influence in corporations and white population numbers in South Africa. Of great concern are young school-leavers unable to find work.
Around the same period of that year my application to perform at a major music festival in Cape Town was rejected, but its rejection was not a problem to me (previous applications had been rejected as well). The manner it was rejected made matters plainly obvious as to the intent of the organizers. When I present my application in an envelope to the interviewer, she immediately begins asking me rhetorical questions: “Do you think you’re better than the musicians playing at the festival? Don’t you think there’s lots of musicians out there (pointing to the street) that would like to play at the festival?” She flings the application across the room on to a table and ends the interview. I walk out of the room, this time not surprised or shocked, given my experience at the broadcaster, but a few seconds later I return to demand my application (the envelope contained some valuable promotional items that I wasn’t going to waste on her or her organization).
As I’m walking down the street, I start thinking about recent events. The two recent bad experiences could easily be written off as just coincidence. I could keep applying to other events and deal with as many doors being shut in my face as was necessary. After all, as a gigging musician I was used to people saying “no” to the possibility of me playing/performing at their venue —they’re not obliged to comply; it’s part of the way things worked.
But for approximately a year, the supplier of my physical CDs kept telling me tales of white suppliers being refused meetings with major retail outlets, making it impossible for me to get my albums into stores. I had served my time from the mid 90s as a musician in areas of Cape Town, where most white people did not tread, back then — Khayelitsha, Manenberg, Guguletu and parts of the Cape Flats wherever gigs took me, to whomever I had to play with, to obtain my experience as musician. (A fellow musician back then had an ‘excellent’ name suggestion for our band — “Robert and the Darkies”. He’d always suggest it and I’d just shake my head and laugh)— I was not the problem here. As I’m walking down that street, I suddenly come to a realization — it’s time to abandon the South African music business as it’s severely plagued and compromised with bigotry and prejudice.
In 2013 Eric Alan left Radio 2000 to start his own internet-based channel, All Jazz Radio, that focused on a more international audience of jazz musicians and listeners. Many more similar political problems at Radio 2000 came his way from the time after my interview. I went on to record and produce my 4 hours of international-sounding smooth jazz including music of other genres. To this day I don’t compose African jazz music. We both felt the need to be part of a larger community of international music and musicians, both of us had no interest in ethnicity as a qualifying factor for musical talent and we both believed politics had no place in the language of music — he as a DJ and I as a musician. The establishment in South Africa had become obsessed and preoccupied with ethnicity, instead of focusing on people already present. Discrimination against whites is still just as afflicting in South Africa today as it was back then.
Julius Malema testifies that he may call for slaughtering of whites in the future.