Tuesday, February 15th 2011
News: U2
Bono: Violent Protest Songs Have Their Place
Bono, U2 frontman and international activist, has stepped in a bit of the old cow pie down in South Africa, where his band are setting up shop for a concert in Johannesburg. Controversy caught fire when he drew comparisons between sentiments expressed in an anti-Apartheid song and the Irish Republican songs he sang as a youth.
The liberation song he made reference to, Shoot The Boer, calls for the shooting of white farmers. It’s caused controversy in South Africa where Julius Malema, ANC Youth League president, is in legal battle with a white lobby group who want the song banned as hate speech. “Boer” is considered a derogatory term for white citizens, and the line has taken on a stark new gravity after the shocking murder of Eugene Terreblanche, the white separatist leader killed on his farm by two black employees in April 2010.
Speaking with South Africa’s Sunday Times, the singer was quoted as defending the song. Bono told the press: “I was a kid and I’d sing songs I remember my uncles singing, rebel songs about the early days of the Irish Republican Army. We sang this and it’s fair to say it’s folk music as this was the struggle of some people that sang it over some time.”
However, Bono stressed the need for understanding context when it came to such sensitive issues, adding, “Would you want to sing that in a certain community? It’s pretty dumb. Yet it’s about where and when you sing those songs. There’s a rule for that kind of music.”
AfriForum’s legal representative Willie Spies, Malema’s opposition in court, responded: “It’s good practice for any visitor not to pass comment on the affairs of a foreign country in their first week there.”
Singing songs is OK, killing people is not. People need to figure this out.
so simple, yet people can’t figure it out.
The root of your writing whilst sounding agreeable originally, did not really work well with me after some time. Somewhere throughout the paragraphs you managed to make me a believer but only for a while. I nevertheless have a problem with your jumps in assumptions and one would do well to help fill in those gaps. When you can accomplish that, I would certainly end up being fascinated.