Creating the New South African Anthem

This episode is brought to you by Lloyds Business and Cercial Banking. One of the great things about finance is that it may result in you having to pay tax. and this was a constant grumble in Anglo Saxon, England, which was the most heavily taxed countryry in the whole of Christendom. And just when the Anglo Saxons thought it couldn't get any worse, they got conquered by King Canute and Canute imposed a tax rate that was effectively one hundred cent Yeah, well that was one very big change, Tom, but another tax change is upon us And this is the advent of making tax digital for income tax. And if you're at all concerned about it, this is where Looyd's come in because they are here to help make that change much simpler for you with a useful HMRC recognized accounting tool that will help you stay in line with all the making tax digital requirements. And the brilliant thing about this is that it is free for Lloyd's business account customers So when it is time to digitize your income tax Bank on Lloyds. search Lloyd's business accounts to find out more This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a fifty page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it Ready to make anything online makes sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check Response is set upp required compatibility and availability varies eighteen plus So Hello everybody. So those were two opening verses of the South African National Ansome and cozy Cielle I Africa, which was sung by the Imilunji Kantu choral Society at the Rugby World Cup final of nineteen ninety five. So I remember very vividly watching that final, a great match, incredibly tense, very exciting So the match was held in Johannesburg at Ellis Park, the Totemic stadium of the Springbos, South Africa, and they were playing the All Blacks or New Zealand. Now the All Blacks were overwhelming favorites. They were and are The dominant national team in any sport, not just rugby The all Blacks had steam rolled their way through the tournament They kicked off, of course, with the hacker, with their Mai dance, which intimidates their opponents. They had in Joon Al Lomu, the star of the tournament probablyroably the most intimidating rugby player compared to his peers who has ever existed. L me this absolute man mountain so every anyone who remembers the Allbacks playaying England in the semifinal will remember him absolutely crunching his way through the England defense to score tri after try crushing the undernderwood brothers underfoot He's called four triries and he's this massive massive presence, isn't? Tom in the tunnel as the two teams are waiting to go into the pitch and basically the eyes of the sporting world are not on the spring boooks, even though they're the hosts, they're on the All Backs and everybody expects the All Backs to win. Yes, and just to explain for people who have no idea about rugby or what it involves quote from John Carlin, who wrote an entire book Playing the Eemy About this nineteen ninety five final. He describes rugby as being like a giant chess match played at speed with great violence And the reason that Lomo is widely regarded as the greatest rugby player of all time is that he's not only huge, he's also very, very fast. And so you combine those and it makes him an absolutely terrifying prospect. And so Dominiic, as you said, when they're waiting to go out in the tunnel before the match starts, for South Africans, the Springbockx cannot take their eyes off him. and to quote Joel Stransky, who was the Springbk fly half, which for American listeners is kind of vaguely the quarterback Yeah the Fly half controls the game. Yeah, basically. They didict take the pace of the game. Strancey said, you know, he couldn't take his eyes off Lomu. He looked like a mountain O that we had to climb the event Dominic South Africa did climb that mountain becausecause the nineteen ninety five rugby World Cup final turns out to be one of the great sporting upsets of all time. And the sprint box win in extra time by the skin of their teeth And it's Stransky who scores all their points. Very unusual, I gather. Yeah rugby. This doesn't often happen. And the measure of Stransky's impact is that he gets to be played by Clint Eastwood's son Scott in this film that was made in two thousand eight in Victus by Clint Eastwward himself. So listeners by this point, may be wondering two things Firstly, what on earth is Clint Eastood doing Making a film about a rugby match doesn't seem an obvious kind of thing for him to be doing And secondly, why is a series that is marking the Football World Cup? going on about a World Cup in a completely different sport And the reason for this is that The nineteen ninety five Rugby World Cup final was historic for reasons that transcended sport and The singing of the National anthem The South African National Anthem by the spring boox at the start of this Rugby World Cup final is a crucial, crucial part of what makes the match historic So before we go into the details of the anthem and why it matters so much to this extraordinary match First of all Just to explain the significance of rugby in South Africa It is introduced obviously by the British who colonize South Africa. But it evolves to become preeminently the sport of another white people in South Africa And these are the Africanas people who over the course of the twentieth century had transformed their country into a pariah state cut off from the rest of the world by a whole kind of array of business boycottts Cultural boycotts, international boycotts and sporting boycotts. And the sporting boycotts matter enormously because rugby is one of the absolute symbols of Africanadom and of Africana identity. I mean, sport generally, but rugby in particular. So what have the Africanas done? Who are they? Why have they become so globally notorious? Why does no one want to play them at rugby or eat their oranges or whatever So listeners who feel We haven't had nearly enough Dutch history. on this series so far, We'll be delighted to learn that the Africanas were originally Dutch Calvinists Plus a few Huguots from France, or Protestants from France. Calvin always shows up at World Cups on the rest of history, doesn't he always does In the seventeenth century, the Dutch and French Protestants begun settling the cpe southernmost point of Africa. But they didn't view themselves as colonists so much as chosen people who had been brought into a promised land people will remember from the episode we did on the Dutch Republic that this was a crucial part of how the Dutch rebels saw themselves as a chosen people on the model of the Israelites who were led out of Egypt by Moses. And of course, just as the Israelites end up being led into Canaan. conquering the Canaanites and taking it and turning it into Israel So do the Africanas see Africa in a similar manner. It is a land that has been given to them by God and the fact that there are people already living there that's all part of God's plan. Yeah. And they went on a great trek, didn't they, rather like Exodus, So the Vor Trek. And the trek becomes part of their mythology, the Trek to the prromised land. Well, they do this, not because they're getting away from Black Africans, but because they're getting away from this second wave of white colonial invaders who are, of course, the British and they end up absorbing the whole of South Africa, the Africaners included into their empire Even though the Africaners, as you say, they go deep into the interior, the British follow them and they find that there are kind of diamonds and things. So obviously the British areet let the Africanas have them So The Africanans find themselves part of the British Empire. they don't like it. They fight a war, another name by which they're known is the Brs. So this is what the Burr Wars are all about But all the while Conservative Africanas They never doubt that God's plan is still working itself out, that they are bound by a covenant to God. that the British Empire will end up collapsing. And so the Africanas buyied their time. and sure enough, in due course by nineteen forty eight The sun is setting on the British Empire Government dominated by these Africana Cervatives gets elected to power. and the voters at this point are only white. So Black Africans do not have the vote. And this government that gets elected in nineteen forty eight, itss stated ambition is to solidify the Afrkana' sense of themselves as a chosen people into an entire political program And what does this mean in practice? It means instituting a policy of what they call separateness, which in Africaans is apartheid And so white rule is enshrined as the expression of God's will The Africanas obviously are not instituting apartheid because they think it's wicked or evil They think that it is expressive of God's purpose However, the practical consequences of this is to enshrine Racial segregation as the animating principle of the entire South African So whether it is buying a house, or falling in love Oh Sitting or not sitting bench in a park Oh Get an education. So pretty much every aspect of daily life in South Africa. The opportunities that you have are dependent on the color of your skin. is racist to the very kind of depths of its marrow. and to give people a sense, by the way The population of South Africa at this point in the nineteen forties is about To thirads The white population is about a fifth thenen there's what's called a colored population, which was mixed race and labourers from India who had been brought in. So basically you've got twenty percent of the population who are bas governing the lives of the other eighty percent. Yes. and the twenty percent who are white U Eshrined as the masters And the Black population in particular are essentially a kind of a servant class, a heot class. Yes. And they are denied educational opportunities that would enable them to combat this. This is all part of kind of the plan And the role that rugby plays in this, so John Carlin in his book, points out that rugby becomes the Africana sport park excellence It serves as a perfect metaphor. for the brutality that is inherent in apartheid. So to quote him. Successive South African national teams had built up a reputation during the twentieth century as the most bruisingly physical rugby players in the world. So in other words, they essentially kind of trample down anyone in their path and shoulder them out of the way. I mean even now they're the most physical of all teams byy far. And you can see why, therefore, to Black South Africans becomes to seem symbolic. of apartheid and the kind of the very distinctive green jersey of the Spring boox, the South African National teeam becomes one of the defining emblems of the apartheid system that the Black South Africans are kind of groaning under.. And this is why anti apartheid campaigners who are emerging over the course of the fifties, sixties, seventies, into the eighties are very, very keen to see South Africa banned from all international sport, but particularly from rugby because they know, as you kind of implied, that is the ban that will hurt and upset the Africanas the most And it's not until nineteen eighty one that a full The boycott of the Spring Box is successfully instituted But it is brought in And this means that in nineteen eighty seven, when the first Rugby World Cup is held in Australia and New Zealand, South Africa are not invited. They are not present So two in nineteen ninety one when the second World Cup is held in England because at that point apartheid is still holding But then in nineteen ninety five, South Africa were not just participants, but the hosts. So obviously something very dramatic has happened, some radical change in the makeu upp of the South African government Constitution has occurred Basically that change. process beginning in nineteen ninety of the dismantling of the apartheid regime and a consigning of the entire doctrine of white supremacy to the ideological scrap heap. And it's a massive, massive story. You and I lived through it. Yeah, peopleople who haven't may be startled to learn that there was a government so profoundly racist And now it's kind of completely collapsed And numerous factors contribute to the process of this collapse, the collapse of apartheid. So chiefly There come to be massive black resistance movements There are campaigns of mass civil disobedience. By the late nineteen eighties, going into the nineteen nineties, this essentially is making South Africa pretty ungovernable We've talked about the sporting boycotts, but I mean it's I think the economic sanctions kind of cripple the South African economy not immediately, but it's a kind of slowly deflating puncture South African business classes can feel the life kind of whistling out of the economy. Yeah. And I think the cultural sanctions actually are massively important as well because they create this sense of isolation, a sense that the rest of the world hates you. Remember that song in the bit satical song in the nineteen eighties? I've never met a nice South African. mean There was a sense that South Africa, I think was having been a sort of promis land for immigrants in their white imagination in the twentieth century. Mr. Thatcher's son Yeah, Tony Greg. list of people. Yeah. It becomes such a pariah that that cannot help but have a corrosive effect on Africana's sense of self worth, which goes to your next point, Tom, which is about there. They lose self confidence. Yeah, exactly. And they lose moral self confidence. And I wrote about this in Dominion. I was amazed the degree to which kind of theological anxieties about whether apartheid was part of God's plan actually played a crucial role in deflating the self confidence of the apartheid regime because So many leading members of the South African government were very devout Christians. And they started to worry that actually apartheid was, as the rest of the world was saying, a kind of mortal sin know, basically they It all kind of you know, theologically deflated as well as economically and deflated in terms of law and order But even so, they still might have decided to hold on. I mean, they're a massive minority. They have been suppressing majority for decades and decades and decades, they must be nervous about what their fate might be if they give up power so I think that E with everything that is going wrong for them They might still have tried to maintain apartheid Had it not been for the fact that there existed a black leader with whom The leaders of the Apartheid regime could contemplate business, and this black leader is, of course, one of the most famous political figures of the late twentieth century, and that is Nelson Mandela, by far the most formidable, the most celebrated of all the revolutionaries that the campaign against apartheid throws up in South Africa, a member of an OSA speaking royal family He becomes the deputy president of the African National Congress and the African National Congress, the ANC is the leading organization in the struggle against white rule, and Mandela founds the spear of the nation, which is in effect the armed wing of the ANC. And in his kind of career as the leader of the Sar of the nation, he became famous for his ability to evade attempts to arrest him and he becomes fated in the world's press as the black Pimoneel So he finally arrested in nineteen sixty two, probably as a result of a tip off from the CIA. He was convicted of criminal sabotage in nineteen sixty four and he gets sentenced to life imprisonment. Gives a great speech at his trial, really moving rousing speech. Yeah. And so when he goes into prison, He is globally accepted as not just the kind of political but the moral leader of the campaign against apartheid. And perhaps because of that initially, he's kept in very brutal conditions. So he's kept in a tiny cell He has to wash in icy cold sea water. He's put to hard labor in a stone quarry And the glare of the sun in the quarry is so bright that it permanently damages his eyesight Sos very tough conditions And throughout this period, he never renouncedces violence. In nineteen eighty five, the South African government say, lookook, we'll let you go free, if you will renounce violence. And he retorts only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts. He ends up being kept in prison for twenty seven years And over the course of those years, he reflects on the limitations of violence And this, I think is in large part because of the spiritual the ideological wellsprings that he's drawing on. So he'd been raised a Methodist His faith is discreet, but committed, I think. in prison. He very rarely misses a service. He's reading the Bible all the time And he takes seriously what he reads in the gospels. So the kind of incredibly subversive words of Jesus in the gospels, loveve your enemies and pray for those who persecute you And when at last on the eleventh of february nineteen ninety, he is freed from prison He's seventy one Amazingly, he returns to the world determined not just to reclaim his freedom do so in a spirit that is devoid of hatred and bitterness. And he's holding to this philosophy not just as a kind of spiritual discipline, although I think That is absolutely what it is for him but also because he is trrue statesman And he sees this philosophy as the sure as the way to bind up the kind of the terrible wounds been afflicting South Africa for so long. And in short, his aim is to meet the people kept him. prison for so long brutalized his people discriminated against them deprive them of every opportunity that they could He's determined to meet them with forgiveness. and he is trusting that they will answer this forgiveness with a mood of And this essentially is where the rugby World Cup sin South Africa had been out in the cold in rugby for a long time. and more than a decade. which was a massive blow to Africana's sense of self confidence, I think. But it had been readmitted in nineteen ninety two and then awarded the Wld Cup as a sort of as a gesture, I guess you're back in the fold. So they were given the World Cup in ' ninety three and then nineteen ninety four, they have their first multiracial election, don't they? Properly Democratic election. Yeah, so they get the World Cup before the election. Yeah But in the expectation, of course, that things are going to change politically in South Africa, which they do, because the African National Congress, Mandela's partarty, wins a landslide majority in the the first election. Am Mandela becomes the first president and his relationship with rugby And the way in which he uses it is actually a really, really interesting example of the political use of sports Yeah, because South Africa would never have been given the Rugby World Cup. ella and the ANC not essentially giving it the green light even before they become the government As you say, Mandela has picked up on the significance that rugby plays in the kind of Africana soul. And by the way, you can't emphasize enough how unusual this is Black South Africans did not by and large support the Springbuck rugby team. Their sport was not rugby, it was football. Rugby was the game of the oppressor So for Mandela to have any interest in this at all is groundbreaking.' stunning. Well, it's part of a kind of broader programme of self education that Mandela puts himself through in prison basically to try and understand enemy. So he is learning Africaans. he's learning about the history of the Africaners, their heroes, their mythology, you know, how they understand their role in Africa. because of course by this point they have been in Africa for centuries and centuries. so they are essentially an African people And Mandala absolutely kind recognizes that that they have to be part of the settlement that Mandela is hoping will come And so as well as studying African history, he also tries to befriend his jailers, he treats them with respect and the expectation, which Increasingly the longer he's in prison comes to be met. the jailers will treat him with respect in return. And he ends up great friends in particular with one guard Christe Bran brand who in the late nineteen eighties starts to educate Mandela in rugby. As you said, it's not just about the rules, it's not just about the players. It's about the role that it plays in Africana And so Mandela comes out of prison. entirely understanding how potentially significant rugby might be. And he sees I think the World Cup as a way of securing two Gals So the first is that it might help win the support of Africaners who are the most in veterant opponents of accommodation with Black majority rule. It might help them kind of accept this new multir racial settlement As you said So Most Black Africans, rugby is the archetypal sport of the White oppressor Africana oppressor. And so radicals in the ANC They want to see, for instance the the distinctive green jersey of the Spring Box band, they want to see the name Springbox bandn as well push this demand, Mandela flatly refuses Mandel has also made a point of reaching out to the captain of the Spring boox, who is a guy called Francois Pinard gettingetting Pina on board with the exciting progressive new slogan for the South African rugby team. O team, one country PNR is essentially what AI would come up with if you typed in Africana rugby player You I here doesn't really look like Matt Damon who plays him in Victus and who just looks so unbelievably American. it's not true. Pinard looks very, very South African. He looks incredibly hard, doesn't he? He's from a working class transvile family. So he's from one of the kind of great Africana heartlands and he looks like he's hewn out of wood or something veryery blonde, incredibly tall, gigantic an absolute alpha male. But he's very smart, he's educated And he's a deeply Christian man. And he is invited to the presidential palace for tea Meets Mandela is completely charmed by Mandela And Mandela in turn is very impressed with Pinar says about him, he did not seem to me at all to be the typical product of an apareid society. It was a pleasure to sit down with him. And Pinar buys into Mandela's kind of goal and between them they managed to get the rest of the spring box on board so that by the time the World Cup es around all the South African team are aware of their mission, which essentially is not just to win the tournament, although that would be a massive bonus, but essentially to serve as symbols of the N Africa. O te, one nation. But it's not just winning the support of white South Africans for the new Constitution He also has another goal and this is much more difficult which is toget South Africans to back the spring box as their team as their boys. Yeah. I mean, obviously they hate the Spring boox because they were seen as a symbol of apartheid. But as you said, it's also because The ball is the mass game for Black South Africans. They dont most Black South Africans don't understand rugby And those who did understand it, if they watched a rugby match, an international rugby match would always, as a point of principle, support the Springbx opponents And it is an issue that going into the nineteen ninety five tournament The South African team only has one non white player in the entire squad and this is Chter Williams. Chester Williams, who is known as the Black Pearl So it is, I think for Mandela a massive gamble. He's got to get the white rugby supporters backing the new multiracial settlement and he's got to get the Black South Africans supporting the Spring boox as an emblem of this new South Africa. So how does he do it? I mean, the key thing obviously is they win the World Cup Yeah, that's not a huge help, isn't it? So there is a conspiracy theory, isn't there? I know we have some of thisers in New Zealand and they will be absolutely pulling their hair out at this point and throwing their phones across the room because they will tell you Tom that their team were poisoned before the game. they had food poisoning. They're like Gordon Banks? Yeah, well, much more than Gordon Banks. So a lot of the team, they say had food poisoning, they were poisoned by the South Africans and, that's the South Africans won. Now at this point, South Africanists will be going mad. Well, their manager said that it was dodgy Milk. Yeah. I mean, what is definitely a factor, I think, is the presence of Mandela himself. Huge g at the match. And Mandela, who's an incredibly cunning cunning operator at every level. I mean, he plays a blinder So before the tournament begins, he does everything he can to get the ANC, the kind of larger bllack constituency beyond them in South Africa, backing the spring box. He's absolutely insisting this is not a time for school settling. This is a time for generosity He goes to the Springbox training camp before the tournament begins. He shakes all the hands of the various players. He's made sure he knows what their names are, he addresses them by name And then he goes out and he publicly urges everyone in South Africa to back them. He says, We have adopted these young men as our boys as our own children as our own stars And it helps, as you say, that the spring boos keep winning and winning and winning and they end up in the final Mantell us most onic performance of all comes on the day of the final. because he turns up very famously wearing a spring box shirt, the green shirt that had been an emblem of apartheid for so many decades. and on it he has the number six, which is Pinard's number on the back wearing this green shirt He goes down into the bowels of this immense stadium. first of all, he visits the old Backs in their dressing room. And then he goes to see the spring boox And this has a huge psychological impact on both T teams Because bllacks. to have The man who's probably the most admired person in the world at this point turn up in a sprit boox journey. I mean, their synapses are absolutely fizzing with this. they can't kind of synthesize it. And it's reported that Lumu was daunted to meet Mandela, and perhaps this had a kind of dispiriting impact on him Whereas for the spring backacks, of course, they are massively inspired by meeting Mandela But the greatest moment is yet to come. Because Mandela, after he's been to the dressing rooms, then steps out onto the rugby pitch itself, onto the field of what Carlin in his book describes as Africanadom's Holy of Holies, the National rugby stadium could so easily have gone wrong. he could have been booed. I mean, worst of all, he could have been shot. You know, there might have been a kind of know, a racist sniper up there in the stands But it's a triumph. And the overwhelmingly Africana crowd start Chanting Nelson Nelson So it's like us when we're talking about the Battle of Trafalga. And you can hear it on YouTube. It's a kind of amazing of rapturous greeting of a man who by most of the people in that stadium. been seen as a terrorist only a few years before. and Mandela takes off his cap He waves it in the air You see it on YouTube, he's smiling, he's looking as happy as it's possible for a man to look. Amonene de Pessi, who is the Spring boox mananager, great former South African rugy player capaptain. Yeah. He said of this moment. It was a moment of magic, a moment of wonder. It was the moment I realized that there really was a chance this country could work This man was showing that he could forgive totally. and now they white side Africa, rugby, white side Africa. They showed in their response to him that they too wanted to give back Oh that's a very good version of the accent that people around the world have come to love Thank you Maybe he's rubyer I should have made sounded slightly more formidable. but so yeah it sounded formidable. I was focusing on the vowels. Yeah. It sounded formidable in the slightly cam way. Anyway, the clock shakes out towards the start of the match And of course, you know, it's a final of a World Cup. And they're going to begin by sing their national anthems So a tense moment Well, not just tense. I mean, it is the most symbolically freightated moment of the entire match, the entire tournament. pererhaps the entire spell of time since Mandela had been released from prison So the two teams New Zealand and South Africa, they have to sing their respective national anthems course the tension with a knife don it. in a phrase We have the Imalongi Cantu Choral Society who are going to be taking the lead in singing the anthems and they are a Black choir from Sueto, which is the sprawling township outside Johannesburg where the Rugby World Cup finally is being held, and it had long served as the effective capital of the anti A apartheid movement On top of that, this choir is going to be singing a song. That had only been South Africa's national anthem for a year since the election of the ANC government. and this is Czy Sic Africa And it's a song that to Africanas had long symbolized version Revolution terrorism. Black power Ething that the apartheid regime had been committed to pressing very brutally to reiterate We are now in the great cathedral of Africanadom. O obviously, the Sring Books had sung it before preceded previous matches, but never in place time a fixture with the amount of symbolic weight that this match had. So what's it going to mean for them to sing this anthem even more pressingly, perhaps How is the crowd in this great stadium overwhelmingly Africana How are they going to react with the eyes of the world upon them Yeah, and what about the anthem itself? and cozy Ciculele Africa. Where's it come from and how has it ended up becoming this great anthem of black liberation We'll be answering all these questions after the break This episode is brought to you by Lloyds. Now when you have ambitions, being able to see the bigger picture is just so important and history definitely teaches us that. My favorite example, not necessarily a brilliant man, but the Spanish conquistado Eernan Cortes. He was a visionary, he was an adventurer, but he also grasped that the Empire of the Aztecs was vulnerable And he took his men in land and he was able to bring down the Aztecs with just a handful of men. And of course, this isn't just a problem for blood soaked conchistadors, it is true for the rest of us as well. Which is where Lloyd's comes in Their app helps you to see all your finances in one place so that you can feel clearer and more confident about what comes next. And rather like Cortes, you're managing the micro and the macro. So one moment you might be managing day to day spending with budgeting insights using the app, or you might be getting guidance if you're thinking about starting a business. what whatever your next move looks like, you can bank on Lloyds to help you make it with confidence. Visit Loyd's bank Hi, this is Garalinica from Goldhangers The restest is foootball. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate and easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe It works in more than one hundred and sixty countries and with over forty currencies. most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid market exchange rate like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate Know the fee and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the wise app today. Be smart, get wise, Ts and Ts apply This episode is brought to you by MintMobile. It's easy to ditch overpriced wireless with Mint mobile. Sign up online at mintmobile dot com slash history. get three months of premium wireless service for fifteen bucks a month. forty five dollars upfront payment required, equivalent to fifteen dollars per month. New customers on first three month plan only. spepeed slower above forty gigabytes on a limited plan Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details Hello and welcome back to the Best is History. So this is the sixth Lagre series tying in with the World Cup, looking at the stories behind the National Anthems for some of the competing nations. And today we are looking at the story of Nkzi Cicule Africa perhaps the most beautiful of all the African national anthems that people will be hearing at the FIFA World Cup and certainly the most celebrated and the most historically fascinating The interesting thing though, is that Yeah, we've done some anthems in this series The origins of which are kind of shrouded in obscurity So, you know, it's sometimes hard to tell exactly where they've come from. For example, God save the King Exactly who wrote it, we can't be sure same story with the Wil Helmas, the national anthem of the Netherlands. But we do know who wrote this anthem And it's a man called Enoch Sontonga, isn't it? Tom? Yes. So he is the writer. And he was born in the early eighteen seventies in the Eastern Cape colony. And like Mandela, he was a native Oossa aker and again I hope I got the click there He moves northwards to Johannesburg and he becomes a teacher in a Methodist school in what will ultimately become the great toownship of Sueto outside Johannesburg. So you would think a teacher in a Methodist school in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, Unlikely to be a dandy In S Tong' case, you'd be wrong. because there is a photograph showing him looking unbelievably natty. he's got a hat, he's got a three piece suit. must have been very hot in the South African sun veryer natty pocket square and he's holding the chain of a foob watch. I mean, he looks very, very stylish indeed. We know incredibly little about him. We don't even know what he taught, but we do know that he runs the school choir and he's always writing songs for it. So he's clearly very musical And one of these songs, which he scribbles down on a scrap of paper in eighteen ninety seven It's the song that becomes Czy Siclei Africa, the song that will make him famous But this fame is entirely posthumous because in nineteen oh five Som Tonga He's thirty two, he starts to get afflicted by stomach cramps And they are so hideous that actually it gets into the local newspaper. He's suffering so badly in the newspaper wrote He suffered at times from stomachche to the extent that he would predict that these were his last days on this earth. And he's right. Yeah, because he dies shortly afterwards of gastroenteritis and he's buried in the section of the Braamfontine graveyard in Johannesburg, which is reserved for bllack Christians. so The racism is evident even in the cemeteries And in due course, the very location of his grave comes to be forgotten. And that is pretty much the sum total of what we know about him. So we do know, you know, we know who wrote this song You know, the life of the composer is pretty much veiled in obscurity If we go to the song itself, written in Corsat and it' means Lord bless Africa. O verse and a chorus, right? That's all there is. Yes. And these words are as well as the music, Santona has written the words As you say, a single verse, Lord, bless Africa. May her glory be lifted high. Hear our petitions. Lord, bless us your children. and then this chorus, Dcend, O sppirit, descend, O holy Spirit So I mean, very evidently A him and answem if you like and expressive of a kind of a broader trend in South African Christianity at the time Sontongo writes it So, u White missionaries have been spreading Christianity in South Africa and among Black South Africans over the course of the centuries By the end of the nineteenth century, Christians in South Africa are, I think coming to resent the kind of the mood, the spirit, the vibe of paternalism. with which they are being treated by white missionaries by the predominantly white led chance In reaction to this, they start to emphasize the antiquity of African Christianity and to argue that Christianity has been a presence in Africa for much longer than it had been, for instance, in either Britain Oh the Netherlands, when they're wrong. They're not wrong because they can focus specifically on Ethiopia The kings of Ethiopia, people who listened to the episode we did on the Ark of the coovenant, may remember that the Ethiopian kings claimed to be descended from Solomon and the quQueen of Sheba And in the Psalms, it had been prophesied that Ethiopia would quickly stretch out her hands to God. And in South Africa, Ethiopia comes to be a kind of synonyism for the whole of Africa. And in the acts of the apostles, South Africans can read that one of the very first Gentile converts is an Ethiopian eunuch and As they say, you know, there's no Dutch, there's no British converts in the actcts of the Apostles, but an African convert, yes, there absolutely is. And so in eighteen ninety two, five years before Sontonga writes and cozyiclei Africa A breakaway Christian movement has been founded by a Zulu Methodist minister and this is called the Ethiopian Church And so this is very much the spiritual climate in which Santonga is living. and it's a climate in which it's taken for granted by Black Africans that God holds Africa especially in his care that he has plotted out a particular path for Christianity in Black Africa. The hymn that S. Thonca writes is Pentecostal, meaning that it describes the Holy Spirit descending like fire And this is entirely appropriate because the popularity of the hymn itself spreads like wildfire And in nineteen twelve, it sung at the inaugural meeting of a crucial convention This is a meeting of the South African Native National Congress. And this was held in Blom Fontaine and it is attended by chiefs and other leading black figures from across the country And the aim of this Congress is to oppose attempts by white legislators to introduce what in retrospect will very clearly come to see one of the kind of you know, the building blocks of what will be the apartheid regime Specifically, it's essentially about enabling the whites to take best bits of land in South Africa. So it's a native land Act, that's what it's called. and it allocates the ownership of ninety percent of South African land exclusively to whites Blacks can have the remaining ten percent, which is all scrubby and rubbish and you know, not fertile So you can understand why Black leaders are meeting up to oppose this. Inevitably it fails This Natative Land Act is passed the following year. so in nineteen thirteen But the members of the Congress don't give up and they're determined to continue the fight And in nineteen twenty three, They changed the name of their organization to a much more inclusive one and indeed much snappier And so what had been the South African Native National Congress becomes the African National Congress You know, you don't have to be A South African native anyone can join it. It's open to everyone And it's two years after that in Czy is adopted as the ANC's official anthem And it's quite It's not maybe an obvious anwem. becausecause we said in the previous episode that we did on the Brazilian National Anthem that a lot of national anthems are really quite violent Um they are they need an enemy And you'd think that the ANC might be tempted to go for an anthem in which the white rulers of South Africa are being damned, but not a bit of it because there's actually very you know there's nothing martial, there's nothing aggressive, there's nothing militant about the lyrics of Ecosi Cicleia Africa at all. And even when in nineteen twenty seven, a Kosa poet add seven extra verses to it because one versse is decided it's not enough. I mean it still remains a hymn. The tone of the song remains kind of pacific in the way that it had previously been. But that kind of works doesn't takei the nature of their struggle. I mean, the struggle is punctuated with moments of martyrdom, with massacres, with funerals and trials and you know, and suffering. Its the story of the ANC is a story about victory through suffering and that's why this as a hymn works really well. Yeah. so people who are being executed, ANC members who are being executed as they you know are standing on the trap dooor that will drop and you know, they'll kind of fall through the trap dooor They are singing it And in a sense, the fact that it's not aggressive, it's not violent But it's it's a kind of hymn to God. I agree. it makes it a kind of all the more powerowerful But equally you can see why to the agents of the apartheid regime The hymn of the ANC. It comes to seem something very menacing, something very aggressive. Well not least because they can't understand it 't really understand it and so they assume that it's a song that's kind of suffused. with hate. and You know, it comes to seem emblematic of everything that they're fighting. They really really mistrust and dislike it. The idea that it might end up is the anthem of South Africa, just kind of monstrous possibility, not least because the apartheid state has its own national anthem, D stem enud Africa the call of South Africa and just as white South Africans hate the AN C anthem, so Back South Africans come to hate the Aartite I mean, entirely understandably In fact, like the lyrics of Cozy Those of did down are actually pretty mellow in tone So there is one mention in it of the groan of the Okswagon and this is an allusion to the V Tackers the Bs who had sought to escape British rule in the nineteenth century you know, so migrating from the Cape Colony to the interior of South Africa and when they get there they kind of place various native peoples have repeated punch up with the Zulus, all this kind of thing So the allillusion to the Vul Trekers is a kind of red flag, I guess to black South Africans. But otherwise, There's nothing in the lyrics that would be obviously offensive. becausecause essentially it's a hymn love to the beauties of South Africa and also thanks to God who had fashioned these beauties. So it's opening lines, from the blues of our heavens, from the depths of our sea, over our everlasting mountains cliffs echo back our calls I mean, these are sentiments that that everyone in South Africa could agree with. abbsolutely, you know Absolutely ecumenical in tone. So the aparthe regime falls U in the early nineteen nineties. And the obvious question is What is the new South Africa adopted this anthem? The majority is obviously black. You would assume they are simply going to throw out Dichem and to replace it with and cozy, which is of course a song that the majority, I guess of Black South Africans would get behind But that's not quite what happens, is it? Yeah, so early in nineteen ninety four, just before Mandela's inauguration as South Africa's first Back president Dancy u kind of preme decision making Caucus hold a meeting to decide what the anthem is going to be. and it's pressing because people from around the world are going to be coming for Mandela's inauguration. And so they do need an anthem As you say, it's absolutely inconceivable that they will have DEem. And kind of the overwhelming consensus is that it should be cozy and They wait for Mandela to pop out for a phone call and while he's gone to take the call, they say, yeah, we'll have in Cosyicleia Africa Madeela comes back, they tell this is our decision. He blows a gasket. He is furious. He tells them this song dem that you treat so easily holds the emotions of many people who you don't represent yet. With the stroke of a pen, you would take a decision to destroy the very the only basis that we are building upon. reconciliation. So Mandela's solution V very centrist, keepeep both anthems And also just for good measure, include a translation in Czy into a second South African language, Sasothu. So basically everyone will be happy, I think, you know, kind of ticking all the boxes there. But there is a problem with this If you play all three songs together It lasts for more than five minutes. I mean, it just goes on and on and At Mandel's inauguration, one of the guests is Prince Philip. Philip is a man. Yeah. he calls it as he sees it. Yeah, he calls it as it is And he jokes that he'd had to keep his hat off for so long, you know, as a mark of respect for the anthem. that he'd got sunstroke. And even Mandela himself acknowledges that it was all a bit boring by the end So there's obviously an issue here. and so he comes up with the classic politiciian's wheeze when faced with an impontraable problem. He hands it over to Committee I suppose you could say he kicks it into touch would that be a rugy kind of metaphor. And then there's some line out metaphor to follow in it Yeah. So this committee meets early in nineteen ninety five the year of the Rugby World Cup. and to begin with The committee are really struggling because the challenge is actually quite a serious one. because Mandela' mandated them to to meet two seemingly contradictory objectives So the first one is to ensure the aptom isn't too low he doesn't want dignitories dying of heat stroke in the future. simultaneously, it has to incorporate both the A and C anthem and the apartheid regime anthem And Mandela's precise instructions are don't scrap anything, be inclusive. So that's a real problem. It's kind of Yeah, M it a bit longer but cut it. Oh yeah, do all that in two minutes or whatever Yeah. And of course, you've got the Rugby World Cup coming along. It's going to be held the finals is going to be held on the twenty fifth of May. It's obvious the anthem is not going to be ready in time for that And that means that these two anthems in Czy Clele Africa and IsemM B both going to have to be sung at the World Cup final. whichich in turn means that it's going to be a massive test for the Springbox, as we've said, know they've got to sing it in full view of the cameras of the world's media and for the crowd in Ellis Park Stadium You know, how is the crowd going to respond to what for seventy years has been the ANC anthem? And the answer is that they respond amazingly well. So the sppring boox, they excel themselves. And the reason for this is that a month before the final They'd all been given lessons in how to sing the ANC anthem Fortunately, two of them who were farm boys raised in the Eastern Cape they already spoke Mosa. So that was good The others, you know, they had no idea, but they thrreow themselves very gainly into learning it. and at the final, No, they're lined up on the pitch before the start of the match and all of them A the very least are kind of pretending to mouth the words. It doesn't look like they've got no idea. It doesn't look like they know what the words of the song are. And actually the only one who doesn't sing, if you look at the footage of it, the only one who doesn't is the captain from S IP now And the reason for this is he said afterwards, I couldn't sing the anthem my dad not because I knew that if I did I'd fall upp Yeah H's as softty hard. Yeah, and in playing the enemy, John Carlin cites what Sean Fitzpatrick, who was the all black captain later told PinR he told me that he looked over and saw a tear roll down my cheek So an incredibly emotional moment and it is respected as such by the crowd. You know, they They really behave very well. in the mythology of this occasion It's kind of cast as something that inspires the entire you know notion of a rainbow country, a rainbow rabow nation. And I think it's kind of easy to be skeptical about that, to be cynical Cverse, I think is clearly true, that the spectacle of the sppringbox failing the same A andC anthem. What is now the South African anthem I think that would have dealt a really devastating blow to kind of any notion of one team, one country, any prospect Well imagine if the crowd had Budd it I mean, that crowd is very white. Imagine if the white crowd booted the the anthem. I mean that would that would nothing more corrosive could be imagined. And so I think it really, really mattered that they didn't do that and that they behaved themselves At the end of the match, Pinar who is You know, he's played a blinder throughout the tournament. He serves up the absolutely Perfect soundbes. So a sports reporter asks him how did it feel to have sixty two thousand fans supporting you here in the stadium Pino's answer does Mandella proud We didn't have sixty two thousand fans behind us. We had forty three million South Africans So not a dry eye in the house. No But they they've sng both anthems, they actually don't have one anthem at this point So the committee doesn't come up with this report until two years after the World Cup, after the Rugby World Cup and their solution I mean, is it a fudge? I guess it is a fudge, really, isn't it? No, it's a fudge if you think that a day in the life, the Beatles' G song which fuses two separate songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney into what is often seen as the masterpiece on Sergeant Peer, whether that's a fudge I don't think it' a fudge. They do exactly the same. They fuse Ecoosy Ciculele Africa and Diem into a single song and it works musically But it also works ideologically as well because actually when you pare the lyrics from the two songs you realize that both of them have emerged from Con Christian African culture Both songs are expressing an identical conviction, namely that God has bestowed particular blessings on South Africa and that people who live in South Africa therefore should be grateful for those blessings. So actually they kind of they blend perfectly However the committee have really got the beat between their teeth because they feel that it's actually not enough just to have these two songs put together. We better chuck in a whole load of other stuff as well. You know, because there are loads and loads of languages of different kind of in South Africa. So they render the new anthem into no less than five of South Africa's eleven official languages. So one of them is obviously OsA, first two lines of Czy Ceulele Africa, as Sontonga had written them Then you have Zulu, so the third and fourth lines of the original are translated into that. Then you have Sasotu, which is a verse asking God to protect South Africa Then you have Desem, so that's Africaans. and then the last verse is in English, composed spepecially for the new anthem and this is very bland sounds the call to come together and united, we shall stand. Let us live and strive for freedom in South Africa, our land. I mean, when they're sing it before a rugby match, their kind of voices arising at that point. It is a very powerful climax, I think. Yeah, I mean, the lyrics are not as powerful perhaps as the early ones, but they that they do what they've got to do. So you have these five language is in the South African National Anthem And that makes it very, very exceptional. And in fact There is only one other country that has a multilingual anthem. And this is Surinam, so a country on the north coast of South America. It had originally been an English colony, so back in the seventeenth century then it In sixteen sixty seven It gets swapped by the Dutch for New Amsterdam, which becomes New York. So the Engish get what will become New York and the Dutch get Sir andam. and I think basically the English have the better of that deal However having said that, I mean, the English end up losing the N York, of course. but the Dutch keep Surinam for almost three hundred and fifty years and Surinam only obtained its kind of ultimate independence in nineteen seventy five But even before that, it had adopted an anthem that had two verses, so one in Dutch And one in a language called, I hope I'm pronouncing this right, Saranan Tong which is an Anglo Dutch creole I mean sort of Surinam tongue, B Yes. Yeah. So I think it's a kind of it's the language that was spoken by the slaves there. Yeah. And it maybe there's something about kind of Anglo Dutch colonial fusion, but fosters multilingual national anthems because there is clearly a kind of correspondence between the history of Zurinam and South Africa And I seen your notes, you say that as fine as the Suranan National Anthemies it can't really compe with in cozy Siculia Africa J Talk me through the Surinan National Anthem, how fine is it? It's not very fine. It's not very fine But it's all right, but I don't think it's banger. Have you actually ever heard? Yes I have. I listened it Oh, well done. Be I was wondering if it was, you know, if it was going to be any good Yeah, and actually I mean it's all right, but it's it's literally nothing else. Well, I mean, it's one of two multilingual national anthems. I think that makes it stand out from the crowd. I mean, we've only talked about the anthems of two South American countries in this series, Brazil and now Surinam. So yeah, this is a terrible resultve for Argentina. they'll be fuming. Right. So let's get back to the South African anthem. You say it's the most haunting and historically resonant of u twentieth century national anthems. And I guess that's true isn't it? Be um There are We've done a lot of anthems with a lot of history but none Past is so kind of freighted with suffering. and martyrdom and stuff. And it's haunting Melody, the words are oby take even though translated and it lacks the kind of Rolling brass based strut that tends to be a characteristic of most national anthems that have originated in the nineteenth century, I think, has a very very different quality. It's almost like a lament is't I always think the sound of it Yeah It's really powerful. And so on that note, the lament let's end this episode and the series by going back to Eric Satonga The man who wrote it And we said that After his burial in the Bramfonteim graveyard in Johannesburg traces of his grave were lost He's a famous figure in ANC mythology, the guy who wrote their anthem and so there had been lots of attempts to try and identify it and nobody could find it But then finally, in the early nineteen nineties, and you can see why this Mandela's release has stimulated a kind of renewed attempt to try and track it down, a researcher has the kind of brain wave Why not look up in the cemetery records not for a Sontonga but for an Enoch, his first name? And there sure enough, they find him. grave number four thousand eight hundred and eighty five His surname had been completely erased and replaced by the insulting Afrkaans's word for black person and they were able as a result of this work out where the grave was. and in nineteen ninety six, So one year after his hymn had been sung at Park stadium heard by people around the world. Elliss Park Stadium was only about three miles away from the cemetery in which he'd been buried. Nelson and Ella arrived to unveil a memorial to Sontonga that had been raised on the site of his grave Mandela said this pride with which we bellowed your melody and its lyrics in good times and bad We were saying to you, Enoch Mani We were saying to you, Enoch Mankei Santonga that with your inspiration We could move mountains. And I guess In a sense Oh, that's a nice ending. It's nice to have another happy ending on the rest of history day have enough So that's an amazing story, fascinating story brilliantly told. Thankk you, Tom So that's the end of our worldld Cup sererus I think a better series than the actual World Cup Weot too many teams in the World Cupos, we limited ourselves. Yeah I think a Wld Cup with any sixteenths I mean it' be very punchy, wouldn't it? It would be prettyun would to be elitees about elite content. Well, it would be like the rugby, actually it be like is it the sixix nations Exactly. Yeah, we'll be like to each other. So talking of elite content, we are returning next week with an absolutely elite series. because Not only is this summer of the summer of the Football World Cup It is the summer in which the tax revolt of seventeen in seventy six will be two hundred and fifty years old with so many back taxes to be paid. And the rebel state Fmed as a result of that event is marking its two hundred fiftieth anniversary. I think the world is looking at the United States of America and saying How have things worked out for them? How How How are their politics looking now? You know, are they perhaps regretting Are Are they in danger of crawling back and asking to be readmitted? I mean, the problem with that diagnosis dominates too the family of civilized nations. Well, yeah, I mean that implies that Britain's been doing better I'm not entirely sure that that'. On the other hand, of course, they could look north and say Canada is the country they could have been Anyway, to mark this event because we do like our American listeners to reach out to them and to give them a little favor We are going to be doing a series about the foundounding Fathers. Four of them Yes,, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton and we should of course be treating them Tom with the reveererence and respect they deserve with exactly the amount of respect and reverence they deserve. So for our American listeners, it should be an eye opening experience Now, if if our American listeners, I imagine even now theyre they're like they're scrabbling desperately their keyboards trying to work out how they can get access to this series early. to hear this patriotic fest becausecause it'll really broaden their minds. Tom, is there any way is there any mechanism or process by which somebody could listen to all of that series on Monday if they wanted to They absolutely could. They could sign up to The rest is history. You know, as we've said, there's a lot of back tax to be paid It's actually Unbelievably good value. just ye very tiny minute number of your tax dollars could go on it. I mean just insane value because you get a whole load of additional benefits as well. I don't think we've ever we've ever mentioned that before. So very, very exciting. And of course, you don't have to be American to do that either do you? because the founding fathers are remarkable characters. Their stories are remarkable. so of interest O and all. So we hope you enjoy that series coming up Starting next Monday. Brilliant. So we'll see you on next Monday for the Founding Fathers. but until then, Tom, thank you very much. That was a brilliant episode. Bye bye everybody. Bye bye Hi everybody. It's Dominic Zembberke here. There are two weeks to go until the restest is History's inaugural festival at Hampton Court Palace. And frankly, I could not be more excited. There's going to be medieval combat. There are going to be all sorts of big name historians You can go to the palace. You can feast like Henry VII on the very lawns where he walked. In the sunshine, I'll be talking to Tracy Bormnann about the Tudors. I'll be talking to Katya Heoya about Weimar Germany. I'll be talking to Ian Hislop about the history of Satire. So it's on two days. It's on Saturday the fourth of July and Sunday the fifth of July The bad news is we have actually sold out the allocations that we were given by Hampton Court for both days. The good news, however, we have persuaded Hampton Court to let us have more people So There will be a handful of extra tickets available for both the Saturday and the Sunday. Now we do expect all of those extra tickets to sell out really quickly. so please Do not wait to get your hands on them. The tickets are exclusive for club members. It's one of the benefits of being a member of the Rest is History Club frankly, if you're not a member and you would like to go to the festival, the only way to do that is by joining the club. So you have to head to the rest ishistory. com to sign up And then you go to the members area once you've signed up and you select festival to get your tickets. We are really hoping to see as many of you there as possible in the sunshine at Hampton Court. Bye bye. Hi everybody. It's Dominan Nxembrook here. There are two weeks to go until the restest is History's inaugural festival at Hampton Court Palace. And frankly, I could not be more excited. There's going to be medieval combat. There are going to be all sorts of big name historians. You can go to the palace. You can feast like Henry VIII on the very lawns where he walked. In the sunshine, I'll be talking to Tracy Bormann about the tutors. I' be talking to Kata Heoya about Weimar Germany. I'll be talking to Ian Hislop about the history of Satire. So it's on two days. It's on Saturday the fourth of July and Sunday the fifth of July. The bad news is we have actually sold out the allocations that we were given by Hampton Court for both days The good news, however, we have persuaded Hampton Court to let us have more people So There will be a handful of extra tickets available for both the Saturday and the Sunday. Now we do expect all of those extra tickets to sell out really quickly. so please do not wait to get your hands on The tickets are exclusive for club members. It's one of the benefits of being a member of the Rest is History Club frrankly, if you're not a member and you would like to go to the festival, the only way to do that is by joining the club. So you have to head to thereest ishistory. com to sign up And then you go to the members area once you've signed up and you select festival get your tickets. We are really hoping to see as many of you there as possible in the sunshine at Hampton Court. Bye bye Hi everybody, Dominiic here from the Rest is History You knew who it was So We have just recorded a brilliant episode of our new mini series about the World Cup and dictatorships with I Paul Rouse of University College Dublin. We were just talking about Palle and Brazil and the dictatorship that ruled Brazil between nineteen sixty four and nineteen eighty five. We had a lot of fun, and we thought you might like to hear a little clip from it to wet your appetite if you're not a member of the Rest' History Club So here it is. enjoy So I guess the question with Brazil in particular is We think that Brazil is defined more than anything else by football. The football is absolutely central to Brazilian national identity. The classic thing that people think when we were talking about this before we started recording, the football is an expression of the Brazilian national soul in some way that it isn't in other countries How and when does this idea become popular So In a global sense, it really took hold from the nineteen fifties onwards