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Censorship – Never The Twain Shall Meet On SABC Radio

A core aspect of apartheid was to keep people apart in order to provide them with unequal resources and to treat them inequitably. There were separate areas to live in, separate buses, cinemas, park benches, public toilets, libraries, beaches, schools, hospitals, radio stations and on and on. Furthermore, the Immorality Act made it illegal for people of different races to have sex with each other, let alone get married. This mixtape delves into the SABC censors’ attempts to stop racial mixing as much as was in their stifling power to do so.

The SABC censors’ extreme paranoia about racial mixing led to the banning of politically innocuous songs like the Gladys Knight and the Pips cover of the Beatles’ “Come Together” because they believed that the lines “One thing I can tell you is you got to be free, come together right now, over me” could be interpreted to be about freedom from apartheid separation and about people of different races coming together (and that’s not even sexually). However, most of the songs banned from airplay for calling on racial unity were more overt. This included several songs which referred to inter-racial dating and god forbid, inter-racial sex.

Examples included on this mixtape include “Melting Pot” by Blue Mink which included the lines “What we need is a great big melting pot, big enough to take the world and all it’s got, keep it stirring for a hundred years or more, and turn out coffee-coloured people by the score.” The apartheid mind surely boggled. As it surely did with “Black Boys” from the Musical Hair soundtrack, which, like “Melting Pot” was also banned by the Directorate of Publications. The singers, including white women, profess that: “Black boys are nutritious, black boys fill me up, black boys are so damn yummy, they satisfy my tummy, I have such a sweet tooth, when it comes to love.” These sexual expressions did not go down well with prudish and racist 1960s apartheid sentiments.

Similarly, Gino Vanelli’s “Mama Coco” was overtly about sex between people of different races, while also managing to rhyme ‘anticipation’ which ‘Caucasian’: “I love you Mama Coco … Mama Coco such anticipation, Mama Coco, mam you’re blowing my mind, Mama Coco I’m just a male Caucasian, Mama Coco I’m a virgin to your kind.” A similar theme was explored in “Do It Anyway” by John Miles, but far less overtly: “I’m gonna do it anyway, it doesn’t matter what the people say, and in the end you all will see, the only one who’s right is me. In my own mind, she’s the right kind, even though her colour scares you, try to see straight, it’s never too late, maybe see the light of day”.

Meanwhile, Boy George’s “Girl With Combination Skin” was about inter-racial dating: “Her mother called her angel, so imagine her surprise, when she walked into the party, with a black boy at her side”. In “Basin Street Blues” the Dorsey Brothers sing of inter-racial fraternizing: “That’s where the white and dark folks meet, a heaven on earth, they call it Basin Street”, while in a cover of Freedom Children’s “Tribal Fence” Rabbitt and Margaret Singana gave the censors some worrying images to ponder censoriously upon: “Say you are my lover,
say you are my child … When will we be, past tribal fence and family tree”.

It was not only inter-racial sex and dating which caused the SABC censors to reach for the ‘avoid’ stickers. Songs which promoted inter-racial harmony in general were also frowned upon, particularly before the mid to late 1980s when various reforms meant that selected petty apartheid laws were relaxed and not all racial mixing was illegal. The political changes meant that by the mid-1980s there seems to have been a degree of confusion among the SABC censors who banned some songs about racial harmony while others with a similar theme were allowed airplay. An obvious example is “Ebony And Ivory” by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder which became a hit on SABC stations, and the government’s own Bureau for Information propaganda song – “Together We’ll Build A Brighter Future” – which could well have been ‘avoided’ given that it was so terrible, but the SABC played it regularly for a while because of government orders and probably because they got paid to play it (anyone with information about this please step forward!).

All that aside, some songs were nevertheless banned from airplay simply because they called on people to come together, even without any mention of race or ethnicity. For example, back in 1966, in “Get Together”, Julie Felix sang “Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another, right now”, and just over a decade later, “One Love” by Bob Marley & the Wailers was also prohibited from airplay for including lyrics like “One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel all right.”

However, the censors were most troubled by songs which specifically called for racial unity. For example, Janis Ian’s “Society’s Child” was problematic in the rigid apartheid days of 1960s South Africa, as it explored friendship across races and questioned racial prejudice: “Walk me down to school, baby, everybody’s acting deaf and blind, until they turn and say, ‘Why don’t you stick to your own kind?’ My teachers all laugh, their smirking faces, cutting deep into our affairs, preachers of equality, think they believe it? Then why won’t they let us be?”

In the early 1970s, in “All Kinds Of People”, Burt Bacharach also called for inter-racial unity in the face of racial prejudice: “Light kind of people, should feel compassion, for dark kind of people, should feel compassion, and care for each other. All kinds of people, should reach out, and help one another”. Very similarly, and just one year later, Timmy Thomas (in “Why Can’t We Live Together”) sang: “No matter what colour, you are still my brother, everybody wants to live together, why can’t we be together?” Three Dog Night’s cover of “Black And White”, also from 1972, called for racial unity: “The world is black, the world is white, it turns by day and then by night. A child is black, a child is white, together they grow to see the light.” And in 1975 War released “Why Can’t We Be Friends” with the lines “The colour of your skin don’t matter to me, as long as we can live in harmony.” Along with the rest of these songs, it was banned from airplay for undermining the righteousness of racial separation which the apartheid government believed in.

In 1980, Steve Kekana released “Colour me Black”, calling for racial unity: “Won’t you colour me black, colour me white, you can colour me any way you like, colour me red, colour me brown, it’s love that makes the world go round.” And four years later, in “People Are People” Depeche Mode questioned racial and cultural prejudice: “So why should it be, you and I get along so awfully. So we’re different colours, and we’re different creeds, and different people have different needs. It’s obvious you hate me, though I’ve done nothing wrong, I’ve never even met you so what could I have done?”

In “One And The Same Heart” Friends First declare that racial separation is anti-biblical: “One and the same heart, yet so far apart, can’t help but wonder what the fuss is about. To a blind man a question of colour, would be so hard to work out, made in the same Godly image, but categorised by skin”. Niki Daly was also critical of apartheid separation – in “Sunny S. Africa”. The song, with an oft-repeated chorus of “That’s the way it is in sunny South Africa”, ends with the ‘chameleon dance’: a review of the number of people in South Africa who had, in the previous year, officially changed their racial classification, statistics which were published in the government gazettes. While the statistics Daly reels off reveal that many people changed from one race to another, he ends by noting that ‘No blacks became white and no whites became black’. Thus was white superiority indelibly stamped in the statute books and upheld by the SABC censors.
In “Together As One” Lucky Dube asked, “Too many people hate apartheid, why do you like it?” and then called for unity “Hey you Rastaman, Hey European, Indian man, we’ve got to come together as one.” It was not a vision shared by the SABC censors who promptly gave it the same treatment as all the other songs on this mixtape, by banning it from airplay.

Although the SABC continued to censor music until 1996, when the Broadcasting Complaints Commission came into being, they stopped taking issue with songs about togetherness by the time the ANC was unbanned in early 1990. That’s about the time when a wave of South African musicians embarked on all forms of cross-cultural musical expressions and collaborations, none of which were banned from airplay for promoting racial and cultural unity. Perhaps a theme for a future mixtape …

Playlist

  1. Colour Me Black, Steve Kekana, 00:00:00
  2. Together As One, Lucky Dube, 00:03:21
  3. One Love, Bob Marley & The Wailers, 00:07:27
  4. Melting Pot, Blue Mink, 00:10:04
  5. Black And White, Three Dog Night, 00:13:47
  6. Why Can’t We Be Friends, War, 00:17:30
  7. Society’s Child, Janis Ian, 00:21:03
  8. Get Together, Julie Felix, 00:24:09
  9. Come Together, Gladys Knight & The Pips, 00:26:44
  10. All Kinds Of People, Burt Bacharach, 00:30:01
  11. Basin Street Blues, Dorsey Brothers, 00:32:46
  12. Black Boys, Cast of ‘Hair’, 00:35:50
  13. One And The Same Heart, Friends First, 00:39:24
  14. Girl With Combination Skin, Boy George, 00:44:16
  15. Sunny South Africa, Niki Daly, 00:49:46
  16. Why Can’t We Live Together, Timmy Thomas, 00:55:18
  17. Mama Coco, Gino Vanelli, 00:59:45
  18. Tribal Fence, Rabbitt & Margaret Singana, 01:02:45
  19. Do It Anyway, John Miles, 01:06:22
  20. People Are People, Depeche Mode, 01:09:02
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Censorship – No Sex on the SABC

It is common practice throughout the world for radio stations to ban songs about sex from airplay. This is especially the case with public broadcasters like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) who famously banned (from airplay) songs such as Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s “Je t’aime” and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”. But usually such radio censorship relates to songs which are overtly sexual, and the broadcasters are concerned that the songs are inappropriate for younger people in the audience. The SABC took their concerns about sexual lyrics (and sounds) to an extreme level, often banning songs from airplay with just cursory reference to something sexual or even to one night stands or sex workers. There was a strong Calvinist moral directive to SABC sexual censorship, according to which, the less said about sex, the better. This mixtape includes a broad spectrum of examples of music banned for taking on the topic of sex.

On one extreme the SABC banned a creepy song like Gary Glitter’s “Happy birthday”, a song written to a previously underage girl who has now come of age and the singer can’t wait to have sex with her. On the other extreme there were fairly innocuous songs with vague or cryptic reference to sex, such as Flash Harry’s “Handlebars” with lyrics like “you gotta grab your partner by the handlebars” and at the end of the song “the boys at work will laugh at you when you say, she looked so pretty what a shame she was gay.”

Certainly, reference to same-sex relationships was a sure way to get a song banned on SABC. Examples include Edi Niederlander’s “Mabel” in which the female singer declares her attraction to a “good looking woman” and Joe Jackson’s “Real Men” in which the singer describes, “see the nice boys dancing in pairs, golden earring, golden tan, blow wave in their hair.”

Rod Stewart’s “A Night Like This” is a coming of age sex of a different sort to Gary Glitter’s song. It is about a sixteen year old boy who is going to have sex for the first time. It is not particularly explicit. Lulu’s cover of the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” was frowned upon simply because it referred to a man who was only into non-committal one night stands.

In general, songs which viewed sex as a good thing were banned on SABC. For example Brook Benton’s “Makin’ Love Is Good For You”, “Sexuality” by Culture Club, “Thrill Of The Grill” by Kim Carnes, Lita Ford’s “Hungry” in which the singer declares “I got an appetite for your love tonight, I wanna taste your sweet thing,” and Blue Mink’s “Daughter Of Someone” in which the male and female singers combine to sing “Let’s go to bed, I’m waiting for you to come on in”.

Songs which described sexual encounters were also avoided by the SABC. For example Paul Simon’s “Duncan” in which the singer’s “long years of innocence ended” and Motley Crue’s “Rattlesnake Shake” in which the woman in the song does the rattlesnake shake and makes the singer’s body ache.

The SABC censors also frowned upon songs in which singers declared their zest for sexual activity. For example Pink Floyd’s “Young Lust” in which the protagonist declares “I need a dirty woman, ooh I need a dirty girl”, Prince & the Revolution’s “Temptation” in which the singer exclaims, “Working my body with a hot flash of animal lust, temptation, all my fingers in a pool of splashing musk”, Linda Clifford’s cover of Rod Stewart “Tonight’s The Night” in which she pronounces, “The secret is about to unfold, upstairs before the night’s goes old,” and the Bernoldus Niemand cover of the Radio Rats song “Welcome To My Car” in which the protagonist welcomes a woman to his car, the back seat of which is used for sex. He sings “I find the back seat so bizarre, so come on stream up my widows please, welcome to my car.”

The SABC censors also took umbrage to songs which referred to sex workers and paying for sex. For example, “Love For Sale” by Julie London, the Night Ranger’s “This Kid Needs To Rock” and “Room Of Horror” by Sipho Mabuse, despite the fact that the character in Mabuse’s song was warning of the dangers of prostitution.

Clearly, for the SABC censors, songs about sex were to be unseen and unheard. This mixtape provides the opportunity to lift the lid on some of the songs the SABC didn’t want South Africans to hear. Enjoy!

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Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll!

In 1963 the South African apartheid government passed the Publications and Entertainments Act of 1963 which led to the establishment of South Africa’s first central government censorship board. Although its name and various regulations changed over the years, the censorship board went on to ban well over one hundred music albums and singles over the next three decades. One of the categories of censorship was obscenity, which included sex, drugs and bad language.

This mixtape focuses on examples of songs banned for the first two of these criteria: they promoted sex or they promoted drug use.

Several vaudeville-type songs were banned in the 1960s and early 1970s because they promoted sex. These included entire albums by Oscar Brand (Bawdy Western Songs), the Jock Strappe Ensemble (Why Was He Born So Beautiful And Other Traditional Rugby Songs), Glenda Kemp (Both Sides of Glenda Kemp) and Ivor Biggun (More Filth! Dirt Cheap …). For this mixtape Oscar Brand’s “Charlotte the Harlot”, The Jock Strappe Ensemble’s “The Mayor of Bayswater”, Ivor Biggun’s “Wanking Your Blues Away” (printed on record sleeves as “Winking Your Blues Away”) and Glenda Kemp’s “Strike Buster” have been chosen as good examples of the sorts of things which got the censors hot under the collar.

Other albums from the same era which were banned included Chuck Berry’s London Sessions, the original cast recordings of the musicals, Let My People Come and Hair from which “My Ding A Ling”, “Choir Practice” and “Sodomy” have been selected respectively.

During the late 1960s and into the 1970s a trend set in whereby recorded popular featured the sound of orgasm(s), mostly to titillate the listener but sometimes to provide additional sensual vocals to otherwise potentially monotonous long disco tracks. The apartheid censors regularly censored such music, including the following songs included on this mixtape: “Love To Love You Baby” by Donna Summer, “Slow Blow” by Hot R.S., “Je T’aime .. .. .. Moi Non Plus” by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, “Airport Love Theme” by Super Erotica and “Cruisin’ The Streets” by Boys Town Gang. Whereas it was typical for women to be making the sensual sounds in such songs, “Slow Blow” and “Cruisin’ The Streets” feature males making orgasmic sounds; the latter song was even more controversial for apartheid-era censors because the men in question were pleasuring each other.

Some songs were banned because they were deemed to promote sex in a particularly (for the censors) lewd fashion, such as Blowfly’s “The Girl Wants To Fuck”, Celi Bee and the Buzzy Bunch’s “Superman”, Frank Zappa and the Mothers’ “Dinah-Moe-Hum”, George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex” and “Hlope Jive” by the Naledi Boys. The last of these was banned because of a spoken dialogue at the outset, supposedly between a brother and sister who discuss an unpleasant oral sexual exchange they have shared.

The censors also thought that Des & Dawn’s spoken word humorous piece about “The Pill” was too immoral for 1960s South Africa. And Blue Mink’s “Melting Pot” was far too scandalous in apartheid South Africa, suggesting that people of different races get together to produce “coffee-coloured people by the score”. On a bizarre note, Patti Smith’s “Pissing In A River” off the Times Square film soundtrack was banned for promoting sex because the censor transcribed “Come for me” as “Come fuck me”.

Several albums were banned because they featured images of marijuana on the front cover, including Culture’s International Herb and U-Roy’s Dread In Babylon. Songs which were banned for the same reason included “Legalize It” by Peter Tosh (including the album because of the cover) and “Show Me The Way To Get Stoned” by David Peel & the Lower East Side, whose entire Have A Marijuana album was banned.