Hugh Masekela: Welcome to South Africa


Hugh Masekela: Welcome to South Africa

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Transcript


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Welcome to our concert.

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The sound of migration, of South Africa,

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dedicated to the people of South Africa

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who have been able to, after 300 years, collect together

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such a great anthology of songs.

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We're playing tonight with the London Symphony Orchestra,

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a few South African singers, and the community choir of the LSO.

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Welcome to South Africa.

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APPLAUSE AND CHEERS

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I grew up in the...in Africa's largest coal-mining town, Witbank.

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Music absorbed me from when I was a little child.

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When I was two years old I lived for the gramophone -

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two, three years old, I used to wait,

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who's going to get up first so they can hold it for me?

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Cos I wasn't strong enough to hold it and wind it up.

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By the time I was 13 I went to boarding school

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and I saw a movie about a trumpet player called Young Man With A Horn.

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I'd already met Father Harrison cos he was chaplain of my school.

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He asked me one day, "What do you really want to do in life?"

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I sort of was in trouble a lot with the authorities.

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I said, "If I could get a trumpet, Father, just a trumpet, I wouldn't bother anybody any more."

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And he got me a trumpet and a trumpet teacher.

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I'd been trying for three years to get Harrison to get me a scholarship,

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so I could come and study music here, and he finally got Johnny Dankworth,

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who had been deported from South Africa for hanging out too much with the native people,

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and they convinced the Guildhall to write me a letter of acceptance,

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which was the only thing that I was lacking.

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I got it shortly after the Sharpeville Massacre.

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And I left immediately, because by then

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I was also, like, very politically involved in the resistance movement

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and underground work.

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And...yeah, I left in a hurry.

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APPLAUSE AND CHEERS

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I had worked very hard so that by the time I got to New York,

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I could already really play, you know?

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I wanted really to, if nothing else, play in Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

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But they refused to give me a gig.

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Everybody said "Why don't you do your own thing? You come from Africa,"

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blah, blah, blah.

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So finally I put together a trio and from there, I was gone.

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We were really, like, into protest music and the anti-Vietnam War crusade was really on,

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and the Civil Rights thing was on, so it was a great time for anarchy.

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I was already very heavily involved in rubbishing the apartheid government,

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and my friends were people like Belafonte and Miriam Makeba

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and Dizzy and... It was all the anti-apartheid people.

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And I was unknown, so Belafonte especially sat me down and said,

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"Man, with your mouth you're going back there...

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"They don't even know who you are, nobody knows who you are.

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"They're going to be waiting for you at the airport

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"and you're going straight to jail.

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"They can do anything with you,

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"nobody will know what happened to you.

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"But if you stay here and you try and make a name for yourself,

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"and you talk about your county,

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"if you have a name, people will listen,

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"and you'll be able to get the message across.

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"You'll be of more use to your people than going back to them."

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And...it made sense, so I stayed.

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I stayed 26 years longer than I had planned.

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MUSIC: "Stimela"

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PERCUSSION IMITATES TRAIN

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There's a train.

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APPLAUSE AND CHEERS

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It comes from Malawi,

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Namibia.

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There's a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe.

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There's a train that comes from Angola

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and Mozambique.

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From Lesotho, from Botswana,

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from Swaziland.

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From all the hinterlands of Southern and Central Africa.

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This train carries young and old African men

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who are conscripted to come and work on contract

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in the gold and mineral mines of Johannesburg

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and its surrounding provinces and metropoli.

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16 hours or more a day,

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for almost no pay.

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Deep!

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Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep,

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deep, deep down in the belly of the earth.

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When they are digging and drilling

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for that shiny, mighty evasive stone.

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When they dish that mish-mash-mush food

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into their iron plates with an iron shovel.

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When they sit in their stinky,

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filthy, funky, flea-ridden barracks and hostels,

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and they think about their loved ones they may never see again

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because they might already have been forcibly removed

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from where they last left them.

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Or wantonly murdered in the dead of night

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by roving and marauding gangs of no particular origin.

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So we are told.

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They think about their lands and their herds

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that were taken away from them with the gun and the cannon,

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with the collaborator, the dog, the tear gas and the poison.

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With the bomb and the Gatling.

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And when they hear that choo-choo train,

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a-smoking and a-chugging and a-pumping and a-climbing

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and a-struggling and a-pumping and a-smoking,

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a-puffing and a-tooting and a-singing and a-crying

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and a-moaning and a-wailing and a-screeching and a-screaming -

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Aah! AAAAAAH!

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They always curse.

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And they curse the coal train.

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The coal train that brought them to Johannesburg.

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Stimela.

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APPLAUSE

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APPLAUSE AND CHEERS

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I got ahead during the times of free love,

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and I was a flower child, and my friends were people like David Crosby

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and...the Jefferson Airplane people,

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the Grateful Dead,

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Big Brother and the Holding Company.

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I played Monterey Park, you know.

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It was everybody -

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Jimi Hendrix was, you know, hanging out there.

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And we were not wild, but we didn't sleep much.

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The biggest record I ever had was Grazing In The Grass,

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a typical South African dance tune.

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And Russ Regan was the head of A&R at UNI.

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He came to listen to, I think it was my fifth album,

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he came and said, "I like that album, but you need another sound."

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The saxophone player had been listening to these tapes that

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I had just brought back from Zambia.

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He said, "Why don't we try that song? Because it's simple."

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It's got a simple melody,

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It's got a bass line with four notes, boom boom, boom boom.

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The drum just goes bam, ch-ch, bam, ch-ch.

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And the piano goes... HE SINGS THE MELODY

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And the guitar goes... HE SINGS THE MELODY

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So we did it in half an hour,

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and by the time Russ Regan came, it was mixed,

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it just took us a short time.

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Maybe we spent two hours on it.

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And he came in and we played it for him and he said, "This is a smash."

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APPLAUSE

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This is an old, beautiful song from Brazil.

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It's called The Joke Of Life. Brinca de Vivre.

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It was written by Jon Lucien at a time when he thought

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that injustice was the biggest joke of life.

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Brinca de Vivre.

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APPLAUSE

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I spent 1980 to 1985 living in Botswana.

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While here, we started the Botswana International School of Music,

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and I'd signed with Jive Records and had a mobile studio,

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in Gaborone.

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So, I came back and I lived in England for five years, on and off.

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On the stage, I toured with Paul Simon and I had Sarafina.

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We were doing Sarafina, it was on Broadway, I think, for two years

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when I got the call that Mandela was going to...

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then Sisulu and Kathrada and all those people

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were going to be let out of jail and then soon we'll be able to go home.

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I didn't believe it, but when I...

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When I finally spoke to Miriam Makeba and my sister Barbara,

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at the time, was Mandela's chief of staff,

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they put him on the phone and he said, "Hugh, you must come home.

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"It's been long enough now."

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And the next week I was on the plane.

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APPLAUSE

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I think the greatest thing for me of getting back to South Africa

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was to be able to get back with the people,

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especially the rural, ethnic, indigenous people.

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And learn those things

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about my heritage that I didn't know.

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Now, I'm so obsessed with, like, all that kind of revival,

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not only for myself, because, like,

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colonialism and apartheid dealt so much damage,

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not only in South Africa,

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but all the neighbouring countries and, I guess,

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to a great extent, the whole continent itself.

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It's very important that, I think, the people of Africa

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get back into their heritage, because I think there lies

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the remedy for xenophobia.

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I wasn't naive, because I'd lived in Botswana,

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I knew what the economics of Africa was.

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Indeed, I'd lived in the Congo, I'd lived in Nigeria,

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I'd lived in Ghana, I'd lived in Guinea,

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I'd lived in Liberia and Senegal.

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So I knew the terrain.

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So when I went back it was, of course, personally,

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to be able to, like, reimmerse myself

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in the culture and the society,

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but mostly to see what I could bring,

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because I had sourced so much from Africa

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and I need to pay it back.

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And the only way to pay it back, I think, is by making the people see

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how wonderful they are and how excellent they are

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and get them to enjoy their heritage again.

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APPLAUSE

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The most unfair judgement of South Africa is the fact that

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people expect us to be that which they thought we were going to be -

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The Miracle Nation.

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But we come from a very, very untidy

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and raggedy and very violent past.

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And also...a very corrupt one.

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And we've only been free 15 years.

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I say to people - listen, England has been enjoying freedom

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maybe for over, like, ten centuries.

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France, you know, maybe just as long,

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if not longer, and, like, Germany and all those places.

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And America has been free, maybe, almost 300 years.

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But they all have problems.

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They still have problems,

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so maybe if you come back to me 800 years from now,

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I'll be able to say, "Well, we're making some headway."

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MUSIC: South African National Anthem - "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika"

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APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

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