We have heard it all before about artists attempting to justify touring despotic regimes claiming their art seeks to bridge differences – sometimes if not always  very bitter and inviting international disapprobation – and all that crap.

From Olympians participating in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Vorster’s apartheid South Africa and other international sporting events, examples come aplenty, and imagine men and women of conscience claiming “well, sport is a uniting force among nations, this is our contribution to bringing different peoples together!”

For local sportsmen, artists, musicians and other kosher cosmopolitans, they no doubt have a hell of a time time explaining themselves about being part of any event from Olonga and Streak’s cricket to Mtukudzi’s Swazi jaunt “boycotted” by other “big names”.

Mutukudzi claims he is a man just doing his job by going to perform in despotic Swaziland. Well, indeed he is. Africa’s remaining absolute monarch also claims he is also just doing his job cracking down on unionists!

But for many artists and ordinary people alike, the question appears to be: “do these boycotts change anything?” And it is that logic that no doubt informs the indifference of many artists and sportspeople despite these prominent people this time wearing the hat as conscientious objectors being able to keep up the heat bad presidents.

Only a while ago, a group of yuppie South African girls were debating among themselves whether they should hit the road and visit Swaziland and have a real weekend blast. However, as one of them wrote, their consciences were burdened  by the awareness that where they were destined to enjoy their “girlie outing,”  the natives [the Swazi] themselves were being clubbed for staying away from work, opposition politicians being hounded, their universal human rights being generally trampled upon by the increasingly despotic monarch. Thus it was, ” can we dance the night away well knowing outside these walls a mother is missing her son, a wife her husband, an activist denied her right to speak her mind?”

It then obviously is a question of conscience if a “respected” chap like Tuku [once referred by some with a twisted sense of humour as Zimbabwe's own Michael Jackson] is to be understood by his determination to be part of a crowd that only soon harps – as much as our own – “see, international artists are coming here to shame the lies and lies of the western press about the alleged despotism of our dear leader.”

Is he [Tuku] not the same guy who has – unlike Mapfumo – refused to say there is something wrong with the men and women he lionised and penned many a liberation war soundtrack back in the halcyon days of nationalist fervency? But it sure looks like it’s about the bread and the butter first and human rights concerns later, and he could well be retorting, “fuck you, I don’t eat human rights.”

Only a few nights ago, Tuku Supastar was on the telly courtesy of some ZTA shindig telling the nation that journos must not obsess with the negative! Looks like he knew what was coming!

Surely his PR people should know better.

This entry was posted on June 1st, 2011 at 3:24 pm by Marko Phiri and is filed under Activism, Governance, Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.