Rappers Delight In The Vaal

Hip Hop culture has, throughout its extensive existence, proven to be quite controversial and paradoxical in that it has evolved and assimilated a plethora of social expressions and refined them into a collectivised protest aimed at systems of oppression so pervasive in our times. This notion sprung into my after attending a session at Zone 6 Venue, where artists such as 9^th Wonder who turn-tabled beats while Skyzoo dropped lyrical atom bombs and sent trigger-quick bullets through the microphone. That is where I encountered the selection skills of one DJZakes Mixmaster, and a throng of other Hip Hop heads navigating the murk and storms of a cult that is slowly consuming South Africa.

Basically, I was left wondering about the visible gulf between the young Hip Hoppers crunking their wares and flipping scripts to synthesisers and beat machines in simulacra to US bubble gum mainstream brands, and their older peers who still scribble papers of wails while blasting bootleg TDK tapes in automobiles filled with infants on their way to kindergarten. 

These are undeniably old school Hip Hoppers that have characterised the longevity of this culture within our borders, and who still blot the annals of SA Hip Hop history. Their contribution towards the steady growth of the culture in the country is to forever be lauded, but damn, most of them are now grown ass beard-spotting men with routine family lives and corporate responsibilities. I encountered a lot of them during the last couple of weeks when I began something of a journey of rediscovering the J-Sec and Vaal Hip Hop scenes.

The prickling exhilaration I felt at the SoCo Show held at Salsa Lounge, another dingy hovel that resembles a sheeben long abandoned by train riding men, took me back to those heydays of Boom Bap Hip Hop. This obscurely situated hangout, minutes from Kwaggas Station train tracks which are hotspots for stuff-riding, pulsates with urchins and brutes that populate the joint. And you would be certain they just hopped off one of the metal serpents clanking along to the sounds and rhythms spewed by worn-down and rattling speakers.

This is Sebokeng or SBK as it is fondly referred to by its seedlings, and I am having  an induction smack dab into the Vaal Hip Hop scene, headlined by hard lining MC’s from the inner sectors of die-hard crews and raucously ambitious contenders on the battleground filled with lyrical slingshots and ambushed punchlines.

A week passes, soon I am at Punchline’s album (Thiba Nta’oo) launch, which was hosted at Intersexion Café, Sebokeng Zone 13, a somewhat ‘up market double storeyed hideout’ for the crème de la crème of local celebrity. Dope session and a marvel of market diversification it catered. One could clearly notice the age differences between each of the crowds at the respective venues I have so far visited, but this also seems to speak to categories and clique mentalities spawned by the financial objectives of profitability for hosts of such shows. But I must admit, here were some well-organised gigs in the midst of a township not known for many Hip Hop spots, let alone events, which further echoed the difference between struggles of suburban Hip Hop and Kasie Hip Hop.

There are obvious long standing beef and rivalries ushered by class divides between various aspirants and admirers of Hip Hop in the Vaal, which though characteristic of the mainstream myth spread by the media about Hip Hop, end up in actual fatalities.

As the evening slowly progressed with my receding day’s hangover, sultry women street-smart conscious-type began to crowd the venue. With all abandon they danced stilettoed and bounced delightedly stimulated by rhymes and beats by Kaydo. Kitch disco lights danced blue on their faces, and smoke machines made clouds for fantasia of their making. Subdued eroticism of Freeky’s lyrical swerves kept their airs misty and wet, and these were but two among some emerging and notoriously recognisable artists from the Vaal, sending masses skyward with deck selections mingling with vocal acrobatics.

Street creed disciples HERBEX stepped on stage to admiring screams and stomps, and cold stone thuggin’ Mr KOMMANDA Obbs (from Maputsoe, Lesotho) kept trashing sissy boy poses of city slicker rappers, sending parable ripples through a frenzied crowd in abandon.  Then Golden Shovel grabbed the microphone, where even his freestyle drooled voluminous testaments of township brutal realities. So rest assured,  content is key for most of these MC’s, and the idea that the commercialization and eroticization of hip hop into a trashy expression of pent up sexual fantasies is not a norm at all here. These are MC’s who can adorn sex with honourable gowns it deserves, especially when music is not to be a tool of misogyny but an art form deifying the female form.

Dreadlocked heads bobbed to Dilla and Primo classics rammed down parched voiceless throats of young Africans making language of their protest against cruelties of a boring contemporary existence.  DJ White Dog on flaming decks, arms flapping to Craig Mack’s Project Funk while grown men mimed to Biggie’s Suicidal Thoughts. They were slaughtering youth’s troubles at midnight under suspiciously spying looks from lazy cop in cars jamming vacant intersections, hours ‘Killing Them Softly’ like refugees who don’t want to return home. So, basically SBK nights will never be the same with lyrical brawls in cyphers replacing hostel attacks on civilians.

Images by: Khahliso Matela

Circumcising The Township

A recent and fast-growing cult of initiation schools is assailing Kokosi, a township near Fochville in the North West, which is further damaging the image of a town that gained notoriety for rampant corruption at its drivers licensing department.

Over and above the infamous protestations that plagued the neighbourhood nearly two years ago, when residents reacted to termination of employments of a number of people who worked at yet another villainous enterprise named BMP, an explosives manufacturer racking in profits from the Merafong Mining sector, a new traditionalist propaganda is been proselytised by initiates from various sects.

These initiation schools, located just a couple of kilometres outside the township are said to often be owned by women, themselves not circumcised, who have made a booming business enterprise that is worrying to a number of residents.

According to some residents who did not want to be named, these schools charge an excess of about R6000 for a three week initiation period, during which the ceremony is said to transpire.

Other witness accounts claim that boys as young as 13 are becoming victims of kidnappings and forced into these initiation schools.

It is also alleged that these kidnappers then return to the boys’ parents claiming the boys volunteered, and a deposit of R2000 is often demanded for admittance into the schools.

Such sporadic schools of masculinisation have been a trend in the face of changing gender dynamics in this country, where young boys are convinced by society and media that brute culture and vagabondage are synonymous to a healthy masculinity.

Tradition has often been called the exegesis of this phenomenon, which is a symbolic rite of passage, which has often been misconstrued by its practitioners in this contemporary social space of unfavorably devastating health concerns.

Paradoxes are then easily incurred in many instances, such as when a Xhosa boy is initiated in the Basotho tradition.

In Kokosi, there is for instance a virulent spate of gangsterism which is associated with initiates from certain ‘sects’, and often than not the victims of the indiscriminant violence are the initiates themselves, who have been dubbed ‘mentally divergent’ after the ceremonies.

Machismo and its worship of force and aggression are symptoms residents associate with these new initiates, not the care-giving manhood of our father which was inculcated through traditionally sober initiation rituals and processes.

The tradition of circumcision has entered into its deepest crisis since time immemorial, a continual sinking into the barbarism of capitalist agenda and corruption.

In short, this burgeoning entrepreneurship enterprise is hell-bent on turning customs into commodities in order to maintain and increase profitability.

It is an undeniable fact that in most religions, circumcision is a means to masculine self-awareness and self-realization. I often associated the shedding of the foreskin with an act of inaugurating the organ of life into a realm of creators.

Opening the life-giving orifice was every man's duty to the sustenance of human life, I often argue.

But of late, circumcision is singularly perceived from the stand point of ‘who can take the pain’, and initiates deemed worthy only when withstanding the pain, as pain is often thought to purify. Or at least that’s the idea.

Understanding that most township boys have been socialized over ages to think of pain in terms of justice, what devilry is seducing our young to this flawed view of a sadistic role of males in society?

Most initiates here are active participants in rapes of women.

When circumcision is supposed to help create and strengthen communal feeling, identity and solidarity among males in a society, it has systematically become a platform fueled with misogynistic sentiment.

Lured by prospects of respect by their peer, young men ignorantly conclude to indulge in the orgiastic cult practices that eventually castrate them.

More often than not, these young boys volunteer into such rites, and leaving school in the process.

Schools, as institutions of care beyond the parents, are obliged to provide a note allowing for leave and that document must be signed by parents, and certified by the SAPS so as to hold the initiation practitioners accountable in instances of malpractice.

But in most instances, that is not the case.

Some members of the community now point to police corruption which thrives on reimbursements by these initiation initiatives undertaken by unscrupulous entrepreneurs.

So what does one say?

What happens when a nation turns its young and most productive males into castrated monsters hell bent on venting their pent up rage on whoever stumbles into their path?

What happens to their sense of commitment to social institutions such as matrimony? Can they sustain romantic relationships without bouts of violent outbursts?

What do women eventually represent in the psyche of these boys often raised by single mothers?

My point of view is that masculinity as a social construct, obviously having a plethora of flawed foundations which are still perpetuated by our brute-force driven culture, has to change its psychological trajectories prior to any re-evaluation of the importance of such traditional practices. Boys need be fully educated from an early age about misinterpretations of cultural customs and therefore be equipped with knowledge that will save them from partaking in nonsensical initiatives and cults. And these lessons are to be imparted by grown men in our society, but sadly most of the father figures have themselves lived through the traumas of botched initiations. Then what needs to be done? Render the practice inappropriate and force its premature extinction?