Jacob Zuma, the social body and the unruly power of song |
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| Authors: | Gunner Liz |
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| Institution: | Liz Gunner (Elizabeth.Gunner{at}wits.ac.za) is Professorial Research Associate at WISER (The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research), University of the Witwatersrand. She is also a Fellow (2008) at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The article was written at NIAS and I am most grateful for the superb institutional support that NIAS provided. A far shorter piece on this topic appeared in the newsletter WISER in Brief 1, 5 (June 2007). For discussion on the present and earlier articles my thanks to Shireen Hassim and to WISER colleagues, in particular Lara Allen, Jon Hyslop, Achille Mbembe, Sarah Nuttall, Irma du Plessis, and Deborah Posel. My thanks also to colleagues of the Mediations of Violence in Africa research group at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, Wassenaar, 2008. |
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| Abstract: | This article tracks the life of the song ‘Umshini Wami’(My Machine Gun) adopted by Jacob Zuma, the President of theAfrican National Congress, since early 2005. It exploresthe wider implications of political song in the public spherein South Africa and aims to show how ‘Umshini Wami’helped Jacob Zuma to prominence and demonstrated a longing inthe body politic for a political language other than that ofa distancing and alienating technocracy. The article also exploresthe early pre-Zuma provenance of the song, its links to thepre-1994 struggle period and its entanglement in a seamlessmasculinity with little place for gendered identities in thenew state to come. It argues too that the song can be seen asunstable and unruly, a signifier with a power of its own andnot entirely beholden to its new owner. |
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