Vb. Lyrics of Protest - For Individuals

A second method the poets and musicians use is to write in the support of specific individuals who are antiapartheid leaders. The purpose of memorializing these leaders is to publicize the repression that apartheid put them in and to continue their cause while they are unable. Music proves especially effective for this goal.

Nortje writes a poem about the persecution Brutus suffered in prison. He writes in "Autopsy," “But what isn’t told / is how a warder kicked the stitches open…” (Nortje 196). As individuals are unable to continue their protest, the poets use their words to continue speaking for the persecuted whose “luminous tongue in the black world / has infinite possibilities no longer” (Nortje 197). Masekela performs this same function through his Masekela album in which they “paid tribute to Robert Sobuwke, the leader of the Pan-African Congress…[who] had led the pass-burning demonstrations shortly after the Sharpeville massacre. Sobukwe was rotting on Robben Island’s prison, where he was incarcerated without trial” (Masekela 226).

Both poets and Masekela write about Nelson Mandela. Nortje, in ("Questions and Answers,") mourns Mandela’s inability to use “the golden words that sprang from his black mouth” (Nortje 375). Masekela’s song, “Bring Him Back Home,” however, explicitly demands Mandela’s freedom. Despite the simple lyrics –

Bring back Nelson Mandela
Bring him back home to Soweto
I want to see him walking down the streets of South Africa
I want to see him walking hand in hand with Winnie Mandela

– the song became the “regular anthem during [Mandela’s] travels after his release from prison” (Mandela 343). This effect depicts the power of music in the protest movement. With words, the musicians could act as the poets did in expressing the violations of apartheid’s events and against those at the forefront. But the dynamic quality of their music also enabled them to be catalysts in attracting attention and support.