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Since overcoming apartheid, one of the more tumultuous periods of modern history, South Africa’s identity has slowly transitioned into one of promise. As a result, a myriad of subcultures is awakening, including the niche heavy metal subculture. Finding their impetus under an authoritarian rule, metal acts in South Africa performed away from the lenses of peering authorities as the music found itself increasingly stigmatized. Today, however, the metal subculture is finding its way through the postapartheid era, enjoying the benefits of a dedicated fandom from many throughout the nation, including the province of Gauteng.
This chapter discusses the post-authoritarian metal scene in the greater Johannesburg area by presenting a discussion of what the scene looks like today and how the scene is embracing the communal aspect around metal music. The principal research for this chapter is a result of a scene survey that was conducted online in 2017. Responses were then followed up with interviews to select respondents to gain a better understanding as to what these participants observe in the contemporary scene and the community that has blossomed around this subculture.
Black, white, and red all over
Heavy metal in South Africa came to life under one of the most restrictive political mechanisms in modern history. The evolution of the genre in South Africa into a formidable musical presence rose from a passionate fan base who reached toward the west for a musical expression that best reflected their lives. However, their reach toward this western import was constantly slapped, pulled, and cut away during a period of political, economic, and cultural boycotts in response to their country’s oppressive regime. Thus, the first metal acts in the country, including the bands Black Rose, Suck, Retribution Denied, and Metalmorphosis, formed with limited western influences.
While some western artists including AC/DC, Van Halen, and Led Zeppelin were heard and enjoyed in a similar fashion to their western contemporaries, the “other” western scenes, including death and thrash metal, were promoted through an intricate network of underground word-of-mouth, letter writing campaigns, and emigrant/immigrant exchanges, all under the structures of a church-led authoritarianism—a deterrent to the promotion of the genre.
This restrictive mechanism was a product of the Calvinist tradition that has been embroidered into the South African cultural map beginning with the arrival of the Dutch and French Huguenots in the late 1600s. Yet, it was during the 1948 elections when the National Party (NP), campaigned on promises to the white minority, including a perfervid policy of segregation and land rights to the nation’s white minority who numbered less than 10 percent of the population. By virtue of birth, whites were granted the full privileges of citizenry, including voting, property, and movement rights, as well as the benefits of stronger financial privileges. For 46 years, South Africa was officially a racist state.
The NP needed to enforce their policy of racial separation in a manner that could not be compromised. Thus authoritative institutions were constructed. As a result of the attachment to Calvinism, religious authorities were also able to hold sway and control challenges to its philosophy through a variety of means.
Ways of influencing what the population consumed for entertainment, including inculcations against heavy metal, came to fruition during apartheid. Not only did the mandating of the Publications Act of 1974 assist censors in monitoring what was being broadcast on television and radio,1 but the government was also helped by personal crusaders or moral entrepreneurs (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994: 154). One of the more notable figures leading these moral crusades was a former police officer named Rodney Seal whose personal mission was to dissuade school-aged youth away from the dangers of rock and metal music owing to their purported links to Satanism.
The quixotic Seal often presented a list of known “Satanists and homosexuals,” complementing his presentations with rock and metal music and videos from artists he deemed to be perpetuators of immorality. Seal also published a book called Rock Music and the Right to Know2 (1988), which allowed his message to reach larger audiences. However, as metal fans who grew up during the latter portion of apartheid attest, Seal’s plan to deter potential listeners by playing heavy metal to students had a reverse effect: his tactics introduced new fans to the genre.
Promoter and blogger Patrick Davidson recalls attending school with an interest in metal during this era:
Metal’s entrance into the dialogue of conservative leadership was propitious—it stepped into the dialogue of desperate leaders as apartheid was coming to an end. As Falkof posits, “[t]he Satanism scare was a response to social change, a consequence of the fear of apartheid’s end” (Falkof 2012: 7). “The possibility of blaming Satanism for personal and communal ills was only available to those who inhabited the spaces of privilege” (Falkof 2012: 19). Metal had stepped into mainstream relevancy in the 1980s, existing in South Africa under difficult circumstances. However, as a result of a passionate fealty, metal bands formed, established live performance spaces, and worked adroitly with limited resources—all under a poisonous police state. Moreover, unlike their erstwhile counterparts, the next generation of South African metal fans would define their scene in a liberal, desegregated democracy.
Gauteng’s metal scene today
In their study of heavy metal scene formation, Jeremy Wallach and Alexandra Levine define scenes “as loosely bounded functional units containing a finite number of participants at any one time […] (acting) as conduits to the global circulation of metal sounds and styles.” Scenes also “provide gathering places for the collective consumption of metal artifacts […] sites for local performance and artifactual production,”—noting that scenes must interact with the larger economic order of society—and “promote local artists to the larger network of scenes” (Wallach and Levine 2011: 119, original emphasis). Notably, their research indicates that metal scenes “are always found in a metacultural context of modernity” (Wallach and Levine 2011: 120), which is what best defines the Gauteng province.
Home to over 13 million people (South African Government Census 2016: n.pag.), Gauteng is, geographically, the smallest province of South Africa’s nine, boasting of not only the nation’s political capital, Pretoria, but also the country’s largest city, Johannesburg. Formed on April 27, 1994,3 Gauteng today serves as the nation’s economic center producing one-third of South Africa’s GDP, 10 percent of the sub-Saharan GDP, and—incredibly—7 percent of Africa’s GDP (IMF; see Brinkhoff 2017). Given its significance as a financial and cultural center, a survey was conducted with the intent to gather a better understanding of the scene from the participants themselves and to further discuss themes relevant to metal’s place in the current setting, Gauteng, South Africa: home to numerous bands, fans and spaces for performance, as well as a sizable fan base.
This survey asked: How old is the average metal fan? What is their occupation? Are they educated? Are they male? Female? Since the fall of apartheid, has the metal scene become more diverse? What are the popular bands of the scene today? What are the frustrations and aspirations of the fans in today’s metal scene? What drives fans to metal shows in the first place? And, if applicable, what are the challenges facing the metal scene today? What follows is the result of a survey constructed in order to answer these questions, which assisted in formulating a more constructive hypothesis to assess whether the corresponding scene shows signs of viability.
Methodology
The survey used to research the scene in Gauteng was based on a draft written by Dr. Bardine for his survey of the Dayton, Ohio, metal scene. The original survey results were presented as part of a panel comparing the Gauteng metal scene to the scenes of Dayton, Ohio, and Hull, United Kingdom, at the International Association for the Studies of Popular Music Conference (IASPM-US) in March of 2018 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. In order to better reflect the intended correspondents, the original survey was augmented with two additional questions that best embody South Africa’s diversity: What is your home language? And, what is your race?
The survey was posted on two Facebook pages in South Africa—Krank’D Up (5,492 followers) and Metal4Africa (6,675 followers)4—by the administrators of each page. The former represents a festival held annually in Gauteng, featuring a multiple-stage setup composed of local acts along with two international headliners. The latter is a page representing a webzine, fanforum, and an eponymous biannual metal festival based in Cape Town. Both pages are curated by the respective festival’s promoter. The popularity of these forums within South Africa led to my decision to contact the purveyors of each page as they are both considered “go-to” sites for fans to promote music from local and international bands. Once the survey was posted, the site administrators encouraged visitors to complete the survey if they lived in the Gauteng province, or frequently visited the province. The prospective respondents were informed of the survey’s purpose.
The survey was activated via Google Drive and was live for the duration of several weeks before the response function was shut off on October 19, 2017, at 15:39 EST. A total of 342 responses were compiled and studied. In some surveys, not all of the questions were answered. Once the answers were reviewed, I set about composing interviews with several of the participants by way of email to follow up on specific aspects of the survey,5 notably the responses regarding gender, community identity, and the diversity of the scene. Follow-up interviews were chosen with individuals based on their involvement within the Gauteng scene; whether as promoters, musicians, or journalists, they are active participants who have acquired a significant amount of acuity of their local scene.
Age, scene participation, and the communal experience
A strong indication that metal is translating well to the current generation of South Africans is noted from the 69.9 percent of respondents who indicated their age to be between 19 and 30 years old. One positive reflection would be that heavy metal has continued to inspire new generations of fans globally because of its overwhelming appeal to young audiences, not just from the well-established acts of the genre’s...
