Both of my parents are South African and immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s. The entire time they lived in South Africa was during apartheid and I’ve grown up seeing the dilemma that my parents have with the country they were raised in. While they lived with privilege as white people, they saw that the majority of the country, which was not white, did not have the same privileges as them. My parents realized the apartheid system was wrong, though it was all they knew, but they had little power to make lasting changes. I remember my mother telling me years ago about the young boys who would jump over her fence to steal food from her fridge when she was a child. She allowed them to do this because she realized that they needed the food more than her, but there was nothing more she could do for them and the others in their position. She couldn’t grant them the basic rights they did not have because of their skin color.

 

To further connect with my parents about their upbringing, I asked my mother to write a response to Nelson Mandela’s Inaugural Address, a speech that in part marked a major societal, political, and cultural change in South Africa. To set her words, I decided to write a choral work based on the melodies of white African anti-apartheid activist and musician Johnny Clegg. Both of my parents grew up listening to Clegg’s music and still remember it clearly to this day. I chose to use melodies from Clegg in a way that mirrors both the text that my mother wrote and the changing environment of South Africa from the start of colonization to the present day. Beginning with simple villages and nature, it quickly develops while becoming exponentially oppressive leading up to apartheid. This era suddenly reaches a breaking point and ends, but equality is still far away. However, many still can see peace in the future and fight every day to bring it sooner, just as they did to end apartheid.

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Na Drie Dekades is not exactly a work about apartheid, but rather about how the effects of it are still lasting. A visit to the country revealed this truth to me quickly. While laws no longer forcefully separate black and white people, they still have not begun to unite. The pain resulting from apartheid has made progress difficult. Now, South Africa is once again in a terrible state, as a corrupt government restricts the flow of essential resources while the rest of the country suffers. This will only change for good once all South Africans find a way to unite and work against the dark history of their country and the cycles that have created it.