Those of you who have never heard of David Kramer, allow me to introduce you to one of the most remarkable figures in indigenous South African culture of the last century: like Johnny Clegg of the North of the country, David Kramer was also a Jew who took a deep and serious interest in our local culture, but while Johnny Clegg focused on Zulu culture (for which the French came to refer to him as "Le Zulu Blanc - The White Zulu", where he was genuinely received as one of their own), so in the South, David Kramer focused on the so-called "Coloureds" (whose genetic origins were less clear - probably the ragged remnants of the Xhoi San ("Hottentots") and miscegenation with the white settlers and likely even some Xhosa tribesmen) - in international terms a creole people.
These people, who reside mostly on the West Coast and the Karoo (both of which Kramer has sung about in heart-rendingly affectionate ways) have very unique facial characteristics: probably as a result of generations of poverty and deprivation but also as a result of their Khoi-San origins, they are small and thin; they have high, prominent cheekbones and sharp eyes and they move with agile, darting movements. The most tragic aspect of their physiognomy is their characteristically flat faces, which are a dead giveaway of foetal alcohol syndrome - a by-product of both poverty and deprivation on the one hand, and a lack of education on the other.
Bear in mind that when Englishmen first encountered the "Hottentots", they could not distinguish or discern the whispering, whistling sounds that they made as human speech and as the power of speech was considered to be one of the distinguishing characteristics of Homo Sapiens, there was debate at the London Geographical Society as to whether "the Hottentots" could be classified as human or not! Can you imagine what their fate would have been, had they been classified as not human?
God bless the English! Sometimes I understand Robert Mugabe's almost obsessive hatred of England and the English.
Although the current South African government is busily rewriting the history of our country to exclude any possible credit to anyone save the black tribes, the stark truth, which I hope will never be forgotten, is that as with so many relatively new countries formed in the last century or two, we are a cauldron of nations which drew it's strength from a multitude of origins to produce a unique and completely new genus of Homo Sapiens - and as with every other group in the world, the genetic composition of the group is dynamic. It is still in flux, and it is thrilling to watch it evolve. When such a group becomes static, it starts to die - but we are very far from that at this point in our history.
Clegg and Kramer may not even have known of each other until later in life. They were contemporaries, but they wrote and performed in isolation and as far as I know there was no conscious collaboration between them. Each one just "happened" on his own. At the time of writing this they have both pretty much run their course. Clegg has already died, and Kramer is old. But he remains true to his cause, and the link below is a clip from a relatively recent performance.
The people who he wrote, sang and spoke about will walk into obscurity and oblivion very shortly. This, however, is not entirely a bad thing: they are not relics in a museum; they are living, breathing human beings and they are rapidly assimilating into the surrounding black and white populations - and the blacks and whites, too, are also assimilating into each other. My image of the cauldron again. I believe that the best and most workable solution for the melding of South Africa is that we should produce a single, brown population by cross-breeding over the next few generations. I look around me and I see how far we have already come in that regard, and my most fervent hope is that we should continue along that path. May the path become a freeway into the future!
Meanwhile, here is David Kramer at his shining best. He's loving it, and his audience loves him. Me, too.
