Afrikaans Punk 


Africa Open presents IfPop Conversations #3:
 Aidan Erasmus


An Alternative Genealogy: The Genuines and Afrikaans Punk


 

This paper attempts to think the relation between rock music and protest through the ghoema-punk group The Genuines. In particular, it asks what a more prominent positioning of a group such as The Genuines in the larger historical trajectory of rock music in South Africa would mean for how we conceptualise what has been named Afrikaans punk -- a term brought into conversation largely by the Voëlvry movement and more recently by the infamy of Fokofpolisiekar – as well as that which we understand as a tradition of rock music in South Africa. In doing so, the paper argues that reading the historiography of rock music in South Africa against itself presents an opportunity to reflect on the genre itself as a politics of disavowal.