Welcome to part one of a series of political propaganda and related recordings and ephemera. Todays item is a very rare flexi-disc that was produced by the ANC in 1970. The item was most likely manufactured in the UK and then sent by post and smuggled to South Africa. Despite the heroic optimism communicated it was to take another 24 years before the democratic vote was achieved.
Interesting! I'll have to check this out.
ReplyDeletep.s.
Can you please upload more volumes of the Harare Hit Parade compilation?
This is extraordinary. Many thanks for it, and I look forward to more in your series.
ReplyDeleteStrangely, the figure on the record cover looks just like the corny British pop DJ Dave Lee Travis, who was on BBC Radio at that time. Which seems very incongruous!
Soon after this propaganda disc Radio Freedom was established and broadcast from Radio Tanzania and Radio Zambia external services, Radio Nacional de Angola, Voice of Revolutionary Ethiopia, and Radio Madagascar. Many of the trademark signatures of Radio Freedom have their genesis on this recording. Picking up the signal within South Africa was always a tricky business. The government subsidised the local manufacture of FM/MW radios and so getting a radio that could receive SW was not easy. Scrolling the dial to find Radio Freedom was also not easy due to signal scrambling. The most popular time to try and listen tended to be on the annual anniversary of the ANC - 11 January - when the new years speech from the ANC President would be broadcast. The key challenge for the ANC during the seventies was to continue to demonstrate that it was still active inside the country - through leaflet bombs, armed propaganda and other means.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post Dabulamanzi. It brought back the nostalgia of days gone by. Am also hoping to see more posts of these. Got links for the Amandla Group record sponsored by the Swedish movement. Was wondering humbly if u can't e-mail me links of these posts. Am trying to collect all of these mementos to teach our kids what we were involved in. My e-mail is melamasinga@webmail.co.za
ReplyDeleteThis is extraordinary. Similar in production sensibilities to what I remember hearing on the remarkable Radio Freedom recording distributed in the U.S. by Rounder Records in the early '80s.
ReplyDeleteWonderfully important post, thank you so much. I listened to Martin Luther King's "Vietnam War" speech a couple of days ago, and it seems to me that no better education can be presented to our young people than these historic documents that chronicled people working together to create change. Change today is desperately needed, but there is little hope for change among many. Could this recording be made available for download?
ReplyDeleteThe download file is hiding behind the flash player...here it is:
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/5uu4d2c