[At first glance, it might seem strange in a nation where 80 percent of the population is black that a singing contest decided by a popular vote had failed for years to produce a single black winner. But in South Africa, which for decades separated the races under the brutal apartheid system that put blacks at the bottom and whites on top, nothing, not even a singing competition, escapes examination under a powerful racial lens.]
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Yip Photography
Khaya
Mthethwa, the first black winner of "Idols SA," on stage with the
runner-up, Melissa Alison, during the season finale.
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JOHANNESBURG —
When Khaya Mthethwa breathed out the last notes of Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass,” a song he had
heard for the first time that same day, the judges of “Idols SA,” the South
African version of “American Idol,” were blown away.
“Dude, you’ve just got
it,” said Gareth Cliff, one of the celebrity judges, shaking his head.
“This is your
competition to lose,” said Unathi Msengana, another judge.
Beyond the usual jitters
of a contestant on a reality television program, singing his heart out and
hoping for his big break, the weight of pop culture history weighed on Mr.
Mthethwa’s shoulders: would he finally become the first black contestant to win
“Idols” in his country?
At first glance, it
might seem strange in a nation where 80 percent of the population is black that
a singing contest decided by a popular vote had failed for years to produce a
single black winner. But in South Africa, which for
decades separated the races under the brutal apartheid system that put blacks
at the bottom and whites on top, nothing, not even a singing competition,
escapes examination under a powerful racial lens.
And so last week, when
Mr. Mthethwa (whose name is pronounced KYE-ya m-TET-wa) was crowned winner of
the eighth season of “Idols,” a fit of soul-searching ensued about just how far
the rainbow nation has come in burying its racial divisions.
“It’s about time a black
person was recognized,” said Portia Moloi, a 23-year-old sales clerk in a
retail shop at the upscale Rosebank shopping mall. “Why did it take so long?”
“Idols,” in all its iterations
across the globe, is meant to represent the democratization of musical taste.
In its purest form, winners are chosen by a popular vote conducted largely via
text messages. Contestants perform contemporary pop hits, classics and old
standards before a panel of expert judges from the music business. Ultimately,
it is up to the viewers to decide who wins.
But as with so many
other aspects of this theoretically egalitarian country, the competition was
long swayed by the nation’s Achilles’ heel: the deep imbalances in wealth that
have made this one of the most unequal societies in the world.
South Africa’s version
of Idols began appearing on M-Net, a private satellite channel available only
to subscribers to DStv, in 2002. Back then, the subscriber base was largely
white, said Yolisa Phahle, an executive at M-Net, because black people could
less easily afford the subscription fees. Votes are cast largely via SMS, which
costs money.
Questions about race
have dogged the popular program from the start. South Africa has no shortage of
black musical talent, producing legend after legend. From international
superstars like Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masakela to Ladysmith Black Mambazo,
which shot to fame when it recorded with Paul Simon on his smash album “Graceland,”
for most international listeners South African music is black music.
Yet for seven seasons
the top spot eluded black contestants. The first season a young, blond
Afrikaans rock singer named Heinz Winckler won,
singing “Drops of Jupiter,” by the American band Train. A white adult
contemporary singer named Anke Pietrangeli won the second season by crooning
hits by Madonna, Aerosmith and Faith Hill. In the third season Karin Kortje, a
soul singer who in South Africa is considered colored, or mixed race, took the
title, belting out Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston numbers. Talented black
contestants would make it to the finals only to be outvoted by a white or
colored contestant.
At the end of season 6,
when a white rock musician named Elvis Blue beat
black soul singer Lloyd Cele by almost
twice as many votes, a former judge in the competition, Mara Louw, lashed out.
“Lloyd should have won,”
she was quoted as saying in an interview with
City Press, a Sunday newspaper. “Blacks do not have access to DStv.
This excludes a sizable chunk of South Africans from the competition. Whites
vote for whites and blacks are disadvantaged,” Ms. Louw was quoted as saying.
“I am sick and tired of being politically correct. The whites refuse to vote
for blacks.”
Eusebius McKaiser, a
political analyst whose new book, “A Bantu in My Bathroom,” tackles South
Africa’s lingering racial tensions, said he had no doubt that if “Idols” were
shown on the national broadcaster, whose channels are free, a black winner
would have emerged much earlier. “We would be talking about when Idols would
have its first white winner,” said Mr. McKaiser, who is also a rabid fan of the
show, posting exuberantly on Twitter for #TeamKhaya.
But South Africa is
changing. M-Net’s audience was once largely white, Ms. Phahle said, but now it
more closely reflects the demographic balance of the country. Broad poverty is
still a major societal problem — and increasingly a political one as well — but
there are also more black people able to afford luxuries like satellite TV.
“More and more black
people have actually been entering ‘Idols,’ and more and more black people have
been getting further along in the competition, and finally this year we have a
black winner,” Ms. Phahle said. “This year’s winner was voted for because he
was the best. But it is also reflective of the changing social fabric of South
Africa.”
Mr. Mthethwa, the son of
preachers from Durban who grew up singing gospel music in church, said that he
was proud to be the first black winner but that race did not define him.
“It saddens me that so
many years after our democracy we still have to racialize things,” Mr. Mthetwa
said.
But beyond economics,
black fans might have other reasons for tuning out “Idols,” said Victor
Dlamini, a writer and photographer. With its emphasis on mainstream Western
pop, he said, it bypasses the most popular and stylistically interesting music
in South Africa.
Many potential black
viewers, especially young ones, have little interest in covers of Celine Dion
ballads and American soft rock anthems (even Mr. Mthethwa’s homage to Ms. Minaj
transformed her hyperkinetic pop song into an R.&B.-by-way-of-Broadway
ballad). For them, the bubbling rhythms of kwaito, the thumping
dance beats of house music and the soulful songs of Afro Pop are much more
appealing.
“Every time I hear these
people singing another Mariah Carey song I get tired,” Mr. Dlamini said. “It is
really a cultural catastrophe that we are not leveraging the stuff we are very
good at.”
At the Maponya Mall in
Soweto, the consumption temple of the black middle class, many shoppers were
happy that a black artist had finally won the competition.
“I was very excited,”
said Mpho Dubazana, a 29-year-old manager at a clothing shop. “I even updated
my Facebook status,” she exclaimed, waving her touch-screen smartphone.
But others shrugged it
off, unimpressed.
“It is not our music,”
sniffed Phindile Maseko, a 35-year-old social worker. “We already have our own
R&B and house in our own languages. Why would we sing in English?”
Mukelwa Hlatshwayo contributed reporting.
