Rain Perry

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

Some people have a big moment of political awakening, like our Person of the Week. For other people, like me, who grow up amongst the earnest hippie activists, knocking doors and attending political rallies are a regular part of life. For example, as a freshman in college I got arrested protesting UC investment with South Africa’s apartheid government. (If you look at the cover of UCSB’s Daily Nexus from April 1985, that’s my right arm!)

Did it make a difference? In the short term, I’d say yes. Worldwide protests and boycotts brought the end of apartheid and the election of South Africa’s first Black president, Nelson Mandela. In the long run, achieving true equality for all in South Africa has proven to be a much longer fight, as I saw when my husband and I visited that still drastically unequal country last year. Right now, politics there are upheaved once again, proving the importance of taking a long view to understand social change.

As we get our feet under us as activists in our own fraught time, let’s take a rock and roll lesson in finding a lane and powering through it.

It’s 1985. A fantastically diverse collection of musical artists gathers in a recording studio to cut a big benefit song about conditions in Africa. Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Pat Benatar, Daryl Hall, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, and many more are lending their talents to the cause.

“We Are the World,” right?

Nope. Also in the recording studio are Gil Scott-Heron, Run-DMC, Darlene Love, Joey Ramone, Jimmy Cliff, Grandmaster Melle Mel, Miles Davis, Pete Townshend, Ringo Starr, Lou Reed, and more. The person who’s gathered them together is not Lionel Richie, but Bruce Springsteen’s right hand man in the E Street Band, guitarist “Miami” Steve Van Zandt.

What is this song, you ask? It’s “Sun City,” a rousing anthem in which a bunch of musical artists passionately pledge never to perform at a particular resort.

That sounds weird, right?

(It’s worth doing a quick refresher on the history of the South African policy of apartheid, which would be enhanced by listening to Trevor Noah read his own harrowing, hopeful, and deeply entertaining book about growing up in Soweto under apartheid’s brutal rule.)

But for now, let me give a little background to the song. Here’s an excerpt from the wiki about the Sun City resort:

“Sun City is a luxury resort and casino…officially opened on 7 December 1979, then located in the Bantustan of Bophuthatswana. As Bophuthatswana had been declared an independent state by South Africa's apartheid government (although unrecognised as such by any other country), it could provide entertainment such as gambling and topless revue shows, which were banned in South Africa proper.”

(This is kind of like how Walt Disney didn’t want alcohol in Disneyland (except in his private club). But there’s a lot of money to be made promoting Disneyland as an all-inclusive resort, not just a place to take the kids. So they figured out a loophole, building California Adventure and Downtown Disney outside the footprint of Disneyland’s original borders and selling alcohol there. )

So anyway, back to Sun City. Lots of international musicians made a lot of money playing there, with the South African government subsidizing artists to the tune of millions per performance. It was an investment in better PR for the beleaguered Afrikaner government.

Around this time, a rock and roller from New Jersey had been traveling overseas and was having his big political awakening. Steve Van Zandt says: “I never read a newspaper. I was completely obsessed with rock 'n' roll until we broke through with The River, and at that point I said, 'Y'know, I wonder what’s going on in the world.'“

So he gave himself a crash course in geopolitics, identifying 44 domestic and international issues that caught his attention. (You can read the fabulous interview with Dave Marsh where he talks about his political awakening here.) As part of all this, Van Zandt decided to travel to South Africa to talk to people and learn more. What he saw radicalized him.

“I was in a taxi cab and a black guy stepped off the curb, and [the white taxi-driver] swerved to hit him, [muttering] 'Fucking kaffir,' which means 'n---er' in Afrikaans. And I said [to myself], 'Did I just witness that?,' ‘cause I wasn’t really paying attention [at first]. And I remember that moment," Van Zandt said. "It just hit me like, 'Okay, these guys gotta go.’”

So he got home and he called a bunch of friends — rock and rollers, rappers, punks, pop singers, and international artists — and asked them to perform on a single.

“Sun City” is different from other songs of its do-gooding genre. For one thing, with lyrics like “It’s time to accept our responsibility” and “We’re stabbing our brothers and sisters in the back",” the song contains a level of personal accountability not present in the self-congratulatory “We Are the World” or “Do They Know It’s Christmas.”

Also, rather than being an inoffensive statement about “helping Africa,” “Sun City” described a specific, measurable demand: getting international artists to boycott Sun City in order to embarass and pressure the South African government. A well thought-out test case can have larger-than-life impact, like Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat, or the United Farmworkers’ boycott on grapes.

“Sun City” also made news becasue it included artists from many genres whose work was segregated in its own way on American radio, which didn’t know what to do with the single. As Van Zandt says, “it was too white for black radio and too black for white radio.” The version on Top 40 stations — I remember this — replaced the Run-DMC/Melle Mel rap section with a guitar solo. I’m sure Van Zandt fought the record company on it, but apparently chose not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and accepted that getting the song on the radio at all brought much needed attention to the issue.

Steve Van Zandt knew what he cared about, he knew his skill set, and he knew his unique and broad collection of friends. He put those three together in order to find his lane in the larger cause. And that, I would argue, is what we all can and need to be doing right now.

Here’s a wonderful article about the creation of the song.

Here’s the video. See how many artists you can spot! It’s amazing.

And here’s a documentary about the making of the song.

And in case you want to go further down the rabbit hole of anti-apartheid music, please enjoy Gil Scott-Heron’s "Johannesburg,” Peter Gabriel's "Biko," Randy Newman's "Christmas in Capetown," and Stevie Wonder's "It's Wrong (Apartheid)," as well as this gem by Miriam Makeba about the then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela:

One More Thought

Apartheid to me as a North American young adult was one of those things that had existed my whole life and seemed like it would always exist. And then, like the Berlin Wall, socially acceptable drinking and driving, and smoking sections on airplanes, it was suddenly over.

Have faith. Find your lane. Keep at it.

A Habit of Hope

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xo Rain