Realizing the South African multilingualism dream through Kwaito music

The multilingual nature of the lyrics in Kwaito music, the popularity of this genre among young South Africans of all races and tribes, the universality and value of music throughout human history provides this genre with the potency for realizing the unitary effort envisaged in the constitution of South Africa. Despite its origin as an art-form invented by youth from the ghettoes (euphemized slums, romanticized as kasi) of South Africa and the fact that it is associated with gangster life and at times misogyny, this genre, like sheng in Nairobi–Kenya (Wrong, 2010), possesses a unifying element, as it proves itself to be a ‘caul-dron’ of South African languages. With South Africa still experiencing the residues of apartheid, Mfecane and Difaqane (Southern African tribal wars of the 1800s) and not immune to latent ethnic atavistic tenden-cies, this product of youth, an age bracket that epitomizes change, is deemed a “contagious” and potent tool towards the demolition of the old social order. It is, however, unfortunate that very little studies have been dedicated to this aspect of the art form. In light of this, this study was then conducted with the view to establish the extent to which Kwaito music, could be relied upon to disseminate the thirteen languages, which have been confined to tribal and demographic enclaves, making it possible for the social order in which divide and rule as the modus operandi could prevail against democracy and social cohesion. In order to justify the utilization of a music genre into long established social-political neuroses, this study also draws the attention of the reader to several other uses of the art form to human exigencies. The study uses a song by an award-winning Kwaito artist, Kabelo Mabalane. Analyzing it with special focus on its multilingual content, then some subsidiary themes such as moral lesson and ethnomusicology background provided, the study showed that, indeed, this genre has the potential to disseminate the rudiments of South African languages, especially, those which are seldom available in some neighborhood. Even more cru-cial is the fact that the songs in this genre can inspire love for other languages. Lastly, the selected song also demonstrated that this genre is socially and morally responsible.