Hard rocks aren’t always gems

Respect for voters is the minimum [View this email in your browser]( October 12, 2021 [Mail & Guardian]( [Mail & Guardian]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( Hi there, When Lauryn Hill deservedly took home five awards at the 41st Grammy Awards in 1999, it may have been a small but significant vindication for her role in the dissolution of the Fugees. With success came a realisation of Joy Division’s warning: love will tear us apart. As a member of a group lauded as musical geniuses breathing reggae’s revolutionary sensibility and a soulful air into hip-hop, Hill’s star was burning bright. Too bright it would seem. Young, perhaps naive, and romantically involved with the group’s lead, Wyclef Jean, it wouldn’t be long before she realised going solo would come at a price. Hill and Jean were envious of each other’s talent, and neither he nor the third member of the Fugees, his cousin Pras, supported Hill when she wanted to do a solo album. Jean, not Hill, was said to be the musical genius. But Hill knew she had the talent to create worlds, even without him. According to Questlove, the drummer for The Roots, “Her solo career wasn’t based on ‘I wanna do an album.’ It was based on not being Wyclef’s side girl.” The “side girl” swung and didn’t miss. Doo Wop (That Thing) was her debut foray into solo stardom and is the lead single from her debut album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. It became the first single written, produced and recorded by one sole woman since Debbie Gibson’s Foolish Beat in 1988 to reach number one in the US. The song stayed at number one for two weeks, making Hill the third female solo artist to do so with a song that debuted at number one, after Mariah Carey and Celine Dion, while also setting the record for the longest-running number-one by a solo female rapper, holding that record for almost 19 years. The accolades don’t stop there. US radio station NPR named it one of the 300 most important songs of the 20th century. This year, the song ranked number 49 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. Although the song would go on to get sampled and quoted innumerable times, one line in particular stands out: “Don’t forget about the deen, Sirat al-Mustaqeem”. For the so-called “people of the Book” — that is Jews, Christians and Muslims — the concept of the sirat al-mustaqim or the straight path is a familiar and a crucial component to an afterlife in paradise. The Bible mentions Jesus’s sermon on the mount, which underpins the importance of “the straight path” in Abrahamic religion. Halakha is often translated as “Jewish law”, although a more literal translation of it might be “the way of walking” or how to behave. Each of these religions and their varying sects is aware of man’s fallibility and how humanity is prone to deviate from this path. But there are always directions to glory if only one would listen. Which brings us to the Democratic Alliance. With a governing party replete in rent-seeking behaviour, logically one would assume the official opposition doesn’t need to do much in the way of campaigning beyond stand by and watch the ANC die from the sepsis of graft. The ANC might not be the only party that practises a version of cadre deployment, but through its long-standing position as the party in office, it has used its position to cement an “accountability” model in society in which political choices are determined by the distribution of patronage. Almost assured of the straight path to victory, it was baffling to watch how the lion that was the DA provincial campaign leader, Dean Macpherson, became an incontinent chihuahua in a matter of days. The DA’s election posters for its KwaZulu-Natal campaign stating — “The ANC called you racists; The DA calls you heroes” — started being erected in Phoenix last week. Somehow, erecting posters in an area described as a “racial tinderbox”, where 36 people met their end, allegedly at the hands of a small group of vigilante Indian residents, during the devastation of the July riots, seemed like a great idea to the DA. As we near the local government elections, we must heed the warnings of a party in irreversible decline, and a president desperate to claw back the voting public’s lost trust, while also dismissing the ANC’s missteps. And we must also pay attention to when the DA says the quiet part out loud. Initially defiant, party leader John Steenhuisen and Macpherson defended their choice, adamant that the only people offended by the “facts” were the media and those who had the good fortune of not experiencing the eight days of violence. But by the end of the week, the posters had come down, an oddly phrased apology was issued, and the progress made in assuaging black voters’ fears of racial exploitation was lost. “Respect is just the minimum,” Lauryn Hill once told listeners. We urge the DA to internalise those words. Have some respect for your constituents. That oft-mentioned self-correction is not solely for the ANC. Divisive language, capitalising on anger and fear, will lead only to tears. Until tomorrow, Kiri Rupiah & Luke Feltham [Subscribe now]( Enjoy The Ampersand? Share it with your friends [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( [Share]( [Share]( Copyright © 2021 Mail & Guardian Media LTD, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in to receive communications from the Mail & Guardian either at our website or by taking out a print subscription. 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