When slay queens like Fassie emerge in a male-dominant, sexist society, they present a complication for respectability politics. And with it, how South Africans imagine gender roles, sexuality and the nation.
The rebel girl child
Vulindlela’s wedding plays into the foundations of a new nation. The nation can be seen as an imagined family or community and that family is commonly a nuclear family with a dad, mom and children. Think of male presidents and their first ladies across the globe. The children are the nation’s citizens — and Brenda is the rebel child. The child-like persona that Brenda embodied is part of her impact.
In 2001 she performed Vulindlela at the Kora All Africa Music Awards, wearing a school uniform and holding a lunch box. Mandela — fondly called “uTata” (father) — was in the audience and Fassie handed him a banana. This reminds us of children sharing lunch boxes with one another. The banana, of course, can also work as a mischievous sexual symbol or as a metaphor of handing over a baton of power and responsibility.
Citizens as children may open up critical conversations about how people expect to be taken care of politically, economically and socially.
Nation building
Vulindlela invites South Africans to ask difficult and necessary questions about their future as citizens. Do their leaders fully represent the nation — including the rebel girl child? Or is it still a case of “children are to be seen, not heard”? Who is included in and excluded from the family?
As a queer woman and bad girl, Fassie symbolises those who are most often excluded. As a symbol of sexual freedom she asks: can we afford weddings that won’t end in at least one out of three of the guests getting raped by the end of the night? (The rape crisis in South Africa was, after all, addressed by her in her music.)