Song of Africa

Song of Africa. Film, early 1950s, starring inter alia Mabel Magada.

In this all Black production directed by an Afrikaner a Zulu band leader, Daniel Makiza, returns to his village with a gramophone and musical instruments determined to start a Zulu jazz band. He takes his band to the city where their jazz contest performance constitutes the body of the film. This film, produced at the inception of apartheid, contains many of the cliches and self-delusions that were to make apartheid tenable. The cosmetic world depicted is completely in harmony with Afrikaner Nationalist philosophy, a mass fantasy indulged by thousands of Afrikaners.