National anthem needs a substitute

South Africa must be the only country that needs a backing track when the national anthem is played at the Rugby World Cup.

This year, a recording of some youth choir is the musical piece of choice, and if they didn’t play a backing track, there would be an embarrassing silence because many people do not know the whole anthem.

Yes, the Boks are singing out loud, but their voices are flatulence in the wind in a massive stadium packed with thousands of people all fiddling with their zippers at that moment because they cannot sing our national anthem.

It’s the same story at home; depending on the particular part of the anthem playing at that moment, fans either boom out the first part and stand there sucking saliva when the second and third parts come up, or the other way around.

Having a national anthem in three parts and three different languages was, while a unification attempt, not very well thought through - great in theory, not so great in practice.

We must look like a nation of complete idiots on a grand stage such as the Rugby World Cup.

After 29 years, very few know all three parts except the Boks, and they had to be tutored for weeks in order to learn the whole whatchamacallit.

It should be replaced with something everyone knows, wants to sing and can actually sing without having to go for speech therapy classes.

So what are our options? Afrikaans music is too tragic and emotional, most being about hoping to find love, losing it and committing suicide thereafter, so it won’t do.

Kill the boer, rhino- or the pangolin-type struggle songs are a load of hogwash, so it’s another definite no!

Unfortunately for the English folks among us, God Save the King has already been taken.

There’s only one tune I can think of that will do; one that everybody likes, even if they pretend not to.

It’s catchy and powerful, not like that frail warble we are sitting with now and which makes it looks like half the nation suffers from dementia.

That song is Shozoloza.

It’s already our unofficial national anthem and everybody sings it with much enthusiasm wherever it spontaneously pops up, so drop the mixed melody and it won’t matter whose morena is the real king or how diep die see happens to be.

Some say Shozoloza is a struggle song but it is not true; mineworkers came up with it and sang it to work up rhythm during group tasks and to alleviate stress.

We have a lot of stress in this country and there’s absolutely zero rhythm among many people, so that’s what we need.

And no, I don’t know the meaning of every word in Shozoloza either, but what does it matter?

What I do know is that I know the words and I like singing it, and that I cannot say about iAfrica, beautiful as the words are.