DJ’S Israel gig leaves bitter taste
Durban POISON
DEAR DJ Black Coffee,
Shalom and congratulations on becoming a household name across South Africa. Thanks to your gig in Israel on the Easter weekend, even white people have heard of you now. To be honest, I always thought you were a musician. I suppose the letters DJ should have tipped me off, but it could have been your initials. Like PJ Powers.
Perhaps DJS do consider themselves to be musicians these days. If so, I apologise. When I was a teenager, disc jockey was little more than a fancy title for the neighbourhood geek with a record collection who was sometimes persuaded, usually by threats of violence, to be in charge of the music at a house party so everyone could have fun without the hassle of changing the records.
I imagine things are a bit more sophisticated now, although the basic principle remains the same. You people – DJS, not black people – are like the taxi drivers of the music business. Instead of women saying “Take me to Verulam and please don’t kill me”, they say
“Play some reggae or my boyfriend will kill you”.
Even the music has changed.
It’s all digital and electronic and you have to have an ear for it.
You don’t need much of a brain, obviously, but an ear is quite important. I lack the ear, frankly. I always seem to miss the moment the beat drops. I don’t even notice when I drop my car keys.
Your job can’t be easy, though, even if it means putting on a clean T-shirt every day. You’re on your feet the whole time and your mission is to keep everyone happy. It’s especially important that we keep the Israelis happy, particularly the soldiers after being out in the field all day.
Shooting Palestinians is hot and heavy work, even if they are unarmed and several hundred metres away. Soldiers are people too. There is a time for shooting and a time for dancing. It’s a good thing the Israeli army knows which is which or the carnage at Gan Ha-slaim (that’s The Rocks Garden to the goyim) would have been awful.
You probably know by now that not everyone is delighted with you spreading the love among the Israelis. The ever-charming and always restrained Lindiwe Zulu said this week it was “with deep concern that the ANC has learnt of the recent visit to Israel of Mr Nkosinathi Maphumulo, popularly known as Black Coffee”.
It was with deep concern that I learnt Black Coffee was not your real name. I’m not judging. All the best people have pseudonyms. Don’t worry about the ANC, comrade. The party never noted with anything remotely approximating deep concern that the previous president and half his cabinet were allegedly stealing.
I do think it’s damnably unfair of the government not to even mention that your concert was a sell-out. You sold out, Black Coffee. That’s got to count for something.
Nobody could blame you for taking to Twitter to defend yourself. Hell, if you were an Israeli you would have taken to a Merkava battle tank. Your critics are fortunate that tweets do a lot less damage than 120mm armourpiercing rounds.
“Like everyone else,” you tweeted, “I have rights and free will and no, Black Coffee is not a political party. I work as an entertainer to feed my family. To sum it up I’ll take a bullet for my family.”
Funnily enough, 18 Palestinians took a bullet for their families on Good Friday. It’s their own damn fault for protesting about something instead of entertaining people with music and maybe doing magic tricks for the kids.
Anyone with an ounce of compassion understands that you work as an entertainer to feed your family much the way that Syrian President Bashar al-assad works as a warlord to feed his family, Kim Jong-un works as a dictator to feed his family and Jacob Zuma didn’t really work but still managed to feed his massive family.
I read somewhere that you’re worth R27million. I don’t know how big your family is, but I do know that kids eat a lot these days. Nobody wants to see your family go hungry.
You say Black Coffee is not a political party. Have you considered going into politics?
Now would be the perfect time.
The only place to go is up. You could have bilateral relations with the Myanmar government. Set up your decks on the northern border and give the Rohingya a rousing send-off as they flee to Bangladesh.
Or hook up with the Chinese. Play at the Yulin dog festival to raise money for organ harvesting among the Falun Gong.
There are massive opportunities in Russia and North Korea. What about a Taliban tour? Or, closer to home, a benefit concert for the Freedom Front Plus?
The possibilities are endless and you’d be a fool to think the world doesn’t need more people who are prepared to do anything for money.
This isn’t your first rodeo in Tel Aviv, is it? You played there in 2014. At this rate you’ll be declared an honorary Israeli in no time.
If you’re not circumcised, get it done soon. You wouldn’t want something as silly as a foreskin getting in the way of being granted the freedom of the city.
Back then, a centrist group of left-wing conservatives called Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) South Africa asked you not to do it. Maybe you didn’t get the memo because you reportedly feigned ignorance about Israel holding 4.5million people hostage while slowly stealing their land.
It’s okay. Feigning ignorance is an old South African tradition, albeit one that is largely restricted to the white population, especially when it comes to apartheid.
I don’t know whether to call you Comrade Black or Mr Coffee. Nevertheless, I applaud you for your decision not to boycott Israel even though you boycotted the Swaziland arts festival in 2011.
At the time you said: “We can’t be happy when Swazi people are suffering. We support the call to boycott the festival and I am not going.”
Good for you. King Mswati is way worse than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He refuses to allow his marijuana to flow freely into South Africa, for a start. The man is a monster.
Cultural boycotts don’t work. Imagine if losers like Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Keith Richards and Jimmy Cliff hadn’t pledged in 1985 to never play at Sun City while the apartheid government was in power. They’d be rich and famous today. So much for principles.
You probably know Lindiwe Zulu also said: “We await an opportunity to engage Black Coffee and the creative sector at large with a view to… creating common cause between all South Africans in rallying behind Palestine.”
My advice is that you tell her you’re already engaged. And what is this creative sector? We’re a splinter group at best. Full of jagged edges and shrapnel.
The minister of arts and culture is a former minister of police, for heaven’s sake. You want funding? Come and get it, painter boy. Make my day.
Also, we can’t physically rally behind Palestine because that’s the Mediterranean sea behind Gaza and it’s full of Israeli patrol boats and anyone on the beach is liable to get shot at or blown up because at that distance nobody can tell for sure what kind of shells those Palestinian kids are busy with and I still need my legs so I can get to the bottle store on a Friday afternoon.
You’ve upset some powerful people. You can either double down like Donald Trump and become the resident DJ at the Orania Home for the Eternally Unrepentant or change your name. How about DJ Caffè Macchiato? Black with a bit of white foam. Or DJ Kafe Shachor? That’s Hebrew for black coffee. Or move away from hot beverages altogether.
Whatever you do, though, don’t move to the ghettos of southern
Tel Aviv. Netanyahu just did a big flip-flop after his right-wing homies called him out for being a schvartzer-lover. Go back to Africa or go to jail seems to be the migrants’ only option.
Anyway. What do you care? You’re off to Ibiza for six months. Keep living la vida loca, my friend.