What in a song …"(Something Inside) So Strong"— a song written and recorded by a poet, singer-songwriter Claudius Afolabi Siffre, simply known by the name Labi Siffre. Labi Siffre came out of self-imposed retirement from music in 1985, when he saw a television film from Apartheid South Africa showing a white soldier shooting at black children and he wrote this song. He originally wanted to give the song to another artist to sing, but could find no one suitable, and so was persuaded to release it himself.
Released as a single in 1987, the song became a success and perhaps because of its lyrics and poetry in it. As it endured popularity in political and social landscapes the song was coined the anti-apartheid song.
… The higher you build your barriers
The taller I become
The further you take my rights away
The faster I will run
You can deny me, you can decide
To turn your face away
No matter 'cause there's
… Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no
There's something inside so strong
Oh, something inside so strong
… The more you refuse to hear my voice (ooh-weh ooh-weh ooh-weh ooh-weh)
The louder I will sing
You hide behind walls of Jericho (ooh-weh ooh-weh ooh-weh ooh-weh)
Your lies will come tumbling
Deny my place in time, you squander wealth that's mine
My light will shine so brightly it will blind you
Because there's
… Something inside so strong, strong
I know that I can make it
Though you're doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone, oh no
There's something inside so strong
Oh, something inside so strong
Let the light of humanity shine so bright that it will blind your race … race is a social construction, a social fabrication, manmade … created to classify people on the arbitrary basis of skin color and other physical features. It has no genetic or scientific basis …In his book, The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea, the anthropologist Robert Wald Sussman is arguing that race is not, and never had been, a valid biological category in humans.
Biological races do not exist—and never have. This view is shared by all scientists who study variation in human populations. Yet racial prejudice and intolerance based on the myth of race remain deeply ingrained in Western society. In his powerful examination of a persistent, false, and poisonous idea, Robert Sussman explores how race emerged as a social construct from early biblical justifications to the pseudoscientific studies of today.
The song line …My light will shine so brightly it will blind you, reminds me of the magnanimity in the African person, the generous or forgiving for those who did you wrong, for those who denied you a space in humanity merely because of your race. The magnanimity of our ancestors, … bo mama le bo tatago bo rona (our mothers and fathers) who could not walk in a particular street because their skin colour. Every time, you listen as they tell their stories, there is so much spirit of magnanimity in them that it blinds me… this is the light that shines so brightly that it blinds race.
From where you are, how do you see beyond race? To see Ubuntu, Botho, the humanity of the other person before you see the colour of their skin.
What is your thought?
