Lucky for Some

Last Sunday night we avoided the fact that it was the Jewish festival of Shavuot and headed to a Lucky Dube concert. Was a big deal for us daggy new parents because it only started at 9:30PM, but we thought, fuck it, let's live large. It was at the Roxy in Parrammatta, an old scaly venue with the seats bashed in and the requisite broken toilets. (I went to the Ladies and a woman from Malawi told me 'they don't flush, but don't worry, I didn't make a poo'). There were at least a thousand people there - Africans, Aboriginals, Islanders, Maoris, barely a wasp or Yid in the mix. It was fantastic to be in that environment, the buzz, the smell of fresh weed, everyone making eye contact with each other, people dancing unselfconsciously, women who didn't look like they'd been starving for years a la Lara Skin Boyle. I felt like I was back in Joburg circa 1989. My friend K, who met us there, immediately mentioned that I was 'walking like a Joburger'. She explained that I bounced into the concert with my head up and a strut in my step. Like I didn't mind taking up space. She's a physiotherapist and told me the technical term for how I've been walking recently is 'Sydneysidus Avoidus'- head down, shoulders slumped, no eye contact. Made me realise how much I suppress of myself since I left South Africa.

The concert was two and a half hours and I didn’t stop dancing for a second of it. At one point myself and the people on either side of me in the moshpit put our arms around each other and sang along to the song "One" (Hey Rastaman, Hey European, Indian Man, we got to live together as one). Yes, pathetically simplistic and yes the dude on my right did in fact grab my arse on the word 'European', but for those few hours in the concert hall I felt connected to everyone around me in a way that doesn't happen when I'm walking the white streets of the Eastern suburbs. A little surprising weed infested Utopia.

I came home to a sleeping baby and wondered if she'll ever have a real connection to South Africa, or if it will just be that place her mum bangs on about when she's pissed off with over-regulated, white-bread Australia.