Africa Is a Country

The Wrong Answer

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Wrong Answer

By
Sean Jacobs

The nonsense that foreign journalists, who don't understand Afrikaans or the language's creole cultural history, write about Die Antwood.

Yolandi Visser and Ninja (Waddy Jones). Promo Image.

The Guardian’s Music Blog has a post up about Die Antwoord, a mostly white rap (or rave-rap) band from Cape Town. The group is led by Waddy Jones, who as Max Normal (that was a long time ago) made some pretentious rap in the mid-1990s.  So not surprisingly there’s a lot of posing that comes with Die Antwoord (in English, The Answer). The group is now being paraded as the next best thing out of South Africa. (Not surprisingly hipster magazine Vice has an online feature on the group.)

Anyway Guardian blogger Scott Wright made a fool of himself twice in the piece. First he pretended to know the meaning of the Afrikaans slang word, “zef,” the name of the song featured in the video above. Wright claimed it is a musical style associated with Die Antwoord. That it also means “masturbate” and “vagina” in Afrikaans He could not been more wrong on both counts. It is not a musical style and if it was, Die Antwoord is only but one exponent of zef. Second, zef refers to working class attitudes among white working class and some coloureds and is mostly limited to the poorer suburbs of Cape Town (although people have noticed it in places like the capital Pretoria).  Think ghetto or trailer park. When people say someone is “common” (pronounced like “kommin”) or lower class, that’s what they mean by zef.

Then Wright claimed that Die Antwoord and another white rapper, Jack Parrow, invented Afrikaans rap. (Though Die Antwoord raps in Afrikaans also, the song featured on The Guardian Music Blog, “Enter the Ninja,” is entirely in English.)

Where has Wright been? Has he ever heard of Terror MC, Prophets of da City, Isaac Mutant, Brasse vannie Kaap, Mister Lee or even Kallitz and their work to shape Afrikaans rap for more than 20 years now?

If, like Scott Wright, you don’t know these bands, go google them.

Further Reading

Kenya’s vibe shift

From aesthetic cool to political confusion, a new generation in Kenya is navigating broken promises, borrowed styles, and the blurred lines between irony and ideology.

Africa and the AI race

At summits and in speeches, African leaders promise to harness AI for development. But without investment in power, connectivity, and people, the continent risks replaying old failures in new code.

After the uprising

Years into Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict, the rebellion faces internal fractures, waning support, and military pressure—raising the question of what future, if any, lies ahead for Ambazonian aspirations.

In search of Saadia

Who was Saadia, and why has she been forgotten? A search for one woman’s story opens up bigger questions about race, migration, belonging, and the gaps history leaves behind.

Binti, revisited

More than two decades after its release, Lady Jaydee’s debut album still resonates—offering a window into Tanzanian pop, gender politics, and the sound of a generation coming into its own.

The bones beneath our feet

A powerful new documentary follows Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi’s personal and political journey to recover her father’s remains—and to reckon with Kenya’s unfinished struggle for land, justice, and historical memory.

What comes after liberation?

In this wide-ranging conversation, the freedom fighter and former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs reflects on law, liberation, and the unfinished work of building a just South Africa.

The cost of care

In Africa’s migration economy, women’s labor fuels households abroad while their own needs are sidelined at home. What does freedom look like when care itself becomes a form of exile?

The memory keepers

A new documentary follows two women’s mission to decolonize Nairobi’s libraries, revealing how good intentions collide with bureaucracy, donor politics, and the ghosts of colonialism.

Making films against amnesia

The director of the Oscar-nominated film ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently.