Yvonne Chaka Chaka: We are taking our freedom for granted

Music veteran and activist Yvonne Chaka Chaka has issued a stern warning to South Africa’s youth‚ telling them that the country would decline if the freedoms she fought so hard for as an artist during apartheid continue to being taken for granted.

Yvonne told CliffCentral’s Gareth Cliff this week that she was concerned with the way that South Africans had forgotten the nation’s turbulent history and taken for granted the freedoms won.

“We have come a long way and I am so happy that we have lived to see South Africa transcending and we have these freedoms. My only problem is that we are taking this freedom for granted. All of us- black and white and purple.

“We need to make sure that we do things for ourselves. I get so angry when I see buildings dilapidated. I get so angry when I see the dirt. Who should clean up for you? ‘” Yvonne said.

She also reflected on the anger she felt growing up during apartheid‚ including the hatred she developed.

“Our history is just terrible. What really angered me was when we drove from the station to the street where we lived‚ these young white boys would be sitting there and would be laughing. They would open the gate for their dogs and the dogs would chase us. They would have catapults and you would be walking and have rocks hit you‚ and they were laughing.

“I grew up hating. I grew up with hate. The only white person I liked was my madam (her mother’s boss)...I have three dog bites on my body because the dogs were set on me‚ because of the colour of my skin ‚” she said.

Yvonne said she would sometimes ask her mother’s boss if white people breathed different oxygen to black people.

“When you are young you are told you breath oxygen. So‚ I thought that white people have their own oxygen and black people have their own oxygen‚” she said.