This study documents the history and lyrics of a counter culture of South African
punk rock, new wave and alternative music from the late nineteen-seventies and
nineteen-eighties. While attempting to recover a lost history of this oppositional
culture, this thesis also locates the lyrics of specific songs within the broader sociohistorical
conditions of an apartheid South Africa, thus confirming their validity as
forms of resistance to state hege o
alternative music as politically s1gni 1
with musicians, producers and jou
theoretical framework fi r this study
context. The British and
investigated in Chapter Two.
a ter oflocal punk, new wave and
ral writing on pop , lar music as a
music contexts and discusses the character 0£the-p0pu1ar music charts, the radio
stations, the record companies and censorship. An account of the histories of
significant punk, new wave and alternative bands is provided in Chapter Four and
Chapter Five assesses the political significance of these lyrics