Tag: PJ Powers & Hotline

Powerful Post

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This sign: “post” meaning post of course, “Kraft” meaning power in German is from a time when post services changed from stagecoaches transporting people and mail to buses transporting people and mail. This bus service (including delivering mail overland) ran from 1904 to the 1950s when the German post office stopped transporting passengers. They tried again in the 2010s to join the burgeoning passenger bus service in Germany but they stopped that business after a few years.

Oh, and I just had to do a Brian and include a music link. PJ Powers and Hotline was the biggest band in South Africa in the 1980s, the first commercially successful crossover band (crossover meaning they had fans with all the different population groups). PJ Powers had (has?) a successful solo carreer afterwards, and international fans might have heard her in the movie “Invictus”. One of the biggest hits was “Jabulani” (meaning “be happy!”), not quite incidentally our eldest son’s middle name.

Jabulani

Oh my, there were a lot more words today.

One Word Sunday: Power

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See you in Soweto

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The first time I heard the word “township” was in the context of South African apartheid policy. Soweto, as I learned, is not an exotic word from an African language but stands for South Western Township. I’ve been to Soweto when it wasn’t officially allowed – it would have never ocurred to me to take photos at the time.

PJ Powers and Hotline was the first really successful “crossover” band in South Africa, crossover referencing the fact that they had white and black fans (and coloureds, too – yes, in South Africa there used to be a difference, the powers that were believed in “divide and conquer”, and there were actually many more distinctions referreing to “race” – ignoring the fact that there are no different human races).

One of their hits was “Jabulani” (a Zulu word for rejoicing and a fairly common male first name, incidentally the name of our oldest son). Another one is “See you in Soweto”, if you’ve never heard it enjoy it here on youtube.

Word of the Day: Township

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