“Wot ‘Bout Me?”: Punk, Africa, and theorizing International Relations
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020231163059 |
| Author | Kevin C Dunn |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00207020231163059
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“Wot ‘Bout Me?”: Punk,
Africa, and theorizing
International Relations
Kevin C Dunn
International Relations Department, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA
Abstract
This essay offers a narrative history, though certainly not definitive, of punk in South
Africa. Rather than an ethnographic study or a history of popular culture, the essay
places this narrative firmly within the academic fields of Political Science, International
Relations, and International Political Economy. The story of punk in South Africa also
illustrates the tensions and contradictions within the multiple, complex circuits and
processes in play in formal and informal realms of everyday life that are central to, but
often ignored, by the field of International Relations. The narrative of punk in South
Africa is offered as a corrective to the disciplines’Western-centrism and places people
at the centre of scholarly analysis.
Keywords
Africa, punk, South Africa, International Relations, globalization, music, popular culture
In 2017, on a street corner in Johannesburg, four youths from Soweto set up their
musical equipment and played an impromptu gig in front of a small crowd. They called
themselves TCIYF and were one of a handful of all-Black punk bands in and around
Soweto.
1
It might not seem that an all-Black punk band playing on a street corner to a
handful of curious passersby has much to do with International Relations (IR),
Corresponding author:
Kevin C Dunn, International Relations Department, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney
Street, Geneva, NY 14456, USA.
Email: dunn@hws.edu
1. The full name of the band is quite controversial, given its explicit sexism. The name is “The Cum In Your
Face.”
2022, Vol. 77(4) 656–673
International Political Economy (IPE), Development Studies, or any other related
academic discipline. But I find this an extremely illuminating entry point for examining
issues of agency, centres, peripheries, interstices, social forces, resistance, trans-
culturation, race, colonialism, corporate-led globalization, and more.
TCIYF were part of a punk scene that emerged around 2011 around the Skate
Society Soweto collective, which spawned the Soweto Rock Revolution, driven by
such bands as Brainwreck, The Brother Moves On, Death at the Party, Shameless, and
TCIYF.
2
Given punk’s lengthy history in a country where almost 80 percent of the
population is Black, the emergence of all-Black punk bands should not be that re-
markable. But until very recently, South African punk had largely remained the domain
of whites, with many multiracial bands, but almost no entirely non-white bands.
It needs to be noted that TCIYF’s impromptu show was part of the Afropunk
festival, a culture and musical festival that is normally held in the US but was held that
year on the African continent for the first time. Amongst the handful of observers were
numerous reporters from Western media outlets such as The Guardian and Vice
magazine, and possibly representatives from Red Bull, Vans Shoes, and Converse
Shoes, three American corporations that have bestowed sponsorship upon TCIYF.
This essay offers a narrative history,though certainly not de finitive, of punk in South
Africa. Rather than framing this as part of an ethnographic study or a history of popular
culture, I want to place this firmly within the academic fields of Political Science, IR,
and IPE, where it most certainly sits with a great deal of discomfort. For this is not the
usual subject matter for those disciplines. And it is more than likely that TCIYF
offends—both with their music and their name—the sensibilities of many who locate
themselves professionally within these disciplines. But that offense and discomfort says
a great deal about those academic fields, the “experts”who populate them, and the
assumptions they make.
In this essay, I employ two theoretical frames or intellectual dispositions that inform
how I construct the narrative. The first involves a re-centring of IR away from the Euro-
or Western-centric assumptions that have traditionally underpinned it by placing Africa
and African experiences at the centre. There is long and impressive history of scholars
focusing on Africa to both complicate and elucidate assumptions about global politics,
from W.E.B. DuBois to Walter Rodney.
3
Equally, there is a great deal of value in
examining punk’s four-decade evolution to better understand the complex and con-
tradictory forces at play in IR and IPE. Centring South African perspectives in the story
of punk provides us a different analytical lens that results in unique but equally valid
knowledge claims.
2. CarinaClaassens, “Unravellingthe punk cultureof South Africa’smodern youth,”Culture Trip, 1 September
2017, https://theculturetrip.com/africa/south-africa/articles/unraveling-the-punk-culture-of-south-africas-
modern-youth/ (accessed 15 January 2023).
3. Kevin C. Dunn and Timothy M. Shaw, eds., Africa’s Challenge to International Relations Theory
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).
657
Dunn
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