As punk and new wave came down the pike, things just seemed to come together to make the musical climate more conducive to the possibility of my contributing to the scene, from the tradition of protest I was rooted in. You have to understand the state of near paralysis that living in a fascist society produced in me, as I’m sure it also did in others. At what point does one just say “fuck it, I’ll take a fucking bullet if I have to, but I’m going to get up and sing my fucking song?” I think that point is “punk.”
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For Kadey and his Parktown friends, the nascent rebel rock of England appeared at exactly the right moment. In the period after the Soweto Uprising, South Africa had all the right ingredients for a genuine revolution—political unrest, racial bigotry, radicalised youth, and a longrepressed need to speak out—and with this new music Kadey heard something that matched his own feelings. “The whole sound, the attitude just reflected what I was feeling at the time, about living in South Africa, about many things. The idea of just putting something out there without any formality appealed to me.” Another formative impulse arrived at roughly the same time, the “first Third World superstar” in the person of Bob Marley, whose mid-70s albums made a strong impression on Ivan Kadey. Marley’s juxtaposition of bass culture and social commitment resonated strongly in Southern Africa, and also founjd echoes in the musical ferment of the Parktown commune. When reggae-influenced punk bands like The Clash and The Specials appeared, their politically-charged music reverberated deeply within the increasingly tense situation in South Africa. That rising anger soon found a perfect vehicle for unprecedented expression when Lebesi introduced two new memebers to the Parktown jam sessions—a rhythm section consisting of brothers Gary and Punka Khoza on bass and drums respectively. Kadey remembers that “one day he arrived with the Khoza brothers and we got into some really exciting music. I had been putting material together with another Joburg musician, Paul Giraud. We started jamming as a five-piece with Gary on bass guitar, Punka on drums, Paul on lead guitar, Mike on congas and cow-bell and myself on rhythm guitar. We worked up a set of songs with all of us contributing, and decided to stage a gig. Without any overt discussion we all knew what we were embarking on, and were totally charged