Republic or Death! (38 page)

Unsurprisingly given that background, Wally fully expected ‘Nkosi' to be South Africa's only anthem after apartheid. ‘It had inspired us to want freedom in our life, to fight and to unite our people,' he said. ‘You can never separate it from that context.' He was somewhat shocked, then, when it wasn't subsequently given pride of place. He was the ANC's head of culture at the time and it seems he only reluctantly accepted the decision to keep ‘Die Stem' too. The way he described it, he only fully realised why the compromise was made when he heard it at Mandela's inauguration. ‘I was standing there at the Union Buildings next to four, five, six Afrikaner women and when the anthem was sung they wept,' he said. ‘And I mean
wept
. Then one of them said, “At least they've put our song in there.” I heard that with my own ears. I'm not making it up. And when I saw them weeping I realised that's how all South Africans feel about these things, how important they are. You can imagine us, how we felt, when “Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika” and “Morena Boloka” were sung. It was almost the same feeling when we saw the National Defence Force do the fly-past, knowing that at one time these planes were bombing us and now were saluting our president. You realised that these were all symbols of change and how important it is to include everyone in them.'

After he told me that story, Wally started to speak about the euphoria of the moment, but also about how such euphoria is difficult to sustain when you can't change things like inequality and racism overnight. I expected him to then say, like most of the other black people I'd met, that the anthem had had its time, that you can't have one created on a wave of euphoria twenty years after its moment. But instead he said this: ‘If you say this anthem was created so that our people could be united, there's a simple way to gauge if its time has passed or not. If you still have people who can't sing “Die Stem”, then that is a problem. If you still have people who can't sing “Morena Boloka”, then that is a problem. If you still have people who can't sing “Nkosi Sikeleli”, then that is a problem. And that problem can become deeper and create disunity. This song still has the potential to unite the country if everyone commits to it. I've committed myself – I sing the whole song – and to do that was a serious effort for me. It was a serious effort to sing “Die Stem”. A serious
emotional
effort. But that's what everyone has to work out for themselves: how do you make that leap? A song can help us still. It can be a bridge so that when people are singing they only see South Africans, no matter their colour.'

*

After leaving South Africa, I thought it'd be Wally's comments that would stick in my mind longest: honest, realistic, but hopeful. But surprisingly, the words that I kept remembering were those of someone who couldn't have been more different – someone who I only met for a minute but who I could tell hadn't tried crossing many bridges himself. I'd been in Cape Town trying to meet the former president F. W. de Klerk to talk about his role in negotiating peace with Mandela, and to see if he had anything to say about the anthem. I failed miserably in that regard, but outside his office I spoke with a member of his security team. ‘Nah, I'm not singing the anthem – that's their song,' he said, dismissively. The fact ‘their' meant ‘blacks' needed no spelling out. ‘Why should I? It's got nothing to do with my culture,' he went on. I thought about reminding him I was a writer and that perhaps he should tone the comments done, but then he said the most hopeful sentence of my entire trip. ‘Of course my kids sing it – sing the whole fucking thing, all the languages. But they're a different generation.' And he walked back inside shaking his head, as if his own children were unfathomable.

 

THE
ARMADA PARAGUAYA
is not perhaps the first part of Paraguay's military you would choose to go to in search of blood-and-guts patriotism, it hardly seeming like the most threatening fighting force there is. From its headquarters in downtown Asunción – the country's capital – you can't actually see water unless you are looking at one of the paintings on its walls. The Paraguay river is only a few minutes' walk away, admittedly, but if the
armada
ever wanted to get out to sea from there, they would have to sail for a good three days downriver, first on to the Paraná and then, eventually, out to the Atlantic, hitting the ocean 700 nautical miles away just north of Buenos Aires – praying Argentina's far grander
armada
let them past en route.

You might, therefore, expect the Paraguayan military to view the
armada
less as an integral part of their operations and more a place to hide the worst of its recruits, hoping that they just while away their days in the heat and not get into any trouble. If that is the strategy, though, they got it horribly wrong with
capitán
,
comandante
and
jefe
Mariano González Parra, perhaps the most patriotic and dedicated person I have met in all my travels. He welcomed me at the
armada
's entrance a few moments ago, gleaming in a freshly pressed white shirt, the handful of medals on his barrel chest jangling up and down with every shake of my hand. He then practically dragged me into his office, from where he oversees river navigation, as if he could not have been more desperate for a chance to talk about his country or its anthem, ‘República o Muerte'.

‘Of course the anthem means a lot to me,' he says, leaning forward so I can look right into his eyes and see how honest he is being. ‘That sentiment of independence still means a lot to everyone here. We were under the yoke of Spain for three hundred years. Can you understand that? We had to struggle to free ourselves from slavery. Then once we had independence, other countries tried to take it away. Do you know the Great War against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay? Mothers and children died defending our country.

‘Today,' he adds, ‘we're all still struggling to become a better nation, to be better people and have a better life. It's not like I have to look hard for reasons to be patriotic. If I forget all that struggle then it wouldn't make sense to sing the anthem, but every time I sing it, I remember it all.'

He talks just as enthusiastically about all the memorable times he's sung it: from the day he graduated from the military academy to anniversaries of past battles. And he happily jokes about his job; how even his friends think it's funny he works for a landlocked navy (I assume they were especially unforgiving when he trained in Antarctica, given that the only ice you see in Paraguay is in people's drinks). But as he continues happily chatting away, his smile growing wider and his laughs louder, I start to feel worse and worse, because I know what I have got to do. In a moment, I have to ask him the one question I arranged this interview for – one he is going to see as facetious at best; at worst, an insult. ‘Mariano,' I finally say somewhat embarrassedly, ‘would you do as your anthem asks and die for your country?'

‘Would I
die
for Paraguay?' he says, as if to check he's heard properly. He looks at my translator to check I'm serious, realises that I am and pauses to think. One, two, three seconds I count, far longer than I would have thought a soldier would need over such a question. He clears his throat. ‘I'm not really a person who supports wars and confrontations,' he says with an awkward smile. ‘I'm not someone who's happy when there's conflict.' My heart sinks. He's going to tell me he's not patriotic after all, isn't he? He's going to apologise for misleading me earlier with all that talk of dying mothers and Spanish yokes. This isn't the man I need to be talking to at all. I start mentally packing my things up to go when he suddenly adds that most glorious of words: ‘But … Of course I am ready to die,' he says. ‘It would be an honour to give my life if the chance came. And not just for me, for every Paraguayan. We'd all prefer to die than be defeated.' I smile with relief. He gives me a look suggesting it is perhaps not the most appropriate gesture after such a solemn vow.

*

South America's national anthems are, as a group, easily the world's best. They are exuberant, passionate, over-the-top, hilarious, camp, majestic – everything anthems should be. You can try to find adjectives to describe them, as I am right now, but none will ever seem good enough. It is the music most people know them for, these songs that last five or six minutes and sound more like operas than national anthems, featuring seemingly as many musical twists as the composer could fit on to the score.

Just take Argentina's, for example. For the first thirty seconds or so, it sounds like an orchestra being wound into life, as if the conductor is having to turn the key in each of his musicians' backs. But then for the next thirty, it is as though he steps away, throws his baton into the air and just lets everyone spectacularly unwind, each section of the orchestra trying to outrun the others until they reach the cataclysmic finale. It is one of the most vivacious anthems there is, although it is somewhat ruined when the singing comes in and all the speed and vitality in the song drops away, as if the orchestra's limbs have slowed to a crawl, each player in urgent need of a rewind.

But it's not just musically that South America's anthems stand out. Just read some of their lyrics. They are like epics, setting down for posterity the entire history of their country and its people, the woes they suffered, the pain they bore, and which then swear, with all the weight of the Old Testament, that they will never go through such ills again.

It's not hard to work out who the villains are in these songs: the Spanish and Portuguese who once tried to control the continent. ‘Don't you see them over sad Caracas / Spreading mourning, weeping and death?' goes Argentina's at one point.

Don't you see them, like wild animals,

Devouring all people who surrender?

Fortunately, heroes are at hand: ‘“Down with the chains!” / the gentleman yelled, / and the poor man in his hovel / for freedom implored,' goes Venezuela's, sounding more like a Dickensian novel than an anthem. ‘For a long time the oppressed Peruvian, / dragged an ominous chain / … he quietly moaned,' adds Peru's in a similarly dramatic vein. ‘But as soon as the sacred cry, / “Freedom!” was heard, / the slave's indolence shook / [and] his humiliated, humiliated, / humiliated neck rose up' – the word ‘humiliated' repeated three times to fit the music rather than to ram home the message of quite how bad being Peruvian was under Spanish rule.

Soon it's not just the people who are stirring to throw out the oppressors; it's the very land itself, the gods too, the animals, every historical figure you can name, even the dead. ‘The Inca are shaken / and in their bones the ardour [for freedom] revives,' goes Argentina's. ‘Untameable centaurs / descend to the plains,' adds Colombia's, making you wonder why the Spanish and Portuguese ever tried to colonise their countries in the first place.

The anthems then tell of the battles that were fought for independence, the blood that was spilled and the revenge that was had. You would think that all that would be left to do after that would be to celebrate victory, but practically all South American anthems then make sure to warn people that the Europeans could one day be back; that ‘the barbaric injustice of fate' might force new chains around people's wrists. If that happens, everyone must be prepared to fight again (Ecuador's anthem is one of the few that doesn't call for more fighting in that eventuality, instead asking for a volcano to erupt and turn everything to ash so there will be nothing for the Spanish to enslave, an approach I doubt many Ecuadorians would be happy with).

The only South American anthems that do not roughly follow this pattern are Guyana's and Suriname's – perhaps unsurprising given they were colonised by Britain and the Netherlands – and Brazil's, which is simply two verses rhapsodising about that country's beauty (‘Thy smiling, pretty prairies have more flowers [than any other land]'), but that is probably because it only got words in 1909, long after independence had been achieved and the wounds of colonialism had begun to heal.

It is easy to get lost in the sheer eccentricity of these songs – every time I read Colombia's I end up gawping at a verse that starts, ‘In agony, the Virgin / tears her hair out' – but there is a serious point to them that you shouldn't miss: South America's anthems get to the point of what
nationalism
is meant to be about better than any others. They all say, in no uncertain terms, ‘This is my land and I'm prepared to die for it.' Chile's, for instance, has the chorus, ‘Either the tomb of the free you will be / Or the refuge against oppression', while Argentina's screams, ‘Let us live crowned in glory / or let us swear in glory to die.' Then there's Bolivia's: