RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
c/o Warner
Music
75 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10019
USA
23 May 2012
Dear Red Hot Chili Peppers,
75 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10019
USA
23 May 2012
Dear Red Hot Chili Peppers,
South African Artists to Red Hot Chili Peppers: Don’t Entertain Apartheid, Choose the Right Side of History!
We are South
Africans artists who have recently learned that in the course of your upcoming
international tour (which will include Bulgaria, Greece, Lebanon and Turkey)
the Red Hot Chili Peppers are also
planning to perform in Israel in September.
We appeal to
you to heed the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel. As you may
know, the boycott enjoys the support of the overwhelming amount of Palestinian
civil society (including artists and artist groups) and an increasing number of
progressive Israelis.
You might
wonder what purpose refusing to perform in Israel might serve? As a people
whose parents and grandparents suffered under (and resisted) Apartheid in South
Africa, our history is testament to the value and legitimacy that the
international boycott had in bringing an end to the Apartheid regime in our
country. When artists and sportspeople
began refusing to perform in South Africa, the world’s eyes turned to the
injustices that were happening here. This then created a wave of pressure on
politicians and world leaders representing their constituencies, to insist on a
regime-change - this contributed to a free, democratic and non-racial South
Africa. The same is not only possible for Palestine-Israel, but inevitable. The
question is: on which side of history do you want to be? Performing in
Apartheid South Africa during the 80s, or in Israel today, is choosing to be on
the wrong side of history.
As South
Africans, we recognise the role that internationally-recognised artists like
yourselves played in helping us to end apartheid in our country. It is this
recognition, along with our belief in you, that leads us to join the many
others around the world who are calling on you to cancel this part of your
tour.
We understand
how difficult it would be for you to reject an opportunity to share your
enthusiasm and skills with others. Bands like you are the reason artists want
to exist. Your music motivates beyond concert stages, penetrating into the
intimate personal spaces of individual human lives and transforming them
forever, the way only true art can.
Unhappily,
matters are not so simple in this context. Art does not simply take place in a
vacuum. The belief that cultural activities are “apolitical” (or that you are
simply performing music, not getting involved in politics) is a myth. You
performing in Israel will be a slap in the face of Palestinians (who have,
since 2005, asked international artists not to perform there) but it will also
be tacit support for the Israeli regime and its practices of apartheid.
The audiences
before whom you would perform at Haryakon Park in Tel Aviv will not include
your Palestinian fans from Gaza or the West Bank - they are barred from
traveling to Tel Aviv. They are excluded, like how Blacks were excluded under
Apartheid in South Africa, by laws which shut them out of places in a land
which, historically, is as much their own as those who are permitted to attend.
These are laws
which the International Court of Justice (the highest court on this earth) has
declared to be illegal and in violation of international human rights law, just
as apartheid was declared to be illegal in our country. The Court found that
the fundamental rights of people who would otherwise be enjoying your
performances have been violated and their rights to a cultural life and to
self-determination denied. By agreeing to perform before segregated audiences –
whether in Israel, Gaza, or the West Bank – the Red Hot Chili Peppers would be used by those responsible to claim
legitimacy (with or without your consent) for the injustices and humiliations
they are inflicting on Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza as well as
those living anywhere else in Israel.
From our own
experience of the cultural boycott of South Africa which we ourselves called
for, we had no sense of being its unwilling victims and isolated from the rest
of the world. In fact, our experience was precisely to the contrary – we were
strengthened by a powerful sense of world-wide solidarity with us and support
in our struggle for freedom.
As
Palestinians (and an increasing numbers of progressive Israelis) have
themselves called for the boycott, we have no doubt that they will feel as
heartened and encouraged in their struggle as we were.
We
urge to you to stand by them, to exclude Israel from your tour, and be on the
right side of history.
Joni
Barnard, Mpho Madi, Aslam Bulbulia and the rest of the SA
Artists Against Apartheid collective