Bunny Wailer congratulates South Africa

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

The last time Bunny Wailer - original member of The Wailers along with Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Cherry Smith, Beverley Kelso and Junior Brathwaite - recorded a song about South Africa, he was spraying lyrics at President Botha the mosquito on the 1989 Liberation album.

Fast forward nearly two decades and the political ball is rolling the other way, with the African National Congress (ANC) ruling since universal adult suffrage, although the blacks still trail very badly on the social and financial score. Wailer has South Africa on his mind again, but this time it is not dogs, water cannons and rubber bullets, even though commands will be barked, sweat will pour and shots will be taken.

He is looking forward to the World Cup 2010 with Congratulations, South Africa and simultaneously looking back to his most active football-playing days, his love for the sport as strong as ever.

"I am a football player, outside of being an artiste. My most famous sporting game is football," he told The Gleaner. There were other sports - track and field, table tennis, cricket - but football is number one. He pointed out, too, that he played at a high standard as "every time we do things in them day deh, we try match with the best. Although a pon the street we a play we call it World Cup".

That was on Second Street in Trench Town, Kingston, Bob Marley among those who would play as well. The standard would seem to have been noticed abroad, as Wailer said when The Wailers went on tour and played in the park to keep fit "crowd draw, to the type a ball weh roll. Englishman come ask we if we need to make some money by showing some of his guys how to do some of them tricks we doing with the ball".

Two passions

There was an invitational pick-up side named Soul Rebel and Wailer said he played Colts and Second Level football, leaving before Camperdown got involved in the Manning Cup competition.

Congratulations, South Africa rotates at the intersection of two passions, as Wailer said, "Africa has been our most important and necessary (topic) for all the time, from Marcus Garvey. We aware that we are Africans taken out of Africa, brought into colonialism, and have been through that experience, always agitating for repatriation as a Rastaman.

"So to see where all of that tradition has led to South Africa being selected to host this great game, the world's game, which is soccer, it put I in a position where I had to say something. I had to contribute something towards that opportunity, towards that destiny that is South Africa," Wailer added.

In the song, which has the tweet of a whistle to really get it rolling near the start, Bunny Wailer invokes the names of various nations and encourages all to pass the ball and "let the ball go round". And he has been letting the musical ball go round close enough to where the World Cup 2010 will be held. Wailer recalls going to Reunion Island ("fly cross the whole Africa to go to this little island") and persons from South Africa making the trip for the show. Congratulations, South Africa was written in January, after he returned from Reunion Island.

Bunny Wailer said he has made the South African High Commission aware of the song, but is not waiting on the song to be centred there, as he is very optimistic about it scoring in the United States, based on early feedback. "I feel I going to get some kind of justice there, based on how these people have been treating it," Bunny Wailer said.