Cultural Relations between Switzerland and Apartheid South Africa
ed. by Stephanus Muller and Chris Walton

Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien 2025
372 pages, with many figures
ISBN 978-3-906927-74-9
eISBN 978-3-906927-75-6
doi.org/10.53202/LHFY9620

In the decades after the National Party of South Africa assumed power in 1948, a close economic relationship evolved between South Africa and Switzerland, whose longstanding refusal to join international boycotts enabled it to advance to being one of the apartheid state’s most important business partners. But alongside trade in gold, diamonds and much more, the two countries also enjoyed manifold relations in the cultural field, both “official” and “unofficial”. Swiss musicians toured South Africa with state assistance, plays by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch were performed there in English and Afrikaans, South African jazz artists such as Abdullah Ibrahim (aka Dollar Brand), Sathima Bea Benjamin and Chris McGregor found enthusiastic audiences in Switzerland, and in the 1970s the plays of Athol Fugard began to be seen on Swiss stages and heard on national radio. 
Cultural objects, performances and lives moved between these two countries, accruing symbolic value even as artists themselves often bore the costs—in substance abuse, exile, censorship, domestic violence and early death. The essays in this book reframe Switzerland not only as an enabler of apartheid-era cultural life, but as a site refracted through South African critique. 
The essays in this book cover a multitude of topics from jazz to classical music, architecture, linguistics, theatre and literature in translation. They are derived in large part from the papers given at a conference held in Basel in May 2023, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), and organised by the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB) in collaboration with the Bern Academy of the Arts and the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel. The authors investigate the activities of official state actors and private individuals, institutions and organisations in order to elucidate understandings and misunderstandings in a field where meanings and intentions were fluid, and where cultural relations existed in a complex process of give and take.

Available in open access. The printed version of the book is available for sale.

Content

Chris Walton & Stephanus Muller | Introduction

Part I: Historical Foundations and Early Encounters 

Chris Walton | Tracing the Paths of Culture between Switzerland and South Africa

Lineo Segoete | A Nineteenth-Century Swiss Missionary Encounter with Sesotho Orthography

Annemie Stimie Behr | Vignettes from the Travels of Things: A Cultural Biography of Objects in the Hans Adler Collection

Thomas Chapman | Compact Urbanity in Contrast: Revisiting Civic Centres Designed by the Kirchhofer Office in Apartheid-Era South Africa

Part II: Music, Theatre and Performance as Cultural Exchange

Hilde Roos | Deon van der Walt (1958–2005), a South African Tenor in Zurich

Chris Walton | South African Youth Orchestras in Switzerland

Franziska Burger | Listening to South African Apartheid on Swiss Radio: Athol Fugard’s The Blood Knot and the Translation of Passing

Franziska Burger | A Theatre Scandal in the Swiss Provinces: Fugard’s Statements in St. Gallen

Part III: Literature, Exile, and Intellectual Dialogues

Jasper Walgrave | Peter Sulzer and the Conservative Representation of South African Literature to a German-Speaking Readership, 1948–1994

Paula Fourie | Swiss Literature in Afrikaans between 1948 and 1994: An Overview

Astrid Starck-Adler/Dag Henrichsen | Lewis Nkosi and Switzerland: Provincialising the Global North

Féroll-Jon Davids | “Coloured nature… isn’t that easy to shake off”: Gordon Jephtas in Switzerland

Chatradari Devroop | Shalati Khosa’s Swiss Sojourn

Willemien Froneman/Stephanus Muller | Singing Cowboys and Alpine Goat Herds: The Passaggio of Culture to Nature in Afrikaans Yodelling

Part IV: Jazz 

Richard Butz | When South African Jazz Came to Switzerland: Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand), Chris McGregor and the Blue Notes, Joe Malinga and other South African Jazz Musicians, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and “AfriKaribik” in St. Gallen

Bruno Spoerri | Dollar Brand in Zurich – Taking Notes

Steff Rohrbach | Harmonies of Foreign Climes
Christian Steulet/Steff Rohrbach | Abdullah Ibrahim in Ichertswil: An Interview with Six Trutt

Steff Rohrbach | Interview with Rose Ntshoko

Steff Rohrbach | Interview with Bob Degen

Steff Rohrbach | Interview with Stephan Kurmann

Steff Rohrbach | “Jazz against Apartheid”: An Interview with Jürgen Leinhos

Christian Steulet/Steff Rohrbach | Interview with Barbara Pukwana

Christian Steulet/Steff Rohrbach | Interview with John Wolf Brennan

Steff Rohrbach | Interview with Niklaus Troxler
 

Sources, Bibliography, Index