The Bayswater revolutionary

Tom Fox played a strong part in the anti-apartheid movement. Photo / Richard Robinson

In the last years of apartheid, an unlikely group of young middle class white men sang a protest song. It became the anthem of a generation of young whites conscripted into the South African Army and ordered to fight for a regime they found they didn't believe in.

The song was called Weeping and was about then-President PW Botha, whose response to the dying days of apartheid was to become more brutal.

Political and subversive, Weeping went to number one on state radio.

The surprise is that it ever got past the censors, says the man who sang the song.

Tom Fox, member of the iconic South African band Bright Blue, now lives in New Zealand, working as a musician for The Sound Room, a company he started up with Kiwi musician Marshall Smith.

Weeping was released during the most violent period of apartheid. The end was around the corner, but in 1987 the country was in the midst of civil war.

Nelson Mandela was still in jail, uprisings in the black townships were brutally suppressed, people were imprisoned and tortured and the country was in massive debt caused by so much spending on the army.

Bright Blue were part of an anti-apartheid movement known as the End Conscription Campaign which encouraged conscientious objection and campaigned against conscription.

Political gatherings were banned but the band were able to speak through music to young, sheltered whites like themselves, many of whom were only awakened to the true horror of apartheid through conscription into the army.

In fact, Fox says he started his life in Cape Town living in a middle-class bubble. He remembers Rosa, his family's cleaning lady, one of the many black women who left their own families to care for white families.

Though he always sensed something was not right in his homeland, he and his siblings were carefully protected from the poverty and brutality, which were never far away, as they grew up in their musical family.

"You don't at an early age know anything because it's just something you're brought up in. The only black people we saw initially as kids were people doing the garden or working for you, menial jobs.

"I think you develop quite a strong relationship, but it's obviously always that master/servant thing, which is terrible."

Fox says his own awakening came from his two years in the army straight out of school, followed by the formation of Bright Blue and mixing with activists.

The bubble was such he hadn't even known who Nelson Mandela was until his late teens, and even though New Zealand had seen its violent protests during the Springbok rugby tour of 1981 and knew who Mandela was, the propaganda machine that was apartheid was promoting Mandela and the ANC as communists and terrorists to be feared.

South Africans knew about the protests of 1981 in New Zealand, Fox says, but those clashes were reported in the same way, "that agitators and communists have inspired the New Zealand public, have misled the New Zealand public, that sort of propaganda."

By the time he and Bright Blue began writing and singing songs like Weeping, Fox knew apartheid was an evil system, put together by a "bunch of madmen".

Weeping begins with the words: "I knew a man who lived in fear, it was huge, it was angry, it was drawing near; behind his house, a secret place, was the shadow of the demon he could never face."

The lyrics describe Botha building a wall of steel and flame and using men with guns to keep the demon tame, and the realisation of the rest of the world about what was going on.

It was a brave song for a time when even whites were being detained without trial, and if you listen to the music, lyrics aside, you also hear another act of blatant subversion.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, the then anthem of the African National Congress, was strictly banned and songs were read line by line by the censors for political messages. These young white men from middle class families slipped chords of that haunting hymn (now incorporated into the nation's national anthem) into their song.

You might have expected the state censors to go ballistic, or the band to be thrown in jail. But the censors didn't notice.

Right-wingers tend to be thick, says Fox with a grin at his Auckland home.

This unassuming musician moved to New Zealand six years ago with his family. He is now working on music for a documentary to go with the upcoming film Invictus about the 1995 Rugby World Cup (which is based on the book Playing the Enemy by John Carlin.)

The documentary, with the working title of The 16th Man, is by Morgan Freeman's company Revelations Entertainment (Morgan plays Mandela in the film), and interviews rugby players and black leaders of the day about the new president's goal to unite his divided country through the white man's game of rugby, which to the black majority had for so long been a symbol of white oppression.

This was the World Cup which saw the Springboks beat the All Blacks in a final remembered here for allegations of food poisoning. Fox says though food poisoning may have dominated the headlines here, for South Africans something much bigger was happening.

While that momentous World Cup final played out, the streets in South Africa were deserted as blacks and whites watched their nation win, then partied. In the end, rugby did help unify the country.

Fox lives quietly in Bayswater these days, though last month he and the rest of the band had the opportunity to relive their youth, performing live once again in Cape Town.

Bright Blue reunited for the 25th anniversary of the End Conscription Campaign, a movement which included a small number brave enough to risk jail and violence by being conscientious objectors, but also boasted a groundswell of support among thousands of young people who had been conscripted or faced conscription.

The band received a rapturous reception from the emotional, though balding, crowd.

FOX is a huge star in South Africa, not that you would know from speaking with him. He is modest and unassuming and initially seems too shy to be so famous. As you speak with him though, the shyness is replaced by humility.

While other South Africans we spoke to remember the role of Bright Blue as of the utmost importance, Fox shrugs aside any such talk.

With such a struggle going on in his country, there were many real heroes but he was not one of them, he insists.

The band were not even activists, rather they were young musicians who tuned in to their generation through their own experiences of conscription.

Fox detested his two years in the army in the late seventies, though because he is short-sighted he was not called upon to fight.

And though he sang Weeping (which you can watch on Youtube) he did not write the song. Another band member, Dan Heymann, wrote the song during his own experiences of conscription, though all the band members worked on elements of all the songs.

Another white South African immigrant told Weekend Review he still plays the music of Bright Blue and is still struck by how much it meant when he, too, was facing conscription.

He says Bright Blue played their part in the downfall of apartheid, "whether it was just giving strength to people who were in situations they didn't want to be in and also in just creating music that added to the outrage". They were unique, he says, because they were such ordinary young men.

"They were the most unlikely protesters. I mean, he (Fox) might say they weren't activists but they were the most unlikely non-activist activists."

Another Bright Blue band member, Robin Levetan, told us from South Africa why ending conscription was all-important. "Conscription of young white males was an essential part of the state's attempt to oppress the black majority using military force," he says.

"This is the context in which Bright Blue began to reflect the increasing resistance from within the white community to the use of conscripts."

Although the sentiments expressed in the songs were often quite bleak, there was also a sense of optimism and hope, he said. "Despite the constant harassment, detentions and imprisonment, activists were always ready to party and Bright Blue were a core part of the resistance culture."

Fox, modest as ever, concedes Bright Blue played their part. "Luckily music is a medium that can reach a lot of people. Hopefully, it did help a lot of people through the situation - it would be nice to think that."

REMEMBERING RAINBOW WARRIOR

Bright Blue recorded a song (written by Robin Levetan) about the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985.

Tom Fox: "I think what drew our attention to it was the unprecedented terrorist attack by a French government on a ship of peace in a land of peace."

Auckland Bay, on a winter's day
They destroyed a ship of peace
They murdered a man, an innocent man
Aboard the ship of peace
How could they destroy
A Rainbow Warrior
In the right place at the right time
Where were the bombers when the sun went down
She may sink to the bottom
But her spirit will never lie down
The Rainbow Warrior
In court they say, followed orders that day
And try to get their release
Changed their names, tried to shift the blame
They murdered a man of peace
How could they destroy
A Rainbow Warrior
With enough time and enough space
They'd kill everybody in the human race
She may sink to the bottom
But her spirit will never lie down
The Rainbow Warrior