Grad overflow has been housed in Beattie Theatre these last couple of rounds, and performed this duty last week too. The foyer outside was transformed into a creche as some enterprising couple brought a horde of toddlers along. Given that even adults find grad boring, how they thought a wriggle of knee-highs were going to survive - well, clearly "thought" is not what they did. The toddlers discovered the wonderful acoustics - how sound in the foyer amplifies, while sound in the Beattie Theatre struggles. I'm sure everyone shared the joy of their discovery.
But by far the worst assault wafting out of the Beattie Theatre was the strains of the "national anthem".
The playing of the "national anthem" at grad was the subject of protracted debate, opposed by groups on the Left and by Liberals alike.
The Left argument - that it's a _national_ anthem, thus promoting nationalism; that this is out of keeping with the nature of a university which has since the Middle Ages been a supernational / transnational institution; that nationalism is an ideology of the Right - has merit but its impact is eroded, IMO, by the alacrity with which these same Left proponents accept funding from the national state celebrated by the anthem. Were those Leftists to surrender that portion of their salaries attributable to state funding, or to decline that portion of their operating budgets or their research funds, their argument might seem a little more credible.
The Liberal argument - positioned by the anthemists as "conservative" - is not dissimilar, resting on the separation of state from university; the assertion of academic freedom and the freedoms of expression required by scholarly pursuit. The Liberals argue that national anthems were not sung under Apartheid, or before; why should this now enter proceedings merely because the government in power is one acceptable to many in the University community? Gaudeamus, on the other hand, is what unites us as a scholarly community with others all over the world, in all other ages, for all times...
My own opposition is rather more subjective. Since encountering Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika at an impressionable age, I've had a soft spot for it, and happily sang it all those rallies, marches and illegal gatherings of the 80s although not a Charterist. This cobbled-together, ill-fitted abortion that welds bits of Nkosi Sikelela with Die Stem is abhorrent to me both aesthetically and politically. It sounds fractured, disjointed, discordant - perhaps accurately reflecting the nation it seeks to represent - and strains every sensibility and modicum of taste, but more importantly it encapsulates something which remains a potent symbol of oppression and exclusion. Those familiar with Die Stem will know it as a poem shoring up the mythology on which Apartheid rested. I refused to stand to attention when it played under Apartheid; why should I now respect the sentiments it endorses in their decline?
When the strains of the "national anthem" filter down the passage from piped grad in the Beattie Theatre, I reach for my iPod.