Fact #144790

Andrew Zweck : When Paul Simon made his Graceland album, there had been a lot of controversy about whether he should go to Johannesburg to record with black people, was it against the cultural boycott, was it ethically sound and so on.

Then, on December 31st, 1991, the United Nation’s Cultural Boycott against South Africa was lifted. Paul Simon wanted to be the first act in, so we played stadiums in January in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.

Attie Van Wyk (promoter, Big Concerts) : During 1991 I was very active with the South African Musicians' Alliance. I was very friendly with the executive committee and we were keen to get the cultural boycott removed. We had several meetings with government and the ANC and eventually we managed to get the boycott uplifted.

The very first approach we had after that was from Paul Simon. His musicians were all friends of mine, so I was in touch with them anyway, Ray Phiri in particular. Ray was in New York and I asked him to put the idea to Paul Simon because he seemed like the perfect act to celebrate the end of the boycott.

Andrew Zweck (booking agent) : Paul wanted to be the first artist to play in the new South Africa when the cultural boycott was rescinded. In December 1991 the cultural boycott was rescinded by the United Nations so artists could now go and play in South Africa. This was one of the conditions of the white government conceding things.

Paul Simon wanted to make a statement by standing shoulder to shoulder with Ray Phiri and Bakithi Kumala, the bass player, and Paul had an eighteen piece band at that time, two or three of whom were the hottest players in South Africa.

Attie Van Wyk (promoter, Big Concerts) : Let me tell you exactly how it happened. I flew to New York and met with Ray Phiri and Paul Simon's manager Ian Hoblyn. Ian said the best way to do it was through the international promoter Harvey Goldsmith, and Andrew Zweck was working with Harvey at that time.

I had no real experience of promoting at that level so Ian was unwilling to work just with me, so I said I'd be delighted to work with Andrew Zweck who I knew from the Clapton concert in Mozambique. In fact, that made me very comfortable, because otherwise I'd have been completely out of my depth. So Hoblyn gave it to Harvey, and Andrew became my contact.

I can't tell you how much I learned from Andrew. He came out on several occasions and would basically camp inside my office. He would walk into my office, put his feet up and we'd start talking. He took me through everything. We started doing proper budgetting, then I managed to do a proper template of concert expenses, and he was at every concert and we became very good friends. After the concert tour I took him and his family on safari, and I have subsequently worked with him on Depeche Mode and Mark Knopfler and lots of others.

Andrew Zweck (booking agent) : So Paul Simon came to me as his agent and said, "I wanna play in South Africa. How do we get it organised?" I thought, "Shit. There is no promoter in South Africa." The music business didn't exist outside of those guys up at Sun City. Then I remembered Attie Van Wyk, who had helped me with an Eric Clapton concert in Mozambique, and I wondered if he'd be interested in being a promoter. I met with a few other people but I chose Attie because he was the smartest one and I thought he had the resources.

There was one particular political group, AZAPO (Azanian People's Organisation) that was very active against Paul Simon, they were a wing of the Pan-African Congress, the opposite of the ANC. ANC was for it.

Harvey Goldsmith : This was just when the ANC were starting to take control of everything, and there were talks being held with the various factions. Unfortunately the youth faction of the ANC were left out of the talks. They decided to use our concert as a platform, as a voice to say how angry they were at being left out of the talks.

Andrew Zweck : Paul Simon was sitting in New York wondering if he should get on the plane, was it a good idea to come? Debate raged down there so much so that the AZAPO youth threw a hand grenade into Attie's office. Luckily it was quite late in the evening so nobody was injured because the building was empty.

It was a time of extreme stress. We were there about two weeks before Paul Simon turned up and it was just a mess. Every day AZAPO would issue statements saying, 'The concert should not take place, the political conditions are not yet right, we will stop it at any cost, there will be violence and bloodshed' … and the newspapers would print them.

It was January, holiday season, everyone was at the beach down there, not much news going on, so this made huge headlines every day.

So we went to all three of the major political groups, DeKlerk's white government, the ANC, and to the Zulus' Chief Buthelezi, and we got a signed letter from each of them, saying that the time was right, that the white government was making political concessions, that it was important to show the world that South Africa could host international artists like Paul Simon, and we fully support the rescinding of the cultural boycott.

So we had all these letters of political support to show Paul Simon was doing the right thing, and I kept phoning him in New York to tell him all of this and encourage him to come, but ticket sales were poor because of the AZAPO threats of violence.

Paul Simon came in about three or four days before the show and every day brought another crisis.

The day Paul Simon was due to arrive, at the airport in Johannesburg, he was due to give a press conference immediately, saying the concerts would go ahead, it would all be safe ... that was the day they threw the hand grenade

Attie Van Wyk (promoter, Big Concerts) : A few days before the Johannesburg concert I met Paul Simon at the airport at around five o'clock. He came in with an entourage about eighty people. I fetched him, welcomed him and checked him into the hotel in downtown Johannesburg.

There was a reception for him at the hotel, hosted by Nelson Mandela and all the dignitaries were there, including P.W.Botha. Then we went out for dinner and when I got home about 11.00 o'clock to receive a call from my general manager to say a hand grenade had been thrown through the office window. It was a drive by, these extreme left-wing guys, AZAPO, and they had decided there was a lot of unfinished business, and they were going to bomb our office.

So at 3.00am that morning, we were all sitting in the lobby of the Carlton Hotel wondering what to do. I remember telling Paul that we had insurance cover through Lloyds of London that included terrorist action, so we could cancel because all our expenses would be covered. Paul Simon just said, "The show must go on."

Andrew Zweck : The next day, AZAPO got all the headlines, Paul Simon was way down the news. The headlines were 'Promoter's Office Bombed. Concerts Under Threat.'

Attie Van Wyk (promoter, Big Concerts) : That day, Paul consulted with his entourage and they all agreed with him, which was wonderful. A lot of people would have just walked away. I have to say, though, that we had very good security. The South African police were totally behind us. They protected us.

Andrew Zweck : We were teetering on the brink. Paul would call a meeting of the whole band every day in the big suite on the top of the Johannesburg Sun hotel, in the centre of town, which is now the really, really black part of town. Nobody goes there now. Even back then we'd see a mugging a day. We'd sit in the bar at 5 o'clock and there'd be another American tourist and his wife screaming in with blood on their faces after being mugged. Now, you just don't go there.

So anyway, there'd be this meeting with the band every day and me and Attie would have to be there to tell everybody what was going on. Every single day, Paul Simon's manager would say, 'Renew the hold on the twenty business class seats out of here on British Airways tonight.' On a daily basis they were ready to get on the plane and go, because of AZAPO, the threats, the hand grenade…

Harvey Goldsmith : . I managed to get to meet these people and I said, 'What the hell do you want?'

They explained that they were angry at being left out of the talks so I said, "What the hell's that got to do with us? We've got nothing to do with the talks. We don't even live here."

Of course, they were just using us as an example, so I asked what they wanted and the guy said, "I want you to send us forty tickets for the show, and I want them deposited in the post office at Soweto."

So I agreed but I made it clear I didn't want any aggravation in the streets or at the show. I said, 'If you wanna have a peaceful demonstration, that's one thing, but if you start any trouble I'll come round and deal with you."

So they got their tickets and it could have been horrendous but in the end it went off brilliantly and that was that. Bizarre way of getting tickets.

Andrew Zweck : Paul decided in the end to meet the AZAPO kids, and they agreed to let the concert go ahead, so Paul called a press conference which was a huge media event, CNN, Reuters, BBC, everybody was packed in there.

So Paul Simon takes the platform and announces that he'd had a meeting with AZAPO, and he was going to make a donation to their organisation because he agreed with their principles, and then he spotted one of the kids from AZAPO right there in the room and he invited him up onto the stage. The kid gets up on the stage and says, 'You're a liar! We never said any such thing.' It was a nightmare.

It was a baptism of fire. Me and Attie were totally out of our depth. It looked like he'd be out of the concert business before he'd really got into it. I remember phoning home to Harvey Goldsmith to ask his advice and there was absolutely nothing he could tell me. It wasn't a situation anybody had encountered before.

Attie Van Wyk (promoter, Big Concerts) : We used to call AZAPO 'three men and a fax machine' because that's really what the core of their organisation amounted to. I think when the concert finally happened there were about twenty of them outside protesting 'Paul Simon go home'. You imagine you're up against a huge organisation, but that was really all they were.

Andrew Zweck (booking agent) : The reality of it was that these were about ten young radicals who couldn't even afford shoes, in their early 20s, living in a house in Soweto, not a well-organised group. The white South African police would say to us, 'Don't worry. We know these people. We've got the house bugged. We've got an infiltrator in their group. We know everything they're doing.'

I said, 'How come you didn't know about the hand grenade?'

It got to the point where we actually met AZAPO to talk about our differences. We had two cars organised to go to some sports pavilion somewhere, neutral territory, and the second car didn't turn up. I said, "Let's wait a minute for my colleagues." And the driver says, 'Maybe there's been a bomb.'

The kid who had thrown the hand grenade was a shrewd political operator. He'd been educated at the University of London, paid for by the British Government. They created absolute mayhem and cost Attie, in the end, hundreds of thousands of dollars because the concerts failed.

The show did take place, but it was touch and go every day.

The final thing was that Paul got the band members all to stand up and make a vote, do we stay or do we go? The South Africans were the first to get up and say, 'We must stay. We must play this concert. Our country is finally changing and we must take a stand.' Every member of the band said, 'We will stay. We will play.'

So that became the first big international concert in South Africa and it was a disaster. White and black people did not want to go to public events together. The white people were frightened. They didn't wanna buy a ticket to an event where they thought black people could be. Ticket sales were terrible.

We were playing stadiums. The first time in football stadiums, because the Graceland album had been huge, and there was enormous political turmoil still in that country and we were there in the month of January, two weeks after the cultural boycott had been removed.

AZAPO turned up, I counted about forty of them, barefoot, standing outside with placards saying, 'Paul Simon – Fuck Off'. There was no actual violence, but they'd done their job very effectively in the media. The tour played in 40-50,000-capacity stadiums, and we were getting maybe 10,000 scared white people. There were no black people.

I was OK but Attie lost his shirt because he was on a guarantee and the tickets just didn't sell.

(Source : interviews with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, September 2009 and February 2010)