The Fees Must Fall campaign that swept across South Africa between 2015 and 2017 was the most significant youth political movement in the country's democratic era. Students of this movement were inspired by the anti-apartheid struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, in which black youth were the most prominent actors. The radical and contentious politics of the 1980s also found expression among Afrikaner youth, one expression of which was the rise and popularisation of a short-lived but significant artistic and social movement known as Voelvry.

During the 1970s Yeoville, particularly Rockey-Raleigh Street, saw the emergence of several nightclubs and became the hub of a youthful counterculture, which complemented Yeoville's enduring reputation for cosmopolitanism. From the mid-1980s onwards, Yeoville's clubs came to play a crucial role in the development of Voelvry. Literally ‘free as a bird’, better rendered as ‘outlaw’, Voelvry (voël: bird; vry: free) was both a social movement and a subversive and satirical anti-apartheid punk-inspired rock ‘n’ roll. Sung in Afrikaans, and dubbed ‘boere punk’ (Allan 1989), this music was performed by the so-called Voelvryers (members of Voelvry), mostly white, youngish, Afrikaans-speaking male artists from middle-class backgrounds (Grundlingh 2004: 487). They were deeply dissatisfied with the government, represented by the National Party (NP). Based on interviews with Yeoville residents and individuals who patronised its entertainment spots from the 1970s onwards, this chapter focuses on how the nightclubs that thrived in the high street of Yeoville during the course of the 1980s enabled counterculture Afrikaans-speaking youths to escape transgress and oppose the legal and socially sanctioned codes of behaviour of the dominant society. They did so by performing, dancing and listening to witty punk-rock. What could be conveyed in 1980s Yeoville through light-hearted performances and concert parties was in stark conflict with the hegemonic – and allegedly homogeneous and monolithic – Afrikaner cultural identity, which was carefully produced and protected by the official nationalist institutions run by, or aligned with, the NP government through a number of both legal and secret organisations (O’ Meara 1996: 44).