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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Comes as a cd/dvd set in double jewel case with matching picture discs. Artwork features Penelope's "activist patch" coat with patches collected from activist campaigns all over the world that Penelope has played for and/or supported in 15 years of touring

    Includes unlimited streaming of Legacy: Two Decades of Topical Writing via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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      $1.75 AUD  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

  • Full Digital Discography

    11
    releases

    Get all 11 Penelope Swales releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Captains of Industry, Legacy: Two Decades of Topical Writing, Skin: Deep, Archive Vol. 2: Songs from the Borderline 1989-1992, Monkey Comfort, 'Archive': Demos, Out-takes and One-offs 1995-2000, Justifying your Longings to the Doctor, Homemade Wine, and 3 more. , and , .

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lyrics

Our Apartheid
© Penelope Swales 1995

Oh-wey-oh Stephen Biko,
Oh-wey-oh Mandela.
Oh-wey-oh children of Soweto, 

Oh-wey-oh Sharpeville Massacre.
Oh-wey-oh death in Johannesburg
Corruption 
in Pretoria
Oh-wey-oh, Inkatha-Zulu, ANC
Oh-wey-oh Africa. 



When you were sitting in your prison cell,
For twenty-seven years,
Did you 
risk your sanity by dreaming of this day?
Breaking rocks on Robben Island, I 
tell you,
We never thought we'd see the day

When a black man would rule 
South Africa,
Where black dreams have shaped the world
A long and bloody 
fight and so many have died
To bring about such a relatively peaceful 
revolution

When Daniel Yock was sitting in his prison cell,
Your victory 
was already guaranteed
We who have sat here, next-door in the Southern 
hemisphere
Some of us signed petitions hoping you'd be freed
We have 
thought about ourselves as so egalitarian
So superior to whites in your 
country
And yet there's so much that bears comparison
But in your land 
Aparthied's over and in my land it's still here

Well I never said it was 
official government policy
And Mabo rolled hope and despair into one
Lip 
service ifs effective and it's free
And the mining machinery rolls on
One 
obvious difference is in your country
Black people have always outnumbered 
whites
Yet here the white race worked so much more efficiently
And many 
people live and die never even having met a Koori

Over there in your 
country how do your people feel tonight?
Dancing in the streets, exuberance, 

"At last we have our rights!"
Over there in your country how do white people 
feel tonight?
It's fun to speculate on the trembling of the fascist 
two-percenting right
Over here in this country how do white people feel 
tonight?
Oblivious or nodding their approval
Rolling over and turning out the 
light.
Here in this country how do black people feel tonight?
Daniel's 
relatives could be excused for having their fists and their lips clenched 
tight
Aiee, Maralinga. Kurnai, Wurundjeri, Daniel Yock
Truganini, 
Namatjera
So many thousands nameless lost

You still have so far to go in 
your country
And we yet further here in ours
Take care old man, don't 
dance to late
We all know you're more ill than you make out
But they need 
you and we need you
And we all know that you're tired,
But we want you to be 
the hero,
We want you to make it right
‘Coz we don't make it right
Not 
here in our lives, not here in this land,
Not here in our Aparthied.

credits

from Legacy: Two Decades of Topical Writing, released July 1, 2010

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Penelope Swales Boolarra, Australia

Penelope Swales has been articulating the human condition with passion and humour for 30+ years. She sings about politics, love, friendship, the unbreakable bond between us and dogs and the impact of the Internet on society. She won the 2019 Alistair Hulett Songs for Social Justice Award with “Cambridge Analytica”. “The Ides of March in Christchurch" was short-listed for the same award in 2020. ... more

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