I've Never Met a Nice South African

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I've Never Met a Nice South African is a satirical song originating in a sketch on the British television series Spitting Image. It was written by John Lloyd and Peter Brewis and was sung by Andy Roberts. In 1986 it was commercially released as the B-side of the chart-topping The Chicken Song. When the song was recorded, South Africa was considered a pariah state because of the white supremacist regime that was in power; their racial policies became known internationally by the Afrikaans word apartheid. Spitting Image's take was characteristically savage; the song contains lyrics which whites in South Africa may find offensive.

The song is narrated in the music video by a seasoned traveller who describes his unlikely experiences to a bored bartender (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lord Lucan or Freddie Mercury). He has met the Loch Ness Monster, had a close encounter ('of the 22nd kind'), seen unicorns in Burma, and had sunstroke in the Arctic, but despite all these exotic experiences, he has never met a nice South African. The lyrics bluntly describe white South Africans in a variety of insulting ways, such as 'arrogant bastards who hate black people', 'ignorant loud-mouths with no sense of humour' and 'talentless murderers who smell like baboons'. The chorus is sung by a number of gun-toting white South Africans, out on safari. As the song progresses, dead animals are piled up on their jeep and the Bar man becomes ever sleepier before collapsing on the floor.

The closing verse names writer and anti-apartheid activist Breyten Breytenbach, exceptionally, as 'quite a nice South African'. At the time Breytenbach had, as the song points out, had been living in exile in Paris and had been previously imprisoned by the South African regime due to his mixed marriage.

[edit] Lyrics

Man in bar

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