Roger Taylor calls Queen’s performances in apartheid-era South Africa a “mistake”
It is well-known that English rockers Queen have never been the most political band on the earth. Preferring a theatrically rocking good time over more weighty topics, in many ways, this was one of the band’s main routes to success. Given just how miserable the 1970s and ’80s were at points, for a lot of fans, Freddie Mercury and Queen were a painless means of escaping the everyday mire with aptly named tracks such as ‘I Want To Break Free’. They were colourful, playful and had numerous belting anthems to boot.
However, although they attempted to be apolitical throughout their career, at one point during the ’80s, they found themselves at the centre of a firestorm. In 1984, Queen broke the United Nations’ cultural boycott of apartheid-era South Africa by playing a run of shows at Sun City, an entertainment complex in the bantustan of Bophuthatswana.
“Throughout our career we’ve been a very non-political group,” said bassist John Deacon at the time. “We enjoy going to new places. We’ve toured America and Europe so many times that it’s nice to go somewhere different… I know there can be a bit of fuss, but apparently we’re very popular down there…basically, we want to play wherever fans want to see us.”
“We’ve thought a lot about the morals of it a lot,” guitarist Brian May said elsewhere, “And it is something we’ve decided to do. The band is not political – we play to anybody who wants to come and listen.”
Widely criticised for their decision, Queen were fined by the British Musicians’ Union, with many fans even walking away from the band for good. Their decision was so widely condemned that even the United Nations blacklisted them, and it was a list they stayed on until apartheid finally ended in 1990.
Undoubtedly the greatest blemish on Queen’s career, in 2021, when speaking to Classic Rock, drummer Roger Taylor opined that their decision to perform in the country was probably a “mistake”, a significant U-turn considering the band defended their decision for many years. “Oh shit, did we get grief for that,” he said. “Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow. They didn’t get any stick, but we did.”
Taylor concluded: “We went with the best possible intentions, actually. We didn’t make any money out of it. I remember Brian went to award some of the prizes at the Soweto festival. We went with the best intentions, but I still think it was kind of a mistake.”