It's the process, stupid!

How was Apartheid dismantled? The documentary Under African Skies, tells us of an arduous, complex, non-linear and enormously time-consuming process.

The film shows a sliver of that process, of course--the putting on the world stage of South African music by Paul Simon in his classic music album "Graceland" (1985). I haven't heard "Graceland" but the album is said to represent global music at its best. In the album Simon fused together Western beat with (Black) South African rhythms.

As Tom Friedman writes in his Op-ed piece, "Graceland" also globalized apartheid as a vicious and grossly immoral political system in the process of putting the beauty of Black music from South Africa--banned in South Africa itself--on the world stage.

Friedman reminds us that this musical intervention into the politics of its time was effective in mobilizing International opinion against apartheid, yet the mobilization took place in an era sans social media and the Internet, Globalization, iTunes, and YouTube.

Today, for instance, the South African musicians whom Simon internationalized, would have easily put together a video on YouTube and it would have been an instant "hit." But would the "hit" have generated anything more than just that--a raging popularity of something that excites viewers momentarily?

Means, the fate of apartheid could have remained undecided in an era of instantification and easy ingratiation.

Malcolm Gladwell had similarly reminded us of the fate of the Civil Rights Movement in his controversial  essay Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted.

Social and political activism is converted into mere, flaccid forms of mass entertainment these days. Recently a Simpsons episode had sky-rocketing ratings because it showed Lady Gaga kissing Marge Simpson. Did this really help the cause of LGBT politics in real ways?

When activism is subsumed under or becomes inseparable from mass entertainment/consumption, then it loses its unique identity, which as Gladwell had insisted, resides in the process of its unfurling and maturing over time.