No House of the Rising Sun

The old (apartheids) flag of SA as portraited in a bar in Cape Town

"That song The House of the Rising Sun was not allowed in South-Africa, because it’s about a whore house", says my companion while we’re talking about the U2 and Green Day song. "My father is therefore very proud of the illegal copy he has got somewhere". But if you don't know it is about a whore house than you will never pick that fact up from just the lyrics, I reply. He shrugs. Apparently that didn't matter to the apartheid-censors and apparently it wasn’t hard to get bootleg copies too. I know his father and he doesn’t strike me as a guy who knows people who know people, if you know what I mean.
Apartheid was first and utmost a crime against the black people of South-Africa. But there were some other 'side-effects'. An example of that is the strict censorship that was applied to everything that was against the 'morals' of the nations' leaders. (The irony of which always makes me laugh). Every song or book with the smallest reference to boobs, nudeness, sex, anarchism etc. was banned. It must have been some dull Sixties here. Once I enquired after the presence of hippies in the country in those days. Yes, there were youngsters with long hair and weird clothes, was the answer. What did they protest against, I remember asking? The silence that followed spoke for itself, I guess. Demonstrating was forbidden. Not just for the anti-apartheid activists, for everybody. As a dentistry student my (white) father-in-law and his fellow students were not allowed to demonstrate to get fluoride in the tab water to prevent cavities.
Erotic magazine were allowed though! Only, gold stars were covering up the 'good' parts of the women. Ever tried to scratch those stars of the paper, I asked my South-African boyfriend once. Of course, he said. "But it never worked. They were printed in the paper".