Apartheid music in South Africa was extremely important in the freedom movement. In an era when there was not much money for the anti-apartheid movement, music became the most important weapon. The songs sung across South Africa to resist apartheid intimidated the government more than weapons and violence could have done, because of the powerful meaning behind each song that united and strengthened the resistance. Artists across South Africa wrote songs against the government and its cruel laws, and although many of them were banned, the South African people listened and sang them in protest against the government's rules. While there are many different varieties of groundbreaking anti-apartheid movement music, ranging from ironic and upbeat songs like "Meadowlands" by Nancy Jacobs and Sisters to aggressive and angry songs like "Beware Verwoerd" by Miriam Makeba, some of the most powerful songs are soft and gentle with very meaningful lyrics, like 'Nkosi Sikelel' Afrika' by Enoch Sontonga. Although the song is neither belligerent nor confrontational, the haunting melody played beneath extraordinarily powerful lyrics constitutes perhaps the most influential song in the anti-apartheid movement. "Nkosi Sikelel' Afrika" was written by Enoch Sontonga, a Methodist minister, in 1899 for the South African school children's choir where he worked to sing at the ordination ceremony of Reverend Mboweni, a Methodist minister in South Africa. Soon after the first performance, Samuel Mqhayi, a famous South African writer and poet, added seven verses to the song, giving it a much more significant connotation. As the struggle for blacks in South Africa intensified, 'Nkosi Sikelel 'Afrika' increasingly became... center of paper... the most influential song during Apartheid. Without it, there would have been far less hope for those involved in the anti-apartheid movement. Works Cited Amandla: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. Director Lee Hirsch. ATO Pictures, 2003. DVD.Byerly, Ingrid B. “Mirror, Mediator and Prophet: The Indaba Music of Late Apartheid South Africa.” Etnomusicologia 42.1 (1998): N. pag. Print.Drewett, Michael. "Stop this Filth: The Censorship of Roger Lucey's Music in Apartheid South Africa." SAMUS: South African Music Studies 25 (2005): 53-70. Print.Grant, Olwage. Composing Apartheid: Music for and Against Apartheid. South Africa: Witwatersrand University Press, 2008. Print.Jules-Rosette, Bennetta and David B. Coplan. ""Nkosi Sikelel' IAfrika" from the independent spirit to political mobilization." Cahiers D'Études Africaines 44.1/2 (2004): 343-367. Press.