Many readers will have been too young – if they were yet born at all –  to remember Miriam Makeba’s 1959 single, “Pata Pata,” or even when Makeba re-recorded it in 1967.  It was a remarkable song which you can see Makeba sing below on the Ed Sullivan show in 1967 when it gained international fame. It’s old footage, so bear with it, and listen carefully to hear what makes this song so unique.

Before we get to the song, we should mention that Miriam Makeba was pretty special, herself.

Often known as Mama Africa, Makeba was the first artist from Africa to popularize African music around the world. Her songs raised awareness about apartheid, and about the injustices faced by South Africans as listeners learned more about the singer.  In response to Miriam’s outspokenness,  the South African government revoked her passport in 1960, and then her citizenship (and the right to return to the country) in 1963. It wasn’t until 1990 when the apartheid system collapsed that Makeba was finally able to go home. Eighteen years later in 2008, Miriam Makeba died of a heart attack after performing in a concert in Italy.  She was 76.

As for the song, Pata Pata (and we promise, there is a dog in this post), the Afro-pop dance song popularized African rhythms and melodies by blending traditional Xhosa music with modern pop elements.  Xhosa is the second most common language in South Africa after Zulu, and if you listened carefully to Makeba sing, you heard “clicks.” Like Zulu and six other African tongues, tongue clicks are phonetic elements of Xhosa.  And it’s harder to do than it looks. Each click in Xhosa (and there are three types called dental, lateral, and alveolar) is followed without any pause by a vowel sound. When each type of click is paired with one of six vowel sounds, it makes for a total of 18 click sounds in the Xhosa language.

Is the world not an amazing place?

What this has to do with purebred dogs underscores a tenet of National Purebred Dog Day. If we lose a breed because of neglect or war, we lose the legacy of the culture which created or nurtured it.

Several breeds originated in South Africa including the Boerboel, Basenji, and Rhodesian Ridgeback. There is one other breed – the Africanis – that may cause some readers to ask why a site about purebred dogs mentions what some consider to be a landrace.

Our answer is to name the Canaan Dog, Carolina Dog, Korean Jindo, and Basenji.

At one time, the aforementioned breeds were regarded as landraces (and there are more if we consider breeds whose ancestors were primitive, aboriginal, or village dogs). Landraces typically evolve through natural processes, often in isolated areas, which helps maintain their genetic integrity. Over time, a group of people, or perhaps an individual, identifies certain populations of dogs to be so consistent as to resemble a breed. While some of these populations may have more phenotypic variety than would be found in standardized breeds, most breed true, and the Africanis may be such a dog.

Visitors to South Africa may have dismissed the Africanis to be the stereotypical plain brown street dog seen around the world, but many others consider it to be the original dog of Africa, a distinct breed endemic to southern Africa with a lineage that goes back at least 7,000 years. Only in the 21st century did the dogs begin to shed the “mutt” image because Joseph Sithole and Johan Gallant, animal healer and dog behaviorist respectively, studied dogs they encountered in rural KwaZulu-Natal kraals and homesteads. It was Gallant who gave the breed its name based on the Latin for dog – “canis,” and the dog’s place of origin, Africa. Gallant and Sithole concluded that the dogs known colloquially as Sica, Isiqha, or Umgodoyi were not a “stew” of common mutts, but dogs with a distinct and consistent set of characteristics and behaviours.  In other words, a breed. A distinct genetic makeup led the Kennel Union of South Africa to recognize the Africanis as an emerging breed, though the AfriCanis Society of Southern Africa’s mission statement is “to protect the AfriCanis as an aboriginal landrace and to uphold the principles of natural selection that have shaped this landrace for thousands of years.” In fact, we came across the minutes of a meeting of the Kennel Union of Southern Africa from 2019 in which a letter from a member of the AfriCanis Society objected to the AfriCanis being identified as an emerging breed rather than as a landrace, and the Union decided unanimously to remove all references to the breed from the KUSA website.

While there’s still a feral population in South Africa, people are recognizing that the playful, friendly, and loyal Africanis is a marvelous family pet. Though there is no rigid uniformity in appearance, Africanis (the plural form of Africanis is Africanis) are medium sized, well muscled, and agile. With a pointed muzzle, drop or prick eared, and a curled tails, most Africanis are brown, but they may come in other colors and marking. Most interesting is that a ridge of hair is sometimes seen on an Africanis’ back leading cynologists to suspect that the Africanis made a genetic contribution to the Rhodesian Ridgeback.

We have no proverbial “dog in this fight,” but share information about the Africanis because one day, it may be acknowledged by others as a bona fide breed.  Those wanting to learn more about the Africanis may want to read Johan Gallant’s book, The Story of the African Dog. 

Top image by Patrick Desloge/Unsplash