Arty party band the Dirty Skirts are equally global in their insouciant indie-rawk swagger. Reacting against the post-grunge hangover that has “plagued” local rawk ever since bands like the Springbok Nude Girls imploded, the Skirts make rock music for “people who don’t have nits in there hair”.  Think an ultra-fashionable pastiche of pert punk-ish guitar and euphoric electro-pop beats that tap directly into the international neo-new wave styling that makes British crews like Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah et al. deemed cool and cutting edge.

The Dirty Skirts are well aware of their international indie influences and unabashed in their ambition to make a global impact. As lead singer and guitarist Jeremy ‘Jess’ de Tolly declares, “We’re unequivocal about the fact that we’re trying to make a world class product…. Any South African rock band has to face the question of migrating or not. We want to play Reading. Hell, I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but if we don’t roll those dice….”

In many ways, rolling the dice towards the overseas market makes sense. After all we live in a globalised world characterised by rapid big brand corporate imperialism and densely networked capillaries of information flows. And in South Africa, those flows do seem to be unnervingly one way. Jeremy again, “The local scene seems to receive more from the international scene than it sells to it, and we’re trying to reverse that one-way traffic.”

It’s not a new dream. Ever since grunge pioneers Lithium signed a major label deal with EMI in the mid 90s, the local rock scene has been pursuing the idea that if even one South African band could make it overseas it would part the global musical sea for others to follow and the local industry would get the big bucks boost its so desperately needs.

Of course it doesn’t really pan out that way – especially when so much South African rock buys into an imported international blueprint. Sure, South African post-grunge purveyors Seether might have gone massive in America but no one over there seems to know or care that the band started out here. Even fellow chart-rockers the Foo Fighters were surprised when, in a recent interview with their drummer Taylor Hackford, I revealed that Seether originally hailed from our shores.

So where does that leave South African rock? Stuck somewhere between a rock and a hard place – too foreign to really give South African audiences something unique or to make a lasting impact on the local scene and simultaneously too bound by major label capital flows to ever break out of the local geographical context.

That might be the case if it weren’t for a new school of bands that are filling the gap by creating rock music that’s unequivocally bound to the here and the now.  Leading the Mzansi rock charge is a small renegade bunch of independent Afrikaans sonic Voortrekkers. As my good mate, Mda points out: “For decades now, Afrikaaners have identified themselves as Africans.”

Enter Fokofpolisiekar whose ability to blend razor-sharp socio-pathological Afrikaans lyrics with good-old -fashioned pedal-to-the-metal garage rock has made them one of the most crucial rock bands in the country at the moment. Hell, you don’t even need to be Afrikaans to relate to the Fokof’s Rainbow Nation assassinations, disenfranchised suburban angst, koeksister konsentrasiekamp laments and bakgat Post-Voelvry blues-rock ballads.

But its not just die manne that are rewiring the local rock scene. Afrikaans all female Pretoria-based post-punk princesses, Rokkeloos are also adding their Estrogen-edged antics into the rock mix. While English chick rockers like Mitsoo and the femme-fronted Love Jones are content to draw on international bad girls like Juliette Lewis and Kim Gordon for inspiration, the Rokkeloos bokkies site Brenda Fassie as their main influence – and it shows. The band’s debut album Nooiens-vaart is a searing slice of hardcore Afro-femme-rocktica that combines Johannes Kerkorrel’s socially charged nihilism with township jive’s street-savvy cool and Patricia Lewis’ damp-between-the-thighs loslyf lust to fling a melktert in the face of post-apartheid phallacies and gender hip-o-crisies.

Another Afrikaans musician not afraid to raise his middle finger to the current musical and social status quo is Joburg singer and subversive shit-stirrer extraordinaire Francois Henning. Having originally made a name for himself with his white-boy kwaito alter-ego Lekgoa, Henning recently defied the security police manning South Africa’s music genre borders again - this time by switching from kwaito to punk rock for his new Snotkop project. Did I say punk rock? Well kind of. See Snotkop radically reinvents rock by remixing it with kwaito, techno, pop and a good dose of foul-mouthed lyrical satire to create something that is at once a genuine product of the post apartheid Rainbow Nation promise and a defiant statement against Rainbow Nation propaganda.

“Kwaito and Afrikaans punk-rock are very close to each other,” explained Henning in a recent interview with the Mail & Guardian. “Kwaito originated off the streets - the subject matter the music deals with is the same stuff… it speaks about issues that touch the youth and frustrates them, makes them angry, but at the same time it also is music you would get drunk on, party with and get rid of all that anger and frustration.”