“Asimbonanga, asimbonang’ uMandela thina.” We have not seen him, we have not seen Mandela. In 1987, when it was banned to show Mandela’s picture in South Africa, Johnny Clegg sang about him.
Johnny Clegg was born in England in 1953 and moved to South Africa as a child. As a teenager in Johannesburg, he met Zulu migrant workers who played street guitar and danced isishameni, a Zulu dance style. He learned the music, the language and the dance, which was unusual and sometimes illegal for a white South African under apartheid.
Juluka
With Sipho Mchunu, a Zulu musician, Clegg formed Juluka in the late 1970s. A mixed-race band was provocative under apartheid, and the two faced harassment and arrests. Juluka combined Zulu music with Western pop and rock, and their album Scatterlings of Africa gained international attention. The title song later reached a far wider audience when it was used in the 1988 Hollywood film Rain Man.
Savuka
After Juluka, Clegg formed Savuka in the mid-1980s. Its music was more directly political. “Asimbonanga”, released in 1987 on the album Third World Child, was dedicated to Mandela and other figures of the struggle, including Steve Biko, Victoria Mxenge and Neil Aggett, whose names are sung in the song.
The white Zulu
Clegg’s energy, his dancing and his fluent Zulu earned him the nickname the White Zulu, particularly in France, where he was hugely popular.
Mandela on stage
After Mandela’s release and election as president, Clegg performed “Asimbonanga” at a concert in the late 1990s, and Mandela walked onto the stage and danced with him. The footage became one of the best-known images of reconciliation in the new South Africa.
Anthropologist
Clegg also studied and lectured in social anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, writing about Zulu music and dance.
Death
Clegg was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015. He continued performing, including a farewell tour, and died in July 2019. Tributes poured in from musicians, politicians and fans in South Africa and France, and South Africa mourned him as a musician who crossed lines that apartheid tried to enforce.
Legacy
After Clegg’s death, choirs, schools and communities recorded “Asimbonanga” as a tribute.
The song asked where Mandela was. About a decade later, the answer was on stage beside Clegg, dancing.
