Thandizwa Mazwai Suggests It’s Time For SA To Change Its National Anthem

Afro pop singer Thandiswa Mazwai has expressed her feeling towards the SA national anthem which she further suggested should be changed to a song called ‘Makubenjalo’. The Zabalaza hitmaker’s reason of the suggestion is for  freedom to reign in the new and changed SA.“Makubenjalo must be part of the national anthem. Because it must be so! Makubenjalo means ‘let it be so’. Let freedom reign! I believe it still isn’t so. We still need the power of those words,” she said.

Makubenjalo is the outro of the original Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika anthem written by late composer, Enoch Sontonga over 40 years back. Mazwai expressed these sentiments while she was at the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz Festival in Sandton, Johannesburg performing amongst jazz legends the past weekend. She went on to elaborate on her statement and said that it felt antithetical to sing Nkosi Sikelela.

“My issue was that it’s antithetical having the two of them together in one anthem, she had said at the time. It’s antithetical having to sing Nkosi Sikelela and then move on to Die Stem. And so I felt that the two could not coexist.”

Leaving no opinion to herself she went on to say that they sang the anthem to represent struggle now that we free it should change. “I grew up in the 80’s and singing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, the song represented the struggle for our freedom as the oppressed people of this country. We would sing Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika to represent that struggle and to represent our hopes that one day we will be free. And as a young person Die Stem represented the nationalism of those who oppressed us. That’s what Die Stem represented; it represented that nationalism- the nationalism of apartheid was represented by that song.”