The first day of 2026 will go down as a magical one. It was a day full of historical significance. One of those was the inauguration of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City. Amid the proceedings was a three-minute, you-snooze-you-lose moment. Just as the poet Cornelius Eady was invited to the podium to read the poem he had written for the occasion, the strains of Abdullah Ibrahim’s Mannenberg were heard.
What is Mannenberg, and what is it to us as South Africans? And now, what is it to the rest of the world?
Mannenberg is a song, a dance, a time and a place, a memory, and the present.
It is etched deep in the fabric of our souls, a sharp reminder of the unsustainability of the vain, evil, false and ahistorical divides between us black people of various ethnic roots. It reminds us that while it might have succeeded in its evil “influx” aims, apartheid — which we are still told to “move on from” — failed where it truly mattered: breaking down the bonds that bind us to each other.
Mannenberg was recorded in 1974 at a studio in Cape Town, with producer Rashid Vally. The song’s title refers to the Manenberg township, symbolising the forced removals of coloured people from District Six during apartheid.
It became an unofficial anthem of the anti-apartheid movement and a celebrated piece of South African jazz.
Key members of Ibrahim’s band at the time included Basil Coetzee, Robbie Jansen, Monty Weber, Morris Goldberg and Paul Michaels. This collaboration resulted in a masterpiece of Cape jazz, blending klopse, marabi, lang-arm, jazz, tshaba-tshaba and other styles.
Growing up in the mid-1970s, the song was everywhere. It tracked our lives like no other. To now hear the lilting, slow guitars, synth organs, piano and rhythm section waft up and away in Manhattan at such a historical moment ...
It just reminded me of the often unheralded (especially by us South Africans) impact our music, cultures, styles and liberation figures hold on the global imagination. I felt something similar to that Mannenberg moment about 15 years ago when I went to see Talk to Me, the biopic about activist and radio DJ Ralph “Petey” Greene, at a 2am showing in Brooklyn. Greene, played by Don Cheadle, arrives at Radio City Music Hall to tape his first TV show. As he alights from a limo, shaking with fear and anxiety, a song floods the auditorium — Hugh Masekela’s Grazin’ in the Grass. I have never been so excited in my life.
Paul Simon would not have recorded Graceland. The Buena Vista Social Club might never have happened
As soon as the credits rolled I jumped out and called my friend and mentor Hughskie in Johannesburg. We had a long rap about South Africa’s musical heritage and laughed about how Herb Alpert would not have become a multimillionaire had he not heard South African music.
After Mamdani’s inauguration I spent half the day cleaning the house and cooking. I was moved to play thula mabota, aka “bump jive”, as I went about the chores. They all came thundering through the speakers — the Movers, Pat Matshikiza, the Cannibals, the Drive, and Abdullah Ibrahim. My 82-year-old lost ‘n found uncle, Bra Sailor, lost his head and regained the rubbery flex in his legs. He jumped up and jived a storm.
I would later hear him and my sister still talking about the music at 1am as I went to the restroom outside.
If it were not for the township thula mabota and “soul” guitar and organ synth attacks and Shangaan rural guitars, and dance music from the mines, all collected in Indestructible Beat of Soweto and Next Stop Soweto, and the Shangaan music from Nkowankowa in Limpopo that first won over Harry Belafonte in the late 1970s/early 1980s, the thing now packaged as “world music” would not have reached the heights it has.
Paul Simon would not have recorded Graceland. The Buena Vista Social Club might never have happened; same with the rediscovery and repackaging of Ali Farka Touré, Toumani Diabaté, Zap Mama, Papa Wemba, Gogol Bordello, Mariza, Concha Buika and Busi Mhlongo. There would certainly have been no renewed interest in Malombo, Philip Tabane, Mabi Thobejane, the Blue Notes, and the entire thing here called Afro-soul.
Back to the inauguration day. I called up friends I’ve long neglected in Cape Town. We tried to track down anyone we know from Manenberg. We could not find anyone. A friend from Athlone reminded me of the day we went to Manenberg on our way to Athlone in search of a gatsby. I remember that day very well. I remember other days I’ve been to Mannenberg. And I remember how the place felt forlorn, dull, life zapped out of its soul.
I remember my friends told me I cannot just walk the streets as if I’m in a safe, white people’s suburb “where blacks like you live, mos”, and I hit back lamely, telling them I had survived Salt River and Bonteheuwel; what could happen to me inside Abdullah Ibrahim’s song? We burst out laughing, but they had managed to put the fear of God in me already. We quickly left. As we drove out, all I saw was a black township that has not changed at all since 1974. Again, tears well down my cheeks.
I had forgotten about Manenberg, the place and the song, until Mamdani’s inauguration team took me way back home into one of our musical masterpieces. It was befitting and apt for Zohran, who spent time as a laaitie in Cape Town in the early 2000s, though definitely not in the Cape Flats.
The moment told me something else. That not only is memory a weapon but it is a raft the poor, the forgotten, women and all kinds of children who have been told their lives will amount to nothing can use to swim to freedom.
Memory in song, storytelling, legend, text or artwork can be the blanket or armour that small people, disenfranchised people, can use to enshroud themselves against the powerful and greedy. It can be the indelible, invisible ink with which they sign their names across their hearts to remind themselves and future generations to say their names correctly, and with pride.
I thought long about the living conditions of the people of Manenberg. And I thought about the throngs of freed Africans, then known as “Negroes”, who journeyed from the South to the rest of their country in an almost biblical migration.
I thought about New York City as a cultural melting pot of migrants from Ireland, Italy, Uganda, France, England, South Africa, China, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Mexico and just about everywhere. The lid to the memory vault exploded. I thought about the days decades ago I was a brief migrant there too, hungry, sick and walking the streets of Forte Greene, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, NYC, where the Eastern Parkway kisses Park Slope in the way only New York town planning can. I remember walking the streets bankrupt, hungry and in threads, only to be taken in by migrant families from Nigeria, Jamaica, Haiti and elsewhere who fed and medicated me back to robust health.
Who does that today for the children of Manenberg?
● Madondo is an award-winning author, essayist and photography critic.
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