An interview with Zola

By Frank H. Woodward Feb 24, 2006, 14:16 GMT

Soundtrack for the movie Tsotsi ...more

Since the success of his 2000 debut album "Mdlwembe", Zola has emerged as a superstar of Kwaito -- South Africa's answer to hip hop.  He has also become an icon of South African youth.

Kwaito is meant to lift spirits and hopes. "Kwaito kids are made from hunger, abuse, no father, violence and guns," Zola has often explained.  "Now as adults we must change the game for the better.  Now we must change everything we are made from." 

Zola was born Bonginkosi Dlamini.  Zola is actually the name of the Soweto ghetto he rose up from.  After the release of "Mdlwembe" and the equally successful "Khokhovula" and "Bhambatha", Zola was named South Africa's Artist of the Year in 2002.  Now,  Zola provides songs for South Africa's Academy Award nominated TSOTSI (he also appears in the film).  TSOTSI, the story of a ghetto gang leader who confronts the consequences of his brutal nature, beats with the essence of Kwaito as does Zola's every day approach to life.

In preparing for this article, I had learned that interviewing Zola could be an intense experience.  What I didn't expect was to be infected by his passions -- the beauty of South Africa, the poetry of African names, and the responsibilities a successful hip hop artist has to his community.  We hardly talked about his music at all, but to hear Zola's views on the world around us is to gain a deeper enthusiasm for his work.

ZOLA: No matter how many years it takes, you have to come here, man.  It's like the mecca of the world.  You have to get to South Africa once in your lifetime.  We got space, good weather and opportunities... Everybody that wants to get away from the noise, pollution, the political has to come to South Africa.

I'm 25 minutes away from my hometown (Johannesburg) on a road that has no traffic.  I got enough space in my yard, I could walk barefoot there and take off my shoes and walk on the grass, sit under the trees in my yard.  I burn incense in my yard... and I just sit there and talk to the gods.  I talk to the spirit world.  Nothing here exists without the spirit world and until people understand that, we're lost.  The cars... these houses mean nothing because we were born buck naked and when you make love, you want to be buck naked and when you die, chances are, if you bury traditionally, you're going to be buck naked.  These things don't match anymore... but, you know, you can't blame a lot of people.  To many things have been messed up in the world.

M&C: And South Africa is where you've always wanted to live.  You've never been drawn to anywhere else?

ZOLA: This is the place.  I live in a population of four million people and I'm home everyday.

Listen brother.  We have too many people from Europe here.  From America to England to the rest of Europe and once they come here... they meet a couple of friends.  They taste the food.  They feel the people.  Before you know it, brother or sister is moving in next year.  (It's) because we give opportunities.  That's what we're here for and now they find it very difficult to leave after awhile.  You know?  So they'd rather move the whole family to South Africa instead of going back.  Listen, it would be a bad idea to take your girlfriend here because she would demand you to stay or break up with you.

That's how beautiful it is.  You can walk at 12:00AM, you know?  You can walk.  If a car parks next to you and you're a woman, probably somebody wants to find out if you're okay.  "Can I give you a lift home?"  It's like Mandela taught us.  Ordinary South Africans think that you kick a stranger out or not give them a lift... the spirit world does not approve of that, you know?  You get a guy parking on the side of a freeway to lift a lady, do a U-turn and drive for 40 minutes just to make sure she's okay... you do that to a person, you have that person for the rest of your life as a friend. 

I have to lift a lot of people because of my position.  I mean, I have to live with them.  My mother is a pastor.  I can't say no to that, you know?  If I say no to that, they tell my mother and I get in trouble.  But as big as I am in the country, when it comes to my family household, I'm just a baby, man.  I'm a bambino, man.  I'm 28.  My mother still treats me like I'm four years old.

M&C: But your mother will always treat you like that.  That's what mothers are for.

ZOLA: The privileges of being a star and the last born come with so many opportunities, I cannot explain.

My South Africans embrace me and I came out of the gutter and they made me a god, man.  They gave me love, they listened to my stories, they listened to my interviews, they listened to the stuff I said in my music, they watched my acting and before I knew it, everybody knew me in the country.

M&C: What sort of responsibilities come with that position?

ZOLA: The responsibility that comes with being an icon in South Africa is nothing but love.  It's about kissing babies and hugging friends and listening to what the old man has to tell you and give reassurances to people of your age.  You know, I buy a lot of school uniforms for kids in the neighborhood.  You know, and I'm involved a lot in charity.  (People) always tell me that if you made 40 million today, you'd lose it all tomorrow to charity.  This is what I was raised on and this is the culture we are fully preserving.

Once you come here, you get hooked... you just become a social junkie, you know?  You go to clubs.  People want to buy you drinks.  They want to know about your country.  Most likely when you come to South Africa, somebody will give you an African name.  Say maybe you are a fighter.  Maybe you are freedom fighter.  You fight for all the civil rights and everything. They'll give you a name like QHAWE which means "hero".  And if you're a beautiful graceful woman... they'll give her a name like CWEDILE which means "purity".  I've given so many Americans names and they love them... the meaning underneath and they go to the Department of Home Affairs and they demand for that name to be registered.

My name is THUTHUKANI which means "the visionary".  And my other name is BONGINKOSI which means "praise the powers that be".  African names are pure poetry.  My daughter's name is LWANDLE which means "ocean" because with everything that we've done... orbiting the earth, sending satellites out, going to the moon...  we still don't know what is in the ocean.  Its secret (is) unrevealed and every religion alive today has got something to do with water because somewhere along the line, they all figured out that the very essence of life is water.  So I named my daughter Lwandle... that's how much I love her.  She covers three-thirds of my world. 

I think South Africa could be used as therapy for a lot of American kids.  If they knew the real inspiring story of who we are and how we live and how you might think Mandela is just one guy, but there's millions of Mandelas around.  Four-year-olds live under the same inspiration that Mandela gave us and they follow the same lifestyle of forgive and make peace... make the best of yourself, help the brother next door.  You know, I think they'll be so inspired by us because, you know, we're not even in the situation of singing about bitches and "ho's".  We haven't even got there and I don't think we ever will, you know, and stuff.  We don't brag about the cars we drive.  We don't do any of those things.  We just sing about the basic generics of human beings and how human beings are supposed to be. 

You know, like I've seen so many things about  hip hop and stuff and people killing each other on the street because hip hop was getting to a little scuffle.  People on the street take it serious.   We don't have that.  If we have a party, there's hugs and kisses.  I think somebody somehow got it all wrong.  "Okay, now let's shoot each other.  Let's talk about drugs, talk about killing each other."  That's not who we are.  That's why I feel there's a lot of stories that need to be told that can rekindle the spirit. 

You know, I saw how they honored Rosa Parks awhile ago.  And I looked at how graceful that human being was.  I know about Martin Luther King and Malcom X.  Maybe people need to be back into that and find the very essence of what being human means instead of... how you can kill your own brother.  That's not who we are.

M&C: Isn't that message at the heart of kwaito music?

ZOLA: The music is about pure love.  It's about giving back.  It's about protection.  It's about the dream of going to the mountaintop, seeing the promised land and getting to the promised land.  That's what the music is about. 

You know, this is what Mandela taught us.  This is what the Mahatma Gandhi taught us.  We know these people like they live next to us.  We don't just read South African material and if we read international material, we research it.  We know so much about Martin Luther King, you would swear that maybe once we had a Sunday soul food with him.  We know so much about Malcolm X.   We know so much about Rosa Parks. We know about Tu Pac as if he's a boy next door.  We know about Biggie Small.... I just wish they'd put the same concern on us.  We know about Beyonce.  We know about Alicia Keys.  We know these people like they live next to us. 

You know, every energy I felt about Alicia Keys before I even met her became true because we were in Cape Town and she actually came to us.  She's as South African as we are, you know?  She came across as such a beautiful human being and you know, you can always feel somebody's energy when they're good.  You always feel it when they're faking it and then they're good.  That child is very good inside.  I will fly.  I will get into a studio.  I'll do a song with her.  I will walk barefoot in the park with her.  I'll go and have food on Sunday cooked by her mom.  I will do that because she just felt absolutely amazing. 

And P. Diddy was cool as well.  There was a time when bodyguards walked into a room and they were like, "You know, guys, you better move." and P. Diddy was like, "Hold up.  These guys are with me."  Maybe you would have just kept quiet and watched the security push us out because we're just a couple of guys from South Africa, but P. Diddy absolutely said, "No, no, no, no, no.  These guys are not leaving.  They came here to support me.  They flew from wherever they're from to come and support me, so no way they're leaving."  The arrogance that the media sells us is actually not true.

M&C: It's hard to tell because the people that represent them or protect them sometimes give the wrong impression.

ZOLA: What they need to do is to give us a chance to know each other without being dictated on who we would like to be or how the industry likes to perceive us. 

I was in the studio.  Must have been 12:00 in the evening and I was deep in my lyrics and guess who walks into my studio?  Pras from The Fugees.  I think we must have been up to like 5:00 in the morning.  These kids in American music are not what we perceive of them.  They just want love and protection and to have fun.  He kept us laughing the whole... Pras can hold his whole comedy show, you know?  You know how beautiful that is? 

I tell you, in about a year from now, it will be such a a trend to do a collaboration with a South African musician. And, if their record labels do not take us serious, then we can do it one on one.  We can give each other a call.  I can fly to the states and get into a studio, flip a song with Alicia Keys, go do it with Jay Z, go do it with P. Diddy.  And we can contribute something to charity.  We can do a show to save Africa.  We can do a show to save the kids in New York.  This is the sole purpose we are here with all (the) money that can be made through the music so that it can save human lives and they don't have to be rap artists or R&B singers or hip hop or whatever.  They can actually become engineers, doctors and teachers.  They can actually become that through hip hop money because I believe that internationally we can make that much.

Imagine if we did a show that maybe was dedicated to save a couple of kids in Zimbabwe, for an example, which is not my country.  But maybe we picked up 200,000 kids and we did a hell of a show.  We dropped a CD with everybody doing collabos on the CD and maybe throw something like $40 million and all of us didn't get paid on it.  We just saved 200,000 kids.  They get enough money to go through school and get food and go through college... This is how I see music, you know.

M&C: Let's talk about the music.

ZOLA: That music is sung in pure Zulu.  Those are my people.  That's the tribe I come from.  In fact, it's not a tribe.  It's an empire.  I mean, it's about time people knew the languages that were taken away from them... the history that was taken away from them when they became slaves and when they became superstars in America.  I know they wear big chains and I know that they wear big clothes, but, you know what, the old slaves used to wear big chains, too.  They didn't wear them willingly and at the same time, they used to wear big clothes, too.  They were made of cotton and they worked in the cotton fields.  We need to free ourselves spiritually and mentally.  We need to look beyond the race.  We need to look beyond human life itself.  We need to look into the very same energy that created us...  the color blind energy.

And, you know, the movie TSOTSI, like poetry on my side, gives me a chance to finally tell the stories of our people to the world.  It's like opening the Pandora's box to the entertainment industry because it's going to take over, man, like you cannot believe.  It'll control, because we've got oppression stories, we've got struggle stories.  We've got negotiating stories.  We got the independent stories.  We've got the people leaving and coming out, like a butterfly out of  the silk cocoon.  There's just so many stories to be told about South Africans. 

TSOTSI probably right now is the most important film South Africa has ever made.  I'm proud of that project.  The Oscar for us would prove something very important.  It's an introduction to the world.  Charlize Theron has already had one for us and we are very proud.  But then again, we also feel that we've got a point to prove to the world.  We've got a message to put across that Africa is not about kids running around with AK-47s, women being oppressed, being taken into slavery and stuff.  Africa is actually a beautiful world in that we never invented cocaine, we never invented the land mine, we never invented the guns.  This is what TSOTSI also talks about.  It talks about a young troubled man in the modern world and the choices that he can make (that can) either destroy him or make him a man.  And I've seen movies, like, NEW JACK CITY.  I've seen CITY OF GOD.  I've seen JASON'S LYRIC.  I've seen all of those movies and we understand what is going on around the world.  The only thing is the world doesn't understand what is going on around us.  But TSOTSI gets a chance to tell it.