Johnny Clegg, a South African musician who performed in defiance of racial barriers imposed by the apartheid system, has died at the age of 66.
The British-born singer sometimes called the “White Zulu” died peacefully at home in Johannesburg with his family, his manager Roddy Quin told the state broadcaster.
Johnny had previously been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
His multi-racial bands, who performed during white minority rule, attracted an international following and he crafted hits inspired by Zulu and township harmonies, as well as folk and other influences.
One of his best-known songs is Asimbonanga, which means “we’ve never seen him” in Zulu, referring to South Africans during apartheid when images of then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela were banned.
Mandela was released in 1990 after 27 years in prison and became South Africa’s first black president in all-race elections four years later.
Grammy-nominated Johnny “impacted millions of people around the world,” his manager Roddy said. “He played a major role in South Africa getting people to learn about other people’s cultures and bringing people together.”
The singer learned about Zulu music and dancing as a teenager when he socialised with a Zulu cleaner and street musician called Charlie Mzila.
Johnny later explored his idea of “crossover” music with the multi-racial bands Juluka and Savuka at a time of bitter conflict in South Africa over white minority rule.
He recorded songs he was arrested for and “never gave in to the pressure of the apartheid rules,” his manager said. The apartheid-era censorship also restricted where he could perform.
The musician was performing as late as in 2017, high-kicking and stomping on his The Final Journey tour, during which time his cancer was in remission.
At a concert in Johannesburg that year, Johnny said that “all of these entries into traditional culture gave me a way of understanding myself, helping me to shape a kind of African identity for myself, and freed me up to examine another way of looking at the world”.
In December, Johnny told South African news channel eNCA that the “toughest part of my journey will be the next two years” and called himself an “outlier” in an interview that mused about mortality.
The performer had been diagnosed with cancer in 2015, and the gruelling treatment included two six-month sessions of chemotherapy and an operation.
“I don’t have a duodenum and half my stomach. I don’t have a bile duct. I don’t have a gall bladder and half my pancreas. It’s all been reconfigured,” he told reporters in 2017.
In that interview, Johnny recalled how he performed Asimbonanga during a tour of Germany in 1997 and experienced a “huge shock” when Mandela, beaming and dancing, unexpectedly came out on stage behind him.
“It is music and dancing that makes me at peace with the world. And at peace with myself,” Mandela said to the audience.
He then called on Johnny to resume the song and urged all in the audience to get up and dance. At the end of the song, Mandela and Johnny, holding hands, walked off stage.
“That was the pinnacle moment for me,” the musician recalled. “It was just a complete and amazing gift from the universe.”