BIBLICAL BRIEFS 59
For a long time now there has been a lot of suspicion created concerning the hymn that constitutes the larger part of the South African national anthem. It is alleged that the song is dedicated to an ancestral idol entitled Nkosi, or even possibly the ancestral mother figure Mina Mamo Wê. It is also alleged that the underlying ubuntu theology denies the biblical salvation values. The critics even suggest that its singing encourages that pregnant white women (representative of apartheid) should be slaughtered in line with the 6000 pregnant women who were apparently killed by Shaka Zulu. It is unfortunate that believers with a crude political agenda cause unnecessary division in an already polarized country through such disinformation, and that their insecurities awaken fear and suspicion. Not one of these wild statements is true, and at most misleadingly distorted. Nkosi Sik’lele ‘iAfrika (“LORD, bless Africa”) was composed in 1897 as a spiritual song by a sincere and true Christian believer, Enoch Sontonga. He was a teacher at the Methodist Missionary School in Nancefield, Johannesburg. The melody is based on the psalm ‘Aberystwyth’ by Joseph Parry, and Sontonga adapted it to unite Western and African musical styles. He was a poet, a choral master and a preacher. The song was formally recorded in London in 1923 and the lyrics published in a Presbyterian songbook in 1927. Nkosi’s identity in the song is implicitly linked to the Holy Spirit, and is clearly the Name of the true God of the Bible. In Zulu, Nkosi means: master, chief, king, but undoubtedly also ‘Lord’. Believers, of whom God at all times expects the ministry of reconciliation (2Cor. 5:18), can boldly sing this song as a song of worship.
Dr. Tom Gouws
