Vusi Mahlasela has never stopped singing for change

There is a line in one of Vusi Mahlasela’s most beloved songs, When You Come Back, about climbing mountains and reaching for the top of Africa’s days, that’s a mixture of poetry and prophecy. Because that is exactly what he has spent his life doing. From Mamelodi township, where he taught himself to play guitar as a boy, to the stage at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration, to the arenas of North America alongside Dave Matthews and Paul Simon, Mahlasela has climbed steadily without once losing sight of where he came from or why he started singing. They call him “The Voice”. Not just because of the raw, arresting power of his instrument, though that is reason enough but because of what he has consistently chosen to do with it. In a country wrestling with the ghosts of apartheid and the unfulfilled promises of democracy, Mahlasela has spent more than three decades using song as a formof diagnosis. “I’m like a doctor who has to diagnose problems in society,” he says, “and give it to the people through the subject matter of my songs, so that people can listen and debate those issues and come up with solutions.” It’s a calling that has never let him go. Born and raised in Mamelodi, a sprawling township north-east of Pretoria, Mahlasela came of age in a community defined by both oppression and extraordinary creative resilience. He became a singer-songwriter and poet-activist almost as a matter of necessity, joining the Congress of South African Writers and channelling the political urgency of his surroundings into music that was as hopeful as it was honest. His 1992 debut on BMG Africa, When You Come Back, announced a voice that the country had been waiting for without knowing it. Two years later, Mandela was free, apartheid was over and Mahlasela was performing at the inauguration of a new South Africa. But even then, he understood that the work was not done. Today, sitting on the eve of a new album — Questions and Answers, from which the singles Setshu Sa Ditamati and the fort