HIGHER and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo has paid tribute to his late daughter, Zanele Naledi, in a touching song released on Sunday through the politician’s Twitter account.
BY SINDISO DUBE
In the song titled Tribute to Zanele Naledi Moyo, the minister rearranged the track from the old gospel classic, Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow You.
“Zane used to keep me abreast with hip-hop lingo. This dope rap is for her! Tribute to Zanele Naledi Moyo by Prof Moyo,” he tweeted.
Moyo told NewsDay in a follow-up interview that it was a year since Zanele’s death. A second-year student at the University of Cape Town, she was found dead in her Rosebank apartment on October 23 last year.
Moyo said the song had been in his spirit for a long time.
“I started specifically working on the song on Thursday and its recording and production was done on Friday evening with Gus Smyth, Jairos Hambahamba and Beast. So all told, it was really a 24-hour operation, but of course it is also true that the song was in my spirit, having lived within me since October 23, 2015 when I sang the original or classical version of Surely Goodness and Mercy Shall Follow You at the burial of my angel daughter, Zanele,” he said.
Moyo, said the version he recorded for the memorial was re-arranged and modernised to suit the situation.
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“I hope it also will resonate with others, who have gone or are going through a similar experience as endured by my family’s loss of Zanele,” he said.
Moyo said, whenever he sang the lyrics he saw his daughter’s “infectious smile” and reflected on her life.
Moyo said Zanele used to keep him abreast with hip-hop lingo and the rap line on the last part of the song reflected the young woman’s love of the genre.
“Zanele used to teach me the hip-hop language that young people speak and through that, she would expose me to their music, for example she taught me that dope means nice and I thought, wow, that’s really dope! Zanele was my everyday generational link,” he said.
The minister said following the tragic death, he went through “a composer’s block” and shied away from listening to music.
The song is available on YouTube, with a collage of Zanele’s pictures making up the video, which accumulated more than a thousand views on its first day.
