A whole country dances to Jerusalema on Heritage Day

Jerusalema was released in November 2019 by Master KG, a producer from Limpopo, with a vocal by Nomcebo Zikode: a prayer to be taken to Jerusalem, set over a house beat. It was a South African hit through the summer. Then, in February 2020, a dance troupe in Angola, Fenómenos do Semba, filmed themselves doing a line dance to it while eating from plates. As lockdowns spread in the spring, so did the challenge: hospital wards, monasteries, airports and police stations around the world uploaded their own versions.

On 16 September 2020, in a televised address on easing restrictions, President Cyril Ramaphosa asked South Africans to mark Heritage Day, 24 September, by joining the Jerusalema challenge. Across the country they did, in uniform and in traditional dress, on hospital forecourts and in townships and shopping centres, in one of the few collective moments of a year that had banned most of them.

The song went on to top charts across Europe and to become the most Shazamed track in the world for a stretch of 2020. The official video has passed 700 million views. For a country that had exported jazz, mbaqanga and kwaito to the world, it was the first South African record of the streaming era to reach everywhere at once.