AfricaIs aCountry

Sampling Semenya

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Sampling Semenya

By
Tom Devriendt

An interview in a (South African) Sunday paper with a ‘hopping mad’ Caiphus Semenya (the South African musician* was surprised to hear his music was being sampled in the ‘Murder to Excellence’ track on the Jay-Z & Kanye West’s Watch The Throne album — without him being consulted) got us curious about the song used. Turns out it is ‘Celie Shaves Mr./Scarification Ceremony’, of The Color Purple soundtrack which Semenya co-wrote with Quincy Jones, Harvey Mason Jr., Joel Rosenbaum and Bill Summers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ci8KKr5zV0

Get them, Caiphus.

In the meanwhile we’ll stick to Zuluboy sampling another song of his (‘Nomalanga’):


[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNhkatwxLXo&w=600&h=373]

*If you’re wondering who Caiphus is: with his wife Letta Mbulu (fronting their family band) they built respectable careers out of Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s. (Click through for the videos of Letta on Soul Train with Caiphus on backing vocals and later in the early 1980s.) When he arrived in the US in the early 1960s, Caiphus started collaborating with Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa (listen to their Union of South Africa).

Further Reading

Visiting Ngara

A redevelopment project in Nairobi’s Ngara district promises revival—but raises deeper questions about capital, memory, and who has the right to shape the city.

Gen Z’s electoral dilemma

Long dismissed as apathetic, Kenya’s youth forced a rupture in 2024. As the 2027 election approaches, their challenge is turning digital rebellion and street protest into political power.

A world reimagined in Black

By placing Kwame Nkrumah at the center of a global Black political network, Howard W. French reveals how the promise of pan-African emancipation was narrowed—and what its failure still costs Africa and the diaspora.

Securing Nigeria

Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by foreign airstrikes or a failing state, but by rebuilding democratic, community-rooted systems of collective self-defense.

Empire’s middlemen

From Portuguese Goa to colonial Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani’s latest book shows how India became an instrument of empire, and a scapegoat in its aftermath.

À qui s’adresse la CAN ?

Entre le coût du transport aérien, les régimes de visas, la culture télévisuelle et l’exclusion de classe, le problème de l’affluence à la CAN est structurel — et non le signe d’un manque de passion des supporters.

Lions in the rain

The 2025 AFCON final between Senegal and Morocco was a dramatic spectacle that tested the limits of the match and the crowd, until a defining moment held everything together.