Watch: Musical tributes for Nelson Mandela's 95th birthday

Watch: Musical tributes for Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday

By Robyn Dixon

July 18, 2013 12 AM PT

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The music video starts with three young people walking along a road -- a symbolic reference to Nelson Mandela’s famous “long walk to freedom.”

Their song, “Thank You Madiba,” which uses Mandela’s clan name, is one of myriad musical tributes made in honor of the anti-apartheid hero’s 95th birthday.

This one, though, is a little different. It’s by a white Afrikaner band, ITB (In the Beginning), led by Machiel Roets, a Free State farmer’s son-turned-musician who started piano lessons at age 9.

“Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and soul,” the lyrics go.

PHOTOS: Worldwide celebrations for Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday

The song is testimony to the love that Mandela has inspired among South Africans of all races, despite the tiny right-wing white minority lampooned on Twitter recently because of its fear of a race war after Mandela’s death.

“You said we are in so much fear and need,” the group sings. “We don’t know the power of the light, the light that’s shining from within. It’s power for every human being. I hope the future, black and white, learns of your love and your insight. So I thank you my friend Madiba.”

Singing star Zahara, whose real name is Bulelwa Mkutukana and who, like Mandela, was born in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, has also written a tribute song titled “Nelson Mandela.”

Part of it is in the Xhosa language. South Africa’s City Press newspaper provided this translation: “Nelson Mandela. Tata Madiba. Father of the nation. Hero of heroes. There’s none like him.”

Zahara performed for Mandela in 2011, at a family gathering at his home in Qunu, sitting on a chair at his feet, as he reclined in a chair listening, a newspaper on his lap.

The video of her singing to Mandela is one of the few of the former leader circulating since his last public appearance in 2010, at the final of soccer’s World Cup in South Africa.

Zahara’s tribute will be part of an album to be released in September.

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