Each episode begins with a piece of music to reveal what it tells us about a historical event, an era, or a social and cultural phenomenon. With "Asimbonanga," a song gave a face back to a man whom the regime wanted to render invisible. This song became one of the international anthems of the struggle against apartheid and helped make Nelson Mandela a global symbol of that fight.

It is the summer of 1986 in South Africa. The apartheid regime has declared a state of emergency. Demonstrations against racial segregation are multiplying and are being violently repressed. The same figure looms large in everyone's minds: that of Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for twenty-four years. His name is known to all, but his face has been erased from the public sphere. The authorities forbid the dissemination of his photographs. Entire generations thus grow up without ever having seen his face. This is also the case for Johnny Clegg, a white singer who grew up surrounded by Zulu musicians.

“We had never seen Mandela, yet for us, the mere sound of his name evoked the promise of a new South Africa,” he would later confide. At the age of 33, he composed “Asimbonanga,” which means “The One We Have Not Seen” in Zulu. The song was released in 1987.

Everything in this work constitutes a challenge to the apartheid regime. First, its title, then the choice to openly pronounce Mandela's name, at a time when many artists preferred to use pseudonyms to circumvent censorship. Next, the band Savuka, which, exceptionally for the time, brought together Black and white musicians. Finally, the choice of languages: verses in English and choruses in Zulu.

Where apartheid divided, Johnny Clegg united, much like Mandela. The lyrics also drew inspiration from the imprisoned leader's thinking, particularly his famous speech at the Rivonia Trial, just before his life sentence. "Who will find the words to abolish the distance between you and me?" sings Johnny Clegg. Unsurprisingly, "Asimbonanga" was banned in South Africa. But the song crossed borders, circled the globe, and helped strengthen the international movement against apartheid, thus contributing to the regime's inexorable decline.

On February 11, 1990, the world finally saw the radiant face of Nelson Mandela, released at the age of 71 after twenty-seven years of imprisonment. In 2010, Johnny Clegg recalled that moment on RFI: “It was fantastic. For me, it was as if the clouds had parted to reveal paradise.” Could he have imagined that one day Madiba, who had become South Africa’s first democratically elected Black president, would give him the greatest gift of his career?

In the spring of 1997, during a concert in Frankfurt, Germany, while Johnny Clegg was performing "Asimbonanga," Nelson Mandela unexpectedly joined him on stage. Moved like a child before his hero, the singer handed him the microphone. Mandela then addressed the audience: "It is music and dance that bring me peace with the world and with myself. Besides, I haven't seen you dancing much. Shall we start again?" Johnny Clegg immediately launched into the song.

Beside him, Nelson Mandela began to dance, his face lit by a radiant smile. This scene will remain one of the most moving in the history of protest music, as a symbol of a song that had contributed, long before freedom was regained, to making visible the man whom an entire regime wanted to erase.