EXCLUSIVE: The Many Lives of Zakes Bantwini

In 2026, Zakes Bantwini is an artist who has experienced success on all levels, yet refuses to rest on his laurels. During his set at the Corona Sunsets in Cape Town back in March, he deconstructed his catalog before our very eyes. Flanked by a keyboardist and a synth player on either side, and perched on a platform between them, he projected something of an oracle, dispensing sensory medicine to hordes of receptive partygoers.

“Imali,” with Karyendasoul and Nana Atta, found another life; 2020’s “Osama” transformed the crowd, a spiritually attuned intervention, a grounding in the present. Songs we’ve heard many times before assumed new life. No sooner had his set ended than the event, which was meant to go well into the night, was called off.

He didn’t enter the music industry as an artist, but as a music executive, a behind-the-scenes figure, back in 2003. He signed L’vovo Derango to his label, Mayonie, and took him from a budding artist in the Durban party scene to something of a national superstar. In the process, he studied the industry — how the stars of that era moved, and how L’vovo himself responded to the challenges of fame.

“I remember this one time, I was judging Mandoza [for having security] around him. I remember saying, ‘Man, why is [he] having security? Can’t we have access to him? I mean, we’re all in the industry here,’” he recalls.

“I realized later that we were not bothered like [he] was bothered.”

A year later, he found himself having to arrange security whenever L’vovo was out in public. “Sometimes there are things that just happen that you don’t understand in the moment, but you do later,” he admits.

Pioneering Sounds and Building Legacies

Zakes Bantwini coined the term Durban kwaito and set a template for taking the sound beyond its regional reach — one that the likes of DJs Sox, Tira, Bongz, and others would follow. “I’m like a guinea pig because if it doesn’t work, then they don’t do it,” he says.

“I did not want to call it something else. I remember Bra Mike [Maswanganye, music executive and artist manager] saying, ‘This is not kwaito,’ and I responded, ‘I don't want to shy away from the word kwaito.’”

Later in the interview, when we ask whether he has any regrets, he neither winces nor minces his words: “I’ve been lucky. I think the only thing that I wanted to do that could not happen is really to build with an artist until they reach a certain level.” He stops to collect his thoughts, then turns to Dr. Dre and Eminem’s partnership as an allegory.

“I don’t think that Eminem needs Dr. Dre for money. He can get any producer that he wants. He can pay the money. Eminem is a writer; he can write. But he still works with him to this day.

“And for me it was that. I always wanted that kind of relationship with an artist. I always wanted us to grow together until we’re older, just changing terms of reference, and the terms of business.”

His much-publicized fallout with L’vovo — the result of too many hands in the pie, too many voices in one’s ear — is what he’s referring to, though the two have since reconciled.

Said L’vovo in an interview: “I think people didn’t like what Zakes and I did to the Durban Kwaito Movement. Some of them went as far as asking me why Zakes is on stage with me, and others would say Zakes was spending my money for himself, without taking note that he is my producer. My mother didn’t like what happened between Zakes and I, hence I took the resolution to put our differences aside.”

Says Zakes Bantwini: “[That’s] what we’re [still] trying to do [at Mayonie]. There’s [an exit clause] anytime you feel like you no longer want to be an artist, and you have enough money to invest in your own thing. What fascinates me is to make you a success.”

Afro-house Renaissance and New Beginnings

Success as a solo artist came about because he was familiar with the inner workings of the South African music industry, and his success as a businessman continues because he balances shrewdness with heart. More accurately, he leads with the heart, like when he offered Karyendasoul and a friend a place at his Durban home at the onset of COVID, where they worked on music that altered the pulse of Afro-house. His own “Osama” and Karyendasoul’s “Imali” were made during the same production session.

“We did ‘Osama’ in the evening — I think it was a Friday evening, in the thick of COVID-19 restrictions — and we did [Karyendasoul’s] ‘Imali’ in the morning, around 11 AM,” he tells OkayAfrica. “Those two songs introduced Afro-house on the radio in South Africa, and also as an alternative to amapiano. Which is the same thing that Durban kwaito did at that time: to introduce a new sound, a different sound.”

Zakes Bantwini is back with new music, a seven-track EP with Durban-based singer and songwriter Skye Wanda. Titled Echoes of Botanical Gardens, it breathes the city in which it was made: songs between friends whose musical connection goes beyond recording for release.

“[She’s] the one who actually made me realize that we’ve got so much music together. We really didn’t struggle to put this project together. We sat down and listened to all the songs we’ve done; okay, this one doesn’t make sense, that one does. We just had to sit and hear what felt right,” he says.

Skye Wanda is a masterful songwriter, a gifted vocalist with the range to repurpose the pain of loss, the longing that heartbreak intensifies, the feelings of inadequacy that depressive episodes bring about. She synthesizes all of these into something bearable, like an assurance that you’ll make it out of the darkness.

“It’s really a story of spirituality, just spiritual things and tranquility. My studio is next to the Durban Botanical Gardens. The subject matter is the stories that we talk about every time we’re in the studio. There’s a song called “Focus.” I’m sure one day it’s a story she would want to tell herself, but she has been struggling with depression and emotions. When Riky Rick lost his life, it was due to depression. This is the song that she wrote because it’s a struggle she understands.”

In 2011, Zakes Bantwini ascended the stage at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival — an artist caught in the whirlwind of fame, with songs charting, appearances in television commercials, and a relentless touring schedule — yet unshaken by it all.

He tells us that every single person on the bandstand that day had once been his classmate when he was a jazz student. And that’s when it clicks: Zakes Bantwini’s power lies in his ability to see the best in people, and to draw it out using whatever tools are at his disposal. That instinct for improvisation, a core tenet of jazz, is precisely why he’ll remain relevant for a long time.