Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika
Maluphakanyisw' uphondo lwayo
Yiva imathandazo yethu
Nkosi Sikelela Nkosi Sikelela 

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika
Maluphakanyisw' uphondo lwayo
Yiva imathandazo yethu
Nkosi Sikelela
Thina lusapho lwayo. 

Chorus
Yihla moya, yihla moya
Yihla moya oyingcwele
Nkosi Sikelela
Thina lusapho lwayo.

Yihla moya, yihla moya
Yihla moya oyingcwele
Nkosi Sikelela
Thina lusapho lwayo.


Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika (Lord, Bless Africa) was composed in 1897 by Enoch Sontonga, a teacher at a mission school in Johannesburg.  It was first recorded in London in 1923, and became a popular church hymn also adopted as the anthem at political meetings. For decades it was regarded as the national anthem of South Africa by the oppressed and was sung as an act of defiance against the apartheid regime. 

A proclamation in 1994 stipulated that both Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika and Die Stem (the Call of South Africa) would be the national anthems of South Africa. In 1996 a shortened, combined version of the two anthems was released as the new National Anthem.

This anthem was adapted as “Siunaa koko maailmaa” or “Lord Bless the Whole World” into the hymnal of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church as Verse #501 with a text written by Jaakko Löytty in 1985. 

If you enter the Finnish name on YouTube you’ll see a version with a guy looking up in a train station.  This is the moving video that made me fall in love with the tune.  Jaakko Löytty is the first singer.