With Jesse Clegg, Msaki and Skye Wanda beside him, Zakes Bantwini takes on one of Johnny Clegg’s most deeply personal songs — and makes a case for legacy as something that should keep moving.
South Africa has an enormous musical archive, but heritage does not have to mean preservation behind glass. “The Crossing (Osiyeza)” demonstrates another possibility: allow contemporary artists to reinterpret historically important work while preserving the emotional and cultural histories underneath it. The result turns legacy from something remembered into something actively transmitted.
There is a difficult question at the heart of every musical tribute: how do you honour something people already love without simply recreating it?
A song can be historically important without becoming untouchable. Sometimes the strongest evidence of its importance is that it survives reinterpretation.
With Johnny Clegg’s music, that question carries even more weight.
These are songs attached not only to an artist, but to particular memories of South Africa — to language, politics, movement, identity and, in the case of The Crossing (Osiyeza), profound personal loss.
So when Zakes Bantwini steps into The Crossing, alongside Jesse Clegg, Msaki and Skye Wanda, the significance is not simply that a Grammy Award-winning artist is tackling a classic. It is what happens when one of contemporary South African music’s most recognisable creative voices encounters a song carrying more than three decades of history.
The answer is not preservation.
It is continuation.
Originally released by Johnny Clegg and Savuka, The Crossing (Osiyeza) emerged from grief. Clegg wrote the song following the death of Dudu Zulu, his close friend, dancer and longtime musical collaborator. That history has always made the song feel bigger than an ordinary entry in his catalogue. It deals with passage and remembrance, but there is hope embedded in it too — an insistence on moving, even when movement follows loss.
That makes reinterpreting it unusually delicate.
Bantwini, however, is an artist whose career has repeatedly been built around movement between worlds. Over more than two decades, he has crossed between dance music, African musical traditions and electronic production while refusing to make those influences feel mutually exclusive. Osama dramatically expanded his international profile, before Bayethe, his collaboration with Wouter Kellerman and Nomcebo Zikode, won the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Performance in 2023.
There is therefore something fitting about placing him at the centre of a song called The Crossing.
But the new interpretation is not designed as a Zakes Bantwini showcase at the expense of what came before. Its larger purpose sits within Scatterlings, the project conceptualised and curated by Jesse Clegg and Msaki to bring Johnny Clegg’s catalogue into conversation with another generation of South African musicians.
That distinction matters.
A tribute project could have easily become an exercise in reverence: familiar arrangements, familiar melodies, artists carefully trying not to disturb what audiences already know. Scatterlings is pursuing the more interesting possibility.
What if respect for a musical legacy means allowing artists to change it?
“The Crossing is a song that has carried so much meaning for me throughout my life and, of course, for my father,” Jesse Clegg says.
For him, Bantwini’s involvement became particularly meaningful because of the relationship between the song, his father’s story and Zulu culture.
“Seeing his process, his instincts and the way he approached a song with so much history was inspiring,” Clegg says. “He has managed to honour what is at the heart of The Crossing while invigorating it with a completely new life and bringing it into his own artistic world.”
The final part of that statement may be the key to understanding Scatterlings.
Johnny Clegg's legacy is secure. It does not require contemporary artists to impersonate him in order to protect it. What the music can still do, however, is encounter artists who grew up in a different South Africa, work within different sonic languages and understand the cultural material from their own perspectives.
Msaki describes the philosophy even more clearly.
“We never wanted to reproduce what Johnny had already created,” she says. “Scatterlings is about allowing these incredible songs to meet a new generation of artists and listeners, and for each of us to bring something of ourselves to them.”
“That is how music stays alive.”
It is a simple idea with larger implications.
South Africa has an enormous musical archive, but celebrating that archive cannot only mean looking backwards. A song can be historically important without becoming untouchable. In fact, some of the strongest evidence of a song’s importance is its ability to survive reinterpretation.
That is where the combination of Bantwini, Jesse Clegg, Msaki and Skye Wanda becomes particularly compelling. It brings different relationships to the material into the same space: family and inheritance through Jesse; a deeply distinctive songwriting and vocal sensibility through Msaki; Skye Wanda's voice; and Bantwini's contemporary musical vocabulary.
At the centre remains Johnny Clegg.
But he is not being treated like an artist frozen inside a particular era.
That appears to be Scatterlings’ larger proposition: the songs can remain unmistakably his while continuing to belong, in different ways, to South African culture.
It is why The Crossing (Osiyeza) feels like an especially appropriate song through which to understand the project. A composition born from someone passing on is now itself being passed forward.
There is loss in that idea, inevitably. Johnny Clegg died in 2019, and hearing his work revisited will always carry the awareness that the person who created it is no longer here to take these songs somewhere new himself.
But there is also possibility.
Because somewhere between memory and reinvention, the music keeps travelling.
And perhaps the strongest tribute Scatterlings can offer Johnny Clegg is not simply to remind South Africa of what he created.
It is to prove that his songs still have somewhere to go.
The Crossing (Osiyeza) by Zakes Bantwini, Jesse Clegg, Msaki and Skye Wanda is available to stream, with the track forming part of the Scatterlings project celebrating and reimagining Johnny Clegg’s musical legacy.
Reporting basis: This is an updated and substantially rewritten version of Viranova’s existing coverage of Zakes Bantwini’s reinterpretation of “The Crossing (Osiyeza)”. The core interpretive framing and Jesse Clegg/Msaki statements come from material supplied around the Scatterlings project. Release metadata was independently checked against Apple Music, Spotify and Beatport. Apple Music confirms that the single was released on 10 July 2026, with Zakes Bantwini, Jesse Clegg and Msaki as primary artists and Skye Wanda and Johnny Clegg featured. The completed Scatterlings (Johnny Clegg Reimagined) album was released through Oceanbeat on 31 July 2026 and contains 14 tracks, not 13. “The Crossing” is track four. Historical claims around the original were checked against Johnny Clegg’s official catalogue, contemporary archival references and South African institutional sources. The defensible wording is that Dudu Zulu was Clegg’s longtime dancer, percussionist, collaborator and friend who was killed in 1992. Claims that he was definitely “assassinated” or Clegg’s “closest friend” are more specific than the available evidence supports and have therefore been avoided.
Story index Key points, people & topics
Key points & topics
- With Jesse Clegg, Msaki and Skye Wanda beside him — and Johnny Clegg’s own recorded voice still inside the song — Zakes Bantwini takes on one of Clegg’s most personal compositions and makes a case for legacy as something that...
- Johnny Clegg wrote “The Crossing (Osiyeza)” from grief after the death of longtime collaborator Dudu Zulu. More than three decades later, Zakes Bantwini, Jesse Clegg, Msaki and Skye Wanda have carried it into a contemporary...
Frequently asked Answers from the desk
What is Zakes Bantwini’s version of The Crossing?
It is a 2026 house-oriented reinterpretation of Johnny Clegg and Savuka’s The Crossing (Osiyeza), credited to Zakes Bantwini, Jesse Clegg and Msaki and featuring Skye Wanda and Johnny Clegg.
When was the new The Crossing released?
The single was released on 10 July 2026.
Is Johnny Clegg actually on the new version?
Yes. Johnny Clegg is formally credited as a featured artist on the 2026 recording.
Who else appears on the new The Crossing?
Zakes Bantwini, Jesse Clegg and Msaki are the primary artists, with Skye Wanda and Johnny Clegg featured.
What album is the new version on?
It appears on Scatterlings (Johnny Clegg Reimagined), released on 31 July 2026.
How many songs are on Scatterlings?
The completed album contains 14 tracks.
Who curated Scatterlings?
The project was conceptualised and curated around Johnny Clegg’s catalogue by Jesse Clegg and Msaki.
When was Johnny Clegg’s original The Crossing released?
The original appeared on Johnny Clegg and Savuka’s 1993 album Heat, Dust and Dreams.
Who was The Crossing written for?
Johnny Clegg wrote the song in memory of Dudu Zulu, his longtime dancer, percussionist, collaborator and friend.
Who was Dudu Zulu?
Dudu Mntowaziwayo Ndlovu, widely known as Dudu Zulu, was a dancer, percussionist and performer who worked closely with Johnny Clegg in Savuka.
How we reported this Sources, verification & accountability
- Reporting type
- News
- Verification
- Official source
- Reporter / responsible desk
- Viranova Music Desk
- Primary evidence
- This is an updated and substantially rewritten version of Viranova’s existing coverage of Zakes Bantwini’s reinterpretation of “The Crossing (Osiyeza)”. The core interpretive framing and Jesse Clegg/Msaki statements come from material supplied around the Scatterlings project. Release metadata was independently checked against Apple Music, Spotify and Beatport. Apple Music confirms that the single was released on 10 July 2026, with Zakes Bantwini, Jesse Clegg and Msaki as primary artists and Skye Wanda and Johnny Clegg featured. The completed Scatterlings (Johnny Clegg Reimagined) album was released through Oceanbeat on 31 July 2026 and contains 14 tracks, not 13. “The Crossing” is track four. Historical claims around the original were checked against Johnny Clegg’s official catalogue, contemporary archival references and South African institutional sources. The defensible wording is that Dudu Zulu was Clegg’s longtime dancer, percussionist, collaborator and friend who was killed in 1992. Claims that he was definitely “assassinated” or Clegg’s “closest friend” are more specific than the available evidence supports and have therefore been avoided.
- Additional verification
- Johnny Clegg and Savuka released “The Crossing (Osiyeza)” on Heat, Dust and Dreams in 1993. The composition was written in memory of Dudu Zulu following his death in 1992. Clegg’s official Scatterlings channel describes the song as a tribute to Zulu and as a work concerned with loss, remembrance and passage. The 2026 reinterpretation does not remove Clegg entirely from the recording: the late artist is formally credited as a featured performer alongside Skye Wanda. This is important to the feature’s argument about continuity between archive and reinterpretation. Zakes Bantwini is accurately described as a Grammy Award winner: “Bayethe”, with Wouter Kellerman and Nomcebo Zikode, won Best Global Music Performance at the 65th Grammy Awards in 2023. Johnny Clegg died on 16 July 2019. His official site and the South African government both confirm the date.
- Image
- Zakes Bantwini · Supplied by I Be Music
- Primary source
- Scatterlings / Oceanbeat — “The Crossing (Osiyeza)”
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Filed by Viranova Music Desk for the Music desk · Johannesburg, South Africa. Published 07 Sept 2026.
Sources
Primary material
Viranova obtained, attended or witnessed this directly.
- The 2026 reinterpretation of The Crossing (Osiyeza) was released on 10 July 2026 Scatterlings / Oceanbeat via Apple Music accessed 7 September 2026
- Apple Music credits Zakes Bantwini Jesse Clegg and Msaki as primary artists and Skye Wanda and Johnny Clegg as featured artists on The Crossing (Osiyeza) Scatterlings / Oceanbeat via Apple Music accessed 7 September 2026
- Scatterlings (Johnny Clegg Reimagined) was released on 31 July 2026 as a 14-track album through Oceanbeat Apple Music accessed 7 September 2026
- The Crossing (Osiyeza) appears as track four on Scatterlings (Johnny Clegg Reimagined) Spotify accessed 7 September 2026
- The new extended recording of The Crossing runs 8 minutes and 57 seconds Spotify accessed 7 September 2026
- The original The Crossing (Osiyeza) was released by Johnny Clegg and Savuka in 1993 Johnny Clegg catalogue via Apple Music accessed 7 September 2026
- Johnny Clegg's official Scatterlings channel identifies The Crossing as a song written in tribute to Dudu Zulu Johnny Clegg Scatterlings accessed 7 September 2026
- Zakes Bantwini won the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Global Music Performance with Wouter Kellerman and Nomcebo Zikode for Bayethe Recording Academy accessed 7 September 2026
- Johnny Clegg died on 16 July 2019 Johnny Clegg official website accessed 7 September 2026
- Jesse Clegg says The Crossing carried deep meaning for both him and his father and praises Zakes Bantwini for bringing the song into his own artistic world while preserving its emotional centre Scatterlings project material supplied to Viranova · Verified Viranova original information accessed 7 September 2026
- Msaki says Scatterlings was not intended to reproduce Johnny Clegg’s catalogue but to allow the songs to encounter new artists and audiences Scatterlings project material supplied to Viranova · Verified Viranova original information accessed 7 September 2026
Secondary material
Reported first by another publication or organisation, and credited here.
- Heat Dust and Dreams was Johnny Clegg and Savuka’s 1993 album and was shaped in part by the death of Dudu Zulu AllMusic accessed 7 September 2026
- South Africa’s Parliament confirmed Johnny Clegg’s death on 16 July 2019 following his battle with pancreatic cancer South African Government accessed 7 September 2026
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