Dear, Mom: Mombathise is an ascension song. Simphiwe Dana says it is for her late mother: ‘a song to tell her to go and rest and be at peace.’ Photo:
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There is a hymn in Tinsimu Ta Vakreste, hymn 288, titled Vonani, wa ta, Hosi Yesu — behold, the Lord Jesus is coming back.
It is one of those hymns we sing so often it risks becoming muscle memory. The words leave the mouth, the harmony lands where it should but the meaning sometimes stays behind. Faith, like routine, can dull itself when repetition is left uninterrogated. We sing because we know the song, not because we are still listening to what it is asking of us.
Then Moya begins.
The first song played at Simphiwe Dana’s album release gathering is Mombathise — “cover her”. And suddenly that old hymn finds its way back, uninvited but necessary. As the song unfolds, I find myself silently singing Vonani, wa ta, Hosi Yesu. Not because I plan to but because something in the song calls something older to the surface. Spirit recognises spirit. Memory answers memory. The sacred does not always arrive announced; sometimes it simply sits beside you and waits.
It is only later, last Thursday at Jazzworks Studios in Bryanston, that the song fully arrives. The room is filled with people who know music, who have heard brilliance before, who are not easily moved. This is not an audience prone to spectacle. And yet when Mombathise finishes playing, there is silence. Not the awkward kind that begs to be filled. The holy kind that insists on being honoured.
After it played there was a moment of silence. People were sighing. The song touched a nerve. It made people feel something. It moved the room. Not in a dramatic way but in the way grief moves quietly, deeply, without permission.
Mombathise is an ascension song. Dana tells us it is for her late mother: “a song to tell her to go and rest and be at peace.” A song of release, even though release itself has not come easily. There is a tenderness in the way she speaks about it, also restraint. She does not dramatise loss. She respects it.
“Well, it was my way of saying I intend to let you go,” she explains, “because I have not let her go yet.” There is no performance in her voice when she says this. No poetry for effect. Just truth, spoken plainly. She speaks of dreaming of her mother because she wants her to be happy, because her life was hard. “I want you to be happy… perhaps now you finally can.”
Dana goes on to describe the prayer inside the song. “I was imploring God, my ancestors to cover her… to cover her with holiness, to cover her with peace, the peace that she never had.” This is where Moya begins to distinguish itself. It is not grief dressed up as art. It is grief processed through ritual, ancestry and faith. The song does not ask the listener to witness pain; it asks them to witness surrender.
Her mother’s story is one of early loss and lifelong sacrifice. “My mom lost her mother when she was 16,” Dana shares.
“She couldn’t feel her mother… she carried that.” And yet, she was an angel. “She would give you her last cent, she would rather go without shoes for you.”
A nurse by profession, her passing left colleagues devastated. “The nurses were inconsolable because she was so loved.” Dana lets that sentence stand on its own, allowing the weight of that love to do the work.
Moya — spirit, breath, wind, is the only possible title for this album. It is animated by something older than melody and deeper than genre. It is carried by ancestry, grief, devotion and an uncompromising belief in excellence as a form of respect. This is not an album chasing relevance. It is an album anchored in intention.
Dana is candid about how difficult the process is.
“I hate writing songs,” she says plainly. “It’s hard and it requires that you dig deep into the ugly parts that you’re trying to escape from.” Creation, for her, is not romantic. It is labour. A blank canvas demanding melody, harmony, structure. “It’s very, very difficult creating something out of nothing.” What redeems the difficulty is not the applause but what comes after.
Performance, she says, is her reward. “I absolutely love performing because it takes me to another place. I feel closest to God when I’m on stage.” The stage, for Dana, is not a site of ego. It is a place of communion. A place where the work leaves her body and becomes something shared.
This reverence carries through to the collaborators she chooses. Working closely with renowned choreographer Gregory Maqoma, who is a creative partner of over two decades, helped shape both the sound and the visual language of Moya. Dana describes the aesthetic without hesitation: “African high art. African couture.”
A deliberate refusal to shrink African expression into something convenient or easily digestible.
“Greg was one of the very few people who heard my music early on,” she recalls. Back then, the songs were mostly a cappella, still in demo form. While others listened in awe, Dana sat hearing only what could be improved. “As an artist, I’m never satisfied,” she admits.
“You usually have to wrestle the album away from me… because I’ll always find something that I can add.”
What anchors this perfectionism is respect for the art and for the people making it. Dana speaks with deep admiration of Maqoma’s character. “He respects his art and doesn’t make his gift define him as a person.” His humility, she says, has not changed in 24 years. “This is a gift. It’s supposed to help others. It’s a gift that’s supposed to be shared.”
The same spirit defines the wider Moya ensemble. A choir of ten voices, long-time collaborators with whom Dana shares “the same work ethic” and an insistence that “it must be excellent all the time. Always.” Nothing here is casual. Nothing is accidental. Everything is deliberate, considered and held to account.
Watching Dana perform confirms this devotion. There are moments when she turns her back to the audience, conducting, correcting, shaping the sound mid-song. Not out of control but out of care. Out of reverence for the work and for the people receiving it.
And perhaps this is the quiet thesis of Moya: “We are so much more than what we allow ourselves to be.” African art does not need to apologise, simplify, or dilute itself. Legacy is not built by chasing relevance but by standing firmly in intention, discipline and truth.
Moya does not shout. It breathes. It remembers. It mourns. It releases.
When Mombathise ends and the room falls silent, it becomes clear that this is not only Simphiwe Dana singing to her mother. It is Simphiwe Dana inviting all of us to consider who we have not yet let go of. Who we need to cover with prayer, with forgiveness, with love.
Including ourselves.
This is not just an album.
It is communion.