Woolworths Madiba Tribute: The Soweto Gospel Choir

On 7 December 2013, Woolworths had planned an in-store performance at our Parkview store in Pretoria. The plan was to support our Christmas campaign, with a surprise performance by the Soweto Gospel Choir. The song was intended to be a rendition of James' Brown’s I Feel Good.

The Thursday night rehearsal went well but on Friday the 6th of December 2013, the day of Nelson Mandela's passing, with a nation in mourning it was clear that we had to change our plan for the scheduled Saturday morning performance.

We decided to transform the performance into a tribute to Nelson Mandela.
We chose to sing Johnny Clegg’s emotional song: Asibonanga.

We were overwhelmed by the response from the public. The video we created from the performance was played on News networks locally and across the globe and has had over 5 million views on YouTube to date.