‘This is my birth certificate, isitifiketi sami. The genesis of my story as a singer and writer.’

This is what I take from Jabulile Majola’s debut Extended Play (EP) project, Isitifiketi, after spending a year with it on my Apple music playlist. The South African folk singer and writer has introduced me into a world which I can’t separate myself from; the experiences of my own life.

Nami nginaso isitifiketi, I can still find it today under my grandmothers mattress. A piece of processed pulp wood and laminated that introduced me and my name in this world. To share a story, I don’t think my grandfather ever had isitifiketi sakhe – the document. I remember he would tell us often that his ID has all incorrect information of him, from his name to his date of birth, nevertheless he was a man who had isitifiketi sakhe – a genesis and tale of his history. Isitifiketi by Jabulile Majola takes me through this experience to understand identity, memory, and experience.  

I can’t call this a review, rather, the befitting description would be that I am piecing together a listener’s experience with the sound and words. It would take me the entire week to go through track by track sharing my experience with the project. Therefore, I choose to share my experience with my only two tracks of the seven in the album. I’ve chosen Isineke (with Thando Zide) and uBhubesi because they stand as the top two I’ve played in the past year experiencing the project. The two are sequential in the EP and so it is in this moment of the project where I find myself less numb, my own journey told.

I first drafted this writing whilst listening to Bamba Isandla Sam’ – a track in the same EP – traveling to Johannesburg to begin my first year as a commerce student at Rosebank College. I didn’t finish it then but it remained in the diary as an experience with the EP.

The title: Isitifiketi

Isitifiketi, just the title of the project got me thinking when it was released back in April 2025. The name was so familiar but I thought it had no connection to the tales uJabulile was telling throughout the EP. It was only after fully experiencing uBhubesi where I came to understand that isitifiketi is not the word, it’s the identity. UJabulile throughout the EP tells us the first experiences of his life, his memories as a child, his pain and anguish, all to his experience with God. He gifts us the genesis of him as an artist. He gives and shares with us isitifiketi sakhe.

We begin somewhere, there is somewhere of a place and time u-Okwakhe Obusayo began. In this city lights of hopeful Johannesburg, isitifiketi sakho is all of what you have and should perhaps hold on to till you’re sent somewhere else. This is where I can share my own experience with uBhubesi fully.

Track 4: uBhubesi

Apple music quotes Jabulile Majola describing the track as:

“what describes folk music for [him], because it’s a song of the community. It’s the story of this young man that left the homestead, and went up north. It takes place in the Drakensburg so, he went north to Johannesburg in order to seek a better opportunity, and just never came back. So he’s a prodigal son to his mother, but then he’s an absent father to his son. I’m singing to the grandmother, basically consoling and saying, ‘Don’t worry, your son will come back at some point. He does miss you”

When I left for college, my grandmother sat me down and reminded how she has raised me. My grandfather, even today, he still calls to tell me the latest on imfuyo ebaleni and what good football   Orlando Pirates is playing at the Arena. In uBhubesi, I confront this fear of turning into the prodigal son to my grandparents. A boy they raised suddenly losing a sense of him while navigating the greener pastures of Johannesburg. I am afraid of losing isitifiketi sami  and uBhubesi has been the song to remind me the migrant story I carry with me in every lecture room.

My father disappeared when he came here in Johannesburg, I first saw him on his funeral brought back home by Covid-19. I’ve seen the pain of waiting for a prodigal son to return in my grandmothers cries, also, I am the boy with the absent father. Ironically, today I am where my father disappeared. The experience with uBhubesi is beyond this twofold picture, it goes deep to the questioning of isitifiketi sami.

Track 3: Isineke (with Thando Zide)

This is a love song in the EP. I sit with it reminding me of the experience of loving and to be loved. It takes me back to the reminder that we can never do this thing called life alone, at some point,  someone has to pour patience into our sorrows, traumas, and equally to our joy. Isineke has been the acoustic melody reminding me of the experience of loving.

There’s Thando Zide in this track. It turns into a conversation between the lovers pouring into each other’s life experiences in pain and joy. The song keeps the repetition “Ng’cela ngabi noyedwa ofela ngaphakathi”, a remind that we need experience of loving and it does not happen in your silo – Ubuntu.

In a word, like I said before, my attempt with this piece is not to review the EP. Rather, my intention was to share my experience with the project. How the writing and sound have carried my story as a young boy from eMtshezi, telling my reality of migration and hope, confronting fears and my history trauma, and finding love somewhere from someone in someplace and time.

I haven’t touched his newly released debut album, Ipasi, but the name itself has left me somewhat thinking about the sequel between Isitifiketi and Ipasi. Isitifiketi is what formally registers your birth of identity and Ipasi is where you become part of the suffrage; the adult grown enough to make decisions – huh! Is this a sequel on post-trauma childhood or something totally different? Regardless of my thinking on Ipasi, I am still the boy looking for and willing to protect at any cost Isitifiketi sakhe. It would take me over another year I think before I can fully grasp ngesineke Isitifiketi – the debut EP.

–MediaHouse150