Benny Mayengani livened up South African Tsonga music with the flamboyant, boastful, controversial and often profane postures of hip-hop culture. The performer and sometime politician was born Bennet Skheto Baloyi in the Limpopo Province in 1978. Mayengani leapt to the front ranks of SA's house-derived Shangaan disco scene in 2011 with Tiba Ben. While he modernizes traditional Tsonga music with electronic versions of skittering xylophone and bass marimba lines, Mayengani also epitomises his native culture in hits like "Misava Yima Ni Chika", which describes the plight of a man who marries the wrong woman after being dumped by his true love. On his second album, President Mayengani, he began taking partisan swipes at highly popular Tsonga musicians associated with the African National Congress (ANC) political party. From 2016 to 2019, Mayengani served as a Johannesburg city councillor representing ANC rivals the Economic Freedom Fighters, and he was still reflecting a militantly partisan political stance on 2020's Malambani (Page 10).