IN THE ZONE
OF MASTERY

From growing up during apartheid to winning a Grammy, one of South Africa's most influential dance music exports. Zakes Bantwini, sits down with Mission Makers to talk artistic conviction, building his empire from the ground up, and why the most powerful thing you can do in this industry is pass it forward. If you've ever searched for how to break through as an independent artist, how to build a label from scratch, or how the South African house music scene became a global force, this is required listening.

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FROM THE TOWNSHIP TO THE DANCEFLOOR​

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We begin our conversation reflecting on how his childhood was shaped under apartheid, where television, not role models in his immediate world,  became his first window into a life worth aspiring to. Black South Africans, he explains with disarming clarity, were not permitted to own homes, access credit, or even go on holiday. Music videos were the only place he saw people who looked like him living differently, and that was the first spark into the possibility of living a different life. From training as a dancer in Paris, to studying jazz, to a friend challenging him to swap R&B programming for house music, the route to becoming one of South Africa's most recognised dance music exports was anything but linear. It was a song by Rocco & Nana Mouskouri that sealed it - and by 21, he was already sold on the genre that would define his life.

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THE OVERNIGHT SUCCESS THAT TOOK TWENTY YEARS

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Zakes is disarmingly honest about the gap between talent and the timeline behind his breakthrough. Osama - one of the seminal records that shifted South African radio's relationship with dance music and opened the door for a generation of Afro house artists - was the product of two decades of groundwork. When his label doubted it would get commercial radio play in a market dominated by amapiano, he backed himself entirely. The record not only proved them wrong; it shifted the conversation around what dance music could sound like on South African prime-time radio and opened the door for a generation of Afro house and Afro tech artists who followed.

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THE INCUBATOR MODEL BEHIND MAYONIE

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Perhaps the most gratifying thread in this episode is the infrastructure Zakes has quietly built around him. Mayonie is not simply a record label - it is a functioning artist incubator, with a physical house in Durban where emerging producers and vocalists live, develop, and learn the business of music from the inside out. Artists like Karyendasoul, Kususa, and many others have received not just a record deal but mentorship, split sheet education, and a philosophy rooted in one guiding principle: pass it forward. A late mentor once told Zakes he owed him nothing - only that he should give to others what had been given to him. That principle now governs everything he does with the next generation of South African talent.

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GATEKEEPERS, GREATNESS, AND THE LONG GAME

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Zakes is refreshingly unguarded about the reality of industry gatekeeping - even at Grammy level, the doors still get shut. Lineups are denied. Opportunities are withheld. His response is not anger but philosophy: no human being has the power to stop another person's light, only to delay it. For any artist navigating the politics of lineups, the question Zakes leaves you with is not whether you'll make it. It's whether you'll still be making the right music, for the right reasons, when the delay finally ends. From reimagining Bob Sinclair's iconic Love Generation to positioning South Africa's dancefloor culture on the global circuit, Zakes is playing a very long game - and he's thinking at least twenty years ahead.

 

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WE ALSO UNCOVER:

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• The questions every female vocalist should ask before collaborating with a DJ

• Why presence, not provision, is what makes a parent

• His mother's proverb that anchors everything he does

• The mistakes he believes most rising artists make too early

• Why he'd pitch Mandela on culture as the greatest economic investment

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🎧 Tune into the full episode on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe to Mission Makers for more conversations with the visionaries shaping music and culture.