Becoming The Muse

The Lion, The Composer and The Comedian

Chances are high that you know the song Circle Of Life from Disney’s 1994 animated feature film The Lion King. “Circle of Life” was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1994, along with two other songs from The Lion King and was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

Circle of Life was composed by British musician Elton John and composer Hans Zimmer, with lyrics by Tim Rice and performed by Carmen Twillie. The song is well known for its Zulu opening line, sung by South African composer Lebo M.

Nants'ingonyama, bakithi, baba
Sithi hu 'ngonyama.
Nants'ingonyama, bakithi baba
Sithi hu 'ngonyama.
Sizo ngcoba 'ngonyama.
Ingonyama nengw'enamabala.

The song was featured in the 2019 remake of The Lion King and performed by Brown Lindiwe Mkhize, while still retaining the original Zulu opening vocals by Lebo M from the 1994 film.

The Lion

The song recently got a fresh interest when Zimbabwean comedian Learnmore Jonasi offered a translation of the song during an interview with One54 Africa podcast which went viral…

Look it’s a lion, OMG!

The hosts of the show laughed. The internet had a fit, an entire generation of millennials had something done to their childhood, while gen Z’s took to their ticktocking to exclaim, that’s it?

Listening to the song’s opening chant, one can imagine, it’s a profound, ancestral wisdom giving you goosebumps and imagine someone parting the curtain to reveal there is no grand magic… just a lion…

The Composer

The literal translation which broke the internet did not sit well with the award winning South African composer Lebo M, who felt that his work and culture was being disrespected for laughs and set about to offer the song’s meaning.

“All hail the king. Bow in the presence of the royal family. It is a metaphor written by myself in Zulu and Xhosa, reflecting South African cultural heritage, language and traditions,”

Lebo M

Nants’ ingonyama draws from a tradition of imbongi i.e. royal praise poetry, in which “lion” is not merely a description of an animal but an honorific for royalty. The chant is a proclamation of a new king, rich with cultural significance for the Zulu people from whom it originates.

Lebo M claimed that he had reached out and had been arrogantly dismissed by an unrepentant Learnmore Jonasi, who basically brushed him off by saying he had been doing comedy for 8 years and would continue…

The Comedian

For those not in the know, Learnmore Jonasi shot to fame when he got the golden buzzer in the 19th edition of America’s Got Talent, where he finished as a fifth finalist. For balance the are some who are not particularly fond of his brand of humour which they say paints where he comes from in a bad light, conversely others argue that its those who make the country a joke who should do better… Its not unusual to have people divided on how a comedy is supposed to land.

In his defense, Jonasi offered his version of events in an Instagram video in which he recounted that Lebo M had reached out to him and he had suggested they make collaborative video explaining the song’s deep meaning which he had admitted to not being aware of, however according to Jonasi, Lebo called him a self-hating n-word and an idiot and disrespected his craft by calling him a “wannabe comedian” after which he disengaged from the conversation.

Jonasi who might have an African Comedy Tour did not miss beat to turn engagement into promotional material.

On 17 March 2026, social media reports indicate that Lebo M filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court in Los Angeles, citing damaging misrepresentations, defamatory conduct, and unlawful commercial exploitation of the Nants’ Ingonyama chant. The lawsuit demands either $20 million or $27 million in damages, figures vary depending on the source, and includes claims of defamation, trade libel, and violation of the Lanham Act.

There are no official communications from either party, so its hard to verify if there is actual litigation in progress…

The Legacy

From outside looking in, the situation could have been better handled on both sides. I admit on first watch of the podcast interview, I had thought they had gone a bit too hard on The Circle Of Life.

While we are not privy to the initial communication between the two, Lebo M’s response video escalated things, as instead of being the wiser and older cultural custodian, he came across as an emotional diva and it even felt like as a country we were catching stray bullets with the way he went on about  “that idiot from Zimbabwe”…

Zimbabwe and South Africa have a very delicate relations to put it kindly, and nuance is very easy to fuel xenophobic divisions, however unintentional, triggering a regional “vibe check” that no one asked for..

And as for the song’s meaning, perhaps they could have done well to have furnished it with proper interpretation in the past 30 years. It’s been misheard, misunderstood, mangled phonetically and made into jokes for years.. and if a 30-year-old royal clan praise can’t survive a literal translation by a comedian exploiting the elasticity of meaning, perhaps the circle wasn’t as strong as we thought.

Regardless of nuance and metaphor, the literal translation of the song is not wrong… it’s a lion, but not just a lion, its lineage, language, and legacy.