Why South Africa Banned Stevie Wonder’s Music

smiling stevie wonder
Via Wikimedia Commons
Briona Lamback
February 11, 2025

In 1985, Stevie Wonder accepted the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the ballad “I Just Called To Say I Love You.” He dedicated the award to the imprisoned Nelson Mandela, a move that enraged South Africa’s apartheid government.

By then, Mandela was 21 years into a life sentence for his work opposing South Africa’s apartheid system, which was based partly on U.S. Jim Crow laws. South Africa banned Wonder’s music in retaliation.

Wonder didn’t care. He wrote “It’s Wrong (Apartheid)” and doubled down in support of Mandela. “I really don’t mind being banned. The sad thing is ….I’d like to unite with my brothers and sisters in South Africa, but as long as this condition exists in the world, we cannot continue to support it as a country, as a people. “We did away with it here. We can damn sure do away with it there”, he told the UN.

Colonization and the anti-Black systems it created never intended for us to be in solidarity across borders. As Stevie Wonder understands, none of us are free until all of us are.

We’ve always leaned on each other. Despite different nationalities, languages, and cultures, our desire for liberation is our most significant uniting force as Black people.

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