Doja Cat’s South African fans had been waiting for the moment when the artist finally reached their homeland. To them, she’s not just Doja Cat; she’s Zandile.
On Friday, the “Kiss Me More” artist performed in South Africa for the first time at Global Citizen’s Move Afrika in Pretoria. This wasn’t just any performance for Doja, whose superstardom has taken her all around the world. She revealed she had never been to South Africa, despite her estranged father being from there.
The “Juicy” rapper, whose name is Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, was born in a Los Angeles suburb to a white Jewish mother and a Zulu South African father. Doja has said that she does not know her father, who also a performer named Dumisani Dlamini, and has called him a “deadbeat.” Dumisani has gone on record to rebut her statements, but it’s clear that the two aren’t close.
Doja shared in a video that she invited her father to her performance in Pretoria, but he told her he couldn’t make it because she doesn’t “message or call him enough.”
Though Doja had never been to her father’s homeland before, it seemed not to matter when she came out onstage. Her South African fans made it clear that she belonged there. In an emotional moment, fans chanted “Zandile!” at the stage, acknowledging her Zulu name.
Brought to tears when she closed her set, Doja said, “For a place that I’ve never been to, I sure do feel like I’ve been here before.”
She called her Global Citizen set “one of my most fun shows I’ve ever done.”
