Manana returns to Pretoria, where the music feels personal

When Manana took the stage in Pretoria for his Mending Broken Hearts Tour, the performance quickly became a shared experience between the singer and an audience that knew his music well.

The crowd sang along to his songs, filling the theatre with voices that often matched his own. The response carried particular weight because Pretoria is not just another stop on his tour.

He remembers the city as a place that gave him a chance early in his career, making his return feel more like coming home than simply performing another show.

Seeing the reaction is one of the most rewarding parts of performing live, he says.

“Seeing people's faces reacting to the music in real time is probably the most surreal thing. I don't know if the listeners are having the exact same emotional experience I am but those real-time reactions are so encouraging.”

The Mending Broken Hearts Tour brings together different stages of Manana's musical career, including songs he has not performed live for several years. Some of the older material was not made for large festival stages, where artists have limited time to capture an audience and the emphasis is often on dancing and entertainment.

Manana believes the songs work better in a more intimate setting where listeners can give them their full attention.

“A lot of the songs don't necessarily fit on a massive festival line-up or a fast-paced stage, but they work perfectly in an intimate setting where people are sitting down and truly listening,” he says.

Revisiting older songs does not mean returning to the emotions that inspired them. Manana has learnt to separate the music from the moments that produced it, believing that once a song is released, it belongs as much to its listeners as it does to him.

“Once the music is released, it’s for the audience, no longer just for me,” he says.

That distance allows him to revisit earlier work without feeling trapped by the person he was when he wrote it.

He can hear that development when he looks back at his earlier work. Years spent producing, writing and performing have improved his technical ability but he also believes that simply living has changed him.

“I’m a much better producer and writer than I was when I started, I believe,” he says. “Beyond that, I’ve grown. The natural progression of time spent in the studio and time spent living life is growth in everything.”

Much of the connection comes from the emotional honesty in Manana's music. He believes social media has also changed how people experience loneliness, creating the paradox of feeling connected while becoming increasingly isolated.

“Honestly, I think social media has given us a false sense of both community and loneliness,” he says.

Social media can intensify that isolation by constantly exposing people to curated images of relationships, success and happiness against which they measure their own lives.

“People relate to the music because they see things on screens that they don't necessarily experience in real life,” he says. “You see this life you compare yourself to on social media and it ends up feeling very isolating.”

The theatre setting turns the private experience into a collective one. A song first encountered alone through headphones can take on another dimension when an audience discovers that others have found something of themselves in it too.

His return comes as he continues to find his place in a South African music industry dominated by genres such as Amapiano and House. Both have become major parts of the country's music identity, particularly in clubs, festivals and other spaces built around dancing and celebration. Manana does not see this as a reason for alternative music to disappear. Instead, he believes South Africa's strong musical culture allows different sounds to coexist.

“South Africa has a deeply musical audience, and the space for alternative music is definitely growing,” he says. He also credits younger artists for pushing that space further. “I’ve been happy to contribute what I can but there are so many young artists taking it even further than I did at their age.”

For him, the growth of alternative music is therefore not about competing with mainstream genres but creating more choices for audiences.

“Amapiano and House dominate right now, especially as music for the dance floor and good times,” he says. “But tonight shows that our left-field music has a strong, vibrant home, too.”

The Mending Broken Hearts Tour is therefore less about reliving heartbreak than revisiting the person who once wrote about it. The songs may have started as expressions of Manana's own experiences, but in Pretoria a room full of people singing them back showed how far they had travelled beyond him.