How African teams sing their way into battle at AFCON 2025
Before Bafana Bafana took the pitch at AFCON 2025, they sang. Not casually, not quietly—but in full voice, clapping in unison, bodies swaying as they moved through stadium corridors in Morocco. The songs were gwijo, a Xhosa call-and-response tradition. “Asinalo uValo Thina“—we have no fear. “Phambili ngeWar“—forward to war.
If you’ve been paying attention to this tournament, you’ve seen it everywhere—not just South Africa, but variations from Ghana, Mozambique, Senegal. Pre-match singing has become AFCON’s unofficial signature.
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Gwijo wasn’t made for football. It comes from Xhosa communities in the Eastern Cape, where call-and-response singing has marked initiations, weddings, and funerals for centuries.
Somewhere along the way, South African football borrowed it. And in the pressure cooker of AFCON—where one bad half can end your tournament and a nation’s mood turns on a penalty—it became a way to turn individuals into a unit before they touch the ball.
Mohau Nkota and Ronwen Williams emerged as the conductors this tournament, leading the squad through songs before each match. Watch the footage and you’ll see players locked into the same rhythm, moving together.
South Africa beat Angola 2-1 in their opener and Zimbabwe 3-2 in their final group game. They went out in the Round of 16, losing 2-1 to Cameroon. But nobody who watched them questioned their cohesion.
Ghana calls theirs jama. It’s louder, more chaotic—gospel mixed with highlife, call-and-response that builds until the bus is shaking. The Black Stars have been doing it for decades, long before anyone was filming.
“Jama is meant to ginger the players,” Sani Mohammed, founder of the Ghana First Supporters Union, told Al Jazeera. “Without the jama, the players will be dull and can’t score goals.”
Ghana didn’t qualify for this tournament—the first time they’ve missed AFCON since 2004. But watch enough pre-match clips from Morocco and you’ll see echoes of jama in teams that have never set foot in Accra.
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Nobody expected much from Mozambique. They’d played sixteen previous AFCON matches across six tournament appearances without winning once.
Then they beat Gabon 3-2 in the group stage. And before that match, there was the bus.
CAF’s cameras caught the Mambas arriving in Agadir already mid-song, players spilling out with the energy of a team that had nothing to lose. Mozambique’s pre-match rituals were among the most joyful of the tournament—loose, loud, unpolished.
They lost 4-0 to Nigeria in the Round of 16. But by then they’d already made history.
Senegal and Nigeria
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Not every team is loud about it. Senegal’s Teranga Lions keep their preparation internal—team talks, individual focus. The energy comes from supporters whose drumming fills the stadiums. They’re through to the quarter-finals, where they face Mali.
Nigeria’s Super Eagles lean on faith. Prayer before matches, individual rituals. Victor Osimhen has spoken about listening to Olamide and Nas before games, tracks that keep him focused. They crushed Mozambique 4-0 in the Round of 16 and face Algeria in the quarters.
There’s a risk in all this visibility. When every tunnel walk gets filmed, every bus singalong goes viral, the ritual starts to serve two audiences—the players and the phones pointed at them.
At AFCON 2023, Cameroon’s Nathan Douala walked into stadiums carrying a loudspeaker blasting “Pour le kior,” a song about drug addiction. Some Cameroonians loved it. Others felt it embarrassed the national team. When does a bonding ritual become a performance?
So far at AFCON 2025, the clips feel like glimpses, not productions. But the more attention these moments get, the more pressure there is to deliver them.
When Bafana Bafana walked out of that tunnel against Cameroon, the gwijo stopped. The stadium took over.
They lost that match 2-1. The singing didn’t save them. But a team that had only been together a few weeks moved like something coherent. The nerves were still there, but they were shared.
AFCON is unforgiving. The margins are thin, the expectations heavy. In that environment, every edge matters.
The tunnel is where some teams find theirs.
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