Babsy Mlangeni

Babsy Mlangeni died on the night of Thursday, 1 October 2026, aged 83, after a short illness. South African broadcasters including SABC News reported the death on the morning of 2 October 2026. No hospital, city or specific medical cause has been made public. Tributes came from SAMRO, Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie, Deputy Minister Peace Mabe, and Parliament's Select Committee on Education, Sciences and the Creative Industries. Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.

Bernard Mlangeni was born on 24 February 1943 in Orlando East, Soweto. He lost his sight at the age of three after a childhood illness. With both parents working in the city and unable to care for him full time, he spent part of his childhood in Amersfoort in the then Eastern Transvaal (today Mpumalanga). There he found music and taught himself on a homemade guitar. Schoolmates in Soweto sometimes bullied him because of his blindness, splashing water on him or placing obstacles in his path. His parents refused to hide him at home. They sent him instead for education that would give him independence.

Mlangeni attended the Athlone School for the Blind in Bellville, outside Cape Town. At Athlone he learned to play the guitar and joined a student band of blind singers. That group later became known as The All-Rounders. He later credited his parents with empowering him through education so that he would never be a burden on anyone. The school years gave him the instrumental foundation and peer network that launched his professional life.

The All-Rounders formed around 1962 in Mapetla, Soweto, under Jimmy Mojapelo, with Mlangeni as lead singer alongside Koloi Lebona and other blind musicians. In 1964 he released an mbaqanga recording under Strike Vilakazi at Trutone. In 1967 he and Lebona went fully professional; Coming Home (RPM) produced the breakthrough single "Sala Emma", which charted around 1968 and became a South African soul classic despite being sung in Sesotho. Through the 1970s he was among the country's top-selling male vocalists, winning Black Music Awards for Best Male Vocalist in 1975 and 1976. His catalogue grew across languages and labels (including CCP and later Zenzele Music), with albums such as Soul of Babsy (1977), Nansi Lendoda (1979), Music Was Born In Africa (1983), Special Angel (1985), The Way I Am (1997), Guitar Men (2006) and The Chant Umhlabelelo (2009). Signature songs include "Bua Nnete", "Thekeni", "Hey Mr Taxi Driver", "Mapule", "Botsotso", "Lonely Man" and "Umadlembathini". He remained active into his eighties, recording new material and performing at public celebrations of his career.

"Sala Emma" was inspired by his wife Emma; accounts of their early years together say they had four children. Later biographical profiles name Motlalepula as his wife; she died in 2013 at Bertha Gxowa Hospital in Germiston after cervical cancer, about a month after the death of one of his sons from stomach ulcers. Whether Emma and Motlalepula are the same person or reflect successive marriages is not clearly settled in public sources, so both names are recorded as reported. Profiles from the early 2020s said he had five surviving children. At his 82nd birthday celebration in Soweto in February 2025 he spoke with pride about his children, eighteen grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, and a daughter described him as a hands-on father who bathed and cooked for his children when their mother and grandmother were at work. He later lived in Katlehong. He also co-founded Kotulo, a printing company, according to biographical reporting.

Mlangeni spoke often about dignity, faith and work. He rejected the idea that blind people existed only to beg, telling interviewers that he had proved those assumptions wrong through talent and persistence. He thanked God for his gift and said he wanted to keep singing until he died. He framed music as a message to South Africans at large, not only entertainment, and he saw mentoring other blind musicians as part of showing that disability is not inability. He also recalled how apartheid-era industry rules made it hard to mix languages or share stages across racial lines, and how he kept writing anyway.

Mlangeni is remembered as a pioneer of township soul and as one of the first blind South African musicians to sustain a major popular career. His Sesotho ballad "Sala Emma" became a national favourite beyond its language community. He mentored and inspired artists including Steve Kekana, Jacob "Mpharanyana" Radebe, Kori Moraba and the duo Willie and Paul. After his death in October 2026, SAMRO, the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and a parliamentary committee chair described him as an influential voice for nearly six decades and a musical giant whose songs carried warmth and resilience across languages. His life is cited as proof that blind performers belong at the centre of South African popular music.

In 1975 and again in 1976 Mlangeni won the Black Music Award for Best Male Vocalist. In 2017 the South African Music Awards presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award alongside Rebecca Malope and Don Laka. In August 2025 he received further national recognition at the National Arts and Culture Awards (including a ministerial honour for artists with disability reported in contemporary coverage). Disability-arts festivals and Siyabakhumbula-linked honours also recognised his contribution. Industry peers treated these awards as overdue flowers for a career that had already shaped generations of listeners.

Mlangeni's songs remained radio staples for decades, and late-career interviews on stations such as 702 revisited "Sala Emma" and his experience of blindness. He appeared in documentary and podcast settings discussing barriers faced by disabled artists. Birthday and tribute coverage in CityLife Arts, Sowetan, TimesLIVE, EWN, SABC News and Music In Africa kept his story in the public eye. After his death, television and online news packages replayed his hits and career footage for a new audience discovering township soul.

Mlangeni's public story is less about personal scandal than about the discrimination he named. Talent scouts overlooked him because he was blind. Schoolmates mocked him. Industry rules of the apartheid years limited language mixing and interracial stage sharing. He answered by building a long professional career and by mentoring others. That record of barrier-breaking is central to how South African media framed his life after he died.