Harare – No one can say 2020 has not been the toughest year for humanity in generations.

But through the uncertainty brought by COVID-19, people have still found the zeal to dance.

First it was the “Jerusalema” challenge, which just about everyone – young and old, rich and poor, famous and ordinary – putting on their dancing shoes.

Now South Africa has created another dance craze with the #JohnVuliGate challenge.

Beyond the success of the trend that went viral when a group of ladies started dancing to the song at a fuel station are a couple of captivating stories.

The first story is of a guy who goes by the name of Limpopo Boy. His government name – as the Americans would say – is Mahlatse Robert Matome Thoka.

If you are looking for anyone to blame for the John Vuli Gate dance, he’s your guy.

Coming from the unheralded Botlokwa Village in South Africa’s Limpopo Province, the year 2019 saw him start a dance that he dubbed the “Sdudla Dance”.

Many months later, a few girls from his home province used their cellphones to record themselves doing the dance after stopping at a fuel station.

From one phone to another, the video spread. People started uploading and circulating their own clips of the dance.

“Sdudla” is a colloquialism for a curvy woman, and needless to say the dance emphasises the curves. The etymological ties between the original name of the dance and the moves that have gone viral remain, but it has been renamed the John Vulu Gate dance challenge. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

Did Limpopo Boy know he was creating a monster? Who is he anyway?

“I grew up just like any other child in rural South Africa it was not long after our country South Africa had held its first democratic elections. I was a good football player and an athlete, we used to head cattle and I would play in the jungle with other boys. I was very naughty as a child and I think that is where I discovered my Art,” Limpopo Boy said in a recent interview with South African media.

“A lot of people realised my gift and talent at the South African State theatre and I later graced a lot of great platforms including The SAMAs and the MTV Base Awards. I’m a bujwa dancer thus my stage name is derived from my dancing category and my origins.

“My dancing skill is not based on bujwa only, I add more moves to spice up the jive. I started dancing at a very tender age, but before embracing this talent I started playing football, unfortunately, it wasn’t my calling.”

Anyway, how does something called “Sdudla” end up being called “John Vuli Gate”?

To get the answer to that, we have to rewind to 2005.

The cinema world has just been set ablaze by a swashbuckling-yet-heartfelt South African movie called “Tsotsi”, which goes on to claim an Oscar amongst its many international awards.

In one of the most memorable scenes in the movie, the character called Pumla (played by Nambitha Mpumlwana) emerges from a car on a stormy night and shouts into the intercom, “John vuli gate!” (John open the gate).

Mano Nephawe and Leonard Malatji, the South African duo who perform under the name Mapara A Jazz, took that one line from the movie and made a song out of it nearly 15 years later.

Limpopo Boy took the song, did his Sdudla thing to it and here we are today with a new craze.