Forever condemned as its “heart of darkness,” the world remains baffled as to how Africa has seemingly avoided the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier in the year, as the virus ravaged other parts of the world and prepared to make landfall on the continent, the projections were nothing short of severe. It was widely anticipated that Africa’s poor and overcrowded living conditions, the prevalence of other diseases like HIV and TB, and its lack of well-resourced health systems would make for the deadliest viral path on the globe. Despite their touch of catastrophism, these predictions were not unreasonable given the evidence of despair elsewhere. What is strange is the sense of perverse disappointment that this hasn’t been the case. Stranger still that, at the height of doom and gloom, little was done by way of international support to prevent the expected worst case outcomes.

On the flip side, the world is celebrating the lightness of this continent, albeit in the most clichéd way — through its products of song and dance. Since the middle of this year, the gospel-inspired South African house track “Jerusalema” by DJ and producer Master KG, featuring vocalist Nomcebo Zikode, has enraptured a global audience. What made it especially take off was its evolution into the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge, prompted by a group of Angolan friends recording themselves with plates of food performing a variation of the line dance to the song. Following that, similar clips of people dancing to the song have been shared from all over — groups of ordinary people, nuns and priests, health care and other essential workers, police and soldiers, fuel attendants; you name it. Per the African Union, “Jerusalema” is “a song that has transcended its national boundaries and the continent, and has people across the world dancing to its vibrant rhythm.”

The South African government made sure to co-opt the dance challenge, transforming what was a mostly spontaneous and uncoordinated phenomenon to a state-sponsored feel-good narrative. As President Cyril Ramaphosa announced South Africa’s move to its lowest level of COVID-19 lockdown, he urged all South Africans to participate in the dance challenge as part of Heritage Day celebrations that happened in late September. (The holiday itself has a curious history; it replaced Shaka Day and is mostly now an excuse to barbecue.) Suddenly, a country that had been a powder keg of disaffection, traumatized at the injustices and suffering endured during lockdown yet divided on who was to blame, became united in cheerful performance, as it seemed that, at last, things were back to normal. And for South Africans, “normal” means being able to repress the fact of normal being the problem; it means comfortably moving from being outraged about police brutality in June to applauding their renditions of the “Jerusalema” dance in September.