[Editor’s note: I’m very interested to know who translated and taught the isiZulu lyrics for/to Stevie Wonder. Any clues? Comment below]
Ngiculela – Es Una Historia – I Am Singing
(Stevie Wonder)
[Zulu]:
Ngiculela ikusasa
[I am singing for (a) tomorrow]
Ngiyacula ngothando
[I sing of love]
Ngiyacula, ngeliny’ ilanga
[I sing (that) some day]
Uthando luyobusa
[Love will reign]
Jikelele kulomhlaba wethu
[All around this world of ours]
[Spanish]:
Es una historia de mañana
[This is a story of tomorrow]
Es una historia de amor
[This is a story of love]
Es una historia que amor reinará
[This is a story that love will reign]
Por nuestro mundo
[For our world]
Es una historia de mi corazón
[This is a story from my heart]
[English]:
I am singing
There’s songs to make you smile
There’s songs to make you sad
But with a happy song to sing
It never seems as bad
To me came this melody
So I’ve tried to put in words how I feel
Tomorrow will be for you and me…
I am singing of tomorrow
I am singing of love
I am singing someday love will reign
Throughout this world of ours
I am singing of love from my heart
Let’s all sing someday sweet love will reign
Throughout this world of ours
Let’s start singing
Of love from our hearts
Let’s start singing
Of love from our hearts
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKTgWozFEyo
Lyrics edited from http://www.steviewonder-unofficial.com/song/id_243_get_lyrics_Ngiculela..Es.Una.HistoriaI.Am.Singing.html
South African Lyrics 
Zulu lyrics by Thoko Mdalose Hall
Thank you urbanangelzar. Where did you find that out?
Beautiful song in any language
Just saw this today. It’s indeed a beautiful song in any language. It’s a message that seems to be 3 levels as I’m hearing that the war torn South Africa and specifically the origin of it being from the Zulu bribes and that ancestry is a melody of prophecy to sing that the world have love rein and no more war????
Hi Javita! Thank you for your comment. At the time this album “Songs in the Key of Life” was released (September 1976), South Africa wasn’t war-torn but it was at the height of the Apartheid regime, where the white minority government oppressed the black majority population through colonial laws and segregation.
1976 is the year that the June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising took place, where school children in Soweto led a national protest against the oppressive Apartheid regime’s policies. The regime’s police force shot and killed protesting children (including a child by the name of Hector Pieterson, whose death became a symbol of the June 16 uprising). South Africa came to the brink of civil war fueled by racial and tribal tensions in the late 80’s and early 90’s but Nelson Mandela and his political party the ANC averted that crisis.
So South Africa has never been war-torn as such but rather oppressed. Stevie Wonder probably recorded and released the song in solidarity with the oppressed South Africans during our struggle for freedom against Apartheid.
TY 🙏🏻
Hello. I found this page during my internet search for Thoko Mdlalose. Thoko taught performing arts at a small school in the United States in California during the September 1976- June 1977 school year. I have been trying to locate as much information about her as possible and I was able to compile bits and pieces through 2018. Can someone please tell me if she is still alive and, if so, how can I best contact her? Thank you very much.
Wow, I so appreciate being reminded at this moment of that particular era of South African apartheid. Songs in the Key of Life is the first album I bought with my own money, the year it came out. I was 10 years old, and listened and read the liner notes obsessively. It was a North Star at the early stages of learning about so many things, and recently I’m again listening to it every day as I travel. And looking up songs, like this now! Man does it feel different now, tho.