From Mbube to The Lion Sleeps Tonight: Cultural Erasure, Colonial Copyright Law, and the Decades-Long Dispossession of Solomon Linda

This paper investigates the case of Solomon Popoli Linda (1909–1962), the South African Zulu musician who composed Mbube in 1939 — the song that evolved, through a series of transcultural adaptations, into the globally recognized The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Drawing on legal records, musicological analysis, and historical documentation, we trace how the mechanisms of colonial copyright law, predatory publishing contracts, and systematic cultural erasure stripped Linda of authorial recognition and economic reward during his lifetime and for decades thereafter. We analyze three pivotal legal instruments: The original 1939 rights assignment to Gallo Records for ten shillings; The successive one-dollar assignments extracted from Linda’s widow and daughters; The landmark application of Section 5(2) of the 1911 Imperial Copyright Act (the “Dickens Clause”), which ultimately allowed the Linda family to reclaim co-authorship and royalties in a 2006 settlement with The Walt Disney Company. The paper contextualizes the case within broader frameworks of postcolonial cultural exploitation, argues that copyright systems historically served corporate interests over those of indigenous creators, and assesses the implications for contemporary debates on decolonizing intellectual property law.