Shosholoza origins go back to the gold mines of South Africa, Shosholoza holds a firm place in the cultural consciousness having gone through the transformation from a work song to a kind of a solidarity anthem in the African South that is commonly chanted during public actions and sporting events.

This song helps endure monotonous and routine work was mentioned by Nelson Mandela, who, during his nineteen years of imprisonment on Robben Island, sang the chant with other prisoners during hard work. He viewed the train as a symbolism of the growing movement against racial segregation and described Shosholoza as “a song that compares the apartheid struggle to the motion of an oncoming train”.