Driven into exile by the apartheid government, Ibrahim had been living in Europe and the United States during the 1960s and '70s, making brief visits to South Africa to record music.

The song was recorded during a session of improvisation, and includes a saxophone solo by Coetzee, which led to him receiving the sobriquet "Manenberg".

The piece incorporates elements of several other musical styles, including marabi, ticky-draai, and langarm, and became a landmark in the development of the genre of Cape jazz.

It later became identified with the struggle against apartheid, partly due to Jansen and Coetzee playing it at rallies against the government, and was among the movement's most popular songs in the 1980s.

In addition, he learned to play several genres of music during his youth in Cape Town, including marabi, mbaqanga, and American jazz.

In the 1960s and '70s, Ibrahim and his wife Sathima Bea Benjamin largely lived in exile in Europe and the United States, returning to South Africa only for brief periods of time.

[4] He lived for a while in New York City, playing with the band of Duke Ellington and learning composition at the Juilliard School of Music.

As the Black Power movement developed in the 1960s and 1970s, it influenced a number of Ibrahim's friends and collaborators, who began to see their music as a form of cultural nationalism.

[8] While recording Underground, Ibrahim collaborated with Oswietie, a local band of which Robbie Jansen and Basil Coetzee were saxophonists, and who played a large role in creating the album's fusion style.

[21] During the recording, the piano played by Ibrahim had thumbtacks attached to the hammers; the instrument thus had a "metallic timbre" that was generally associated with marabi music.

"[22] Vally began to play "Mannenberg" from loudspeakers outside his store even before the album was released, and sold 5,000 copies of the recording in its first week on sale.

On the 40th anniversary of the album's release, Lindsay Johns praised "Mannenberg" in The Spectator, saying that the song was "threnodic, passionate and ethereally beautiful.

"[18] He went on to state that while "Mannenberg" was specifically about the forced relocation of Coloured people to the Cape Flats, it had also given a voice to poor, oppressed, and marginalized communities across the world.

"[18] He added: Today, it is still a beloved anthem of hope, resistance and resilience and a celebration of human dignity in the face of brutality and evil.

Nowadays, the township of Manenberg may be synonymous with poverty, crime and violence, but Mannenberg the album stands as a musical monument to both a sublime jazz genius and the intrinsic nobility and grandeur of the human spirit.

[18]The place where "Mannenberg" was recorded is commemorated with an abstract sculpture of seven stainless-steel pipes, mounted outside the building where the original studios were.