Zola Budd - Cultural Impact

Cultural Impact

In South Africa today, township taxis are nicknamed "Zola Budd" for their speed. The singer Brenda Fassie (whom Time magazine called "the Madonna of the townships" in 2001) had a hit single in the 1980s with her track "Zola Budd". On 20 July 2012 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a play by Richard Monks about the political and media actions taken to bring Zola Budd to Britain with her father at the age of 17, the script implying she was unwilling and homesick. CEE, an emerging poet in the independent press movement, utilized "Zola Budd" as a metaphor for a running woman's speed, in the poem, "Greasy Guardian", the climactic work in a 2012 concept chapbook of poetry, "Homemade Custer".