If you haven’t heard the song “Skeur Hom”, you have probably at the least seen someone dancing to it. There is a good chance it will either irritate you or have you dancing before you have even realised it.
The song by BongoVibes has taken over social media, particularly TikTok, where “Skeur Hom” has sparked a dance craze, with South Africans leading the charge.
The title alone is enough to make you stop and listen. “Skeur hom” literally translates to “tear him” or “rip him”, but in the context of the song it is used as an energetic call to go hard and let loose.
BongoVibes sings about doing it in the club and in the street, giving the phrase a distinctly colloquial South African flavour that feels made for a dance floor.
Released on 11 March 2026, the track has since found a second life through social media, with TikTok users turning its danceable sections for short routines.
From dance circles to school grounds, people across Mzansi have been “skeuring” it, with one Curro teacher even joining learners in a dance circle to the track in a clip that subsequently went viral.
There is something particularly South African about the way this has travelled.
We don’t always need much convincing to turn a good beat into a full-blown moment, and “Skeur Hom” has clearly found the right buttons to press.
People aren’t just listening to it. They’re learning the moves, copying one another, adding their own flair and, in true Mzansi fashion, seemingly deciding that if one person can do it, the whole room can too.
The feeling behind the trend
For dancer and choreographer Logan Kelly, the appeal of “Skeur Hom” begins with something more fundamental than TikTok: emotion.
Kelly, who has worked with Untimitive Dance Company and has been involved in projects including Red Bull’s "FORMS" and "Bring It On: Worldwide #Cheersmack", says the connection between music and movement is instinctive.
“Music inherently stirs human emotions and feeling. Furthermore, dance is ‘feeling’ first before anything else,” he says.
That emotional response is, in his view, part of what has made “Skeur Hom” so easy for people to embrace. Kelly describes the song as carrying a “Yaadt Party” feeling, pointing to the facial expressions and celebration that have become part of the trend.
It is a distinctly local reference and perhaps one reason the dance feels less like something South Africans have had to learn and more like something they already recognise.
For DJ and Good Hope FM presenter Masoodah, whose sets span Yaadt, R&B, house, hip-hop and amapiano, that familiarity is also important when it comes to South African music finding an audience.
“I think the biggest thing is authenticity. South African music has a way of telling our stories, using our language, our humour and our culture in a way that feels real,” she says.
“Whether I am playing Yaadt, amapiano, house, R&B or hip-hop, I’ve noticed people connect with songs that make them feel something. It could be nostalgia, excitement or just pure happiness.”
She says a song does not necessarily have to fit neatly into one genre to connect with different audiences. “If it has a catchy hook, a cool beat and something people can sing or dance to, it can cross different audiences.”
Kelly says dance has always been rooted in community, from ceremonies and celebrations to rituals and spiritual practices.
“Dancing is community-based,” he says, describing it as a language that can transcend culture, demographics, location, sex and age.
“When people dance together, there is an exchange that happens energetically, physically and emotionally,” he adds.
That communal element has found a new home on platforms such as TikTok, where it has been shared thousands of times.
For Kelly, there is genuine value in that.
Viral dance trends can bring people joy and introduce newcomers to movement, with some eventually taking classes and learning different styles more formally.
“Participating and sharing your ‘rendition’ brings people so much joy,” he says. “Which is the whole point of dance, it moves your emotions in tandem with the music you are dancing to.”
For anthropologist and librarian Joelle Meyer, founder and leader of C2K Dance Crew, the accessibility of a dance is also central to how it becomes a communal movement.
“A dance movement heavily depends on how easy it is to learn and pick up. Not everyone is a professional dancer and in the case of social media and trends, not everyone has the same experience, which is okay,” she said.
“Dance movements are meant to be fun and something to bond over and if that means doing a dance move that might not be 100% correct but is done with heart and with the intention of joining in on a movement, it can become a communal movement.”
A viral dance still has roots
“Skeur Hom” did not emerge from a cultural vacuum.
BongoVibes’ track is an Afrikaans gqom song, bringing together a South African electronic dance sound with Afrikaans lyrics and a dance movement rapidly travelling through social media.
Understanding the dance therefore requires looking beyond TikTok and Instagram.
In his academic paper “Historicising gqom as a post-kwaito phenomenon”, published in the "Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa," Dion Malcolm Eaby-Lomas traces gqom’s emergence and development, its relationship with kwaito, black youth and South African party spaces, as well as the ways the genre developed its own form of musical and cultural expression.
Dance itself is also a way of understanding community and identity in South Africa.
In “Moving bodies, shifting selves: Integration and incorporation through ‘jazzing’ and ‘salsa’ dance in Cape Town”, Jade Gibson examines how social dance in Cape Town has been shaped by ideas of geography, community, heritage, tradition and identity.
Her research looks specifically at jazzing, which became associated with the apartheid-constructed coloured community in the Western Cape, and at how dance movements can cross between communities and change in the process.
While Gibson’s research predates “Skeur Hom” and focuses on different dance forms, it provides a useful South African context for understanding how movement can carry elements of community and identity while also changing as it travels.
That cultural exchange is also reflected in the sound behind “Skeur Hom”. While gqom originated in Durban, its move into the Western Cape has produced a local version of the genre, with artists combining gqom beats with Afrikaans and, in particular, Kaaps.
A 2026 study, “New currents, old boundaries: exploring the relationship between streaming platforms and Afrikaans music”, by Stellenbosch University music scholar Schalk van der Merwe, traces the rise of Afrikaans gqom on the Cape Flats and its links to coloured artists and the renewed use of Kaaps in popular music.
Van der Merwe also notes a connection between gqom’s roughly 128 beats-per-minute tempo and the rhythm of Klopse marching bands, as well as similarities to the ghoema rhythm, a musical tradition rooted in the history of enslaved people at the Cape and now closely associated with coloured identity.
“Skeur Hom” sits within this newer Afrikaans gqom movement. BongoVibes describes the track as an Afrikaans gqom song, released in March 2026, with the accompanying music video and social-media challenge helping the dance travel beyond its original audience.
The result is a dance rooted in a contemporary musical movement, but shaped by the language, sounds and cultural history of the communities where it has taken hold.
Accounts such as Diamond Kids are also drawing attention to the people behind the “Skeur Hom” trend, using TikTok to document the dancers and talent taking part.
The account has been posting clips of the movement as it spreads through different communities, giving the people participating in the trend a visible presence alongside the dance itself.
“The popularity of ‘Skeur Hom’ reminds me a lot of the popularity of amapiano when it first blew up online. Amapiano became this massive movement and united South Africans in the form of dance,” Meyer said.
“Different people of different races, genders and orientations were participating in the challenge and even people who weren't familiar with the dance would give it a try,” she added.
“South Africa being a melting pot of cultures means that sometimes there's so much to take in from different cultures during the cultural exchange but all it can take is one thing to unite us as a nation.”
Meyer also sees adaptation as part of how dance movements spread.
“There will definitely be a cultural ‘remixing’ of the dance with people adding in their own flavour or style to the movement. It is a normal occurrence and encourages the dance movement to continue,” she said.
Why Mzansi recognised the move
For all the conversation around TikTok and dance culture, there is something particularly familiar about “Skeur Hom”.
Kelly describes the movement as reminiscent of “that one brah in the jol” (the one guy at the party) who is simply having a good time. It is an image that requires very little explanation.
The music comes on, the shoulders start moving, the knees follow and suddenly the person who claimed they “can’t dance” is very much participating.
Kelly believes that familiarity is part of the song’s appeal. He says the movement reflects motifs that have existed in Black and coloured club dance culture long before TikTok turned them into a trend.
That makes the global response to “Skeur Hom” particularly interesting. South Africans are not necessarily learning an entirely foreign movement.
They are seeing something that feels rooted in their own social and dance culture, then sharing it on a platform capable of taking it far beyond the original setting.
The result is a local dance language being added to a much larger social media vocabulary.
Masoodah says the song itself has the ingredients needed to make that transition from music to movement. “‘Skeur Hom’ is fun, energetic and doesn’t take itself too seriously. From the first few seconds, the rhythm pulls you in, and the phrase itself is catchy enough for people to instantly remember.”
“As a DJ, I always watch how people react on the dance floor, and songs like this create a moment,” she said.
“The dance is simple enough for anyone to join in, and once people start recreating it online, it becomes something everyone wants to be part of. It turns the song into an experience, not just something you listen to.”
There is also a commercial side to the phenomenon.
Kelly points out that in the age of influencers and short-form video, moving content can be a powerful tool for artists.
“Moving content sells better than a simple album cover,” he said, highlighting the role dancers and creators now play in giving music visibility online.
A successful dance trend can put a song into thousands of videos, exposing it to people who may never have searched for the artist or track themselves.
TikTok has therefore become more than a place to show off choreography. It is a discovery platform and a marketing tool, with dance helping songs travel beyond their original audiences.
But TikTok is not the only route for a song to find listeners. Masoodah highlights how radio and social media work alongside each other.
“It’s a combination of both. Social media has definitely changed the speed at which songs can blow up. A dance challenge on TikTok can introduce a song to millions of people overnight.”
Radio, she says, still gives music another kind of reach. “The strongest songs today are the ones that win on both platforms, they trend online, but they also become part of people's everyday listening through radio and DJs.”
The question of whether the creators helping to drive that visibility are properly compensated is another conversation, but their influence is difficult to ignore.
For now, “Skeur Hom” is doing what South African music and dance have increasingly managed to do: take something deeply local and make the rest of the world want to join in.
South Africa has been putting its own stamp on global pop culture through music and dance, and “Skeur Hom” is another example of that influence travelling far beyond Mzansi.
bernelee.vollmer@nationalmg.co.za