Jerry Dammers, the co-founder of the ska band the Specials, wrote the anti-apartheid ballad more than 20 years ago as part of the campaign to release Mr Mandela from jail in South Africa, but his new protest has a more prosaic feel: he has rewritten the work as a special plea to Lambeth council to give the go-ahead to build a secondary school in Brixton. The song will be re-recorded this afternoon to be delivered to local councillors.
The lyrics to the original song, which reached No 9 in the charts in 1984, have been amended as part of a campaign to build a school bearing Mr Mandela's name in an area of south London that currently has no secondary school.
The words now read:
We can work together
To build our school called Nelson Mandela
We go to school every day
Please don't send us far away
We want a school in Brixton town
Please, oh please, don't let us down
Primary schools in and around Brixton have been given a CD of the new version of the song and lyrics in order for them to prepare for the recording session at a local primary school. The children will record the new song in a session led by Mr Dammers and attended by local musicians and gospel singers.
Devon Allison, the leader of the group Secondary
Schools Campaign in Lambeth (SSCiL), told EducationGuardian.co.uk that Dammers, a local resident, was happy to be involved: "Jerry is genuinely supportive and just wants people to have a fair shake."
"Everything we have done has been based on us plumbing our community ... otherwise, Brixton would be totally ignored."
Nelson Mandela gave permission two years for a secondary school in Brixton to be named after him, but the plans have stalled since.
The school would be the first academy in the UK sponsored by parents, who created the Nelson Mandela School Foundation for that purpose.
Specials song rewound for Mandela school campaign