“It’s been a manic but epic year,” the conductor of South Africa’s Ndlovu Youth Choir, Ralf Schmitt, told the BBC.

Things began to get crazy when the choir – made up of young people from a poor rural community – was asked to audition for the US TV show America’s Got Talent.

The singers made it through to September 2019’s  final and by then they had the whole of South Africa rallying behind them.

The choir sang their own rendition of Africa – a hit for US band Toto in the early 1980s – wowing the judges and audience