Art
The South African Rhythm Behind RB Leipzig’s RE KAOFELA Tribute Jersey
Cape Town artist Yay Abe brings colour, culture and connection to a special jersey celebrating RB Leipzig’s first South Africa tour.
When RB Leipzig touched down in South Africa for the club’s first-ever trip to the African continent, the tour came with a name that said everything: RE KAOFELA.
All together.
It’s more than a phrase. It’s a feeling. A celebration of football, culture, movement and shared energy. From Johannesburg to Pretoria, from the training pitch to the stands, the tour brings two football worlds into the same rhythm, building towards Red Bull Diski Last Namba, where Mamelodi Sundowns host RB Leipzig at Lucas Moripe Stadium on 29 May 2026. The tour runs from 26–30 May 2026 and marks a historic first visit to Africa for RB Leipzig.
To mark the moment, RB Leipzig have created a special RE KAOFELA memorial jersey — a tribute piece designed to carry the spirit of the tour long after the final whistle. At the heart of it is the work of Cape Town-based artist and illustrator Yay Abe, also known as Russell Abrahams, whose bold, colourful visual language has become known for its sense of joy, identity and South African storytelling.
For Yay Abe, the idea of “all together” became the starting point.
“That idea became a big anchor for me,” he says. “I thought about togetherness as something that happens through shared experiences. Music, soccer, community, movement, different people coming together around the same energy.”
That energy lives inside the jersey numbers. Rather than treating them as simple sporting details, Yay Abe turned the numbers into a canvas. Each one carries movement, colour and small pieces of South African life. The result is a set of numbers that feel connected and alive, like different stories finding their place inside one shared system.
The creator of the jersey
© Mpumelelo Macu / Red Bull Content Pool
“I wanted the numbers to feel connected and alive,” he says, “almost like different elements and stories finding a way to exist within one system.”
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A jersey with local pulse
South African football has its own sound, speed and texture. It’s in the noise of matchday, the rhythm of the crowd, the taxis moving through the city, the blast of vuvuzelas, the colours in the streets and the sense that football is never just football.
Yay Abe wanted the tribute jersey to carry that feeling without becoming too obvious or overly literal.
“I wanted to bring in some of that South African rhythm and everyday energy,” he says. “Things that feel familiar without becoming too literal.”
Look closer and the numbers begin to reveal their layers. There are influences from the South African sun, familiar landscapes, street culture, movement and local textures. There are also small pieces of iconography that fans will recognise immediately, from vuvuzelas to taxis.
“South African soccer culture has this raw excitement around it,” says Yay Abe, “and I wanted the work to carry some of that feeling.”
Colour inside the lines
Yay Abe’s work is known for being expressive, detailed and full of colour. That made the jersey project exciting, but also challenging. A football number still has to function. It has to be bold. It has to be readable. It has to work within the shape and structure of a shirt.
“That was probably the biggest challenge,” he says. “My work can get quite detailed and expressive, but with soccer numbers, clarity always has to come first.”
Instead of seeing those limits as restrictions, he treated them as the rules of the game. “I had to simplify and strip things back while still keeping the personality of the work,” he says. “Colour theory played a big role in making the numbers feel legible while staying true to my visual language.”
Then comes the line that could only belong to him: “What’s a Yay Abe piece without an explosion of colour?”
The answer is stitched into the tribute jersey: a design that keeps the discipline of football kit language while letting South African creativity run through it.
“I looked at it as building within a framework rather than compromising the style,” he says.
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A tribute to the tour
The RE KAOFELA memorial jersey is not designed as a match-worn kit. It is something different: a tribute object, a collector’s piece, a visual memory of RB Leipzig’s first South African tour.
It celebrates the moment where RB Leipzig’s high-intensity Bundesliga identity meets the creativity, colour and noise of South African football. It also speaks directly to the spirit of Red Bull Diski Last Namba — a landmark meeting between Mamelodi Sundowns and RB Leipzig in Pretoria, where European precision meets African excellence.
For Yay Abe, the hope is simple: that people see themselves in it. “I hope people feel represented in some way,” he says. “Even if they don’t know it’s my work, I hope they recognise a certain energy in it and feel like it belongs here.”
That might be the true power of the piece. It does not shout for attention. It invites recognition. A flash of colour. A familiar symbol. A rhythm that feels like home. “The shirt becomes a moment of celebration,” says Yay Abe. “Soccer brings people together, and if the work can add even a small layer of pride or connection to that moment, then I think it did its job.”
RE KAOFELA means all together. On this jersey, that idea has colour, rhythm and number. It has a South African pulse.
