This time I am simply reproducing an interview with Hugh Masekela in Classic Feel, South African magazine showcasing the most important music, arts, culture and lifestyle happenings around the country. Do yourself a well deserved favour and visit Kalamu ya Salaam, who wrote a fantastic piece about Hugh Masekela last year. I found it while looking for a decent pic :) at The New Black Magazine.
The people closest to my tantrums about our country will be happy to hear I've found another reason in this particular icon making me, thankfully, proudly South African!
“Hugh Masekela was first introduced to the trumpet at age 14 by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston. This year Masekela celebrates his 70th birthday and a lifetime of music with the release of his new album, called Phola. CLASSICFEEL’s Lore Watterson chatted to the outspoken jazz musician about his music and the state of Africa.There you have it. I've been bashed for having lost faith in our government - this despicable NEW ANC with it's backass way of treating the most vulnerable with the same disdain as the previous morons in charge treated anyone NOT white. If you haven't been following what's going on here simply Google it. All the information you need is right there. Stop kidding youself. Empower your noggin, feed your conscience and help South Africa get back to being a country FOR the People.
Lore Watterson: Do you feel that you are well? Do you feel that South Africa as a country is well?
Hugh Masekela: I am very well. I am very well... If you ask me about South Africa, I think that it’s not just South Africa, it’s many places in the world – more so in Africa... I think that the problem in Africa is that elected leaders seem to feel that the country becomes a personal belonging. The political parties seem to feel that the country, when it belongs to them, has nothing to do with the rest of the people... The quality of life of Africans, not only in Africa but all over the world, is pathetic... It’s a historical inheritance but it doesn’t seem to stop.
I think Africans thought, with the emergence of freedom in the late 1950s and the 1960s, that things were going to change, that things were going to be better, that life was going to be more hopeful. But the most unfortunate thing is that it is not in the interests of international business for Africa to be well. It must be a nightmare [for big business] to imagine an economically independent Africa, because it would change the whole picture of the cost of raw materials, of cheap labour, of all those things, and it wouldn’t be profitable for international business...
Then the other thing is the love of power and the love of position. People will scratch and bite and kick each other to get to the top. The main thing is that they need the people so that people will vote them in and then they forget them.
So, is South Africa all right? Well, nothing much has changed for the people in this country who were oppressed or were disadvantaged. They got the vote, they got freedom of movement, they got water (some of them) and they got electricity (some of them). That is not the food of freedom, ‘the better life’ they keep telling you [about] – the ‘better life’ is being able to provide for your children with shelter, for them to have food, clothing, education and a joyful life... So far, it hasn’t happened. The quality of life of our people might be better than the quality of life in other places in Africa, but it’s not satisfactory.
What is really sadder than anything is the amnesia, the loss of memory, that our political leaders have."
And have Hugh Masekela's music blasting :D
