In December of 1980, the jazz musician and activist Hugh Masekela was set to return to South Africa for the first time in twenty years. His friend Vic Moloi got him on the phone and told him it was time. It was time for him to return to the country his global liberation work had gotten him banned from.
Hugh Masekela performing at SOBs NYC, July 9th, 1998. Photo by David Corio.
Masekela left South Africa 20 years earlier. Shortly after the Sharpeville Massacre.
It happened on March 21st, 1960, in the South African township of Sharpeville, when a day of demonstrations against pass laws wore on. The pass laws were created to – among other things – segregate the population and allocate the labor of migrants. The laws most adversely impacted Black African citizens, who would have to carry passbooks when venturing beyond the borders of their homeland. Pass Laws were one of the defining features of South African Apartheid.