Legendary jazz singer, Dorothy Masuka, passed on at the age of 83 at her Johannesburg home on Sunday, 24 February.
A statement released by the Nelson Mandela Foundation recalled how important her music was during the apartheid era. “Mam’Masuka’s music was part of the fabric of Nelson Mandela’s life in the 1950s. They renewed their acquaintance once he was freed from prison and she had returned to South Africa after years of exile in Zambia and her home country, Zimbabwe,” read the statement.
The foundation also recalled a joyful period from September 1955, when Nelson Mandela’s banning order had expired and he took a road trip around the country. Mandela wrote in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom about listening to the radio as he drove. He wrote, “…While I despised the conservative politics of Radio Bantu served up by the government-run South African Broadcasting Corporation, I revelled in its music.”
Mandela listened to the SABC’s ‘Rediffusion Service’ when he talked to activists around South Africa, which played the music of Dorothy Masuka, Miriam Makeba and others. “I enjoy all types of music, but the music of my own flesh and blood goes right to my heart,” he wrote.
“The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have only a ramshackle house, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope.”
Mam Masuka’s last performance was at the funeral of mam’ Winnie Madikizela Mandela in 2018.
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