This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela from Robben Island, a gesture that symbolized an end to Apartheid. While Mandela’s human face and political eloquence will place him firmly in history as one of the world’s greatest icons, it was musician Hugh Masakela who provided the soundtrack to the anti-Apartheid movement. His songs offered hope to millions of oppressed, and I was lucky enough to catch him at the 2007 African Union summit in Accra, Ghana.
The focus of the summit was debate over a “United States of Africa”, and Masekela offered this prayer for the people of Darfur and others suffering violence:
To the people all over Africa, who are being killed every day by their own people.
We have stood by silently and watched as we watched the Congo burn. As we watched Zimbabwe. As we watched South Africa for decades. We watched Mozambique. We watched Angola. Rwanda. Burundi. And on and on.
And all the people, most of them who lost their lives, innocent people… the people don’t even know why they are being attacked. Because we are really very unconcerned with what is happening in Africa.A reporter from France backstage came to ask me why I was here tonight. And when I told him, I said, why don’t you speak to some other people here backstage, and he asked every one of them if they knew where Darfur was, or what it was all about. They didn’t know.
That is because we’re keeping it as a secret away from each other. It is incumbent upon all of us this time not to stand by until a film is made, called Hotel Darfur.
And we have to inform our people about what is really going on and explain it to them… because if we do a lot of we can get them to get back their spirits, and outrage, and we can all raise our voices for Africa and say no more.
Otherwise it is pointless to be working on a Union. We are the only people who are not being attacked by a foreign people, but attacking each other. Where all those people have lost their lives in all these genocides, may their souls rest in peace.
Amen.
To learn more about the struggle against Apartheid, this is an interesting short documentary on Mandela’s time at Robben Island.
