Still Grazing

by Hugh Masikela

  In the spring of 1980, Vertamae Grosvenor invited me to a birthday picnic in Central Park. At the party was Jackie Battle, whom I’d first met in 1966 at Johnny Nash’s apartment, where she was living with Danny Sims. We had always been attracted to each other over the years, and in the early 1970s, long after she and Danny parted, I had invited her to spend the weekend with me at Ray Lofaro’s Fire Island summer estate. I was unattached at the time I went to Verta’s birthday bash, because Jabu and I just couldn’t seem to get it back together. She eventually moved in with Eugene, her on-and-off boyfriend from Bermuda.

  Jackie and I hit it off so well at the picnic that over the next few weeks we were practically living together. My old friend Frank Karefa-Smart, with whom we’d spent some very enjoyable times with Fela in Lagos, was also a regular at Mikell’s when he was not pursuing his diamond business in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Niger. He was married to James Baldwin’s sister, and often came to New York to bond with his children and liaise with his business associate, the great diamond magnate Maurice Templesman. Because of mounting business commitments in Sierra Leone, Frank was looking to sublet his luxurious Riverdale apartment in upper New York City. When he asked me to help find him a prospective tenant, I offered to take over the place.

  It was at the end of the summer when I got a call from Blowie Moloi, one of South Africa’s most successful African businessmen. He was one of the country’s top township concert promoters in the 1950s when we were just starting out in the music business with the Huddleston Jazz Band, in which his younger brother Prince played the alto saxophone. In New York on business, Blowie said, “Hugh, you and Miriam have now been gone from home for over twenty years, and even though most people have been buying your records, they would love to see you perform in person. I know you cannot come to South Africa, but we could organize three stadium concerts in Swaziland, Botswana, and Lesotho. Why don’t you come down and do it for the home folks? They would come out in multitudes to see you. What do you think?”

  “I would love to do that, Bra Blowie, but we have to ask Miriam.” By sheer coincidence she was in New York at the time. I called Miriam at her Southgate Towers suite, across from Madison Square Garden, and she was very keen to speak to Blowie. Miriam was extremely enthusiastic about Blowie’s proposal, and left all the negotiations to me since she was leaving for Guinea the very next day.

  I asked Quincy Troupe to represent us in the negotiations with Blowie. The two of them took to each other right away. A deal was sealed, and we informed Miriam, now back in Guinea, about the itinerary for December. She would bring her musicians from Conakry, and I would bring my Mikell’s band. On December 18, 1980, Miriam, Thembi, and I left for Swaziland via Kenya on Pan Am Airways. The rest of the musicians and singers would be leaving the following day on South African Airways to Johannesburg and then take a connecting flight to Lesotho. When we arrived in Swaziland, Blowie had very bad news for us. Bowing to pressure from the South African government, both the Swaziland and Botswana administrations had canceled our concert on the pretense of a cholera outbreak. Lesotho, on the contrary, had refused to cave in, and kept our concert as scheduled for Christmas Day, 1980. For Blowie, the cancellations spelled financial disaster. We flew to Lesotho in a twelve-seater Lesotho Airways plane. Besides incredible air turbulence, reports that the South African government had brought down aircraft flying over its airspace and arrested the antiapartheid passengers made the two-hour flight seem like a lifetime. Miriam was praying, just as I was, that the Afrikaners in power there would not order the pilot to land as we flew over the city of Bloemfontein, one of South Africa’s most racist communities. But we made it to Maseru, Lesotho’s capital city, in one piece and were greeted at the airport by a full contingent of the southern African press corps. Word quickly spread that Miriam and I were in the region and the concert was to go ahead as planned.

  Miriam and I were assigned bodyguards from the top ranks of the Lesotho police, but Miriam felt very uneasy because of the possible presence of South African government hit men in our midst. Miriam stayed at the home of Monsieur Jabbie, a powerful Guinean businessman she knew from Conakry. Only when Alf Kumalo requested a photo shoot did Miriam leave Jabbie’s house. The only other times she came out were for the pre-concert sound check and the performance.

  I was taken to the home of Maggie and Mpho Motloung, who, although younger, had been very close friends of my father and my late mother. Maggie and Mpho had been blessed with great business success in Lesotho, and enjoyed a life of unfathomable wealth. At their luxurious hilltop home, they had a large suite for me, and proceeded to spoil me like a long-lost child. My father and stepmother, Abigail, and my stepbrother Lesetja arrived the day after we landed in Maseru. A few days before the concert, my younger sisters, Elaine and Sybil, also arrived with their seven children. Unlike my father’s new family, who came to stay at Maggie and Mpho’s house, Blowie had arranged accommodations for my sisters near my cousin Kay, my uncle Bigvai’s third-born daughter, who was married to the head of the Lesotho postal service. It was only a few minutes’ drive from where I was staying.

  My grandmother Johanna also arrived with several of my great-aunts from Witbank, Natal, and Ennerdale. Her entourage occupied the guesthouse next to Elaine and Sybil’s. Hundreds of people I had grown up with and old schoolmates invaded Maseru, anxious to reconnect with Miriam and me. I had trouble recognizing most of them after I’d spent so many years abroad. I had not seen my father, sisters, and grandmother in twenty years. There was obviously a great deal of history to catch up with, and that meant I would have to spend more time separately with my grandmother, my dad, and my two sisters.

  Out of traditional respect for age, my first obligation was to sit down with my grandma and give her a full account of my life’s activities since I last waved good-bye to her in May of 1960. I gave her an intensely edited version of my twenty years abroad, and although she was hip to the fact that I was leaving out all the juice and sleaze she had been informed about, unlike in our Witbank days, she was not persuaded to lay into me with a belt or a switch from the apricot tree in the backyard, or with painful pinches deep inside my armpits. Instead, Johanna and her traveling companions stared joyfully into my face as I spoke, smiling in pure amazement at the tales I was unfolding, hardly asking any questions. When I came to the end of my story, all Johanna said was, “My child, you have seen the world and escaped many dangers. Your mother and I prayed for you and Barbara every single day that God gave us. I am really happy that you are looking so well and God was kind enough to let me see you before I died. Let us be truly grateful that your mother was fortunate to see you and your sister before she left this world.” Johanna then said a long prayer in which she thanked God profusely for all the blessings our family had been so fortunate to receive. After the prayer, she never mentioned my mother’s name again. Instead she brought me up to date with what had happened to the Witbank people, almost all of whom had since passed away: Uncle Putu, Uncle Nico, her sister Ouma Sussie, her brother Jacobus and his wife Polintjie and their son, Uncle Warra, their daughters Sibi and Dolly, Gigigi’s sisters; her cousin Ouma Tolman; Boy Miga, who was uncle Kalu’s nemesis; Kalu’s lover; Tilly Miga and Mrs. Miga; her customers George, Molly, Oom Jack, Uncle Bassie, Oupa Legwale, and on and on. They were all gone, and her misfortune appeared to be long life. She had not changed too much, although she was more bent over, her fingers bent out of shape from arthritis, and she used a walking stick. She had to be helped when climbing or descending stairs. Apart from that, she was her old self, talkative, humorous, and as stubborn as ever. She argued endlessly with Elaine and Sybil, disputing just about everything they said.

  My two younger sisters were quite the opposite of Johanna. Although happy to be with me again, they were very bitter that Barbara and I had been away from them so long. “You and Barbara just abandoned us and left us to rot in this godforsaken South Africa. You could have sent for us, but all you thought about was yourselves.�
�� We were drinking together, which seemed odd because the last time we had been together, they were seven and thirteen years old. They both appeared older than Barbara and me. The violent fights they had endured with their sibling Britton husbands were etched all over their faces. Sybil and Elaine had lost most of their front teeth. When I had last seen them in 1960, they were rosy-cheeked, with cherubic, angelically beautiful faces. This sight of them was tearing me apart deep inside. It broke my heart to see them in this light. Visions of our joyful years in Witbank and in Alexandra Township as a happy family came flooding back to me, but even with these thoughts, I could not cry for what we had lost. I stayed high from cognac and smoke, my hatred for the apartheid regime hardening me. My mother’s exit from our lives shortly after her visit to America only increased my venom toward the racists. It is a deep bitterness that has stayed with me ever since, one that makes it absolutely impossible for me to consider reconciliation.

  Sybil and Elaine never once mentioned that they were glad to see me, nor did they inquire after my well-being. They just dwelt on their misfortunes and how most of those were directly caused by my abandoning them. They described my mother’s funeral in detail, and how devastated my father was by her death. He apparently wept like a little baby and had to be supported by several people at the graveside to keep him from falling down and passing out from hysterical crying. They sobbed and cried painfully while relating all this to me. Although their sad state and their stories were breaking my heart, I just could not shed a tear. My anger was too strong, completely overshadowing any sadness I felt. My father was very relaxed now. He seemed to have gotten over the loss of Polina. He kept assuring me that she’d had a premonition that she was about to leave this world and had repeatedly told him that her heart was at ease because she had seen Barbara and me; she would be able to die in peace. I found this piece of news amazing because she never indicated these feelings to us before she was about to return to South Africa.

  I spent a great deal of time shuttling between my grandmother’s bungalow, Elaine and Sybil’s, my cousin Kay’s house, and Maggie and Mpho’s mansion. My stepbrother Lesetja went everywhere with me during the day, asking endless questions about America. My cousin Billy, Uncle Kenneth’s son, had also come with his wife, Lorna, who told me that we had gone to nursery school together in Payneville, Springs. Billy was in great shape and appeared to be quite successful, holding a top job at IBM in Johannesburg. He related the story of his father’s murder in sordid detail. His mother, Aunt Bellie, his brother Boro, and all his other siblings had resolved to drop charges against his killers, who were said to be mindlessly roaming the streets of Kwa-Thema Township, apparently having lost their sanity. Many of my childhood friends came to Lesotho with their families. I could recognize only a few of them. The ravages of apartheid had aged most of them into looking like my father’s generation; the effects of heavy drinking were vividly imprinted on their blotchy, toothless faces. There were, however, those who were still in good shape, having taken care of themselves—successful doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs. I spent some wonderful times with them at the Holiday Inn and Lancer’s Inn, talking about the old days and drinking into the early mornings. There was hardly any time for the reckless womanizing I had anticipated. I now actually wished I had brought Jackie along with me.

  It was especially frustrating to look into South Africa from Maseru’s high elevation and have to absorb the pain of not being able to cross the border to go home. Alf Kumalo took a striking photo of Miriam and me looking over the border. It appeared on the front page of the Star, graphically depicting our painful presence so close to the country of our birth, which we dared not enter.

  By Christmas Day, my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday, close to 100,000 people had invaded Lesotho to attend our concert, which also included other top South African groups, like Lesotho’s outstanding Uhuru, led by Tsepo Tshola and Frank Leepa. The audience was made up of all colors of people, cars were lined up for miles across the border where their owners had parked them and walked into Lesotho on foot to see us perform. There was a carnival atmosphere in Maseru. There was no hotel space; people walked the streets in a spirit of revelry.

  Miriam and I both put on performances, which lasted over two hours each, singing and playing all the South African songs that had been made famous through our recordings. The audience clapped, screamed, and sang along frenziedly while they danced up a storm to “Phata, Phata,” “The Click Song,” “Grazing in the Grass,” “The Marketplace,” “Ashiko,” “Thanayi,” “Umqhokozo,” “Amampondo,” “Part of a Whole,” and dozens of other songs we played for them. The entire celebrations tore a gaping whole in the insulation the apartheid overlords had tried to build for the protection of their racial superiority.

  Throughout the night following the concert, some slept on the sidewalks, in doorways of storefronts, and in the parks. The country ran out of all commodities. Lesotho’s army deployed military transports to fetch supplies from South Africa’s neighboring cities. Miriam’s and my performances reverberated right across the Drakensberg Mountains and valleys into the most venerated corners of South Africa’s white-supremacy citadels.

  I deeply admired the government of Lesotho for having refused to be intimidated by the South African government into canceling the festival. Pascal Ngakane, the country’s chief health officer, who was an expatriate South African, had proved beyond doubt that cholera could not develop in the mountains of Lesotho, where stagnant water was almost unheard of and the climate was too cold for the bacterium to thrive. This theory left the apartheid regime’s argument totally without any foundation. The outrageously huge attendance and success of the concert left them absolutely without a comment.

  Not being able to observe the South African government’s reaction in person, I imagined that the screaming headlines must have left the regime’s big shots in a furious state, especially because Lesotho had a very large political exile community from South Africa, and the country’s prime minister, Leabua Jonathan, had already infuriated the racists by allowing the Chinese and Russians to open embassies in the Mountain Kingdom, as Lesotho is popularly known to tourists. I thought that the festival had been a major coup. I was seriously considering settling down in Maseru.

  René McLean and I stayed behind after the concert and embarked on an initiative to build a recording studio with the help of Mpho Motloung’s financial muscle and the Lesotho Development Corporation, headed by Sam Montsi. René McLean met Roma University English professor Thandiwe January and the two fell madly in love. I continued to stay with Mpho and Maggie after my South African family went home. It was sad to say good-bye—our time together had been too brief after two decades away. Shortly after their departure, my dad’s youngest sister, Aunt Clara, called from Natal, and Mpho invited her to come and visit. I hadn’t seen her since 1956, when the family had spent the winter holidays at her home in Durban. She stayed for a week and regaled us with outrageously funny stories about her youth with her siblings and parents in Randjiesfontein, which is now known as Midrand, one of Johannesburg’s most upscale neighborhoods, from which Africans were forcibly removed in the very early 1900s. Aunt Clara was a bundle of joy. This was the last time I saw her, because she died in an automobile accident in Melmoth, Natal, a year before my return to South Africa. The deaths seemed to be piling up.

  Before René and I left Lesotho, after staying in the country almost three months, I got a call from George Phahle, my childhood friend from Alexandra Township. He was in Botswana. He insisted that I come and see him before I headed back to the States. I promised Maggie and Mpho that I would do thorough research into what we would need to build our recording studio. When we arrived in Botswana, George and I were thrilled to see each other after a whole twenty-five years. George planned a welcome party for that evening, to which he had invited a major cross-section of Gaborone’s prominent citizenry. At the party, George played only South African township mbhaqanga music, pointing out to m
e that he had no time for jazz, pop, or rhythm and blues; the only music allowed in his house had to be township grooves, of which he had the most amazing collection, ranging from Zakes Nkosi and Ntemi Piliso to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Dark City Sisters, and Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens. When this music was on, it was difficult to get George off the dance floor. His wife, Lindi, shared his passion, and the party lasted into the early hours of the next morning.

  George had left South Africa for exile in 1977 when the apartheid administration was gunning for him after he had allegedly been involved in a bombing attack on the Carlton Center in downtown Johannesburg. He was running a successful transport company. Jonas Gwangwa was also now living in Botswana, married to Violet, his childhood sweetheart. Jonas was director of the African National Congress’s cultural group, Amandla. In Gaborone, there was quite a large presence of South African exiles, the majority of whom were liberation cadres who had been fleeing that country since the 1976 student uprisings. Many of that group were ANC, and George, Lindi, Jonas Gwangwa, and Wally Serote held vital leadership roles. They had formed the MEDU Cultural Trust, which was planning a cultural and resistance festival in July 1982. George also introduced René and me to a local group called Mother. After a few rehearsals with the band, in which Jonas joined us, we played a benefit concert for former first lady Ruth Khama’s children’s charity. The show, which was staged at the University of Botswana, was a sellout. Afterward, George suggested I stay in Botswana to teach music, cultivate a band, and build a studio, instead of in Lesotho, which he noted was landlocked and could become a trap should the South African government decide to attack. René returned to his love, Thandiwe, in Lesotho.