Still Grazing

by Hugh Masikela

  Nevertheless, it was wonderful to be reunited with my sisters, my father’s family, and my grandmother Johanna, who would be turning one hundred years old on Christmas Day. I went to visit her in Ennerdale Township, where she lived with Sybil, Elaine, and their eight children. My younger sisters were very affectionate this time, and an absolute pleasure to be with. After three weeks I returned to New York, and to juggling my hectic touring schedule and my responsibilities to the Sarafina cast. Although Jabu and I were living well, something was not going right with our marriage. She hadn’t worked in seven years and appeared resistant to my suggestion that she find employment. She’d leave the house almost every morning to go shopping and to hang out with her friend Janet Carter. Jabu had impeccable taste in everything. We went to the best restaurants and enjoyed good theater, movies, and concerts. We lived well, but our problems were just as great. I was still snorting cocaine like a vacuum cleaner, drinking the best cognac and red wines as though my life depended on them, and smoking ganja like a reggae dance-hall dealer. Jabu did not mind the smoke and booze, but was not happy about my cocaine use, especially because it was responsible for my disappearances for several days at a time. We would go for days without speaking to each other.

  In February 1991, I kicked off my official return to South Africa with a tour that coincided with the national launch of National Sorghum Breweries, an African-managed company. Called Sekunjalo, the tour included my band plus the country’s two top groups, Bayete and Sankomoto, along with backup singers (Palesa) and dancers (Baobab). The idea was to start the tour in the northern part of the country, in Pietersburg, the capital city of my ancestral region. After an initial false start, we decided to bring in the accomplished promoter Irfaan Gillan. For the next two months, with Irfaan at the helm, we performed to sellout crowds in Johannesburg, Mafikeng, Durban, Grahamstown, East London, and Cape Town. I have to admit that part of the early problems resulted from my imposing my perspective on how to promote the tour. Having been away from South Africa for three decades, I should have left the details to the experts. But my boozing and drugging, coupled with the adulation I was receiving, let my egomania get the best of me.

  John Cartwright, my former Manhattan School of Music classmate who had played bass for Harry Belafonte, was our tour manager. He brought with him Phil Mosley as stage manager and my son, Selema, as assistant stage manager. We had a security company composed of sixty guards, a cast of forty, a film crew, and a stage crew with scores of set-builders. A convoy of trucks, buses, and cars carried us up and down the land. Brewery executives followed us around the country in jets. Hundreds of fans drove from city to city to see the show. Sekunjalo was dynamite, and when it finally connected, it took the country by storm.

  Jabu had accompanied me to South Africa, but from the onset of the tour we disagreed on most issues. She’d take off to Durban to see her folks, or to visit friends. Shortly after the tour, Jabu returned to New York. I followed at the end of August. The band regrouped and we began a late-summer tour of the United States.

  Whenever we were in Los Angeles, we would go to Richie Druz’s studio, where we had started work on a new RCA album he was producing for me. Richie and I were overindulging, to say the least, which contributed very little to the progress of the album or its quality. Steve Backer was not at all impressed with the final results, an album we titled Beatin’ Aroun de Bush, and he refused to pay more than $40,000 for the master of the album. We’d been expecting more. Richie flipped out. He put an ad in the Hollywood Reporter claiming that I owed him $35,000. He also initiated a lawsuit against me. This was a wakeup call that I was heading for rock bottom, but I did not heed the alarm. The court ordered a lien against all my earnings as well as Jabu’s income (she was now working for the New York Public Library).

  The Sarafina income began to dwindle as audiences who had filled theaters in Europe and America reached a saturation point. My relationship with Jabu reached its lowest point with me spending more and more time alone at our upstate New York farm. After one of my disappearing acts, I decided to visit the Sarafina cast in Washington, D.C. I called Jabu and told her that I would not be returning in the near future. A few days later she sent a message informing me that her mother had passed away. I frantically rushed back to New York, only to be told that my mother-in-law was neither dead nor ill, but in good health. Jabu said she had concocted the story to get me back to New York. I warned her that her antics would translate into bad luck. After some time, Jabu’s mother suffered a fatal heart attack. It was a devastating loss for all of us. I was heading back into dark times.

  20

  INSTEAD OF EMBRACING THE TURN MY LIFE HAD TAKEN—the success of Sarafina and the Graceland tour, the moments of happiness I had eked out with Jabu and Deliwe in Botswana, and, most of all, the progress toward liberation in South Africa—I sank deeper into my addiction. And rather than stay and sort out the mess I’d made with my finances and marriage, I returned to South Africa.

  Miriam had been asked to participate in a Children for Africa fund-raising festival in Lagos, Nigeria, and I was asked to be the music director. Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Bayete, the cast of Sarafina, and Yvonne Chaka Chaka, a brilliant South African singer, known throughout the continent as the Princess of Africa, were also part of the South African delegation. Knowing the uncertainties of African projects, I made sure that the monies for Bayete, with whom I was performing, and me, were paid in advance. This turned out to be a good move, because chaos and confusion would mar the festival. When we arrived, our delegation, which numbered two hundred, was given the red-carpet treatment complete with lavish hotel accommodations and carte blanche to sign for meals and drinks.

  The three-day festival began on a Friday night. Kool and the Gang, Rita Marley, Nina Simone, and other American groups appeared along with some leading local acts. Some acts played longer than they were supposed to, and groups that weren’t even on the bill suddenly appeared and performed at the insistence of their patrons, who were usually rich, powerful chiefs and politicians. We never went onstage. The same mayhem happened the remaining two nights. Miriam and Yvonne Chaka Chaka left the stadium on the final night of the festival in disgust while the rest of us finally performed on the Monday morning at five to a handful of people. Our organizers were unable to facilitate our departure, so for ten days we were all stranded at the hotel. With relentless efforts by Yvonne and Miriam, who lobbied government heads, our departure was eventually finalized. On the day we ultimately departed, several government officials came to see us off. They apologized for any inconveniences and handed Miriam 100,000 pounds to settle outstanding accounts with the artists.

  When we returned to South Africa, the local newspapers had well documented the festival’s mishaps. They headlined our travails, reported that Miriam was the reason our party was stranded, and wrote that she had pocketed the money the Nigerian government had given her. I immediately called a press conference in which I expressed my disgust at their shoddy reporting and set the record straight. Nelson Mandela called me a few days later and thanked me for coming to Miriam’s defense. I told him I was just telling the truth.

  By the end of 1991, I had moved into an apartment in the Johannesburg suburb of Berea. My relationship with Jabu had deteriorated so much that I felt much more content living in Johannesburg than in New York. I was working very hard to convince her that it would probably bring harmony into our lives if we moved back to South Africa, which I was absolutely passionate about. I had waited thirty-one years to be able to return home, but she couldn’t understand why it was not possible for me to live in both America and South Africa. It could have been that having been able to come home every year on her vacation, she didn’t ache to live in South Africa as I did. Barbara and I found ourselves trying to solve many of our family problems—which included my fetching Pula when her mother ran into some problems—that were created during our years in exile, while trying to settle down in South Africa and relearn the country from
scratch. So much had changed, so many friends and relatives had died or settled elsewhere. If I had idealized a return to South Africa at all during my exile, my actual return was a sobering—if not depressing—experience. The political turmoil and violence further discouraged Jabu from coming back home for good. Furthermore, I had already once caused her to leave a job at the New York Times to come and join me in Botswana. Asking her to leave her job at the New York Public Library to start a new life once more was too much for her, especially because we had also spent four years in London, where she could not obtain permission to work either. The Richie Druz lawsuit, which had imposed a lien on our earnings, made it even more unattractive for me to contemplate returning to live in America.

  My cousin Billy had enrolled Pula in a progressive high school on the northern outskirts of Johannesburg called Phuthing. Thirteen years old, shy, and turning very beautiful, she was a boarder during the week, but allowed to come home on weekends. I finally got to really know Pula. She was sweet and so undemanding that I had to persuade her to accept clothing and pocket money. “Really, I’ll be all right,” she would say in her quiet, deep voice. I went to visit my aging father and stepmother as often as I could. I was forging a whole new life for myself back home.

  The bitterness generated by the poisonous effects of apartheid was deeply implanted in the psyches of Elaine and Sybil, exacerbated by the loss of our mother thirteen years earlier. Polina had been the anchor of this family. Her violent death had left a void in all our lives that was impossible to fill. Our visits were spiced with arguments, but even though the moments of peace and quiet were few, I was happy to have them back in my life.

  I was planning to form a South African group, but in the interim I was doing a lot of performances with Bayete. Together with the great group Sakhile, we were the first Africans to play Sun City’s previously blacklisted Super Bowl, breaking all attendance records. In 1992 I formed my first South African group, with seventeen-year-old Moses Molelekwa on piano, Lulu Gontsana on drums, McCoy Mrubata on saxophone, and Bakithi Khumalo on bass. We opened at Kippie’s, a popular local and tourist music haven in the Market Theater complex. For the next two years this group changed personnel from time to time, with Vivian Majola on sax and Vusi Khumalo on drums, later Khaya Mahlangu on sax, Mandla Zikalala on bass, and Themba Mkhize on piano. Sadly, in 2001 Moses committed suicide after his wife also died mysteriously on the same night. Bakithi married and settled in New York, where he freelances and often performs with Paul Simon’s band. Themba has become a world-renowned pianist with two great CDs to his credit and countless awards. McCoy has also carved out a stellar career for himself, as have the others. Khaya is an outstanding performer and a great arranger, and assists me in producing artists for our label, Chissa Records.

  I was struggling to get into the mainstream of the South African music industry, and I didn’t even have a recording deal. Jabu called me frequently, ranting and raving over the phone that Richie Druz’s lien, which had now been extended to her, was taking all her pay. She eventually had to sell all of our belongings from our Harlem town house and our country home and move into her late mother’s apartment with her sister Busi. It didn’t make me happy, but there was little I could do about it. Business was very slow.

  The new year of 1993 dawned with a lot of promise for South Africa. A government of national unity had been agreed upon, and the country’s first democratic elections were set for April 1994. Sadly, the violence continued. A year before the elections, Chris Hani, one of the ANC’s top commanders, leader of the Communist Party, and a deeply loved son of the soil, was gunned down by a right-wing Polish immigrant racist named Janusz Walusz and his partner Clive Derby-Lewis. Both are now serving life prison terms. In the spring of 1994, Miriam went on tour in the United States, and I joined her. On April 27 we voted for the first time at the United Nations, where facilities had been set up for South Africans living abroad, together with the members of our group. We missed the excitement and fever taking place back home, but watched the events on television. It was a great day. We watched with pride as Nelson Mandela did his celebratory “Madiba jive” at the ANC’s headquarters on the night he was elected the new president of the Republic of South Africa. During the same tour, my group recorded a live album at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. Titled Hope, it remains my biggest-selling album of the last three decades. We took this tour to Europe, where we also enjoyed tremendous success.

  At 104, my grandmother became very ill from a badly infected knee, which began to poison her system. Barbara and I spent many of her last days with her, during which she passed on to us old family heirlooms, photographs, and stories. Barbara spent her very last seconds with her. They were singing songs she had taught my sister during happier days back in Witbank. We had lost the woman who had raised and nurtured so many of us, and in whose house Barbara and I were born and Elaine was raised. She had lived a full life, and in spite of her bullying ways and her domineering character, we were happy for Johanna because she had outlived her entire clan and family. She always scolded God in her prayers for letting her live such a long and lonely life. All her great-grandchildren cried with a deep sadness over the loss of their great-grandmother. Although she had terrorized their little lives, she had also made them laugh a lot. Because she was one of Ennerdale’s first residents, almost the entire township lined the streets as her cortege drove by. Many people came from Witbank, and all my friends and those of my sisters came to help us say farewell to Johanna Mthise ka Mahlangu, Mabena, Mdungwa Mganu-ganu waka Maghobhoria. We buried her in Ennerdale’s new cemetery.

  Barbara was appointed South Africa’s ambassador to France, and at the beginning of 1995 she took off for Paris. She asked me to move into her house on the next street from my apartment, which I subleased to three of Elaine’s oldest children, Miles, Candice, and Lyle.

  In early 1995, Jabu and I actually reconciled. By this time I had been able to pay off my debt to Richie Druz after Johny Stirling helped me renew my publishing deal with Warner Brothers Music and secure a large advance. The lien was removed. Jabu came to visit South Africa, and we spent a great deal of time with her relatives in Durban and other parts of Natal, but in the end we weren’t able to reconcile, and two years later we divorced.

  Later that year I was appointed deputy director of the Performing Arts Council, with executive offices in Pretoria’s State Theatre. I had to be at work every morning at eight. I was provided with the penthouse apartment atop the State Theatre, a brand-new Mercedes-Benz sedan, and a full bar for entertaining guests. The entire staff of 750 was headed by the director and me, and I had every possible perk. I would have a couple of tots of brandy before going down to my office. Part of my portfolio was to help in the transformation of the arts in South Africa. At first I was excited over my new job and very enthusiastic to make things happen. I soon discovered that my energies were futile.

  The most frustrating thing was that all the wonderful ideas I had hoped to turn into reality got bogged down at middle-management level and never really got approved in time at cabinet level. The best example was the 1996 Freedom Day celebration. The Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr. Ben Ngubane, came to my office and told me, “Hugh, we have been charged by parliament to produce next year’s celebrations, and we have to come up with a concept. How do you feel about it?”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said, very excited. “Let’s produce a one-day festival where all the ethnic groups of South Africa show off their music and dance cultures. We’ll start off with a parade down Pretoria’s Church Street, and then they can use different parts of the parks to show off their stuff. The rest of the day will be a mammoth concert outside the State Theatre, featuring all the greatest artists from every segment of our nation’s society.”

  “Great,” said Ngubane, “let’s put together a proposal and a budget.” In one week we had these together, and submitted them to the minister’s office. It was September 1995. We proceeded to put venues, artists,
and service providers in place. By October my department was ready to go. Then the waiting began. The process went from the deputy director general to the director general of arts and culture to the deputy minister and then the minister’s office. From there it went to parliament. By the end of February 1996, I had long forgotten about this initiative, when the director general burst into my office and said, “Cabinet has finally approved. Let’s go.”

  In South Africa, as part of the reconciliation process, the old apartheid civil service was kept intact, which helped in some ways to prevent widespread disruptions and bloodshed—but also crippled the new regime. A great portion of the white civil service workers, the country’s middle management, would deliberately slow down the transformation of the government’s services to discredit the new government, thereby providing evidence that Africans were not capable of governing the country. This pervaded every government department.