A Return To Traditional Africa

Famous trumpet player and anti-apartheid activist Hugh Masekela gives an interview to the Voice to discuss his plans for an African-owned entertainment industry. In addition to his aspirations for South African culture, Masekela also holds a deep desire to see South Africans reclaim their pre-Christian and pre-colonial traditions.

Hugh Masekela

“The most important thing to me, today, is to be part of an initiative to bring self-esteem to people of African origin by working for a revival of traditional cultures. Everything we are about was damned by our invaders and conquerors as heathen, as pagan and barbaric. We were converted to other beliefs and religions and were made to abandon those things about us that were traditional and cultural, that are natural to us. As a result we are a non-productive society and community. We’re the only consumer community that imitates other cultures. We have a great traditional historical resource. If you look at the way we’re talked about and the way we present ourselves, you’d think our lives started after liberation. But Africans had a glorious past, long before Europe emerged as a civilization. And it’s very important for us to reclaim our glories, values and pageantry and the culture of that past without abandoning modern technology and what we’ve learnt from the West.”

This interview gives voice to a perspective we rarely hear in coverage of South Africa. Usually we focus on the oppression of apartheid or efforts of post-apartheid reconstruction and reconciliation. When faith is mentioned at all, it is in the context of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the role of Christian resistance to apartheid. Few have questioned the fact that the oppressors and colonial forces all considered themselves good Christians, and in the wake of apartheid it would stand to reason that some would want to call for a return to the faith of their ancestors. Masekela and others like him may very well give rise to a sort of African neo-paganism that takes the best elements of their pre-Christian religions merged with the better aspects of Western culture that have entered African society.

Tags: Neopaganism