AP
It seems that famed South African trumpeter, composer, and Pan-Africanist Hugh Masekela, best known for “Grazing in the Grass” and organizing the Zaire 74 festival to promote Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s Rumble in the Jungle, is not too keen on Black women wearing the wet and wavy.
According to the South Africa City Press, Masekela caused quite a bit of a stir recently while receiving an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University. He refused to take pictures with any Black women wearing hair extensions. As reported by the paper, the trumpeter told a student who just had taken a picture with him,”You’re lucky that you were sneaky enough to have him take a picture of you next to me, otherwise I would have refused. I don’t take pictures with girls who have your kind of hair.”
Masekela continued his rant against the “sneaky” student and other wig and weave wearers during a follow-up press conference at the University in which he added, “We spend about a billion rand on other people’s hair each year. I don’t even know where to begin on this issue.”
As the paper reports, he also had words for the youth of South Africa, in general, who he accused of turning their backs on their culture, including their native tongues, storytelling, and even music.
And here we go again…
We get it: Some of you don’t personally like weaves. However, the obsession that some of our people have with Black women and hair extensions, including making false analogies about self-love and weave-wearers’ alleged commitment to their culture and people, is way past the point of healthy. And sanity for that matter. Every Black woman with a blonde lace-front isn’t trying to be a white woman. Sometimes she’s just a woman with a preference for a certain tacky hair color and style. And we talk so much about the billions Black women are supposedly giving away to the Asians based upon our hairstyle choices like Black men aren’t out here giving away “our” money to Nike, Konig (who makes rims) and every Arab in cheap gold shops.
Never mind how we continue to be abused, underpaid, assaulted and sometimes killed for just being Black women in various parts of this world. According to some of these so-called Pan-Africanists, the worst thing that white supremacy has ever done to Black women is brainwash us into rocking the 100-percent Brazilian. And this is why I have a hard time taking folks seriously.
However, what makes Masekela’s sentiments even more peculiar as he received his honorary degree at Rhodes University is that earlier in the month, students, including some who wear weaves, were engaged in massive protest to demand that the school remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes from the campus. For those who are unaware, Rhodes was not only the founder of the college, but also a British imperialist who is responsible for colonizing Rhodesia, which today is known as Zimbabwe.
As reported by The Daily Vox, The “Rhodes Must Fall Movement,” as the students call themselves, was formed over a month ago and seeks to “decolonize higher education.” And not just at Rhodes University, but on other college campuses throughout South Africa. Outside of the removal of the statue, students want the university to hire more Black academics and offer more Afrocentric curriculum options.
And as The Daily Vox notes:
This means creating a campus environment that is welcoming to black students. The response from some UCT students to the Rhodes Must Fall movement has revealed the day-to-day racism that slips under the campus radar – white students calling black students in the movement “monkeys” and “k****rs” or “savages” who “destroy everything they touch” on social media; black staff and students frequently reduced to tears by the racism they encounter from their peers.
“When we say ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ we mean that patriarchy must fall, that white supremacy must fall, that all systematic oppression based on any power relations of difference must be destroyed at all costs,” Kealeboga Ramaru, a student in the movement, said just before the statue fell.
Thus far, the students have been successful in their aim to get the university’s administration to remove the statue, which was taken down and housed in a secret location earlier this month. Kudos to them. There should have been some acknowledgment of the brave efforts of these students to decolonize their campuses. Yet, when asked his thoughts on the student-led activism, the City Press reports that Masekela was “dismissive” saying that the youth should focus on “bigger problems,” like poverty, inequality and crime. And then he went in on Black women and hair weaves…
Funny how a Pan-Africanist can have so much to say about Black women and their hairstyle choices — in the name of protecting the heritage and the collective wealth of African people — yet be so dismissive when it comes to actual efforts to decolonize. Even funnier is that this ardent protector of African aesthetics and values would even bother showing up to accept an honorary degree from an institution not only founded on the principals of erasing the local culture, but a university that continues to deny his people a place on its campus.
He should have been standing on the front lines and taking pictures with all of the students, including the ones with weaves. Instead, he chose to use Black women as a wedge and engage in the same sort of policing that has held our people back globally. That’s why it is hard to take some Pan-Africanists seriously when they act no different than the oppressors.
