Vusi Mahlasela visited Middlesex School on Tuesday, February 14th as part of the Spectrum Dialogue lecture series devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Mr. Mahlasela was an anti-apartheid activist who collaborated with Nelson Mandela. Mr. Mahlasela tells the story of the anti-apartheid movement through his music. For the “crime” of writing songs of freedom and human dignity, Mr. Mahlasela he was repeatedly harassed by the police and was arrested and held in solitary confinement. We were honored to have Mr. Mahlasela visit campus as he went to class, dined with students and faculty, and then performed for the community.
Mr. Mahlasela began by writing songs of justice, of freedom, of revolution, of love, of peace and of life. He joined a poetry group, The Ancestors of Africa, and also joined the Congress of South African Writers, a group of like-minded artists and writers, including Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer who paid for Vusi’s first guitar lessons. At this point, his political activism truly began. For the “crime” of writing songs of freedom and human dignity, Vusi was held in solitary confinement; he was harassed by the police repeatedly. Many of his friends fled the country. Through this struggle, his songwriting became not only prolific, but also healing for himself and for his listeners. And as Nadine Gordimer so vividly puts it, “Vusi sings as a bird does, in total response to being alive.” He simply became known as “The Voice.”
Recently, Mr. Mahlasela was humbled to receive an honorary doctorate degree from the prestigious Rhodes University in Grahamstown, SA; a couple of weeks later on Freedom Day, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma awarded Vusi with the National Order of Ikhamanga recognizing him for “drawing attention to the injustices that isolated South Africa from the global community during the Apartheid years.”