You can always count on Hugh Masekela to speak frankly. Masekela turned 70 this year. And he still has a lot to say. In London for a concert with the London Symphony Orchestra to mark his birthday, he was interviewed by the BBC.  Masekela, who spent 30 years in exile before returning to South Africa in 1990, talks about who owns the economy; how forming a “unity government” with Apartheid’s rulers in 1994 was “… tantamount to Israel forming a government with the Nazis;” how he can’t affect politics now run by “an international private club;” and, for good measure, he adds that South Africans fought for freedom but only got democracy instead. He also goes on about his preoccupation with bringing back “traditional ethnic cultural performance” better than the Hawaiians. I don’t know about that last part.

It’s worth listening to. Here.

By the way, Masekela has a history of speaking his mind on postapartheid politics.

For example, in a March 2002 interview he told the Chicago Tribune, “I’m trying to help reconstruct the glorious aspects of who we are as a people … There’s nothing apartheid worked harder for than for us to forget ourselves. We have to reclaim our social and recreational life and define ourselves to the world.”

That same year, he released an album, “Time.” It included the song, “Send Me (Thuma Mina), which, breaks with his pessimism, and is like a manifesto of sorts for how he sees his role in the new South Africa:

I wanna be there when the people start to turn it around
When they triumph over poverty
I wanna be there when the people win the battle against AIDS
I wanna lend a hand
I wanna be there for the alcoholic
I wanna be there for the drug addict
I wanna be there for the victims of violence and abuse
I wanna lend a hand
Send me