ZAM’s 2025 Nelson Mandela Lecture event will, besides the main address by Kenyan investigative journalist John-Allan Namu, also feature a once-off performance of the legendary migration-themed song “Stimela”, composed by the late South African jazz great Hugh Masekela.
The song, which portrays Black migrant workers who are separated from home, family and loved ones by an arduous train journey that ends at the cities’ coal mines, is especially relevant today as migration from poorer countries to richer ones is a much-debated phenomenon worldwide. Nelson Mandela speaker John-Allan Namu also referred to migration in a recent interview, when he drew attention to the fact that “the poor in my country often feel that their best prospect is a low-paid and abusive job as a house help in some foreign place.”
The song is named after migrants’ arduous train journeys during Apartheid
The performance of Stimela at this year’s Nelson Mandela Lecture promises to be an exceptional showing, where Amsterdam-based Fra Fra Sound will be partnering with multi-awarded South African saxophonist Mthunzi Mvubu. The song itself is known for its train-like beat; the title Stimela, meaning ‘train’, is onomatopoeic, echoing the sound of the train as it puffed along the tracks.
Kind and fair
Hugh Masekela, composer of Stimela and a global legend who passed away in 2018, was renowned for playing his trumpet alongside fellow icons like Miriam Makeba and others. Another prominent South African jazz musician, Jasper Cook, a former trombonist for the African Jazz Pioneers (AJP), frequently performed with the already internationally celebrated ‘Bra Hugh.’ Speaking to ZAM, Cook recalled Masekela as a strict taskmaster but also as a kind and fair man, noting that he would "pay USA rates instead of the miserly South African ones."
Amusingly, like so many others, Masekela was often befuddled by Jasper Cook—the only white member of the AJP—who, at the height of apartheid, regularly braved the fences dividing black and white South Africa, navigated arrests, and traversed townships ablaze during uprisings, all to join his fellow jazz musicians on foot, simply to play the music he loved.
"Once, while performing Stimela on stage in Johannesburg, I joined the vocalists harmonizing the refrain woza gibela, siya hamba stimela (come hop on, the train is leaving). Hugh laughed uproariously when he heard me singing in Zulu and catching on to the township harmony, which is slightly different from American blues. Afterwards, as we were packing up our instruments, he put on a threatening face, pointed his finger right at me, kind of funnily, and shouted, ‘YOU!’. As he was leaving, he turned at the door, laughed again, and said, ‘Shit, now I’ve heard everything,’ before walking out."
“The word ‘hate’ is not strong enough”
In another discussion, Cook recalls asking Masekela why Africans hated trains so much. “I had worked on the railways, and I loved trains. Of course, I knew the Stimela song and the cruelty of migrant labour, but I wondered why the hatred for the trains themselves was often so tangible when we spoke about it.” Hugh shook his head and said, “Guy, you have no idea how it feels. Those monsters that eat you up and spew you out into a black hole. You work in the heat and dust for a year. The word ‘hate’ is not strong enough.”
