Today marks five years since legendary musician  Hugh Masekela passed on. Africa and the world remember him as an outstanding trumpeter, composer, singer, lyricist and commentator. A defiant anti-colonial, anti-apartheid and anti-imperialist until he took his last breath.

We also remember him as a self-made intellectual musician. When apartheid racism limited his chances of obtaining formal education, he used his own environment to teach himself how to play the trumpet. His education and training were from his people, his community and the concrete conditions of the Struggle.

How he became so articulate and eloquent on any matter of political significance highlights the talent for abstraction that he was born with, which he polished through non-formal platforms of learning, education, activism and international solidarity.

To him, music and political activism as an African were two sides of the same edifice. He utilised them astutely under conditions of hardship to entertain and conscientise. As he became older, he spoke louder about injustices – especially those committed by Africans themselves on their own people in the post-colonial era.

When he attended the 2012 annual commemoration of Africa Day organised by the South African government, he was highly critical of the occasion. Typical of his ability to simplify complex issues with humour, he compared the event to Christmas Day, where people travel from their busy lives to meet again, laugh at each other’s dry jokes, have some lunch and go back to their lives again.

He didn’t see the point of the celebrations as they did nothing to change the material and spiritual life of over a billion Africans suffering from hunger, disease and colonial dispossession.

Bra Hugh, as he was known in musical circles, was a sharp critic of colonialism, apartheid and their consequences such as neoliberalism.

When he spoke and performed on the 2012 edition of the TED Talk in London, he spoke about the need for Africans to remain who they are and be rooted in their heritage. According to him, being different, unique and African was a powerful contribution to the self and to the world.

He told the London audience in this dialogue that he would not have been a successful world-class jazz artist if he had adopted the Euro-American style of creating and playing music. He stuck to being an African lyricist and composer from Alexandra township.

When Rhodes University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2015, he again spoke about the colonial depersonalisation of the African  by asking the gathered academic audience why we as black people spend billions of rand buying other people’s hair.

What is common about all his honorary doctorate award ceremonies and public speaking events is that he would always follow them up with a brief performance of one of his popular songs. To him, his achievements would not have been possible without his trumpet, and it is the genius of his singing and band leadership that communicated his political convictions.

The last album he released before his passing, titled No Borders, was indeed a summary of his life mission. Bra Hugh saw the African continent as a single piece of land that should be united in its diversity. He emphasised that the concept of a nation state in Africa is a design of colonialism. It is a consequence of the 1884 Berlin conference which cemented the categorisation of Africa according to the image of Europe.

It is this “cutting” of Africa into borders that distorted our identities, and the injustice is at the core of all our problems. To him, had SA not suffered colonialsm and apartheid, it would have been one of the most powerful countries in the world given its rich culture, resources, creativity, leadership and intellectual rigour.

Songs such as Stimela, Cileshe, We Are One and Thuma Mina underscore his critical analysis of colonialism and the liberation project of Africanisation that should be carried through.

As we remember and commemorate this legend today, let us not lose sight of who we are. Bra Hugh’s music has showed us that we are a great nation with much potential. He would expect us to rebuild the nation.