Lulama Rozani said music was a means of communication and camaraderie among blacks in South Africa, her native land.

She was a guest speaker Saturday at the Dobbins Heights Community Center where the Hamlet Branch of National Association of University Women presented a program on “A Cultural Excursion - Far and Near.”

Rozani told of conditions in South Africa and traditions there.

The Rev. Damien Mason was also a speaker and told of the abundance of black cultural history in the Richmond County area.

Rozani has been music teacher in Cordova Elementary and Rohanen Primary schools for the past four years.

She gave a little information about the origins of South Africa from the time the Dutch first stopped there in 1652 on their way to seek spices in India. Some decided to stay eventually stealing the land from African natives and virtually enslaving them installing a Dutch culture.

Then in 1806 the British defeated the Dutch to make it a British colony. It wasn’t until 1833 that slavery was officially abolished. What became known as apartheid, or segregation of the races, continued. It wasn’t until 1994 that the first democratic election was held.

Rozani said her parents voted for the first time then for Nelson Mandela as president, the first black president of South Africa. “I will never forget the look on my parents’ faces when he was elected,” she said.

There are 11 official languages in South Africa now, Rozani said. At one time, the official language was supposed to be Afrikan, which was protested by black students. During a protest in 1973, she said some 300 students were killed by authorities.

It was after that incident she said that the world began to take notice of what was going on in South Africa and change began.

One of the fighters for freedom, Miriam Makeba, took her cause public in songs which had a message of protest, hope and was against injustice. While overseas in 1960, here passport to South Africa was revoked and could not return home for the next 30 years.

Rozani said during Makeba’s ban from the county, people could be put in jail for listening to her music.

She sang one of Makeba’s songs which told of the struggles in South Africa calling for patience, respect and focus and to not be discouraged by negative thoughts.

Rozani danced to a musical arrangement which reflected the struggles of South African gold miners who were separated from their families a year at a time, returning home only at Christmas.

Higher salaries attracted men to the dangerous work at the mines, she said, so they could support their families in the rural areas from which they came.

“The men stuck together and became like family sharing the physical and emotional pain of their work by singing and praying together to encourage one another,” Rozani said.

Her rhythmic movements in dance corresponded to recorded music from performers of such music.

Mason called for a greater celebration of black culture in the Richmond County area which he said is rich in its history.

He said there needed to be more talk about local history, and mentioned as an example the late Frederick C. Branch of Hamlet, the first African-American officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. A training building at the Marine Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Va., is named in his honor.

“We owe it to ourselves to be consistent in remembering such history and to come together to honor it,” Mason said.

He said there should be more public information about blacks in Richmond County at least for the sake of children to know their heritage, “to have a connection.”

He said there is much about the area to celebrate.

Since Dr. Martin Luther King died some 40 years ago, Mason said there has been a “disconnect.” Now that Barack Obama has been elected president, Mason said there is a resurgence of hope.

“The United States as a whole has come back to a sense of hope and promise,” he said, and it was a great opportunity for black history to become a greater part of American history.

“The kids need this. We need this. The community needs this,” Mason said, “to come to appreciate one another.”

n Contact reporter Tom MacCallum at 997-3111, ext. 15; e-mail at tmaccallum@yourdailyjournal.com.