Away from a baying crowd of women with weaves, Hugh Masekela swaggers into a television studio on Fox Street in Johannesburg for a talk show. Earlier that day, he was on a talk radio station fielding questions on his disdain for synthetic hair and the popularity of weaves among African women. His remarks, and his refusal to pose with fans with synthetic hair, attracted the ire of women across South Africa.
“If he’s okay with weaved women paying money to come see his concerts then he should afford those fans the privilege of taking pictures with him,” SABC radio personality KG Moeketsi posted on Facebook.
“This thing is tired and unnecessary. We already deal with way too much misogyny, being belittled by men we love, and workplace discrimination, to not be afforded the right to wear our hair the way we want to. Mind you, I’ve never worn a weave in my life, but the right to choose your hairstyle has never been parallel to your taste in music.”
But Masekela is having none of it.
“It’s not about weaves,” says Masekela. “It’s not about weaves at all. You know, it’s about other people’s hair. Like some people wear synthetic, and some even use horsetail hair. But it’s not even about that.”
“Africans and Europeans have had a long historical issue about African hair. When we first encountered Europeans, they laughed at our hair because it was hard. And, historically we’ve been given an inferiority complex, not only about who we are but about our noses being flat, our lips being big, our asses being big, and things like that.”
“And of course we were defeated, you know, in trying to defend Africa. We were enslaved, then we were urbanized, then we were also ‘religionized’. So we’re very far from who we really are originally.”
“We are the only society that imitates other cultures. I mean we wear their clothes and everything. But the saddest part is how far we have come with trying to not look like ourselves.”
“Religion and urbanization have made Africans really believe that their own heritage is barbaric, savage, primitive, backwards, uncivilized and all those words. Psychologically, over the centuries we’ve been conditioned to think that our heritage is not good, that it’s inferior.”
The weave and what it represents is part of a much bigger picture, he says.
“Hair is one of the areas in which we’ve been put down,” he says. “But then we became exploited because apart from the issues of heritage we are the biggest hair market in the world. We spend tens of billions of dollars a year buying other people’s hair. And from a heritage and traditional perspective, that is sort of macabre.”
“So I don’t mind people wearing what they wanna wear, as long as I don’t have to take pictures with them. That’s all. It’s much more than me being an eccentric old man. There’s a whole history to it.”
“But it’s absurd when Africans fall over their feet to get their hands on blonde wigs. I mean I look at Umhlanga (the reed dance)… Half of those kids are wearing blonde wigs and weaves, and they don’t go with traditional clothes. You know, it’s the same as going skiing barefoot. It’s that absurd. But then they also put it on the children. A lot of them put it on their children. If you look at the little school children in this country, almost all of them have had their hair tampered with – their hair, in way or another, has been tampered with.
“If you saw the movie Hotel Rwanda, which was made here, you can see that they tried to wash all the kids’ hair so they look like Rwandans. And all the kids’ hair was ginger from refusing to be washed and it was still standing up by the time they were shooting. It passed over everybody’s head… people didn’t seem to notice.”
Bra Hugh, as the legendary trumpeter is affectionately known, is even disappointed by his own family.
“I was at a wedding just outside Polokwane in South Africa,” he says. “There were Venda relatives of mine and most of them were in traditional Tshivenda garb, but almost all the women were wearing weaves and wigs. One niece of mine had a red, black and yellow wig, a really shiny piece, and she had a matching one on her daughter who was three years old.”
“What that says to me is that, psychologically we have really been messed with. We are buying people’s hair but they are not buying any of our s***, except maybe a little art and craft… You know, it’s a sad joke.”
Back at the TV studio, Masekela moves on to sign autographs and I watch closely as my plus one asks Bra Hugh for a picture. Like many others in the room, my companion is sporting braids that are reinforced with synthetic hair. Masekela politely signs her book before posing with her for pictures.
Perhaps he didn’t feel like splitting hairs that day.

It’s A Sad Joke And Bra Hugh Isn’t Laughing

Once upon a time in Africa, dreadlocks were frowned upon; if you sported them, you were obviously a rough, subversive smoker of something strange. Now dreadlocks are high fashion and big business. Just ask Jabu Stone—a man who amassed a fortune from the fact that many in African society no longer dread dreads.
<div id="attachment_55" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-55" class="size-large wp-image-55" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/stone183_1-680x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="714" />&#8216;Dreadlock Entrepreneur&#8217; Jabu Stone, Johannesburg CBD; 4 August 2011 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
On a sunny winter’s afternoon, Stone glides through the din of chatter and radios at his hair salon in downtown Johannesburg, like a man on a mission. He has every right to: in the years since democracy in South Africa, in 1994, Stone has seen his dreadlock business expand to Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, the United States and Britain, with a turnover of R25 million ($3,489,378.3) from hair products and a dozen salons employing 70 workers.
The black haircare market is large and growing. Its biggest customers: black women. The myth for many black girls growing up was that straight hair made you look pretty and professional. This is why chemical products that straighten—so-called relaxers—account for about 75% of sales in the industry. Now there is a move towards keeping it more natural and Stone is at the forefront.
“Your hair is a unique act of creation; you don’t need to change the structure of your hair,” says Stone.
“Jabu Stone is one of the pioneers of the natural look. He started a trend in South Africa and showed that dreads weren’t for Rastafarians only,” says Pontsho Mokoena, the president of the Afro Hairdressing and Beauty Employers Association of South Africa (AHBEASA).
Stone, a trained electrical engineer, learned the hair trade almost as soon as he could walk.  He grew up watching the nimble fingers of his mother, a school teacher, braiding hair at home.
In later life, he saw a gap in the market. Stone found someone to help him develop a product that worked with the natural structure of black hair at a time when everyone else was looking for ways to straighten it. It was a very modest start, selling merely six units of product a month and renting a chair at a salon.
Stone hit on the idea of getting celebrities, like Nelson Mandela’s daughter, Zenani, to wear his dreadlocks and of allowing word-of-mouth to do the rest, making the unfashionable fashionable.
Research into the black haircare market is scarce, but all agree it is huge. The US black haircare market was claimed to be worth $9 billion in 2009, according to a recent documentary by stand-up comedian Chris Rock. The South African market, according to research company Diagonal Reports, was worth $1.35 billion in 2009. The hot African markets for black hair care are Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.
In South Africa, Stone is on the move. He has a mobile salon that tours the country and sells people the idea of flaunting their own natural, flowing dreadlocks—at a price. It’s still all about the image, he says, and there are even a dozen taxis driving around Johannesburg with a beaming picture of dreadlocked Afro-soul singer Judith Sephuma advertising his wares.  On top of this, there is diversification; you can open a bank account, get a debit card or medical treatment through Stone’s company and there are plans to expand from eight to 24 countries.
“You can only go as far as your eye can see; when you get there you can see even further,” says Stone.
The market is large and wide open with millions of heads waiting for dreads. For a quick, streetwise entrepreneur like Stone, there is a fortune to be made—one head at a time.
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Tag: African Hair

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

It’s A Sad Joke And Bra Hugh Isn’t Laughing

No Business Like Hair Business