Justice Malala: Hugh Masekela is a national treasure, a gem, a gift we should adore and value.

When, last month, he burst onto the stage to accompany international stars U2 during their concert in Joburg, something incredible happened. It was classic Masekela.

Blowing the trumpet that has catapulted him to international fame, he infused a song that is well-loved with a magic that had every single fan in the stadium going wild.

It wasn't just a song; it was almost a chant that brought everyone in the stadium together in what was - and this may sound laughable to some - almost a sublime togetherness. Yes, almost all 100000 people in that stadium, entranced by the keening of Masekela's trumpet and Bono's voice, were one.

You don't get that sort of goose-bump moment often. Everything stops, all memories and loves and hurts and prejudices drain from your body and your brain.

You are caught up in a moment of beauty, of two influences collaborating and creating a beautiful, uplifting and gorgeous experience.

Masekela is a reminder of the journey we have travelled as a country over the past 70 years: he was influenced by the church and gifted with musical talent, pushed into struggle, fled into exile, struggling to survive a lonely and seemingly unending period without sight of home, and made a triumphant return to South Africa.

He is our terrible apartheid past, and a living example of what we can achieve as a country and as a people. Love of this country drips from every note he blows and every lyric he sings.

It has been weeks now since Masekela's show Songs of Migration, with Gloria Bosman and Sibongile Khumalo in the lead opposite him, ended its run at the Market Theatre. It is a simple enough concept: we are all travellers to this place - we all made the journey, with the Khoisan being first to arrive.

These journeys, these travels from home in search of work, or fleeing war, or seeking a better life for our children, have always inspired songs. Young director and writer James Ngcobo and Masekela sat down and drew on these journeys and their songs and put them together.

The result is an astonishing, eclectic, painful, joyous and riveting show that takes us from the American south to the Jewish pogroms, from Zambian mineworkers to black South African migrants and Lesotho cattle herders.

With an extremely talented cast of singers, Masekela and his colleagues take us on a journey of South Africa and remind us of chunks of the world.

It is a journey worth taking, for there is a message and a history embedded in every song we hum, sing or whistle. Do our political neophytes know the history, the pain, embedded in the song uMam' Uyajabula, now known as the "Kill the Boer" song?

Do they know that it is a prison song, a migrant song, that is more than a century older than they are? That it is not just about the beating of whites?

Songs of Migration starts from the beginning, or what we remember of it. There are songs from the 18th century, then onwards to songs that jolt you as you recognise them from your childhood (who thought the song my father used to hum under his breath in anger, Abelungu oh Damn!, would re-appear in a Masekela musical?).

There are playful songs, songs of love and remembrance of loves lost, songs of forced removals, songs of drunkenness and songs of young lovers discovering what it is like to be in love. The show renders all these light and heavy themes in a way that keeps one gripped from start to finish.

From beginning to end, you laugh and cry as the migration stories come. It doesn't matter who you are or where you are from. You will be moved by the magic of the song Die tranne rol vir jou bokkie (The tears roll for your sweetheart), a 17th-century folk song of the coloureds as much as by the beautifully rendered My Yiddishe Mama, a Lithuanian folk song about Jews fleeing Europe.

At the centre of the show is Masekela: energetic, mournful, playful, funny, sad, powerful, vulnerable - and supremely talented and blessed with a fabulous cast. Sadly, the show's run at the Market has ended. It should return, and South Africans should see it in droves. It is one of the best things I have seen here or anywhere else in the world.

These are the things that make us happy. These are the things that remind me that Trevor Manuel is not a leader of the coloureds, or that Jeremy Cronin is not a leader of the whites, or that Nelson Mandela is not a leader of the blacks. They are leaders of all us, the people so ably rendered by our national treasure, Hugh Masekela.