While attending Inanda Girls’ Seminary in Durban, she had the opportunity to meet many of South African civil rights activists, such as ANC leader Albert Luthuli, which would shape her future political and educational careers.

After one semester at the university, she moved to Ghana to help the newly independent country introduce Western-style methods of learning.

Her educational career at Fordham University was short-lived; in her Anthropology classes she experienced racism from her professors, who considered non-Western societies to be primitive and uncivilized.

[2] After being away from South Africa for 22 years, Masekela still kept up with and supported her country through the newspapers where African National Congress (ANC) issues were appearing in the headlines almost every day.

From the media, Masekela learned about their push for the economic sanctions that would weaken the South African government, and their ever-strengthening ties with the Scandinavian countries, all of which had long been associated with human rights issues.

[2] In August 1982 Masekela made her trip back to Lusaka, Zambia, where she worked as administrative secretary for the ANC on a full-time basis.

Masekela was asked to accompany him, to handle arrangements and scheduling, and also to help raise funds and support from students and politicians for the organization in the multiracial, democratic elections that almost certainly lay ahead.

Between ambassadorial appointments, she served as an executive director for public and corporate affairs for De Beer Consolidated Mines.

[5] Masekela's poetry is included in such publications at Sterling Plumpp's Somehow We Survive: An Anthology of South African Writing (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1982).