Legendary South African jazz musician Hugh Masekela, has died aged at the age of 78.

His family confirmed the death in a statement in which they revealed that the musician “passed peacefully” in Johannesburg.

The family says Masekela died “after a protracted and courageous battle with prostate cancer”.

The musician was famous for his Afro-jazz and anti-apartheid hit songs such as “Soweto Blues” and “Bring Him Back Home” among others.

His family describes him a “loving father, brother, grandfather and friend”.

Masekela was born in Witbank, a town in South Africa in 1939. HE was given his first trumpet by the anti-apartheid activist archbishop Trevor Huddleston, who formed a pioneering jazz band in Soweto in the 1950s.

He had been suffering from prostate cancer for almost a decade and last performed in Johannesburg in 2010, where he gave two concerts that were seen as an “epitaph” to his long career.