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November 11, 2008
Miriam Makeba, Singer, Dies at 76 By ALAN COWELL
LONDON — Miriam Makeba, a South African singer whose voice stirred
hopes of freedom among millions in her own country though her music was
formally banned by the apartheid authorities she struggled against,
died overnight after performing at a concert in Italy on Sunday. She
was 76.
The cause of death was cardiac arrest, according to Vincenza Di Saia, a
physician at the private Pineta Grande clinic in Castel Volturno near
Naples in southern Italy, where she was brought by ambulance. The time
of death was listed in hospital records as midnight, the doctor said.
Ms. Makeba collapsed as she was leaving the stage, the South African
authorities said. She had been singing at a concert in support of
Roberto Saviano, an author who has received death threats after writing
about organized crime. Widely known as “Mama Africa,” she had been a
prominent exiled opponent of apartheid since the South African
authorities revoked her passport in 1960 and refused to allow her to
return after she traveled abroad. She was prevented from attending her
mother’s funeral after touring in the United States.
Although Ms. Makeba had been weakened by osteoarthritis, her death
stunned many in South Africa, where she stood as an enduring emblem of
the travails of black people under the apartheid system of racial
segregation that ended with the release from prison of Nelson Mandela
in 1990 and the country’s first fully democratic elections in 1994.
In a statement on Monday, Mr. Mandela said the death “of our beloved
Miriam has saddened us and our nation.”
He continued: “Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile
and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her
music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us.”
“She was South Africa’s first lady of song and so richly deserved the
title of Mama Afrika. She was a mother to our struggle and to the young
nation of ours,” Mr. Mandela’s was one of many tributes from South
African leaders.
“One of the greatest songstresses of our time has ceased to sing,”
Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said in a statement.
“Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to
the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the
certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid and colonialism
through the art of song.”
For 31 years, Ms. Makeba lived in exile, variously in the United
States, France, Guinea and Belgium. South Africa’s state broadcasters
banned her music after she spoke out against apartheid at the United
Nations. “I never understood why I couldn’t come home,” Ms. Makeba said
upon her return at an emotional homecoming in Johannesburg in 1990 as
the apartheid system began to crumble, according to The Associated
Press. “I never committed any crime.” Music was a central part of the
struggle against apartheid. The South African authorities of the era
exercised strict censorship of many forms of expression, while many
foreign entertainers discouraged performances in South Africa in an
attempt to isolate the white authorities and show their opposition to
apartheid.
From exile she acted as a constant reminder of the events in her
homeland as the white authorities struggled to contain or pre-empt
unrest among the black majority.
Ms. Makeba wrote in 1987: “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my
roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and
the people, without even realizing.”
She was married several times and her husbands included the American
black activist Stokely Carmichael, with whom she lived in Guinea, and
the jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela, who also spent many years in exile.
In the United States she became a star, touring with Harry Belafonte in
the 1960s and winning a Grammy award with him in 1965. Such was her
following and fame that she sang in 1962 at the birthday party of
President John F. Kennedy. She also performed with Paul Simon on his
Graceland concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.
But she fell afoul of the U.S. music industry because of her marriage
to Mr. Carmichael and her decision to live in Guinea.
In one of her last interviews, in May 2008 with the British music
critic Robin Denselow, she said she found her concerts in the United
States being cancelled. “It was not a ban from the government. It was a
cancellation by people who felt I should not be with Stokely because he
was a rebel to them. I didn’t care about that. He was somebody I loved,
who loved me, and it was my life,” she said.
Ms. Makeba was born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932, the daughter of a
Swazi mother and a father from the Xhosa people who live mainly in the
eastern Cape region of South Africa. She became known to South Africans
in the Sophiatown district of Johannesburg in the 1950s.
According to Agence France-Presse, she was often short of money and
could not afford to buy a coffin when her only daughter, Bondi, died
aged 36 in 1985. She buried her alone, barring a handful of journalists
from covering the funeral. She was particularly renowned for her
performances of songs such as what was known as the Click Song — named
for a clicking sound in her native tongue — or “Qongoqothwane,” and
Pata Pata, meaning Touch Touch in Xhosa. Her style of singing was
widely interpreted as a blend of black township rhythms, jazz and folk
music.
In her interview in 2008, Ms. Makeba said: “I’m not a political singer.
I don’t know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to
tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing
about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was
happening to us — especially the things that hurt us.”
In a tribute, Jacob Zuma, head of the ruling African National Congress,
said the party “dips its banner in tribute to an African heroine,
Miriam Zenzile Makeba, a freedom fighter and outstanding African
cultural figure.”
“Miriam Makeba used her voice, not merely to entertain, but to give a
voice to the millions of oppressed South Africans under the yoke of
apartheid,” Mr. Zuma said.
