Miriam Makeba
Mama Africa: an icon of our time
Photo courtesy Haags Uitburo
Zenzile Miriam Makeba, also known as “Mama Africa” was a world-renowned songstress who achieved international acclaim and put African music into the global spotlight.
She was born in Johannesburg in 1932 and started her singing career by performing with her cousin’s band called the Cuban Brothers. She rose to fame while performing with the famous Manhattan Brothers during the 1950s and going on tour with them. The group was also a part of King Kong, South Africa’s first theatrical success. Not only did it help pave the way to international stardom for Makeba, it also helped launch other jazz icons such as Hugh Masekela, whom she later married.
Makeba also played a small part in the anti-apartheid documentary called Come Back Africa. Soon after, she was forced into exile for this by the South African authorities, an exile which would last for 30 years.
Makeba made a life for herself in the US and attracted huge crowds everywhere she performed from the Village Vanguard, a jazz club in New York, to Wembley Stadium in London.
Using her voice, Makeba alerted the world to apartheid. However, she always maintained that while fighting the unfair system was very close to her heart, she was a singer and not a revolutionary. Entertaining and making people dance was what she liked to do the most.
Constant challenges and many successes
Makeba was denied permission to go to South Africa to bury her mother in 1960 while she was in exile, she battled with cervical cancer, became a victim of the unscrupulous music industry – she was forced to sign away the royalty rights to her world-famous hit song Pata Pata – and took refuge in alcohol.
Despite her successful career in the US, things changed soon after she married her next husband, the radical black rights activist and leader of the Black Panthers, Stokely Carmichael.
Makeba was constantly harassed by the US government and recording companies cancelled her contracts. She was forced to seek refuge in Guinea as was not welcome in many Western countries, so in effect, she was a double-exile.
Her only daughter, Bongi, died tragically after a miscarriage in 1985 and Makeba went to live in Brussels, Belgium after that.
In 1990 she returned to South Africa following a special request from President Nelson Mandela.
During her life, Makeba released over 30 albums, sang and dined with world leaders such as Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela and also performed at John F Kennedy’s birthday party.
“Mama Africa” was the first black African woman to be awarded a Grammy Award. She was honoured for the album An Evening with Harry Belafonte & Miriam Makeba, which she recorded in 1959 with US folk singer Harry Belafonte.
She was given the Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Prize and was awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Grand Prix du Conseil International de la Musique.
In 2005, Makeba embarked on a three-year farewell tour in 2005 and on 9 November 2008, became ill at a concert in Italy. She suffered a heart attack and died aged 76.