8 – Miriam Makeba

“I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit. I look at a bird and I see myself: a native South African, soaring above the injustices of apartheid on wings of pride, the pride of a beautiful people.” Miriam Makeba

If you were to look for an equivalent to Rosa Parks in the movement against Apartheid in South Africa, then Miriam Makeba might well be it. To reduce her to that, however, would only capture half of her story. Makeba was one of the 20th century’s finest musicians, a legend who opened the ears of millions outside the continent to the sounds of African music. It was not for no reason that she was known as “Mama Africa”: she was arguably the most famous African in the world at her height, and certainly the most famous African woman, representing her people with dignity and strength.

She was born in a township outside of Johannesburg in March 1932, to a domestic worker mother and a teacher father. Her father died when she was just six years of age and her mother was forced by their extreme poverty to live apart from the family for long periods while working for white families. Miriam learned to sing in church choirs and in a family surrounded by music, and decided on a career in singing. She was almost stopped before she had even begun – she was married to an abusive husband and survived breast cancer – but managed to forge a career in various jazz groups in South Africa.

She first met Nelson Mandela in 1955 – he was impressed and described her as someone who “was going to be someone” – and scored her first hit on the American Billboard chart in 1956. She featured in an anti-apartheid film called “Come Back, Africa”, which propelled her to international fame, leading to appearances in London, New York and Venice. On the back of it, she sang on The Steve Allen Show and became a star in the United States, prompting her to move there permanently in 1959. It would be in the US that she would become an activist.

While Miriam was living in New York, her mother died in back in South Africa. She tried to travel back to attend the funeral, but her passport was revoked due to her perceived political views, though she had rarely made political music up to that point. “I always wanted to leave home,” she later wrote. “I never knew they were going to stop me from coming back. Maybe, if I knew, I never would have left. It is kind of painful to be away from everything that you’ve ever known. Nobody will know the pain of exile until you are in exile.” After this, she became a political juggernaut, both in the States and at home in South Africa.

Her career was at a height – she had several hit albums and sang for John F Kennedy – and she was a crossover star: white audiences saw her music as exotic and different, while black audiences identified her as a civil rights campaigner. She herself was less impressed with American politics, remarking that “there wasn’t much difference in America; it was a country that had abolished slavery but there was apartheid in its own way;” referring to segregation policies. She began to travel the world campaigning against apartheid, racism and colonialism, before turning to black power activism in the late 1960s. She raised funds for Martin Luther King Jnr and spoke at the United Nations against apartheid. Eventually, her marriage to Black Panther Stokely Carmichael led to a drop off in her popularity in the US and she moved to Guinea in 1968. She would not return to America for nearly 20 years.

While in Africa, she travelled extensively, performing at independence ceremonies in decolonised African countries and raising awareness of apartheid. Her music was openly political, challenging the South African regime at every turn. When the system finally fell, she was invited by Nelson Mandela to return to the country, which she did in 1990. She continued to tour and perform, eventually dying in 2008 at the age of 76.