Makeba: Unyielding and selfless spirit

By Erick Wamanji

Nairobi was this week awash with Miriam Makeba’s sounds. Music stores, clubs and even radio stations played her songs continuously. Mama Africa’s CDs were in high demand.

Kenya’s older generation easily remember her luxuriant voice resonating through VOK (now KBC). They recall songs such as Pata Pata (her flagship) and her version of Malaika. She also did a song for founding President Jomo Kenyatta: Pole Pole Pole Mzee…ya kufungwa (Loosely translated as ‘sorry old man for being locked up’). It was a hit.

The same song would be played during national holidays for decades, as it was treated like a patriotic song. In 1962, Kenyatta honoured Makeba with a souvenir leopard skin. The songbird fashioned her clothes from the colours of the skin.

Miriam Makeba in different stage performances that captivated the world.

Born Zenzile Miriam Makeba on March 3, 1932, that she was legendary is in no doubt. She courageously fought against social injustice and imperialistic designs. She died doing just that; what she knew best — singing.

Hers was a life twisted in tears and cheers. She dined, wined and danced with kings and corporate chieftains much as she found herself stateless, on the run.

Makeba was a Pan-Africanist who traversed the globe crooning and performing for liberation. It was a liberation war that fired no bullet — was non-violent but deeply effective.

So entrenched was music into her that she would write in her website: ‘I’ll sing to the last day of my life."

She did just that — she collapsed on stage while performing. According to press reports, Makeba had just done Pata Pata when she collapsed in Castle Voluturo, Italy.

Interestingly, it is in Italy at the Venice Music Festival (1959) that she took a leap into the world stage of music. It is here too that the curtain fell on a career that spanned more than four decades.

INTRICACIES

In 2005, Makeba embarked on a global farewell tour, visiting all the states she went to at the height of her singing career.

Her career at times resembled soap opera-like intricacies. But what surprised even her critics was the strong spirit that exile, denunciation and old age could not dampen.

And effortlessly, Makeba constructed a legion of fans that cut across the race spectrum.

In 2004, she was voted 38th out of South Africa’s 100 greatest personalities. A street in Johannesburg is named after her.

News of her demise shocked her fans across the globe.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela extolled Makeba thus: "She was a mother to our struggle and to the young nation of ours. It was fitting that her last moments were spent on a stage, enriching the hearts and lives of others — and again in support of a good cause."

The good cause Mandela mentions is about the Italian author and investigative journalist, Roberto Saviano, who has received death-threats from the Camora Mafia after the publication of his best-selling book, Gomorrah, which exposed the underworld. Makeba was in Italy in solidarity with the writer. Instructively, it is Mandela who encouraged Makeba to return to South Africa after three decades in exile. While in exile, she mingled with the high and mighty of the world. One such person was former US President JF Kennedy. She performed at his birthday party. She is also said to have been close to former Cuban President Fidel Castro.

But a date with the mighty began a little earlier. At 13, Makeba is said to have performed a solo to King George VI of England. While exiled in London, she met Harry Belafonte — the man who introduced her to world recording in the US. Makeba called him ‘Big Brother’. She too was a mentor and inspired countless South African women musicians. At the global level, her music was distinct and loved. Yet hers was a Cinderella-type rise from apartheid battered South Africa to world acclaim.

At home, she accepted the post of Goodwill Ambassador to the UN. And as a philanthropist, she founded the Makeba Rehabilitation Centre for Girls. She also championed the cause against HIV/Aids, in a country with the highest infections in the world.

She documents the intricacies of her life in her 1988 award-wining autobiography, Makeba: My Story.

She wrote: "I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became …voice and image of Africa…without even realising it."

HONORARY CITIZENSHIP

But what made her stand out? Her unyielding and selfless spirit.

According to her website (www.miriammakeba.co.za) Makeba started her singing streak as a student at Kilmerton Training Institute, Pretoria. On professional level, it is said she started off with the Cuban Brothers before joining the Manhattan Brothers, a jazz group. Then, she formed the Skylarks, an all-female music outfit. She would later form her own troupe that strode the globe in a whirlwind of captivating performances.

Barred from her motherland by the apartheid regime, she received an enviable bundle of 10 passports, and boasted about a similar number of honorary citizenships.