Miriam Makeba, the singer who became the musical symbol of the black struggle against apartheid, has died after collapsing at a concert in Italy. She was 76.
Makeba, nicknamed “Mama Africa” by a worldwide legion of fans and famed for hits such as Pata Pata and The Click Song, died of a heart attack in a Naples hospital after she collapsed as she left the stage at a benefit concert in Castel Volturno on Sunday.
“One of the greatest songstresses of our time Miriam Makeba has ceased to sing,” South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said in a statement.
PHOTO: AFP
The singer “died performing what she did best — an ability to, communicate a positive message through the art of singing,” the minister said.
Born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932, Makeba became one of Africa’s best known singers and while Nelson Mandela was in prison took up the battle against apartheid through her music.
The South African government revoked her citizenship in 1960 and even refused to let her return for her mother’s funeral. Makeba spent more than three decades in exile, living in the US, Guinea and Europe.
She saw her music outlawed in her homeland after she appeared in an anti-apartheid film. But she was an international success, winning a Grammy award for Best Folk Recording with US singer Harry Belafonte in 1965 for the album An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba.
“I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots,” she said in her biography. “Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realizing.”
But she also met controversy abroad. Her marriage to civil rights activist and Black Panthers leader Stokely Carmichael in 1968 caused controversy in the US and some of her concerts were canceled.
Makeba performed for half an hour on Sunday at a concert near Naples on behalf of an Italian writer, Roberto Saviano, who has received death threats after writing an expose of the Italian mafia.
“She had been the last one to go on stage, after the performances of other singers,” said Carlo Hermann, an Agence France-Presse photographer who covered the concert and witnessed fellow singers rush to her aid when she collapsed.
“There were calls for an encore and at that moment someone asked if there was a doctor in the house. Miriam Makeba had fainted and was lying on the floor,” he said.
Makeba was the daughter of a Swazi mother and Xhosa father.
She captured international attention as a vocalist for a South African group, The Manhattan Brothers, when they toured the US in 1959. Her citizenship was taken away the following year.
She was briefly married to trumpeter Hugh Masekela, another famous South African artist who also spent long years in exile under apartheid.
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