by Vusi Mahlasela.

Vusi Mahlasela, a great singer who himself was banned from his homeland, wrote this song for the many exiles and imprisoned South African freedom fighters and artists.

Miriam Makeba, who died on Nov. 10th, 2008 was one of the many. She was banned for 30 years, from 1960 to 1990. The name “Mama Africa” was bestowed upon Makeba because she the first person to make African music heard and known internationally.

This is an ode to Miriam Makeba and her still resounding voice. Though her physical form is gone for ever, her visage will remain, not only in the hearts and minds of those closest to her, but also in the minds of the millions who have heard her voice, those who have yet to do so and the millions for whom she sang. Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1939 and began singing professionally in the early 1950s. She sang with a number of groups- such as the Cuban Brothers, the Manhattans, the all-female Skylarks, and with Hugh Masekela in the musical “King Kong,” about a boxer. She was introduced to the international stage through Lionel Rogosin’s film “Come Back Africa,” a dramatic documentary that displayed the racist apartheid system. Makeba’s passport was revoked while she traveled with the film and presented it to the internationa audience.

In a Skylark song called “Miriam’s Goodbye To Africa,” a spaeker intones, “Today we say goodbye to Afica’s queen of soul, Miriam Makeba. Good luck Miriam and please do come back to us soon.” Makeba replies, “Goodbye mother/ goodbye father/ and to you my little baby/ goodbye/ until we meet again/ farewell dear friends/ I am leaving/ may the good Lord be with you all/ though I’m leaving/ my heart remains with you.” The song ment as atribute, has become a haunting lament. Neither Makeba nor members of her group could know that she would be gone for 30 years, that she would never again see her mother or be able to attend her funeral, and never see Sophiatown as she remembered it, for it would be bulldozed to the ground and replaced by a suburb for whites only. Many events would pass which no one could forsee. But the conditions in South Africa were dictated by a racist system that was formelly instituted in 1948 by
then-Minister of Native Affairs Hendrick Frensch Verwoerd- who later became prime minister and described apartheid as “a policy of good neighborliness.”

Umkhonto we Sizwe was the armed wing of the African National Congress. Vuyisile Mini, an Umkhonto activist was and singer who was murdered by a hangman’s noose, would write a song taunting Verwoerd titled, “Pasopa nansi ‘ndondemnyama we Verwoerd” ( Look out Verwoerd, here are the Black people). It would become a polpular liberation song throughout the struggle to free South Africa from apartheid and white rule. Makeba later recorded a version of it. Nelson Mandela said in his autobiography, alluding to himself, that a person is known by his response to conditions. Miriam Makeba, then is know to a voice for freedom. Each breath she took, like the terse exhalations in the song “Amampondo”-about Mpondo warriors, part of the Xhosa-speaking people, preparing for battle-was inspiration to the South African people, as theirs were to her. While Makeba could not be in her homeland, she could sing words of struggle
for audiences who may not have otherwise been able to glean the conditions imposed upon the masses of Black people in South Africa by a European colonizer.

Sifiso Ntuli, an exiled activist, says in the film “Amandla”:”Song can communicate to the people who otherwise would not have understood where we are coming from.” Makeba’s voice was soaring and powerful and could evoke feelings of joy and celebration, such as “Pata Pata,” and pride, anger or sorrow. Whether she was singing in English or Xhosa, singing “Soweto Blues,” about the massacre of students protesting classroom instruction in Afrikaans, or “Khawuleza,” a song about what children shout to their mothers when authorities are coming, she could communicate the conditions and emotions of the oppressed. My favorite Tanzanian music artists produced one of the best hits in 1976 in memory of the Soweto massacre. The words:”Tarehe kumi na sita mwezi wa sita mwaka sabini na sita, Watanzania tunaomboleza mauwagi ya Soweto.” These words still ring in my brains
thirty two years after the cold blooded Soweto massacre.

Finally Makeba would miss her mother’s funeral and those of her uncles killed in the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. Her daughter died at eight years old, after being reunited with makeba and not able to return home. She would face scrutiny and surveillance and exile in another land while married to Kwame Ture, yet her resolve did not tamper or wine. Makeba continued to be a voice for the South African people and renowned worldwide. Her spirit will exist in song and deed and her voice shall become a voice for new generations and new strugles for a better world.