MAKEBA: MAMA AFRICA

By Jerome Ogola

She performed in Kenya's independence fete in Nairobi in 1963, she carried the Name of Mama Africa, for wearing the face of resilience and determination, she became the most successful African female musician, she was an anti-apartheid crusader, and this isn't all. 

She collaborated with American calypso legend Harry Belafonte in 1965, in a venture that yielded the 15-track album, A Evening with Belafonte and Makeba, she was once married to Jazz superstar Hugh Masekela, she spent almost her entire life exiled abroad and only made a return when South Africa gained independence in the early 1990s.

She is Mirriam Zenzile Makeba. All these accolades don't adequately capture who she was in totality. Makeba was born in South Africa in 1932 to a Swazi father and a Xhosa mother. This was in the period that the country was experiencing apartheid, one of the worst social injustices characterized by segregation that was defined by race, and orchestrated by the Boers.

The challenges she grew up in came to define her latter-day life as a renowned musician and civil rights activist, much like Franklin Boukaka of the Republic of Congo who used his music to advance his pan-africanism ideals.

Miriam was her father, Caswell Makeba's only child, to her mother Christina, who had six other children from a previous marriage. Having undergone difficulties in previous births, Mirriam's mother was warned not to conceive again, with traditional birth attendants cautioning that should that happen, both the mother and the child wouldn't survive.

Thus, when Mirriam was born, her grandmother named her Zenzile,  Xhosa word that translates to 'you created three problems yourself'. 

As fate would have it, young Makeba when she was 18 months old. Her offense? Her mother sold traditional beer umqombothi, which was illegal. Of course, it had to be illegal because the brew was patronized by native South Africans, and they weren't entitled to such luxuries as enjoying themselves, at least according to the apartheid government.

One of the country's presidents, Peter Botha, an unapologetic racist once said Africans were lazy drunkards addicted to sex and beer. 

Young Mirriam thus had to serve alongside her mother in prison not because she had broken any law but for the reason that mothers are jailed alongside their infants in an injustice that happens even in Kenya today

Miriam Makeba made her musical debut with a maiden performance with the Manhattan Brothers of Johannesburg in the 1950s. This was a jazz band that fused South African traditional tunes with jazz. It is with this band that the budding musician proved her musical prowess as a great vocalist. In 1959, she had a role in the apartheid-themed movie 'Come Back Africa', and it wasn't the role that she traveled abroad on a journey that she would meet Harry Belafonte.

She moved to New York. Harry had a penchant for mentoring musicians, especially Africans, and was fascinated by this young lady's talent and her passion as a rights activist, coming from a background where indigenous were being subjected to inhuman treatment by exotic imperialists.

Her music career blossomed in the USA. She did quite well with several releases, with Belafonte and on her own, all in the 1960s.  However, her relationship with the authorities in the USA hit headwinds due to her deep involvement in civil rights activism, and she had to relocate to Guinea.

Apparently, this hardened her stand on the gross violation of rights that was happening across the continent, with the struggle for independence gaining momentum in many countries across Africa. She became more explicit in her criticism of apartheid and even recorded a song titled 'Soweto Blues' written by Hugh Masekela.

The song, which became very successful, was heavily critical of apartheid in the country. She also played a role in the movie Sarafina, which came after South Africa gained her independence in 1991, upon which Makeba returned to the country. Among her popular hits are Pata Pata, Malcolm X, Lumumba, Malaika (a version of Kenya's popular music export), and Sangoma, Eyes, on Tomorrow, among others. Makeba died in 2008 in Italy, aged 76. She was touring the country and had just had a performance when she died of a cardiac arrest. She was a breastfeeding cancer survivor.

Her musical journey is too detailed to be enumerated in one presentation. It can be summed up in one line. She is the most celebrated African woman musician, who also made a name as a civil rights activist.

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