South Africa

Miriam Makeba dies in Italy

Article published on the 2008-11-10 Latest update 2008-11-10 16:03 TU

Miriam Makeba
(Photo: Reuters)

The singer Miriam Makeba collapsed at a concert in Italy on Sunday and died later in hospital of a heart attack. She was 76 years old. She had been singing at a concert in support of Robert Saviano, the author of the novel Gomorra, who has received death threats from the Neapolitan mafia.

Makeba was born in 1932 outside Johannesburg, shortly after South Africa broke away from British rule.

She began her ex-patriate career with a tour of the United States, performing with The Manhattan Brothers. She then went on to appear in the musical film King Kong. She also featured in an anti-apartheid film, Come back Africa, which won her an award at the Venice film festival.

Shortly after, she had her citizenship removed and was forced into exile definitively. She only returned to South Africa in 1990, having spent the intervening years in the US, Europe and Africa.

She had left the US in 1968 after her marriage to Stokely Carmichael, the US Black Panther leader, and lived in Guinea.

The country's former president, Nelson Mandela, paid tribute to Makeba on Monday calling her one of the "mothers" of the anti-apartheid movement and the South African government said that throughout her life she had "given to the world, through her art, a positive image of the fight of South Africa's people".

Her music was banned in South Africa but she spent 31 years performing in West Africa, Europe and the US, picking up a Grammy with Harry Belafonte in 1965. She came close to South Africa in 1987 when she performed with Paul Simon in Zimbabwe on his Graceland tour of 1987.  

In a 1998 interview with RFI, Makeba spoke of the hope she had for Africa's youth: "I feel that our continent still has a lot of problems and there are a lot of things we still have to achieve. We just can't sit back and say, 'I'm tired', we have to keep moving and encourage young ones to keep going. They will keep the torch."