Hailed by Nelson Mandela as Africa's first lady of song and known affectionately across the continent as "Mama Afrika", Miriam Makeba was not only a soulful musical voice with international appeal but also a universal symbol of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, despite her protestations that she had never sought such a political position. After an inauspicious start to life - her first six months were spent in prison after her mother was jailed for making illegal home-brew - Makeba's vocal talent soon took her far beyond Prospect township in Johannesburg, where she was born Zenzile Makeba in 1932.
As a child she sang in the local choir. As a teenager, she sang first with the Cuban Brothers and later with the South African Manhattan Brothers (Mandela's favourite group). In 1956 she formed an all-female group, the Skylarks, and her upwards trajectory began. From South Africa she travelled to Britain, then on to New York. Of her songs, perhaps the two best known are The Click Song and Pata Pata, characterised by the distinctive tongue-clicking of the Xhosa language spoken by her family. But her repertory ultimately embraced many styles, modern and traditional, and in 1966 she won a Grammy for her album An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba.
Various tragedies coloured her life, as being an exile for 31 years for her outspokenness on apartheid defined it. Two marriages ended in divorce. Through her first husband, Stokely Carmichael, a Black Power activist, Makeba became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the US. She spoke vigorously on the subject of apartheid before the United Nations in 1969 (the third time she had done so), attracting the unwanted attentions of the FBI and resulting in the cancellation of various contracts by promoters nervous of her political profile.
The late 1970s and early 1980s were a fallow period and, when her only child - her daughter Bongi, born when Makeba was 17 - died of cancer in 1985, Makeba was too poor to afford the coffin. But there were also the highs: her 1959 appearance in the documentary film Come Back, Africa; singing at John F Kennedy's 45th birthday celebration in the company of Maria Callas and Ella Fitzgerald; accompanying Paul Simon on the highly successful Graceland world tour, which celebrated the music of South Africa; meeting Mandela on his release from prison in 1990; and, finally, returning home that same year to a hero's welcome.
Miriam Makeba was born on March 4 1932. She died of a heart attack on Nov 10, 2008, at age 76. * The National
