Mama Africa's grand farewell

Makeba embarks on an international tour, saying: "I can’t quit until I have said thank you to all the people around the world who have applauded me."

In her all-time hit Pata Pata, Miriam Makeba sings of a dance that is so popular that everyone in Johannesburg gets to their feet as soon as the music starts to play. “Every Friday and Saturday night … it’s pata time,” sings Africa’s most famous female crooner to a feisty beat. “The dance keeps going all night long…till the morning sun begins to shine.”

The song, which came early in her 54 years in music, might as well have been the theme in Khartoum last week when Makeba brought the house down in a performance in that city’s Freedom Hall during a summit meeting of the African Union. Not even strict religious laws could keep the audience off the floor as she moved seamlessly from one passionate song to another. Few artistes can hit such high notes, especially at the ripe age of 73, and it is no wonder that the woman affectionately known as Mama Africa has kept her fans on their toes through the decades.

The dance has kept going all night long ever since she left South Africa in her early 20s to go into exile in the US fleeing the apartheid policy in her homeland. In those days of keeping the antiimperialism flame burning in exile, she was the darling of freedom fighters the world over.

And so it was that Makeba found her way to a magical performance during Kenya’s Independence Day celebrations on December 12, 1963. Tom Mboya, one of Kenya’s young and bright sparks of the day, requested her to sing a local song and suggested the Fadhili Williams classic Malaika. He taught her the words backstage as she waited her turn on the podium. It would be a turning point in the history of Kenyan music.

Her recording of Malaika turned the romantic song into an all-time classic and introduced it to millions of people around the world. Dozens of musicians have done cover versions of the song over the years.

In Khartoum, Makeba told Weekend she would love to sing in Kenya again. But she has not been invited. Will someone please do the honours?

The ties between the diva of African divas and Kenya began well before independence when she performed at Jomo Kenyatta’s rallies and during his inauguration as Prime Minister. The Moi Government did its part to build on the relationship and invited her back to a country that reportedly gave her honorary citizenship. In appreciation of her contribution to the arts, Kenyatta University awarded her an honorary degree, which she has been unable to collect.

“I don’t even know what degree it is,” she told Weekend during a meeting in Khartoum, where she was a guest of the Sudanese Government. The performance for the African Union was part of her “Thank You” tour that has already taken her to Cuba, Italy, Mexico and the US. She will perform in March in Australia, France and Germany. It is a grand farewell to the world, which took her to its bosom at a time when her own country was so hostile that she had to leave to rise and shine in the music arena. She will bid farewell to fans in more than 50 countries in a gruelling 14-month tour that opened in South Africa last September.

Unlike her voice chords, which have defied age, Makeba’s frail limbs can no longer take her to the performing stage without help. Says she: “I have trouble with my hips, two bones are pressing a nerve.”

She is not about to let this hold back a glorious career. “I am happy when I sing. I sing about love and life. When I sing about love, I don’t mean love between man and woman.”

Makeba can’t remember how many songs she has recorded since she first stepped into the studio in 1953 — a year after she started singing. Pata Pata is one of her own favourites. She explains that it means “touch, touch” and is a dance tune dating to the days of her own grandmother. Her rendition of our own Malaika, though a groundbreaking performance, is tainted with controversy.

In one of his last interviews, Daudi Kabaka said the Makeba recording altered the song. In the haste of the last minute coaching and poor lighting TJ, as Mboya was popularly known, mixed up the lyrics of two Williams songs and introduced the line Pesa ya sumbua roho yangu which was actually the title of another song by the same artiste. It blended nicely nevertheless and has since been incorporated in subsequent versions of Malaika.

There is a South African group that even goes by this name — in honour of Makeba’s rendition of it. Ironically, she appears to have forgotten where she got it and, in her live album, introduced it as a song from Tanzania. Makeba also recorded another song from Kenya, Pole Pole Mzee, whose original author is not credited.

In her Khartoum concert, the key players in her band were granddaughter Zenzi Lee and grandson Lumumba Lee. She couldn’t keep pace with their dancing but was impressive at a second or two behind the beat.

The Makeba who goes into her twilight years is a child of history wrapped in a roller coaster of a music career with fast and furious interludes of romance that would include five marriages.

The Sunday Times of South Africa reports that when her career took off in the US, where she arrived in 1959, she was helped by Hugh Masekela, Caiphus Semenya and Jonas Gwangwa to set up her music publishing company, putting her in control of her own royalties. In turn, she helped Masekela and Gwangwa enrol in the Manhattan School of Music, their having arrived in America after she had already started making waves there. Her relationship with Masekela blossomed into a romance that ended in marriage.

She won a Grammy in 1965 for the album An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, making her the first South African to receive this honour. But she did not have much time to celebrate the award as her marriage to Masekela came to an end after a brief two years.

In his book, Still Grazing, Masekela writes: “Sweet as she can be, when Miriam is pissed off, the most advisable thing is to simply run for the hills and not come back until the storm has subsided and she is humming again, telling her stories and singing her happy songs.”

He also speaks of infidelity, which is another story altogether. But perhaps her saddest marriage was also the longest. In 1968, while in the Bahamas, she announced her engagement to Stokely Carmichael. As leader of the revolutionary Black Panther Party for Self-defence, Carmichael had coined the phrase “black power” and vowed to take up arms against the American Government and was persona non grata in the US and among its allies. On hearing of the engagement, the Bahamas prime minister hounded her off the island.

Back in the US, Makeba and Carmichael married — and a hellish existence began. They suspected their apartment was bugged and they were accompanied everywhere by two uninvited CIA cars — one at the front and one at the back.

Organisers cancelled concerts booked in advance. Newspapers that had written endearingly of the exotic click-click girl from Africa turned scathing about her association with the man who had openly sat at a podium in Cuba while Fidel Castro attacked the US in a speech. Revenue officials were suddenly investigating her tax status. She opted to pack up and go.

The couple went to Guinea, where President Sekou Toure warmly welcomed her, and the two made the country their home. The marriage lasted a decade. It fell apart when it turned out that Carmichael had an affair with a local woman. Makeba said: “I never wanted my marriages to end. They just did. It hurt every time….”

She always managed to rise from the ashes of a broken marriage and take solace in her success on stage. Nomsa Mwamuka, co-author of Makeba: The Miriam Makeba Story says: “She is a strong woman, albeit very sensitive. I think the death of her daughter Bongi was one loss from which she has never recovered.”

Bongi was her only child, from her first marriage to Jame “Gooli” Kubayi before she became a famous musician. Bongi died in 1985 of pregnancy complications. One of the first things that Makeba did when she returned home in 1990 was to visit her mother’s grave in Soweto. Her first show in post-apartheid South Africa came in 1992. To her relief, it was a great success. She had thought people would not remember her.

But there were trying times ahead. The euphoria of having her back home died down. She says: “From the time I got home, it took me almost six years before I could release my next album in South Africa. It took me six years to find someone in the recording industry who had faith enough to work with me. I think people considered me old and outdated. But in the year 2000 I released Homeland.”

It then turned out that Masekela, with whom she continued to perform after their return from exile, had written to (former) President Nelson Mandela telling him Makeba was an alcoholic. Masekela urged him to persuade Makeba to join a programme to help musicians and other artistes with alcohol and drug addictions. “I was so hurt…Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba have shared a life,” said Makeba. “We even share a street corner in the Housing Association of East London — Hugh Masekela Drive crosses Miriam Makeba Crescent!”

She speaks, though, of forgiveness and finding internal peace. And, inevitably, about how she, the musical pilgrim that she is, is ready to sail on. Mwamuka told the Sunday Times: “The rigours of age are definitely taking their toll. Preparations for the current tour took a lot out of her. She spent long days practising with the orchestra, but what frustrated her was that there was not enough time for the musicians to learn the songs she would have like to do on tour.”

Not even Pata Pata was on the repertoire she did with the orchestra. Mwamuka says Makeba would like to sit back, relax and enjoy her greatgrandchildren.

She also wants to concentrate more on her “government duties”. She was appointed South Africa’s Goodwill Ambassador in 2001 and she has also started the Miriam Makeba Rehabilitation Centre for Girls to help abused girls.

But age and a need to spend more time at home are up against economics. In her book, Makeba writes: “In most cases it as true that we knew nothing about royalties and our society made no provision for our support after our sell-by date. There were no pensions for artistes. That’s why I was still touring and singing at 70 and that is why I always said: ‘Retire? I will sing till the day I die’. What becomes of an ageing artiste? Someone like Frank Sinatra must have done his ‘last tour’ about a thousand times?”

Money has not always been an issue — she made lots and lots of it. Her riches helped her to sustain some of the five husbands she married at different stages of her life.

"I will keep singing until I go to Avalon," she joked at the start of her grand tour that kicked off in her home town, referring to a cemetery in Johannesburg’s Soweto township. "But I want to be cremated and have my ashes thrown in the Indian Ocean ... to all the countries."

• Story by Henry Owuor, The Sunday Times of South Africa and Reuters.