Miriam Makeba

Separation, massacre, exile

The twentieth century was certainly no stranger to conflict. But between 1948 and 1994, South Africa lived through a very particular situation known as apartheid – a white minority government that, through anti-democratic laws, oppression and violence, subjugated millions of Africans descended from the rich mix of native populations, in particular Swazi, Zulu and Xhosa peoples. It is not the purpose of this article to provide a detailed history of the country – the sheer complexity of the events that followed the first arrival of Dutch settlers in 1652 would merit a university course all its own.

But, as with other analogous situations of colonial legacy, the crux of the matter is simple to grasp: internal strife, racial segregation and religious crusades, all designed to sow chaos and guarantee the expropriation and control of the territory's resources by an aggressive minority that has seized power – in South Africa's case, the spoils include minerals and precious stones. When the Cullinan, the largest diamond in the world, was found in 1905 – now set in the English crown, safely kept in the vaults of the Tower of London – the country plunged into a spiral of violence that made the Klondike gold rush look tame by comparison.

The apartheid system instituted in the 1940s was, in short, merely the latest iteration of political abuse and economic control, devised this time with the precise aim of separating populations according to skin colour – white, black and coloured, the latter a kind of "third race" comprising Indian immigrants and natives of the Mascarene Islands – and assigning each group, in blatantly unbalanced proportions, access to resources and designated residential areas. It's impossible not to think of the scene dividing up the stream's waters in Ignazio Silone's "Fontamara".

But on 21 March 1960, the South African government committed a criminal act that would resonate around the world: the Sharpeville massacre, in a town then in the province of Transvaal, to the east of the country. Five thousand people gathered outside the town hall that day to protest against the pass laws, which required African citizens to carry a document to be shown wherever they went, in order to monitor their movements and regulate employment in line with the (low) wages set by the government. The police who responded to the demonstration were ordered to open fire indiscriminately on the defenceless crowd, leaving almost three hundred dead and hundreds wounded.

Miriam Makeba lost two uncles at Sharpeville. A few weeks later, her mother also passed away, due to health problems. But upon arriving at the airport from the United States, where she had recently settled for work as an actress and singer, Miriam discovered that her passport had been cancelled; the local authorities sent her straight back on the first available flight. She would never attend her family's funerals. Her daughter Bongi, only ten years old at the time, would only be brought to America months later. The message was clear: the South African government was a dictatorship intent on controlling all its citizens, and on driving away – or outright murdering – anyone who did not fit within the narrow band of racial and linguistic preference established by a small oligarchy of wealthy landowners.

Here begins the long international journey of Miriam Makeba, known as Mama Africa, the golden voice and pride of every dispossessed people. An elegant, well-mannered, smiling woman, who seems to carry the sun in her mouth when she sings, yet is also endowed with an iron will and a tireless tongue for condemning the abuses afflicting her beloved country. Over thirty years of exile, Miriam collected visas and passports according to circumstance – first in America, but once she was driven out of there too, owing to her marriage to Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Black Panthers and flagged by the CIA as a terrorist, she settled in Guinea, then Belgium, spending time also in Kenya, Mozambique, Ghana and Italy – the country where Miriam would pass away from a heart attack at the age of seventy-six, after a concert held in Castel Volturno in support of Roberto Saviano and the fight against the Camorra.

But she would not set foot in South Africa again until 1990, when the last white government, led by Frederik Willem De Klerk, began to roll back discrimination and, in a gesture that became historic, had the celebrated activist Nelson Mandela released from prison – soon to be elected the country's first democratic president. By then, however, Miriam Makeba had already become a singer renowned the world over, thanks in no small part to the success of "Pata Pata", a curious artefact of the pan-African diaspora that captivated millions of listeners worldwide through a blend of folk songs and original compositions in Swazi, Swahili, English, Aramaic, Portuguese and, above all, Xhosa, the "click language", one of humanity's most singular treasures.

Who was Miriam Makeba? Her origins

Zenzile Miriam Makeba was born in 1932 in Prospect, a segregated shantytown on the outskirts of Johannesburg, to a Xhosa father, a teacher, and a Swazi mother, a domestic worker. A rich cultural heritage, then, but one shadowed by a very harsh socio-economic fate, which had her working from childhood onward. Luckily, young Miriam had a gift: her voice, with which she sang both at school and at church on Sundays, effortlessly tackling folk songs in Swazi and Xhosa, as well as Zulu, Sotho and English – that same linguistic melting pot that made up the social fabric of her battered nation.

American musical influence had already landed in South Africa through records by Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, which Miriam soaked up like a sponge while taking her first steps with the Cuban Brothers and the Manhattan Brothers, then with the female vocal quartet the Skylarks. But even with these groups, the style remained deeply indebted to the African continent – in the West at the time people spoke of Afro-pop, but in South Africa there was the umbrella term marabi, denoting local jazz in its broadest sense. Many sub-genres existed across the country according to specific cultural contexts and performance settings; among these, mbaqanga denotes a modern version of the traditional songs and dances of the Xhosa people, a style only native speakers could truly master, and of which Miriam would become the most famous exponent.

Miriam soon became more than just a singer; her role in the jazz opera "King Kong" brought her a first taste of fame, even though the production was performed before a segregated audience, as government orders required. But it was her participation in Lionel Rogosin's docu-fiction "Come Back, Africa" that turned the young artist into an uncompromising voice for her people – and, at the same time, started the countdown on her time in South Africa. The government was desperate to censor and suppress the film because it was shown to integrated audiences, but it was above all the film's international resonance that exposed the country's dirty laundry to the world. For this role, in 1959 Miriam was invited to the Venice Film Festival, but it was in London that the singer met Harry Belafonte, who would mentor her through the first years of her solo career, persuading her to go and work in America.

Miriam's recording career began right after her exile in 1960, with a self-titled album that presented her as an intriguing Afro-folk singer dressed in sometimes heavy-handed Western instrumentation – early steps in an unusual career, not always perfectly focused, which would only find its true form over time, even as audiences already appreciated her talent. Eight more records would follow before "Pata Pata", including "An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba", which won a Grammy in 1965.

We can't open too long a parenthesis here on the history of civil rights in the United States – that too would take entire pages. But the American 1960s were the culmination of a series of protests, ideas and movements that would lead to the March on Washington – organisations like the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers alarmed public opinion, the Five Percenters emerged in Harlem, while writers such as Maya Angelou and Sidney Poitier, and jazz musicians from Miles Davis to Sun Ra and Nina Simone, longed for an idealised Motherland. It's in this context that Miriam Makeba offered a tangible bridge and a universal story, since racism claimed victims in Africa too: "Pata Pata" is an important document.

Pata Pata: stories from the global village

Among the key songs in Miriam's discography is, of course, the title track, "Pata Pata", which translates as "touch touch" – an infectious Saturday-night village dance set to piano and guitar, sung with an unquenchable zest for life – proof of the resilience and spirit of a people unbreakable in the face of every oppression. Originally conceived in the 1950s by Miriam herself, drawing on a series of popular dances and melodies widespread in the shantytowns of Johannesburg, the song was reworked in the studio with Jerry Ragovoy, who grasped its melodic immediacy and helped the singer shape the arrangements into a lean three-minute miniature. To draw in an international audience, the track features a brief spoken interlude in English, just enough to turn this traditional moment into a kind of Esperanto, instantly felt in every corner of the planet, beyond any language barrier.

The other famous track is “Ngqothwane”, known in the West as “The Click Song”, but here retitled “Click Song Number One”. Set to music by the Manhattan Brothers back in the Fifties – a group Miriam herself sang in – the title refers to an elaterid, the scientific name for those beetles that “click” their carapace as they leap through the air during mating season. In Xhosa villages, the song is often performed at weddings as a wish for good fortune. Carried by a lean, sinewy rhythmic bed that complements the circular repetition of the lyrics and harmony, Miriam popularized the song in America in the early Sixties, often performing it live for audiences fascinated by the inimitable sounds she produced with her palate. It's striking to note how the singer's whole bearing shifts as she moves from English to her mother tongue during performances, as if the sheer force of the music were enough to momentarily transport her home:

Even more evocative is the old traditional tune “Jol'inkomo”, dedicated to young warriors preparing for battle; Miriam sings it with a wealth of guttural sounds and colorations, her voice acting like an instrument woven into the guitar and percussion arrangement, to an effect that is at once encouraging and galvanizing.

“Ha Po Zamani”, sung in Swahili, carries a rather different meaning – a swaying original tune that could mislead the casual listener. The song actually laments the influence of colonialism, wistfully picturing the old days before the arrival of the Afrikaners, when native peoples had homes of their own and didn't need to drown their pain in alcohol (note: when Miriam was still a child, her mother was arrested by police for brewing her own beer at home – a curious parallel to American Prohibition, with the difference that, for African communities under white rule, home brewing was often the only source of income).

Over an urgent rhythmic bed reminiscent of Cuban music – another complex melting pot of humanity born of colonial displacement – “Saduva” is the most personal original song on the record, sung in Swazi; here Miriam laments her sense of dislocation and the absence of her mother's guiding presence, whom she nonetheless senses as a spiritual presence through the memory of her voice. The performance is at once somber and radiant, allowing the singer to shift between emotions in an inimitable display of skill that nevertheless steers clear of excessive showmanship.

But “Pata Pata” also includes songs drawn from other cultures, revealing the cross-cultural intent of a truly global performer. Originally written and performed by the celebrated Ethiopian musician Tilahun Gèssèssè, “Yetentu Tizaleny” is another ode to times gone by, with references to what might be a love torn apart by forced distance – a theme that resonates deeply with Miriam's own life story. Her version is less psychedelic and more contemplative than the original, but she keeps the lyrics in Amharic as a tribute to another African nation, different in culture and geography, yet equally scarred by the grip of European colonialism.

And how could one forget “Maria Fulo”, a song credited to Brazilian composer Severino Dias de Oliveira, known as Sivuca, who nonetheless didn't release his own version – titled “Adeus Maria Fulô” – until 1973. The song is another tale of migration and diaspora that fits neatly with the record's recurring themes: the farewell to a woman named Maria, beloved by the songwriter, works simultaneously as a carnal, geographical and spiritual symbol – in its mournful unfurling of nostalgia over a thread of brass and rattles, the lyrics reference the drought of the sertão, the unforgiving backcountry steppe of Brazil, notoriously hard to farm. Miriam sings this one in Portuguese too.

Western Wind: Stories from New Jersey

Recorded at TownSounds Studios in Englewood, New Jersey, “Pata Pata” naturally also bears the mark of American influence. A ballad like “What Is Love”, again co-written with Ragovoy, makes no secret of its clear, universal sentiments: the song unfolds like a prayer between plucked folk guitar strings and a blanket of soul violins, but it's Miriam's voice soaring above it all with majestic intensity, reminding us, with disarming innocence, that against the world's ills “the answer is always love”.

No less striking is the luminous “Ring Bell, Ring Bell”, another dreamy swirl of guitar and bells conceived as a rosy moment of calm in the present and hope for the future. These are the simplest songs on the record, ones that in the hands of other performers might come across as saccharine or even disingenuous, but Mama Africa leads with her heart on her sleeve, placing herself, in her own way, within the pacifist movements of the Sixties – after all, we're just a step away from 1968.

There's no doubt, however, about the intentions behind “A Piece Of Ground”, a brooding madrigal sung in the plainest possible English to tell the story of the country's last century:

When the white man first arrived from across the sea

He looked around and said: this is God's own country

He was well pleased with this land he had found

He said: “I will make this my piece of ground”

There were many battles still to be fought

And many the families who died during the night

So many were the black men who lived all around

Everyone wanted their piece of land

Then one fine day in 1883

Gold was discovered in great quantity

Now the country was rich, richer than expected

And every digger wanted his piece of land

White prospectors were few and the gold was so deep

That the black man was called in because his labor was cheap

With a cruel shovel he worked underground

Sixpence a day to plow the land

Now this land is so rich, it seems strange to me

That the black man, whose labor helped it grow

Cannot enjoy the fruits that abound

She was uprooted and driven off her own land

[…]

Retrospective critical note

Taken at face value and without context, a first listen to "Pata Pata" often leaves listeners baffled. Set against the more socially roaring albums that rock critics find easier to embrace — whether from Fela Kuti and Orchestra Baobab on African soil, or Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye and Gil Scott Heron in America — this album arrives wrapped in a naive patina of strings and smiles: tribal yet soft, at times almost didactic in the way its lyrics are laid out, a multilingual blend of sounds and themes then filed under the label of world music. It's no coincidence that Miriam would only return to American stages years later, alongside Paul Simon on the tour for "Graceland" — the emblematic record of that Third World sentiment so widespread in the Live Aid era.

But it's precisely here that "Pata Pata" tells its own story, through the work of a woman in exile who can only live on memory. Far from home and from the bonds of family, forcibly cut off from the people she wanted to represent, Miriam symbolically embodies the spirit of all the Black tribes subjugated and scattered by European colonialism — whether gunned down on their own doorsteps, or shipwrecked in Jamaica, the United States, Brazil or Cape Verde. If this listen feels at once tribal, emotional and strangely off-centre, it's because history itself showed no mercy to the peoples represented here. Which, incidentally, makes "Pata Pata" all the more human and truthful.

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19/10/2025