Miriam Makeba, a South African singer whose voice stirred hopes of freedom in her own country even though her music was formally banned by the apartheid authorities she struggled against, died early on Monday after performing at a concert in Italy. She was 76.The Associated Press quoted hospital authorities as saying she died following a heart attack after being brought to a hospital in Castel Voltumo near Naples in southern Italy. She had been singing at a concert in support of Robert Saviano, an author who has received death threats after writing about organised crime.She was widely known as “Mama Africa” and had been a prominent exiled opponent of apartheid since the South African authorities revoked her passport in 1960 and refused to allow her to return after she traveled abroad. She was prevented from attending her mother’s funeral after touring in the United States.For 31 years, Makeba lived in exile, variously in the US, France, Guinea and Belgium. South Africa’s state broadcasters banned her music after she spoke out against apartheid at the UN in 1976 — the year of the Soweto uprising that accelerated the demands of the Black majority for democratic change.“I never understood why I couldn’t come home,” Makeba said upon her return at an emotional homecoming in Johannesburg in 1990 as the apartheid system began to crumble, said The Associated Press. Music was a central part of the struggle against apartheid. The South African authorities of the era exercised strict censorship of many forms of expression, while many foreign entertainers discouraged performances in South Africa to isolate the white authorities and show their opposition to apartheid.From exile she acted as a constant reminder of the events in her homeland as the white authorities struggled to contain or preempt unrest among the black majority.Makeba wrote: “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realising.”She was married several times and her husbands included the American black activist Stokely Carmichael and the jazz trumpter Hugh Masekela, who also spent many years in exile.In the US, she toured with Harry Belafonte in the 1960s and won a Grammy award with him in 1965. She also performed with Paul Simon on his Graceland concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.Makeba was born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932, the daughter of a Swazi mother and a father from the Xhosa people who live mainly in the eastern Cape region of South Africa.According to Agence France-Presse, she was often short of money and could not afford to buy a coffin when her only daughter, Bondi, died aged 36 in 1985. She buried her alone, barring a handful of journalists from covering the funeral.
