The South African singer known as Mama Africa, who carried Xhosa and South African song to the world and became the most famous voice of the anti-apartheid struggle in exile. Hits like Pata Pata and the Click Song made South African sound global, and her testimony against apartheid cost her thirty years of banishment from her own country. A Grammy-winning artist whose warmth on stage never softened her insistence on speaking the truth, she traced the whole arc of the struggle, from exile in 1960 to her return after Mandela's release.
In 1960 a South African singer, away on tour, tried to go home for her mother's funeral — and found that her government had cancelled her passport. Three years later, after she stood before the United Nations and described what apartheid was doing to her people, the state went further: it stripped her citizenship and banned her records, making her exile complete. She was already one of the most beloved singers in America, a friend of Harry Belafonte, a voice that made audiences weep and dance in the same hour. Her name was Miriam Makeba, and her own country had made her a woman without a country. She would not see South Africa again for almost thirty years. The voice that charmed the world had said one true thing too many, and a state had decided that a song could be dangerous.