Mourners Honor 'Mama Africa' Makeba

Mourners Honor 'Mama Africa' Makeba

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Nov. 15) - A trumpet wailed and poetry soared Saturday as South Africans remembered "Mama Africa," Miriam Makeba, for her music and her commitment to human rights.

The memorial service after Makeba's death Monday at the age of 76 followed two days of national mourning, with flags at half staff and books of condolences at the presidency and parliament — honors due a woman seen as an ambassador for the best values of her country, her continent and the world.

South African singer, composer, humanitarian and activist Miriam Makeba passed away after a concert in Italy on Nov. 10.
Makeba's celebrity and grace made her a powerful voice against apartheid, and she later championed women's and children's rights and other causes. She died after collapsing during a concert in Italy in honor of six immigrants from Ghana who were shot to death in September in an attack blamed on organized crime.
Mourners began arriving Saturday hours before the public memorial service began at a Johannesburg stadium.

Zindzi Mfundisi, a 20-year-old waitress and aspiring singer, was first in line. Mfundisi said she once met Makeba before a concert in South Africa. Her heroine encouraged her to stay in school.
"I know her as a mother, as a caring mother," Mfundisi said. "I love her humanity."
Moferefere Mofokeng brought his wife and two children to the service, rising early for a drive of several hours from the eastern town of Ermelo.

"This is my icon," said the 48-year-old engineer, his 5-year-old son Lebo looking up at him solemnly. "I have to be here with my family."

His 12-year-old daughter Cindy called Makeba "an inspiration."
The service drew a South African mosaic — young and old, white and black. Some wore sober black suits and church hats. Others wore vibrant traditional robes that recalled Makeba's own Afro chic — as well as the poet Langston Hughes's call to remember the dead with "one, last trumpet note of sun."
South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela, who was once married to Makeba, performed at the memorial. It was billed as a solo performance of her song "Welele," but the audience of about 1,500 joined in, clapping softly to the dirgelike rhythm set by Masekela.

Poet Maishe Maponya told an audience that included former South African President Thabo Mbeki and Makeba's grandchildren her "lips touched our hearts with hymns of beauty." Pallo Jordan, a former anti-apartheid activist who is now South Africa's minister of culture, said Makeba "deployed her music as a weapon in the struggle."

"She kept her eyes on the prize," Jordan said. "And that prize was a free South Africa in a free Africa in a better Africa in a better world."

The white government toppled in 1994 revoked Makeba's passport when she was traveling abroad to promote her appearance in the 1959 anti-apartheid documentary "Come Back, Africa." In 1963, she appeared before the U.N. Special Committee on Apartheid to call for an international boycott of South Africa. She returned to her homeland only after Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in 1990.

Smith Bopape, a 58-year-old Johannesburg resident who was among the first to arrive for the memorial service, said he would remember Makeba for a song she first sang in the 1970s, "A Promise," which spoke of her longing to go home, and for justice.

"And she did in the end" come home," Bopape said. "Although it took quite lengthy period."