Rampholo Molefhe
17 November 2008
column
She had pleaded, as only she would have, with family and friends that there should be no excesses about the manner in which she would be put away once she had passed.
She wanted to be cremated so that she could travel on with the waves of the seas. She wanted no fuss around her house, with the ritual screeching, tantrums and modelling which has become custom at African funerals.
Look, I know 'simple' when I see it. Miriam Makeba was not as simple as I have heard it reflected in the few programmes I have watched on South African television.
She is probably the only cultural icon of the Africans who managed her career in such a way as to conquer the political arena by simply toiling hard to reach the heights of artistry on the stage.
To put it another way, it is excellence on stage which earned her automatic access to the horrible tribe of the politicians who all appear to be congenitally gifted at the art of selfishness, personal ambition, lack of truthfulness and the readiness to destroy even friends on the climb up to power.
In any other age, politics would have in fact been an intrusion on her artistic endeavours.
Off hand, I can only think of Fela Kuti, who refused to lie down, watching the Nigerians suffer whilst a small section of them in the army enjoyed the riches of the land. Fela spoke up. The state is strongly suspected of having a hand in the death of his mother.
He himself was jailed and mistreated on account of his relentless critique of the military regimes that refused to pass on power to the civilians as they feasted on the economy and oil revenues.
Yes, Miriam was also forced to withstand those hardships, having being denied the right to bury her mother. The passing of one of her daughters was also painful to her.
But she gained a greater credibility at the United Nations and every other international platform, resulting from her credibility as an artist.
In that regard, you might say that she laid the stage for the ascendancy of the likes of the British Bob Geldorf, as a modern day spokesperson of the campaign for humanitarian assistance to the poor who form by far the largest proportion of the population of the world which has been thoroughly ravaged by western capitalism in particular, and imperialism in general.
Miriam was also a little ahead of the American artists - Richie Havens, Jane Fonda, Ameer 'Leroi Jones' Baraka and scores of others - who spearheaded the peace movement in the 1960's, largely in protest against US conduct in the Vietnam War.
Miriam had already made her statement at the United Nations, in the simple and direct language of an artist, calling upon the world to put an end to apartheid.
No, Miriam did not suffer the physical incarceration that the great politicians did at Robben Island and elsewhere. Her imprisonment was probably harsher - if there is a comparison to be made - in that it had no walls, giving the impression of freedom. There were no physical beatings by the cruel Afrikaners who killed Steve Biko in jail. There was only the bludgeoning of the soul, and the denial of the spirit to be nurtured by her family, ancestors and fellow citizens. Hers was not 'life imprisonment' but 'timeless bondage' in a foreign land where even the imported slaves from her own continent spoke the language of the master.
Miriam said: "I have watched several of the 'Pop Idols' shows. In none of them have I ever heard one... only ooooonce in while you might hear a song from home. It makes me wonder why these young people torture themselves so much when there is such an abundance of music right here at home.
"I really wish I could really get that message to them. They would do so much better singing their own music because that is the real 'them'. They would be able to sing so much more naturally". (Paraphrased)
That was the profundity of the politics of Miriam Makeba. Be yourself! That is what apartheid denied black folk in her time. There is more to that. Today's politicians are failing precisely because, even as they can recite Keynesian theory, and the maxims of western democracy, they have failed to allow the greatest population of the Africans that they claim to have saved from colonialism and all the other 'isms', to be themselves.
I could not help, as I watched every tribute to Miriam that I could, to think of the likes of Joyce Mogatusi of the Dark City Sisters and the Mohotella Queens.
She probably knows the history of Miriam Makeba, the Manhattan Brothers, Dolly Rathebe, Sophie Mcgina and all the other icons of South African music more than any other Motswana I know. She was there when the music was made, and she was an innovator in that huge cultural undertaking.
Botswana needs to start now to find Mogatusi, Cocky Tlhotlhalemaje and the many others that this country gave to the music of southern Africa, so that when they do pass, the state will fly its flags all over the world, at half-mast.
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