Mama Africa was the stage name of Zenzile Miriam Makeba, a South African singer, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist who lived from 4 March 1932 to 9 November 2008. She was an activist against apartheid and South Africa’s white minority rule and was associated with musical genres such Afropop, jazz, and world music.
Makeba, who was born in Johannesburg to Xhosa and Swazi parents, had to work as a youngster after her father passed away. She gave birth to her sole child in 1950, went through a brief and apparently brutal first marriage at the age of 17, and beat breast cancer.
What happened to Miriam Makeba?
According to Vincenza Di Saia, a physician at the exclusive Pineta Grande clinic in Castel Volturno, close to Naples, where Ms. Makeba was sent by ambulance, the cause was heart arrest. The doctor reported that the time of death was midnight according to hospital records.
The South African authorities claimed that Ms. Makeba passed out as she was stepping off the stage. Roberto Saviano, an author who has received death threats after writing about organized crime, was the subject of her performance at a concert in his support.
