String of awards and controversies

By ERICK WAMANJI

In her website, Miriam Makeba is resplendent in a leopard skin dress with huge spots of yellow, pink, black and blue. She is on stage holding a microphone, the only visible object in the dark hall. Revellers are swallowed in this darkness, but there are 14 disco lights that give the setting some sense of mystic.

The setting almost represents the intricacies that wove the fabric of Makeba’s life. And beyond the mystics, who really sang Malaika? The original composer of the love song remained a controversial card in the mix that involved Makeba and Fadhili Williams. The latter is said to have composed the song, which Makeba picked. Due to her world acclaim, she claimed ownership.

Besides being an award-winning musician, she also featured in movies and documentaries. She starred in the anti-apartheid film, Come Back, Africa in 1959. She was the first African woman to win a Grammy Award in 1966 for Best Folk Recording. She also won another award jointly with Harry Belafonte for An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba. In 1992, she starred in the hit film Sarafina.

Though she had started making inroads in top 10 US music charts, Makeba stirred controversy when she married Trinidadian-born American civil rights activist, Stokely Carmichael, in 1968. That was at the height of struggle for civil rights. Carmichael led the Black Panthers movement. This did not go down well with US authorities. Her tours suffered a severe blow; her recordings were cancelled and products boycotted.

With her newly wed, they fled to Guinea. There, she made acquaintances with then president Ahmed Sekou Toure.

Makeba knew how to make things work for her, or she was just destined for luck. Even in exile, she was once a Guinean delegate to the UN, complete with diplomatic trappings.

But her marriage with the activist was short-lived — they separated in 1973. She opted to hang around in the country and later married Bageot Bah, a Belgian airline worker.

Earlier, in 1964, she had married Hugh Masekela, a South African musician who was also in exile. They divorced two years later. While in England, she was also married to Sony Pillay, a South African Asian. At one time, she was detained in Tanzania for a day and spent a night in a Danish cell for failing to honour a performance contract. She was bailed out by friends.