Calls for Mama Africa Makeba to be given state funeral

Nov 11, 2008, 9:16 GMT

Johannesburg - South African artists are calling for the country's beloved songstress and anti-apartheid icon, Miriam Makeba, to be given a state funeral following her death in Italy on Sunday.

Makeba, 76, who was known affectionately as Mama Africa, suffered a heart attack shortly after a performance on Sunday evening in southern Italy in support of author Roberto Saviano's campaign against the Camorra, the local version of the Mafia.

Although Makeba, who suffered from osteoarthritis, had been unwell this year, her death far from home came as a shock in South Africa, where she was revered for using her voice worldwide, at great personal cost, to highlight the evils of apartheid.

'Hamba Kahle (Go Well) Mama Africa,' the Sowetan newspaper wished Africa's first Grammy award winner in isiZulu in its front page headline. 'Farewell Mama Africa,' The Star newspaper echoed.

The Star reported that the audience at the Via Verde open-air theatre near Naples was still jiving to Makeba's most famous song, Pata Pata, which describes a township dance, when she collapsed off- stage with her grandson at her side.

Makeba, her hair cropped short, wearing a embroidered gold and black African tunic, is pictured, microphone in hand, her round face wreathed in smiles.

Her remains are to be cremated in Italy and then flown back to South Africa for a ceremony at the weekend.

'My grandmother wanted her ashes to be scattered at sea so that the currents could take them to all the places she had been to,' her granddaughter Zenzi Mkhize told The Star newspaper.

Several artists have called for her to be given a state funeral, in the manner of other stalwarts of the struggle against the apartheid regime that banned her music and condemned her to 31 years in exile - in Britain, the US, Guinea, Belgium and France.

Makeba had irritated the regime when she appeared in an anti- apartheid documentary in the late 1950s and again, in 1963, when she testified before the United Nations about the situation in South Africa.

She only returned to South Africa in 1990, the year of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, which marked the beginning of the transition to democracy four years later.

'Mama Africa deserves a state funeral because most of her life she was out of this country fighting for us,' Arthur Mafokate, a leading performer of kwaito (township music that resembles hip-hop) told the Sowetan newspaper about the Soweto-born singer.

Jonas Gwangwa, the producer of Makeba's Grammy-winning album with Harry Belafonte, An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba, and others echoed the call.

A spokesman for Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the cabinet would 'hopefully' be discussing the request at its regular meeting on Wednesday.

Makeba was married five times but had only one child, who died after a miscarriage in 1985. She is survived by two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Her death came just weeks before she was due to be feted at a special concert of her music at a casino complex outside Johannesburg on November 27. It was not yet known whether the concert would go ahead.