Zenzile Miriam Makeba (/məˈkeɪbə/ mə-KAY-bə,[2][3] Xhosa: [máˈkʼêːɓà̤] ⓘ; 4 March 1932 – 9 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights activist.

In 1959, Makeba had a brief role in the anti-apartheid film Come Back, Africa, which brought her international attention, and led to her performing in Venice, London, and New York City.

[7] When Makeba was eighteen days old, her mother was arrested and sentenced to a six-month prison term for selling umqombothi, a homemade beer brewed from malt and cornmeal.

[a][5][9][10] By the time of her mother's release from prison, Makeba's father, who had been having difficulty finding work as a teacher, had obtained a job as a clerk at the Shell Oil Company in Nelspruit (now Mbombela) and the family moved along with him accordingly.

[6][12] As a child, Makeba sang in the choir of the Kilnerton Training Institute in Pretoria, an all-black Methodist primary school that she attended for eight years.

Her father played the piano and sang in a group called The Mississippi 12, and his musical inclination was later a factor in Makeba's family accepting what was seen as a risque choice of career.

Around that time Makeba's mother began the process of becoming a sangoma or traditional healer, which required her to go back to her ancestral homeland in Eswatini (then Swaziland).

[12] Makeba began her professional musical career with the Cuban Brothers, a South African all-male close harmony group, with whom she sang covers of popular American songs.

Several of the Skylarks' pieces from this period became popular; the music historian Rob Allingham later described the group as "real trendsetters, with harmonisation that had never been heard before.

[22] In 1959, Makeba sang the lead female role in the Broadway-inspired South African jazz opera King Kong;[5][13] among those in the cast was the musician Hugh Masekela.

[11] Also in 1959, she had a short guest appearance in Come Back, Africa, an anti-apartheid film produced and directed by the American independent filmmaker Lionel Rogosin.

[4] Makeba then moved to New York, making her US music debut on 1 November 1959 on The Steve Allen Show in Los Angeles for a television audience of 60 million.

[48] From this point, she became an increasingly outspoken critic of apartheid and the white-minority government; before the massacre, she had taken care to avoid overtly political statements in South Africa.

[26] Time magazine called her the "most exciting new singing talent to appear in many years", and Newsweek compared her voice to "the smoky tones and delicate phrasing" of Ella Fitzgerald and the "intimate warmth" of Frank Sinatra.

[11] As word spread about her ban from South Africa, she became a cause célèbre for Western liberals, and her presence in the civil rights movement linked it with the anti-apartheid struggle.

[66] Following a concert and rally in Atlanta in support of King, Makeba and others were denied entrance to a restaurant as a result of Jim Crow laws, leading to a televised protest in front of the establishment.

[67][68] She also criticised King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference for its investment in South African companies, informing press that "Now my friend of long standing supports the country's persecution of my people and I must find a new idol".

[69] Her identity as an African woman in the civil rights movement helped create "an emerging liberal consensus" that extreme racial discrimination, whether domestically or internationally, was harmful.

[90] She also became a diplomat for Ghana,[87] and was appointed Guinea's official delegate to the UN in 1975;[26] that year, she addressed the United Nations General Assembly,[49] where she advocated for South Africa's liberation from apartheid.

[92] Makeba later stated that it was during this period that she accepted the label "Mama Africa":[87] scholar Omotayo Jolaosho writes that the epithet, by which she came to be widely known, was first given her by her daughter Bongi in an interview.

[46] I look at an ant and see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.

Makeba was left responsible for her two surviving grandchildren, and decided to move out of Guinea,[26] which had become less hospitable to her after Touré's death the previous year and the military coup that followed.

[104] She took part in the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute, a popular-music concert staged on 11 June 1988 at London's Wembley Stadium, and broadcast to an audience of 600 million across 67 countries.

[108] The use of music to raise awareness of apartheid paid off: a survey after the concert found that among people aged between 16 and 24, three-quarters knew of Mandela, and supported his release from prison.

[12][116][117] She worked closely with Graça Machel-Mandela, the South African first lady, advocating for children suffering from HIV/AIDS, child soldiers, and the physically handicapped.

[33] Historian Ruth Feldstein described her music as "[crossing] the borders between what many people associated with avant-garde and 'quality' culture and the commercial mainstream"; the latter aspect often drew criticism.

It contributed to her popularity and her exotic image, which scholars have described as a kind of othering, exacerbated by the fact that Western audiences often could not understand her lyrics.

She is credited, along with artists such as Youssou N'Dour, Salif Keita, Ali Farka Touré, Baaba Maal and Angélique Kidjo, with popularising the genre of world music.

[170][171] In 2014 she was honoured (along with Nelson Mandela, Albertina Sisulu and Steve Biko) in the Belgian city of Ghent, which named a square after her, the "Miriam Makebaplein".

[180] This is a list of albums and songs, including covers, by Miriam Makeba that have received significant mention in commentary about her or about the musical and political movements she participated in.