Mama Africa: Miriam Makeba, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and Transnational Solidarity

This project, the first book-length scholarly biography of legendary South African performer and political activist Miriam Makeba, chronicles Makeba’s life, her musical career, and her crucial role in the international anti-apartheid and Black Power movements. Makeba helped cultivate political solidarity and opposition to apartheid. Her music made anti-apartheid politics legible to different racial, ethnic, class, linguistic and national groups. Because she routinely traveled across national boundaries, her performance and political voice served as a transnational bridge for activists. People who may not have heard of apartheid came to understand South Africa as a site of injustice and threw their support behind the effort to end it. Makeba shaped the anti-apartheid movement through her travels, her music, and her passionate and unflinching criticism of the white South African government and helped lay the foundation for what would become the largest and most successful international solidarity movements.