Miriam Makeba Says Goodbye

By Robert Fox

Miriam Makeba is on her farewell tour at age 73, capping a lifetime of music, dance, exile and struggle. The anti-apartheid legend performed at The Cape Town International Jazz Festival on Friday, and was received with a level of respect "akin to worship of a deity" by the hometown crowd, as described in The Standard (Kenya).

The Guardian also saluted Miriam Makeba recently for her decades of struggle against apartheid as "an icon of resistance," noting that "along with Fela Kuti and Hugh Masekela, Makeba put African music on the world map."

The Standard quoted Makeba giving this moving farewell at her final Cape Town concert: In time we get older

"In time we get to mellow
I can’t change the hands of time
I have been through changes like everyone else
My heart has been troubled and put on the shelf
I love my children, more than anything.
iii…iii…iiiiiii…basi hapo zamani mama shauri ya pombe…iye ye mama…
I want to say thank you to those who raised their voices against the injustices of apartheid.
We say thank you to those who raised their voices for we know that without their voices we would not stand
today and say we are free, we are free, and we are free.
We want to thank our children for the role they played in our freedom.
We want to thank the mothers for their prayers that saved the nation.
We want to thank our traditional healers for healing the nation
We want to thank our leaders who
taught us how to be patient and who told us that though we may never forget we must forget.
Maskani… am home.
Let us make this country the greatest of
all because we are going to give each other a hand and make it strong."