African Personality of the Month August 2026
Miriam Makeba
Music · South Africa
The voice the world called Mama Africa, who carried South Africa's cause through three decades of exile.
The Citation
Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) left South Africa in 1959 and was barred from returning the following year. For three decades she carried South African music, and the case against apartheid, to audiences around the world.
In 1963 she spoke against apartheid before the United Nations. In 1966 she shared a Grammy with Harry Belafonte for An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba, one of the first won by an African artist.
She came home in 1990, after Nelson Mandela's release, and kept singing until her death in 2008. The African Mail honours her posthumously for making a continent's music, and its struggle, impossible to ignore.
