Miriam Makeba: Singer banned from her native South Africa for fighting apartheid

'Retire? I will sing till the day I die" declared Miriam Makeba in her 2004 biography Makeba. True to her word, the most famous African woman of her generation – popularly known as "Mama Africa" – had just taken part in a concert in Italy in support of the writer Roberto Saviano on Sunday when she was taken ill.

Exiled from South Africa for 31 years, she lived a peripatetic life and was showered in awards and accolades, but at times became a fugitive because of her stance on apartheid, as well as for affiliations that others found awkward. In response, she would tell audiences, "I don't sing about politics; I sing the truth."

At the dawn of the 1960s, Makeba was the first African singer to become a worldwide household name. She sang in many languages but always took pride in her musical roots, having realised at the start of her career that this would the basis of her appeal. So she became best known for the likes of "Pata Pata" and "The Click Song", which featured the distinctive clicking sounds of Xhosa, the first language of her father, who died when she was six....