MIRIAM MAKEBA: REMEMBERING FESTAC [1977]
I

“[After the Soweto Uprising of 1976] in many places I went I would meet . . . South Africans [in exile]. I met many when I was in Nigeria during FESTAC 77. FESTAC was the Festival of African Culture that brought together artists and musicians from about 50 countries in Africa and the African diaspora, as it is called. The first FESTAC was labelled the World Festival of Negro Arts. It had been held about 10 years before in Senegal and I had been invited. In the early Sixties some Senegalese artists approached me and they booked me, it was five years in advance. I agreed, but thought to myself, "Who will be alive in '66?" So of course by the time the Senegal event happened I had double-booked and I missed it.”

II

“But yes I was alive for FESTAC 1977. Stevie Wonder was there that year and it was the year that he won four Grammys for his album ‘Songs in the Key of Life’. His acceptance speech was telecast from Nigeria and this was organised by me. We stayed up all night waiting for America to award the Grammys. Stevie Wonder received the award from FESTAC. While he was in Nigeria he wanted to go to the great Nigerian musican Fela Kuti's home at his Kalakuta Republic. I said to him, "You cannot go there tonight." That night Kalakuta was raided and many people were hurt including Fela's mother. The night of the awards was the only time FESTAC was really mentioned internationally even though it represented so many African countries. Here were all these African countries gathered to celebrate our arts and our culture yet the world ignored us.”

III

“At FESTAC we lived in one big village where there were houses for all the different countries. Each night we would say there is a party in Guinea or there is a party in Tanzania, depending on which people from which country were organising it. It was beautiful, but it was a big, big thing and there were problems, like bad organisation. But here were different African peoples meeting and getting together. Some people there had never seen aboriginal people, they were there. There were people from Swaziland, for example, wearing their traditional attire. It was beautiful.”

IV

“At FESTAC I met so many young people and students who had left South Africa. Many of these young people were getting out [of Apartheid South Africa] even without passports. They were everywhere. People were desperate to go out and learn anything so they could go back and fight for their land and for their rights. It showed me that you couldn't keep the people down forever. I met people like David Sibeko, Vusi Make and even Tsietsi Mashinini at FESTAC. Tsietsi was the leader of the South African Students Movement branch in Soweto, the group that had led the June 16 [1976] protests in Soweto.”

V

“He had heard about this Miriam Makeba, and so he came to the house I was staying at and said to me, ‘I am looking for Miriam Makeba.’ I said, ‘You are looking at her.’ He came with his friends and they sat down. They said they had no money, no clothes, no food. They said they had left, escaped from Morris Isaacson School and had gone to England and then come here. I sat with them and asked about home. I also met a young woman called Muntu Mvuyana there. She also had no passport. I eventually took her to Guinea with me. There was a lady doctor in Nigeria who helped a lot of the [South African] students. Some ended up in schools in the north far away from Lagos. These kids never stayed in one place long. Most of them could not. I know someone like Tsietsi went to Liberia, then I heard that he was in Senegal then Nigeria, then all was quiet. When I came home [to South Africa] in 1990 [after the fall of Apartheid] I had pictures of Tsietsi and his family that I gave to his parents.”

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SOURCE:— Miriam Makeba & Nomsa Mwamuka, MAKEBA: THE MIRIAM MAKEBA STORY (Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2004) 157-162.

Historical.