Return To South Africa
Nelson Mandela's 70th Birthday Tribute increased pressure on the government of South Africa to release Mandela, and in 1990, State President of South Africa Frederik Willem de Klerk reversed the ban on the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid organisations, and announced that Nelson Mandela would shortly be released from prison. Mandela, who was effectively released from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl on 11 February 1990, persuaded Miriam Makeba to return to South Africa. She returned home on 10 June 1990, on her French passport.
In 1991, Makeba, with Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone and Masekela, recorded and released her studio album, Eyes on Tomorrow. It combined jazz, R&B, pop, and African music, and was a hit in Africa. Makeba and Gillespie then toured the world together to promote it. In November of the same year, she made a guest appearance in the episode "Olivia Comes Out of the Closet" of The Cosby Show. In 1992, she starred in the film Sarafina!. The film's plot centers on students involved in the 1976's Soweto youth uprisings, and Makeba portrayed the title character's mother, "Angelina". The following year she released Sing Me a Song.
On 16 October 1999, Miriam Makeba was nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). In January 2000, her album, Homeland, produced by Cedric Samson and Michael Levinsohn for the New York City based record label Putumayo World Music, was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best World Music Album category. She worked closely with Graça Machel-Mandela, who at the time was the South African first lady, for children suffering from HIV/AIDS, child soldiers, and the physically handicapped.
In 2001, she was awarded the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in Gold by the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN) in Berlin, "for outstanding services to peace and international understanding". She shared the Polar Music Prize with Sofia Gubaidulina. The prize is regarded as Sweden's foremost musical honour. They received their Prize from Carl XVI Gustaf King of Sweden during a nationally-televised ceremony at Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, on 27 May 2002. She also took part in the 2002 documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, where she and others recalled the struggles of black South Africans against the injustices of apartheid through the use of music. In 2004, Makeba was voted 38th in the Top 100 Great South Africans. Makeba started a worldwide farewell tour in 2005, holding concerts in all of those countries that she had visited during her working life.
Read more about this topic: Miriam Makeba
Famous quotes containing the words south africa, return to, return, south and/or africa:
“I don’t have any doubts that there will be a place for progressive white people in this country in the future. I think the paranoia common among white people is very unfounded. I have always organized my life so that I could focus on political work. That’s all I want to do, and that’s all that makes me happy.”
—Hettie V., South African white anti-apartheid activist and feminist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 21, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)
“We draw our Presidents from the people. It is a wholesome thing for them to return to the people. I came from them. I wish to be one of them again.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Only let the North exert as much moral influence over the South, as the South has exerted demoralizing influence over the North, and slavery would die amid the flame of Christian remonstrance, and faithful rebuke, and holy indignation.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“I have a fair amount of faith that women won’t sit back and allow South Africa to become a totally male-dominated new society. The women in South Africa have shown that they are strong, and I think they will make their voices heard.”
—Paula Hathorn (b. c. 1962)