United Nations Radio

The South African singer and human rights activist Miriam Makeba passed away on Sunday at age 76. For nearly a decade she served as a goodwill ambassador for the UN Food and Agriculture Organizaiton (FAO) in its campaigns to end hunger. Bissera Kostova has the story.

Makeba singing in DRC

NARR:In her last mission for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in March this year, Miriam Makeba went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There she visited emergency projects designed to help survivors of violence and HIV positive women and men feed their families and revive their livelihoods through farming. While encouraging people living with HIV, she incidentally reflected on her own mortality.

Makeba:I have other sicknesses which are not HIV, but I could die before those who have HIV. So it's not a condemnation to death, it's something we must all fight against because as the years go by something will be found to defeat HIV.

NARR:"Mama Africa", as she was widely known, also spoke out forcefully against the epidemic of rapes in the DRC, which she called the most horrifying feature of the complex emergency in the country.

Makeba:I want to shout to those men who rape women and their children and their sisters, please don't do it. We're your mothers, we're your sisters, and we're your children, STOP it, don't do it!

Click Song

NARR:Miriam Makeba was an anti-apartheid activist in her native South Africa, for which she was forced into exile, only returning to the country in 1990. She was appointed FAO Goodwill Ambassador in 1999.

Makeba:Those of us who come from where I come from, who have known what it is to be hungry can understand this war against hunger and not war against man. I pledge to do the best I can to plead the case of FAO and to let people know what FAO is doing to the best of my ability.

NARR:Over the years, Ms. Makeba participated in a long list of events organized by FAO, including concerts to raise funds for FAO TeleFood projects in different countries. She lobbied the government to have one in South Africa, as well.

Makeba:We have poverty like any other country. Even our President has been saying that even the fight against AIDS and all that, we cannot win it unless people have food and poverty is eradicated.

NARR:In April 2001, Makeba visited post-emergency projects in Mozambique, increasing the visibility and impact of FAO's activities in Africa.

Makeba:I was in Mozambique a couple of years ago to give boats and fishnets and things like that from FAO and from the Italian people to the people who have suffered the flood in Mozambique.

NARR:Miriam Makeba reportedly died of a heart attack after collapsing at a concert in Italy on Sunday. Paying tribute to "Mama Africa" FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said "we will miss her energy and her respectful concern for the world's most vulnerable." Through her music, she lives on.

MUSIC (archival)

NARR:For UN Radio, I'm Bissera Kostova.

Duration:5'49" (4'05" to last word)