Showing posts with label miriam makeba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miriam makeba. Show all posts

Thursday 10 May 2007

Miriam Makeba :: Speaking in Tongues


It’s September in the year 1979. Five months have past since the Last King of Scotland fled Kampala and Emperor Bokassa has just been extracted from the Central African Republic. The President of Equatorial Guinea is being tried for genocide and Nigeria is weeks away from its Second Republic. South Africa is currently suspected of conducting a nuclear test with Israel in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. In seven month’s time, Zimbabwe will be born.

It’s September in the year 1979. Three years have past since hundreds of Sowetan kids were killed by South African police during protests against legislation that enforced the use of English and Afrikaans as languages of instruction in “black schools.” Right now, a profoundly South African woman is introducing a song to a Dutch audience at Varra TV Studios. “It’s a Xhosa wedding song,” she explains, taking her time.

“Everywhere we go, people often ask me, ‘How do you make that noise?’ It used to offend me because it isn’t a noise, it’s my language. But I came to understand that they didn’t understand that Xhosa is my language and that it’s a written language. We use the same Roman alphabet in writing it. The only difference is that we pronounce certain letters differently.”

47-year-old Miriam Makeba is still on top of her game. She discharges a volley of crackling Xhosa vocabulary to the delight of the crowd. She finds humour in the sombre subject of South Africa and its languages: “Now, I’m sure everyone here knows that we in South Africa are still colonised. The colonisers of my country call this song ‘The Click Song,’ simply because they find it rather difficult saying ‘Qongqothwane.’”