Busi Mhlongo has joined the ancestors...

I just heard that Busi Mhlongo's time had come, and I try in vain to stop my tears. She had a voice which reached the deepest core of my soul.
The Queen of Maskanda, traditionally Zulu music played by men, fought a battle against cancer but succumbed at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospital, Durban, 15th June.

Jacob Zuma uttered these words in her remembrance: “She transformed the maskandi guitar of migrant Zulu mine workers into an instrument of peace.
Her music carried poignant messages of South Africa’s struggle for freedom and justice. She ensured her compositions defied categorisation and emphasised the universality of the human race.
Her love for music kept the flames of hope alive during our country’s struggle for democracy. Her music encouraged and influenced a range of contemporary South African artists.
She inspired the nation and let the world know of South Africa’s quest for freedom. A true legend has passed away.”

Bless thy soul Miriam Makeba

This day the Queen of African music passed away in the early morning in Castel Volturno, Italy, of a heartattack some time after partaking in a concert to support Robert Saviano who's against the Camorra which is a mafia-like organisation.

Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg on 4 March, 1932, to a Swazi mother and a Xhosa father, who died when she was only 6. She had a talent for singing even as a child when she sang at the Kilmerton Training Institute which she attended for 8 years.
The rest is history one can say. Miriam Makeba began singing, naturally, starting in an amateur group but quicly became a professional when she formed her own group, The Skylarks. She was a speaker against apartheid, and she married the well known African Trinidadian civil rights activist and Black Panther Stokely Carmichael. A woman with a cause.
Her swinging rhythm is characterized by a blend of jazz and South African melodies, and she is one of the best known African artist worldwide.

I remember hearing her music as a little girl from my parents. One song she sang with her group The Skylarks was Inkomo Zodwa; I will never shake that song off my mind. Incredible is a too small word for such a great woman. Bless her soul.

Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika

Bless up all people. I just read collection of poems "The Soweto I Love" by Sipho Sepamla, published in 1977 and banned of the Apartheid regime, which is dedicated to the victims of the Soweto Riots and all of the people of South Africa. You don't need any pictures to imagine the inexpressible terror commited by the white regime when you read the words of Sepamla. As a devotee of human rights and an activist of Black Consciousness he manifests his love for his countrymen and women and his sorrow of loosing his people to death and the western world.

The Soweto Riots were depicted in the movie Cry Freedom which deals with the great, great man and anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko (Black is Beautiful and much much more; played by Denzel Washington) and his fight for the regime to stop the atrocities and oppression put on Black people (and to my annoyance, a white, liberal editor of a newspaper has a big role in the movie as well; it's like there MUST be a white actor in every movie about Africa or Black struggle or else the movie will be too black for white audience; The Last King of Scotland, Goodbye Bafana, Red Dust and so on; not that the movies aren't good because they are). It's a good movie and I like that the makers of the movie put in the names of activists killed by the government in jail and what the police wrote as 'cause of death'.
"Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.
What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops." Matthew 10:26-27

Amandla awethu!

Continue educating yourself:

http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue25/25violenceprocessing.html

http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/article.php3?id_article=1953

An inspiring woman; Bessie Head

Great experiences and simply a natural that was Bessie Head. Some of her pain became something that everyone can share, in her works.
Born in Pietermaritzburg in South Africa, 1937 by a white mother and a black father was already a troublesome beginning of life. Her mother was put in a mental institution as she must have been crazy to be with a black man. Completely outrageous, and that were the times in Apartheid South Africa. She never knew her father, instead she was raised by white missionaries and educated as a teacher but later turned to journalism. An unfortunate marriage gave way to her book "Maru" where she plays the leading role in a sad story of racism and love but with an enlightenment so true that is breaks your heart.

She was a refugee in Botswana, where she discovered her brilliance in writing, for 15 years before she was granted citizenship in 1979 but the waiting did not stop her creativity from unleashing. She has written 11 books and in The Khama III Memorial Museum in Serowe, Botswana, have they devoted to her memory The Bessie Head Room where she wrote some of her greatest her-stories.
I hope her memory will live on forever because she was truly outstanding.

Bessie Head

Bessie Head's home in Serowe, Botswana

Serowe, Botswana in dry season

The principal library in Pietermaritzburg which will be renamed, after a decision made by the Msunduzi Municipal Council, to THE BESSIE HEAD LIBRARY