61 Quotes by Miriam Makeba

I look at a stream and I see myself: a native South African, flowing irresistibly over hard obstacles until they become smooth and, one day, disappear – flowing from an origin that has been forgotten toward an end that will never be.

And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it’s third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries, now it has changed to developing countries, it’s much more polite.

Belafonte sent his people to pick me up and I went back and shook his hand, then went back to my little flat. I was very happy to have met a president of the United States – little me!

For instance, we’re always fighting amongst each other. Who gives us the arms? And then we become indebted to wherever we are buying them from – with what? The very resources we need to keep there.

Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can’t do anything about that.

That was the only time my mother saw me on stage. At one point in the play I am strangled and my mother jumped from her seat and screamed: ‘No. You will not get away with murder. You cannot do this to my daughter.

I believe I can sing anything.