Makeba died among Africans
2008-11-11 16:03
Rome - She was singing on Italian soil, but in a spiritual sense, South African songstress Miriam Makeba died in Africa, the Italian anti-mafia writer Robert Saviano said on Tuesday.
Makeba, 76, died overnight on Sunday after she collapsed at a concert she gave in Castel Volturno, a stronghold of the Camorra mafia that Saviano denounced in his bestseller-turned-feature-film Gomorrah.
Castel Volturno was also the scene of the shooting deaths in September of six African immigrants by a suspected Camorra commando unit. An Italian businessman was also killed in a separate attack the same day.
"If there is comfort in this tragedy, is that she did not die far" from Africa, Saviano said. "She died close to her people, among Africans of the diaspora who have come here by the thousands.
"Miriam Makeba died in Africa - not the geographical African, but the one which these people bring here and which has become a part of this land."
Likening Castel Volturno to the South African township of Soweto, a centre of the struggle against apartheid, Saviano added: "She died as she sought to knock down another township with her voice alone."