It's because they want to sound like Americans. I'd like to see them develop our music and sing it their way, but they think sounding American is goi… - Miriam Makeba

The conquerer writes history. They came, they conquered and they wrote. Now, you don't expect people who invaded us to write the truth about us. They will always write negative things about us. And they have to do that because they have to justify their invasions in all the countries.

When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa.

I didn’t have much, but I was always happy to share what I did have. It seemed like every African that came to New York City would show up at my apartment door at dinnertime, and I couldn’t turn them away. I wasn’t much older than any of them, but they started calling me ‘Mama Africa’ and the name stuck.