Peter Popham said it well—

Miriam Makeba died gloriously on Sunday night: the World Music star and anti-apartheid icon finished her set at the concert for Roberto Saviano with her most famous song, "Pata Pata", acknowledged the ovation with a bow and a smile, walked off stage – then collapsed and died. Italian papers called it a tragedy, which in a way it was, but in another way it was a triumph.

Though she lived in exile from South Africa, which banned her recordings, she embodied such joy and hopefulness that even a lugubrious teenager of the Sixties could hear it and share it—

As for her death, Makeba expressed herself in this recording from 1966, which she was still singing 30 years later—

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