Miriam Makeba | Unisex Organic Oversized T-shirt

Material: 100% organic combed ring-spun cotton

Fabric weight: 200 g/m²

Fit: loose, with dropped shoulders

Set-in sleeves

1 × 1 ribbed neckline

Self-fabric neck tape at the inside back

The fabric of this product is certified for its organic cotton content.

Great struggles are also built through the smallest gestures. To embody Mama Africa, Amandine Szczepaniak paints Miriam Makeba as a matriarch of the anti-apartheid struggle, creating a colourful portrait whose patterned cloth holds a quiet story.

Inspired by Makeba’s words, in which she identified with the strength of an ant facing the weight of racism, the artist creates the fabric’s patterns from tiny ants. Together, they tell a story of perseverance, solidarity and collective strength: patient gestures that, like an ant colony, eventually build something greater.

THE VOICE OF THE ANTI-APARTHEID STRUGGLE
MIRIAM MAKEBA (1932–2008) – SOUTH AFRICA

Born in 1932 in Sophiatown, a working-class neighbourhood of Johannesburg, Miriam Makeba sang with local groups before appearing in an anti-apartheid film, which forced her into exile in 1960. In the United States, she used her immense musical success to call for a boycott of the apartheid regime.

A supporter of the civil rights movement and the wife of activist Stokely Carmichael, she went into exile in Guinea. Singing in many languages for peace, freedom, justice and equality, her commitment to African unity earned her several passports and the title “Mama Africa”.

She returned to South Africa only after Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990. She died on 9 November 2008 in Naples, at the end of a concert held in support of Roberto Saviano, the Italian writer known for his stand against the mafia.