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The African National Congress (ANC) operated in exile for just over three decades, from 1960 to mid-1990. It developed from a flimsy and inexperienced “external mission” to an exiled organization caring for thousands of full-time members and maintaining an army, Umkontho weSizwe (MK), which by the 1980s numbered about 5000 soldiers. Based predominantly in Tanzania, Zambia, and Angola (though with members and offices in many other countries), the exiled movement established schools, hospitals, farms, and factories; it published and broadcast energetically; it lobbied for international support and established a diplomatic presence in dozens of countries. By the late 1980s, it was clear to the apartheid regime that it could not defeat or ignore the ANC but must enter negotiations with the organization. Equally, it was clear to the exiled leadership of the ANC that armed struggle relying on Soviet bloc funding was no longer feasible. Negotiations, and not military victory or seizure of power, was the only available option. The ANC was pushed to the brink of survival but recovered, cohered, and regrouped, especially after 1976 when its membership and influence increased substantially. By 1990, through a combination of popular support inside South Africa and international solidarity, the ANC was swept to the status of government-in-waiting. Yet the exile experience was by no means an uninterrupted success story. The organization was variously beset by factionalism, rank-and-file disquiet, security failings, and an armed wing that saw little armed action. The ANC’s exile experience has generated controversy: over its relations with the South African Communist Party in exile; its human rights record, especially in the MK camps; and a political culture shaped by secrecy, militarism, and hierarchy. The “reinvention” of the organization in exile was a striking achievement—and it came at a cost.

Miriam Makeba (March 4, 1932–November 9, 2008) was among the first to popularize African music on a global scale. Nelson Mandela named her South Africa’s first lady of song; she was also nicknamed Mama Africa. Makeba has been credited with inaugurating the “world music” movement, a designation that she did not like as it marginalized music from a so-called Third World. Already renowned in her native South Africa as a sophisticated and highly sought-after performer in her own right, Makeba’s arrival in the United States in 1959 transformed that country’s music scene. She was a contemporary of Nina Simone and Odetta, with the three women credited for a resurgence of folk music in the United States as they drew songs of everyday life onto the concert stage. South Africa’s apartheid government revoked Makeba’s passport in 1960, when she sought to return home to bury her mother. She was a vocal critic of apartheid in exile, appearing before the United Nations (UN) on at least four occasions (including twice as a delegate of Guinea) to urge sanctions against the apartheid regime and mobilize support for Black South Africans caught under apartheid’s yoke. She supported US civil rights movement organizations and activists, and through her activism embedded US struggles for civil rights within a continuum of African liberation struggles, including anti-apartheid and anti-colonial liberation movements on the continent. She was a cultural ambassador who bore witness to the independence of many African countries through song, with countries for which her performances contributed to the ushering in of independent regimes including Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique. She was the only performer at the inaugural conference of the Organization for African Unity. As South Africa’s apartheid government began transitioning power, Makeba was able to return home in 1992 for a brief visit and subsequently decided to permanently return. Under South Africa’s democratically elected regime, Makeba was appointed an FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) Goodwill ambassador for the UN. She continued performing in her later years, but in November 2008 she collapsed following a performance in Italy and died from cardiac arrest. Her legacy continues through the work of the ZM Makeba Foundation.

From 1960 to 1990, tens of thousands of people fled Southern Africa’s white minority regimes for exile in neighboring, decolonized countries. Although some of these exiles were scattered across the globe, the vast majority remained in Southern Africa, residing in camps administered by liberation movements representing their countries of origin until their eventual repatriation. It follows that liberation movement camps differed from what in the early 21st century is commonly thought of as “refugee camps”—camps administered by a host nation and/or transnational humanitarian agency on behalf of a community of people whom the United Nations and the international community recognize as “refugees.” At the same time, they were not strictly “military camps,” for even camps designed to train and deploy guerrilla soldiers in wars of national liberation often accommodated children, women, older adults, and others with no military training seeking refuge with a liberation movement. Rather, liberation movement camps were hybrid spaces that defy labels commonly used to categorize camps globally in the early 21st century. And they have cast a long shadow, shaping nationalisms and international relations that span Southern Africa and mark a unique, regional history.