Creativity Quote by Miriam Makeba

Makeba’s optimism lands with the hard-earned credibility of someone who knew what “culture policy” can do when it’s weaponized. As an artist exiled for her politics and celebrated for turning song into testimony, she’s not naïve about institutions; she’s reading a shift in the weather and pressing artists to move before it changes again.

The line does two things at once: it welcomes the state back into the conversation while refusing to hand it the microphone. “Our Ministry of Culture” signals access, legitimacy, maybe even a new post-apartheid willingness to fund and protect artists. But the emphasis quickly pivots from government action to collective agency: “We just have to organize ourselves.” That’s the subtextual warning. Ministries can “embark” on reforms; they can also quietly disembark when budgets tighten, administrations change, or culture becomes a battleground. Her faith isn’t in benevolence, it’s in leverage.

The intergenerational framing matters. “Younger and older musicians” is less kumbaya than strategy: a coalition broad enough to resist gatekeeping and to transmit knowledge about contracts, touring, rights, and the politics of representation. Makeba is sketching an ecosystem, not a grant application. The repetition of “better” reads almost deliberately plain, as if she’s translating a complex agenda (infrastructure, labor protections, ownership, mobility) into a mantra artists can carry into meetings and unions.

Contextually, it’s a post-liberation argument: freedom isn’t only the right to sing; it’s the capacity to build the conditions that keep singing from becoming another form of unpaid national service.