They divorced after only two years in 1966. Masekela, in his biography confessed he was too smitten by the fast-paced jazz partying, drinking, and socialising of his career. This led him partly to a long struggle with alcohol and drugs and eventual rehabilitation in Ghana in the 1990s, later becoming a passionate anti drug and alcohol campaigner till he passed.
Their divorce wasn’t acrimonious and didn’t mean a cessation of affection and musical collaboration. They still enjoyed a warm friendship.
Makeba’s later marriage to the FBI watch-listed activist Stokely Carmichael aka Kwame Ture, added to her own outspokenness on apartheid, also led her into serious political and financial wahala in America, ultimately leading to their long exile in Guinea, on President Ahmed Sekou Toure’s hospitality.
