A Red Blanket Addresses Christians- Nontsizi Mgqwetho

Where are your daughters? Cat got your tongue?

They roamed the countryside searching for marriage,

Shamelessly shacked up with live-in lovers,

Cut capers in Newclare till all hours of the night.

With rheumy eyes their mothers bewail

Their absent family, who left them standing,

Advising the air and pleading in vain

With sons and daughters who’ve all been to school.

Gaols crammed to capacity, courts jam-packed

With the learned products of school education;

The judges in charge just hoot in derision

At college certificates brandished by bums.

Our every crook can be found in the schools,

Our every thief can be found in the schools,

Our every rogue can be found in the schools:

I swear by Nontsizi, I swear you should all be kicked out!

You still wear red blankets in God’s very house,

You’re Christians by day, hyenas by night;

The pastor’s the shepherd of God’s own flock,

yet scurries by without a nod.

What do we make of this curious behaviour?

Which voice do we choose from their babble?

You Christians harbour pride in your midst,

Cloaking God in crocodile hide.

You Christians are suckers for every fad,

You discard skin garments and dressed up like whites,

Your ears ring for white man’s booze,

But whites won’t touch a drop of yours.

Every Sunday you romp on the veld,

Kicking a football, whacking a racquet,

Clothing your shame in the name of God:

Satan’s jaw drops in amazement.

You’re have no love, you’re nothing at all,

And yet you proclaim a God of love:

That faith of yours stands just as tall

As I do down on my knees.

If you should ever approach us again,

We red blankets will roast you like meat.

But of course I don’t wish to imply

That God’s words are devoid of truth.

Mercy!
 The Zulu Girl - Roy Campbell

When in the sun the hot red acres smoulder

Down where the sweating gang its labour plies

A girl flings down her hoe, and from her shoulder

Unslings her child tormented by flies.

She takes him to a ring of shadow pooled

By the thorn-tree: purpled with the blood of ticks,

While her sharp nails, in slow caresses ruled

Prowl through his hair with sharp electric clicks.

His sleepy mouth, plugged by the heavy nipple,

Tugs like a puppy, grunting as he feels;

Through his frail nerves her own deep languor's ripple

Like a broad river sighing through the reeds.

Yet in that drowsy stream his flesh imbibes

And old unquenched, unsmotherable heat-

The curbed ferocity of beaten tribes,

The sullen dignity of their defeat.

Her body looms above him like a hill

Within whose shade a village lies at rest,

Or the first cloud so terrible and still

That bears the coming harvest in its breast.

 The Slave Dealer - Thomas Pringle

From ocean's wave a Wanderer came,

With visage tanned and dun:

His Mother, when he told his name,

Scarce knew her long-lost son;

So altered was his face and frame

By the ill course he had run.

There was hot fever in his blood,

And dark thoughts in his brain;

And oh! to turn his heart to good

That Mother strove in vain,

For fierce and fearful was his mood,

Racked by remorse and pain.

And if, at times, a gleam more mild

Would o'er his features stray,

When knelt the Widow near her Child,

And he tried with her to pray,

It lasted not for visions wild

Still scared good thoughts away.

"There's blood upon my hands!" he said,

"Which water cannot wash;

It was not shed where warriors bled

It dropped from the gory lash,

As I whirled it o'er and o'er my head,

And with each stroke left a gash.

 "With every stroke I left a gash,

While Negro blood sprang high;

And now all ocean cannot wash

My soul from murder's dye;

Nor e'en thy prayer, dear Mother, quash

That Woman's wild death-cry!

"Her cry is ever in my ear,

And it will not let me pray;

Her look I see her voice I hear

As when in death she lay,

And said, 'With me thou must appear

On God's great Judgment-day!'"

"Now, Christ from frenzy keep my son!"

The woeful Widow cried;

"Such murder foul thou ne'er hast done

Some fiend thy soul belied!"

" Nay, Mother! the Avenging One

Was witness when she died!

"The writhing wretch with furious heel

I crushed no mortal nigh;

But that same hour her dread appeal

Was registered on high;

And now with God I have to deal,

And dare not meet His eye!"

Your cattle are plundered… - Isaac Wauchope

Your cattle are plundered, compatriot!

After them! After the!

Lay down the musket,

Take up the pen.

Seine paper and ink:

That’s your shield.

Your rights are plundered!

Grab a pen,

Load, load it with ink;

Stir in your chair,

Don’t head for Hoho:

Fire with your pen.

Put pressure on the page,

Engage your mind;

Focus on facts,

And speak loud and clear;

Don’t rush into battle:

Anger stutters.
Ntsikana’s Bell - Ntsikanaka Gabha

Sele! Sele! (call to worship)

Ahom, ahom, ahom! (bell sound by striking a rock)

Sele! Sele! Come, hear the Word of the Lord.

Ahom, ahom, ahom, ahom, ahom.

Respond! Respond! You are called to heaven.

Come, all you multitudes! Come, all you children!

Ahom, ahom, ahom, ahom, ahom.

It has been fenced in and surrounded, this land of your fathers.

He who responds to the call will be blessed.

Ahom, ahom, ahom, ahom, ahom.

Sele! Sele!

Ahom, ahom, ahom!

Respond! Respond! You are called to heaven.

Ahom, ahom, ahom, ahom, ahom.

The British Settler
(Tune — ‘Oh what a row’, or, ‘The humours of a Steam-boat’)

Oh! what a gay, what a rambling life a Settler’s leading!

Spooning cattle, doing battle, quite jocose;
Winning, losing; Whigs abusing; shopping now, then mutton breeding;
Never fearing, persevering, on he goes!

When to the Cape I first came out, in days of Charlie Somerset,

My lands were neatly measured off, and reg’larly my number set;
I strutted round on my own ground, lord of hundred acres, sir,
And said I’d plough, I’d buy a cow, the butchers cut the bakers, sir.
Oh! what a gay, &c

On Knowie’s banks I built a house, and made a snug location there;

I fenc’d my lands with my own hands to keep all tight;
The river rose, and fore my nose made awful desolation there;
The Kafirs stole my only cow away that night!
I made a trip to Kafirland, in hopes to find my cow again,
And tried to act the dentist then, which no one can do now again;
I drew the Kafir’s ivory teeth, at risk of hemp collar, sir.
Which Graham’s Town on the market bought me full 300 dollars, sir!
Oh! what a gay, &c

My second go was but so so, although the trade was brisk enough;
The patrols nearly boned me in a secret maze;
I hid my load out of the road, and, faith, I just had risk enough,
For this trade was hanging matter in this good old days!
My stock-in-trade on pack-ox laid, I tried my luck at smouching them,
But found the Boers were wide awake as Yorkshireman at chousing
them;
They swapt me some rock crystals — gems, they swore, of purest
water, sir;
And for breeding stock, a scurvy lot of hamels and kapaters, sir!
Oh, what gay, &c
Of fortune’s frowns, smiles, ups, and downs, I had a great variety;
I smouching drop, I open shop, then buy a farm;
Doing charming with my farming, blest with friends’ society,
When all at one the Amakosa break the charm!
Assegaing, yelling, crying — murder! fire! and revelry!
Stealing cattle, bloody battle, every kind of devilry, —
Helter-skelter, seeing shelter, wives ad children rustling in!
Husbands wounded, — lost, confounded, tender friends are jostling in!
Oh! what gay, &c

Hopes are blasted, pale and fasted, now reduced to beggary;

Burnt locations, public rations all we’ve left;
Names abused, of climes accused by agents vile of whiggery,
Any sympathy withheld, when of our all bereft.
Compensation for spol’ation, after such representation,
Seemed so futile and inutile, that ’twas scouted by the nation!
And that we’ve still a dollar left, our thanks be to no stingy-man,
Whose name’s a charm our should to warm, — THE GOOD, THE BRAVE
SIR BENJAMIN!
Oh! that gay, &c

Kafirs lauded and rewarded for their savage, fierce irruption,

By the folks of Downing Street and Ex’ter Hall!
Then no checking Boers from trekking, fleeing, seeing such corruption;
Hottentots and Fingoes, saucy vagrants all!
Such delusion and confusion seldom are exhibited,
When for convenience of the blacks the whites are stabbed and
gibbeted!
Yet, persevering through those ills, the storm again I’ve weathered, sir!
My children married happy, and my nest again well feathered, sir!
Oh! what gay, &c
’Tis four and twenty years, my friends, since first on Afric’s shore we
landed!
And retrospections crowd my mind of this great day;
Fear and doubt shut hope all out, for on ta desert we seemed stranded,
And dreary was our prospect then in Algoa Bay!
View contrasted, while they lasted, times of which I’m now relating,
And our happy meeting here, this great event commemorating!
Then may our hearts be grateful still, that Heaven has so guarded us
Through all our toilsome pilgrimage, and now so well rewarded us!
Oh! what a gay, what a rambling life a Settler’s leading!
Spooning cattle, doing battle, quite jocose;
Winning, losing; Whigs abusing; shopping now, then cattle breeding;
Never fearing, persevering, on he goes!

Andrew Geddes Bain

The Contraction and Enclosure of the Land
(translated from the Xhosa)

Thus spake the heirs of the land

Although it is no longer ours.

This land will be folded like a blanket

Till it is like the palm of a hand

The racing ox will become entangled in the wire,

Too weak to dance free, it will be worn

Out by the dance of the yoke and the plough.

They will crowd us together like tadpoles

In a calabash ladle. Our girls

Will have their lobola paid with paper,

Coins that come and go, come and go.

Blood should not be spilled, so they say

Nowadays, to unite the different peoples;

Until we no longer care for each other,

As a cow licks her calf, when love

And nature urges us to do so.

Can money bring people together?

Yes, a man may have words with his son’s wife,

His son need no longer respect her mother

Yes, we fold up our knees,

It’s impossible to stretch out,

Because the land has been hedged in.

Johannesburg - William Plomer

Along the Rand in eighty-five

Fortunes were founded overnight,
And mansions rose among the rocks
To blaze with girls and light;

In champagne baths men sluiced their skins

Grimy with auriferous dust,
The oil and scented, forced to enjoy
What young men must;

Took opportunities to cheat,

Or meet the most expensive whore,
And conjured up with cards and dice,
New orgies from new veins of ore;

Greybeards who now look back

To the old days
Find little in their past to blame
And much to praise —

Riding bareback under stars

As lordly archers of the veld,
Venison feasts and tribal wars
Free cruelty and a cartridge belt;

Pioneers, O pioneers,
Grey pillars of Christian State,
Respectability has turned
Swashbuckler prim and scamp sedate;

Prospecting in the brain’s recesses

Seek now the nuggets of your prime,
And sift the gold dust of your dreams
From drifted sands of time.
City Johannesburg - Mongane Wally Serote

This way I salute you:

My hand pulses to my back trousers pocket
Or into my inner jacket pocket
For my pass, my life,
Jo'burg City.
My hand like a starved snake rears my pockets
For my thin, ever lean wallet,
While my stomach groans a friendly smile to hunger,
Jo'burg City.
My stomach also devours coppers and papers
Don't you know?
Jo'burg City, I salute you;
When I run out, or roar in a bus to you,
I leave behind me, my love,
My comic houses and people, my dongas and my ever whirling dust,
My death
That's so related to me as a wink to the eye.
Jo'burg City
I travel on your black and white and roboted roads
Through your thick iron breath that you inhale
At six in the morning and exhale from five noon.
Jo'burg City
This is the time when I come to you,
When your neon flowers flaunt from your electrical wind,
That is the time when I leave you,
When your neon flowers flaunt their way through the falling darkness
On your cement trees.
And as I go back, to my love,
My dongas, my dust, my people, my death,
Where death lurks in the dark like a blade in the flesh,
I can feel your roots, anchoring your might, my feebleness
In my flesh, in my mind, in my blood,
And everything about you says it,
That, that is all you need of me.
Jo'burg City, Johannesburg,
Listen when I tell you,
There is no fun, nothing, in it,
When you leave the women and men with such frozen expressions,
Expressions that have tears like furrows of soil erosion,
Jo'burg City, you are dry like death,
Jo'burg City, Johannesburg, Jo'burg City.
Witwatersrand - Elisabeth Eybers

What fragile thing can happen in this hard

prospect of flashing shard

and not be marred?

If only day adjourn, the night in store

be dimmer than before,

wind blow, rain pour!

All winter long I’ll nibble at the bare

and bitter rind of air —

then leap back like a hare!

Nightfall - B.W. Vilakazi

I watch the darkness falling

And hills withdraw their shadows;

The sun, like ochre, reddens.

The swallows are at rest,

The sea-wind still and silent;

Above me fly the bats.

Now, as the streets are lit,

I feat the lurking thieves

Who seek their prey like hunters.

Here, there is not grass,

But dust from all mine-dumps

Like smoke is drifting skyward.

Here there is no river

To shelter lurking frogs

And harbour water-fowl.

Here are only people

Jostling home from labour,

Herded by dusk, together.

To Whom It May Concern - Sipho Sepamla

Bearer
Bare of everything but particulars
Is a Bantu
The language of a people in Southern Africa
He seeks to proceed from here to there
Please pass him on
Subject to these particulars
He lives
Subject to the provisions of the Urban Natives Act of 1925
Amended often
To update it to his sophistication
Subject to the provisions of the said Act
He may roam freely within a prescribed area
Free only from the anxiety of conscription
In terms of the Abolition of Passes Act
A latter day amendment
In keeping with the moon-age naming
Bearer’s designation is Reference number 417181
And (he) acquires a niche in the said area
As a temporary sojourner
To which he must betake himself
At all times
When his services are dispensed with for the day
As a permanent measure of law and order
Please note
The remains of R/N 417181
Will be laid to rest in peace
On a plot
Set aside for Methodist Xhosas
A measure also adopted
At the express request of the Bantu
In anticipation of any faction fight
Before the Day of Judgement.
Letter to Martha, 4 - Dennis Brutus

Particularly in a single cell,

but even in the sections

the religious sense asserts itself;

perhaps a childhood habit of nightly prayers

the accessibility of Bibles,

or awareness of the proximity of death:

and of course, it is a currency —

pietistic expressions can purchase favours

and it is a way of suggesting reformation

(which can procure promotion);

and the resort of the weak

is to invoke divine revenge

against a rampaging injustice;

but the grey silence of the empty afternoons

it is not uncommon

to find oneself talking to God.

Motho ke Motho ka Batho Babang - Jeremy Cronin
(A Person is a Person Because of Other People) *

By holding my mirror out of the window I see

Clear to the end of the passage.
There's a person down there.
A prisoner polishing a doorhandle.
In the mirror I see him see
My face in the mirror,
I see the fingertips of his free hand
Bunch together, as if to make
An object the size of a badge
Which travels up to his forehead
The place of an imaginary cap.

(This means: A warder.)

Two fingers are extended in a vee

And wiggle like two antennae.

(He's being watched.)

A finger of his free hand makes a watch-hand's arc

On the wrist of his polishing arm without
Disrupting the slow-slow rhythm of his work.

(Later. Maybe, later we can speak.)

Hey! Wat maak jy daar?

–a voice from around the corner.

No. Just polishing baas.

He turns his back to me, now watch
His free hand, the talkative one,
Slips quietly behind

–Strength brother, it says,

In my mirror,

A black fist.
Waiting - Arthur Nortje

The isolation of exile is a gutted

warehouse at the back of pleasure streets:

the waterfront of limbo stretches panoramically —

night the beautifier lets the lights

dance across the wharf.

I peer through the skull’s black windows

wondering what can credibly save me.

The poem trails across the ruined wall

a solitary snail, or phosphorescently

swims into vision like a fish

through a hole int he mind’s foundation, acute

as a glittering nerve.

Origins trouble the voyagers much, those roots

that have sipped the waters of another continent.

Africa is gigantic, one cannot begin

to know even the strange behaviour furthest

south in my xenophobic department.

Come back, come back mayibuye

cried the breakers of stone and cried the crowds

cried Mr Kumalo before the withering fire

mayibuye Afrika!
Now there is the loneliness of lost

beauties at Cabo de Esperancia, Table mountain:

all the dead poets who sang of spring’s

miraculous recrudescence in the sandscapes of Karoo

sang of thoughts that pierced like arrows, spoke

through the strangled throat of multi-humanity

bruised like a python in the maggot-fattening sun.

You with your fave of pain, your touch of gravity,

with eyes that could distil me any instant

have passed into some diary, some dead journal

now that the computer, the mechanical notion

obliterates sincerities.

The amplitude of sentiment has brought me no nearer

to anything affectionate,

new magnitude of thought has but betrayed

the lustre of your eyes.

You yourself have vacated the violent arena

for a northern life of semi0snow

under the Distant Early Warning System:

I suffer the radiation burns of silence.

It is not comic immensity or catastrophe

that terrifies me:

it is solitude that mutilates,

the night bulb that reveals ash on my sleeve.

Pregnancy - Sally-Ann Murry

I am expecting

to feel I don’t know what,

as now and then you knock, softly,

like a student entering the presence of authority,

until grown with the weeks insistent you butt in more

and still more and more confident.

Nok knok!

Who’s there?

A good question that, unanswered

in the mirror’s muteness, and the held hands’ bolstering.

To what can I refer for the knowledge that I seek? Doctors? Books? Other

woman?

Nothing, except to each week’s waiting which throws me back upon my

body.

Knock nok.

But I know nothing about the knowledge that you seek —

Life, or some quest equally as large —

through each week my body bellies its figurehead more fully,

breasting a cargo through erratic waves.

Of course I am said to bloom, my dear, and blossom.

But I have never been a flower, and do not now intend to pistil into

motherhood.

And always my power is limited as I try to hold but refuse your shape:

cutting the elastic of familiar clothes;

determinedly craving nothing out of the ordinary;

pleasuring my body - my body - as i will.

You will not lie still but I belie your presence,

and think of customs where mothers bind their daughters’ feet,

and fathers celebrate the birth of boys in bars.

Just wait, people say ironically.

(Well what else can I do, with this intimate living that happens all despite

me?)

Your time will come;

we cannot wait to see you, as the Bible puts it, big with child.

So I refuse but hold your shape,

slathering the jut of ourselves with salve;

waking nightly to the darkness;

flushing the bladder yet another time.

And always another knock

a kick

a funny flick

a shiver

and a finny glide

Suddenly

thatslides

across the flesh.

Past the bellybulge you wait,

taking things slowly,

clinging the date declared to make you present.

Lying low beneath a swell

you show your shape in moments:

my elation and sadness,

your peaks and dents,

movements that irreverently decline your future.

Lo Lull - Wopko Jensma (1973)

i am a dirty little room

with spiders in the corner of my skull

my mouth a dark pit

into which human droppings disappear

the speck of rust in my heart worries me

many people breathe in and out of me

i am at ease with the world

only the speck of rust worries me

they stripped me naked

now they let me prowl

but they don’t laugh

i feel no shame, no cold

why are they staring

they wanted me naked

i toss my head off

i cry with agony

to make them laugh

but they only stare

i show them my bum

they still stare

i tell them a joke

they stare

i get it —

i must be their judge

i look at myself sleeping

i look at myself going for a piss

i look at myself coming back to bed

i look at myself having a nightmare

i look at myself getting up

i look at myself shaving

i look at myself going off to work

i keep looking at myself

not knowing that i am being watched

first paint my head in all detail

then pluck the eyes out

then cut the ears off

then strip off the lips

then smash the teeth out

then burn the hair off

then peel off the skin

then the nose, the tongue

first paint my skull in all detail

For all Voices, For all Victims - Antjie Krog

because of you

this country no longer lies

between us but within

it breathes becalmed

after being wounded

in its wondrous throat

in the cradle of my skull

it sings, it ignites

my tongue, my inner ear, the cavity of heart

shudders towards the outline new in soft

intimate clicks and gutturals

of my soul the retina learns to expand

daily because by a thousand stories

I was scorched

a new skin

I am changed for ever. I wand to say:

forgive me

forgive me

forgive me

You whom I gave wrong, please

take me

with you.
Under the Sun - Heather Robertson

under the sun

i am daughter,

comrade,

lover,

friend

i do to please

and please to do

they are me

and i am them

but,

under the stars

under sirius and the three sisters

the southern cross and orion’s belt

i am

wonderfully

less than

vapour
Praises of Matanzima, Son of Sandile - Isaac Wauchope

He’s the hero with ivory armrings,

the great aloe that stops children sucking.

The overthrower, he drops the grey stone,

the cannon that thundered in the Mathole,

so the cowards fled into this land,

so the cowards fled in headlong.

He’s the dark one fit to stay in the Xhiba house,

and not be removed to Mxhamli’s at Mnzwini.

He casts at a wagon and its ribs fall apart,

the rent falls apart leaving the buck seat.

The piercing lightning, the strong sky-wagon,

which dropped a millstone and flattened forests,

so officers lay flat on their backs.

The wild beast that roared below Ncememe,

so the yellow-wood was uprooted.

The raging bull of Rharhabe:

don’t you slaughter this beast for its age?

The red-shouldered parrot of Myeki’s daughter,

which arrived with Mangcotywa.

One black-nailed from digging for the nation,

who entered the court of Victoria.

He has a sharp-pointed tool like a pick:

he dug up the yellow-wood below Gcolo,

and hurled it down below Gqontshi.

The long-haired one of Bholo,

who never paid tax all his life.

After the Battle - S.E.K Mqhayi

Ho-o-o-o-o-o-yini! Ho-o-o-o-yini!
It’s me that’s talking, a man of no worth!
It’s me that’s talking, a man who knows how to speak!
What kind of creature did you think I was,
One who says things that can’t be said?
Today the country’s in labour;
Today the land’s in pain;
Beware of something in the stomach,
Suspect this thing in the womb;
Today it’s as if Gilikankqo’ll be born,
As if a doe who spurns her own fawn will be born.
Ho-o-o-o-yini! Ho-o-o-o-yini!
The trumpet sang out for the start of the journey,
The horn bellowed to gather us,
The day we crossed the Kei armed to the teeth;
The day not a word passed Zanzolo’s lips,
We saw the flames flash from his eyes,
We saw the smoke billow from his nose,
We heard the shrilling of whistles in our ears.
Someone said today the beast’s enraged,
Something long expected had now come to pass,
For the looked at his brows and saw he was furious;
Today those brows are like clouds on a thunderous day,
Today they’re flashing like lightning, and the people tremble.
Someone said today the world’s at war,
In the land of Rharhabe all things are in turmoil,
Shame and disgrace have befallen the Xhosa.
Oh! the things that occur on this earth!
How could the child sidle up to his mother?
Crane feather piled on crane feather, at Hoho;
Iron bit into flesh, at Hoho;
Club clashed against club, at Hoho;
The oxhide thudded, at Hoho;
There was thumping here and there and there, at Hoho;
Someone passed on without prayer, at Hoho;
He joined the multitudes in a moment, at Hoho;
The vulture fed with his dogs, at Hoho;
The buzzard fed and left more for the raven, at Hoho;
The hyena fed and passed on to the wild dog, at Hoho;
The green fly fed and left more for the maggot, at Hoho;
Ho-yi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ni!
Please lay down your weapon now, warrior;
Please lay down your shield now, valiant youth;
It seems your task is done in the land of Rharhabe,
For my part, it seems you’ve scattered your foe.
Go now, there’s much to put right,
For you abandoned your homes with no one in charge,
You left your children to set fire to each other,
There are rows on rows of things you must tackle.
There are so many things that you must attend to —
Haven’t you heard of the visions of old man Khulile?
Haven’t you heard what will come to pass in this land?
Haven’t you heard of the weighty Book that’s impending?
Won’t we send you to examine it for us?
For by then our own eyes will have dimmed.
Haven’t you heard of the prince who will speak?
Even in this battle his presence was felt.
They say that he’s Gaba’s son of the Cirha.
Haven’t you heard of the girl who will speak?
We’ll call it destruction, but it’s sacramental slaughter.
Haven’t you heard of Bright Eyes who are coming?
What you say, for we hear they’re coming with scourges?
Haven’t you heard of these flowing-hair nations?
We hear that they’re people who traffic in lightning.
So I, son of Zolile, address you young warriors,
Go home but stay watchful, the country’s in labour —
When it gives birth I say it will bear Gilikankqo:
It will bear a doe who spurns her own fawn.
Go home but stay watchful, there’ll be pools if blood;
Go home but stay watchful, mankind will come to an end;
Go home but stay watchful, you will sell your fathers;
Go home but stay watchful, chieftainship will die;
Go home but stay watchful, you’ll examine the Book for us;
Go home but stay watchful, the shooting start will flash;
Go home but stay watchful, you’ll stand on guard for Zanzolo;
Go home but stay watchful, you’re the props of the nation;
Go home but stay watchful, your family’s in danger;
Go home but stay watchful, darkness will descend;
Go home but stay watchful, we’ll not endure forever;
Go home but stay watchful, prepare for future generations;
Go home but stay watchful, I say the real battle is upon us.
Could you not Write Otherwise? - Alan Paton

Could you not write otherwise, this woman said to me,

Could you not write of things really poetical?

Of many-coloured birds dipping their beaks

Into many-coloured flowers?

Of mine machinery standing up, you know,

Gaunt, full of meaning, against the sky?

Must you write always of black men and Indians,

Of half-castes and Jews, Englishmen and Afrikaners,

Of problems insoluble and secret fears

That are best forgotten?

You read the paper, you post your letters,

You buy at the store like any normal being,

Why then must you write such things?

Madam, really, since you ask the question,

Really, Madam, I do not like to mention it

But there is a voice that I cannot silence.

It seems I have lived for this, to obey it

To pour out the life-long accumulation

Of a thousand sorrowful songs.

I did not ask for this destination

I did not ask to write these same particular songs.

Simple I was, I wished to write but words,

And melodies that had no meanings but their music

And songs that had no meaning but their song.

But the deep notes and the undertones

Kept sounding themselves, kept insistently

Intruding themselves, like a prisoned tide

That under the shining and the sunlit sea

In caverns and corridors goes underground thundering.

Madam, I have no wish to be cut off from you

I have no wish to hurt you with the meanings

Of the land where you were born.

It was with unbelieving ears I heard

My artless songs become the groans and cries of men.

And you, why you may pity me also,

For what I do when such a voice is speaking,

What can I speak but what it wishes spoken?

Me, Coloured - Peter Abrahams

Aunt Liza.

Yes?

What am I?

What are you talking about?

I met a boy at the river.

He said he was Zulu

She laughed.

You are Coloured.

There are three kinds of people:

White people, Coloured people,

and Black people.

The White people come first,

then the Coloured people,

then the Black people.

Why?

Because it is so.

Next day when I met Joseph,

I smacked my chest and said:

Me, Coloured!

He clapped his hands and laughed.

Joseph and I spent most

of the long summer afternoon together.

He learned some Afrikaans from me.

I learned some Zulu from him.

Our days were full.

There was a river to explore.

There were swimming lessons.

I learned to fight with sticks;

to weave a green hat

of the young wands and leaves;

to catch frogs and tadpoles

with my hands;

to set a trap for the springbaas,

to make the sounds of the river birds.

There was the hot sun to comfort us.

There was the green grass to dry our bodies.

There was the soft clay with which to build.

There was the fine sand with which to fight.

There were our giant grasshoppers to race.

There were the locust swarms

when the skies turned black

and we caught them by the hundreds.

There was the rare last of crisp,

brown-baked, salted locusts.

There was the voice of the wind in the willows.

There was the voice of the heavens

in the thunder storms.

There were the voices of two children

in laughter, ours.

There were Joseph’s tales of black kings

who lived in days before the white man.

At home, I said:

Aunt Liza?

Yes?

Did we have coloured kings before the white man?

No.

Then where did we come from?

Joseph and his mother come from the

black kings who were before the white man.

Laughing and ruffling my head, she said:

You talk to much, Go ’n wash up.

The Child who was Shot Dead by Soldiers at Nyanga - Ingrid Jonker

The child is not dead

the child raises his fists against his mother

who screams Africa screams the smell

of freedom and heather

in the locations of the heart under siege

The child raises his fists against his father

in the march of the generations

who scream Africa scream the smell

of justice and blood

in the streets of his armed pride

The child is not dead

neither at Langa nor at Nyanga

nor at Orlando nor at Sharpeville

nor at the police station in Philippi

where he lies with a bullet in his head

The child is the shadow of the soldiers

on guard with guns saracens and batons

the child is present at all meetings and legislations

the child peeps through the windows of houses and into the hearts of mothers

the child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere

the child who became a man treks through all of Africa

the child who became a giant travels through the whole world

Without a pass
 Sometimes when it rains - Gcina Mhlope

Sometimes when it rains

I smile to myself
And think of times when as a child
I’d sit by myself
And wonder why people need clothes

Sometimes when it rains

I think of times
when I’d run into the rain
shouting ‘Nkce – nkce mlanjana
when will I grow?
I’ll grow up tomorrow!’

Sometimes when it rains

I think of times
when I watched goats
running so fast from the rain
while sheep seemed to enjoy it

Sometimes when it rains

I think of times
when we had to undress
carry the small bundles of uniforms and books
on our heads
and cross the river after school.

Sometimes when it rains

I remember times
when it would rain hard for hours
and fill our drum
so we didn’t have to fetch water
from the river for a day or two
 Sometimes when it rains
rains for many hours without break
I think of people
who have nowhere to go
no home of their own
and no food to eat
only rain water to drink

Sometimes when it rains

rains for days without break
I think of mothers
who give birth in squatter camps
under plastic shelters
at the mercy of cold angry winds

Sometimes when it rains

I think of ‘illegal’ job seekers
in big cities
dodging police vans in the rain
hoping for darkness to come
so they can find some wet corner to hide in

Sometimes when it rains

rains so hard hail joins in
I think of life prisoners
in all the jails of the world
and wonder if they still love
to see the rainbow at the end of the rain

Sometimes when it rains

with hail stones biting the grass
I can’t help thinking they look like teeth
many teeth of smiling friends
then I wish that everyone else
had something to smile about.
A Hen Crowed - Mzi Mahola

A hen crowed at the door;

Inside a woman panicked.
Throwing the child onto her back
She sped cutting a zigzagging path
Her breasts hoping to match
The alternating buttocks
And faded in a grove.

A man chopping wood

Saw a hill of human flesh
Advancing towards him.
He gave a sigh: ‘Mh!
Nomhi! What happened my child?
How is your hut?’
‘Molo tata, I am very well,’
She panted, sweating.
‘Then what chases you my girl?’
‘Tata, I’m here for I’m scared,
When crowed at the door
And I was alone.’
‘Mh! … Mh!’

They went back home

The man relighting his dead pipe.
A howl broke the numbing silence;
Again he let out a deep sigh,
Stood up and went out.
Embarrassed and troubled he chased the howling dog.
‘I haven’t heard from my husband, tata,
Maybe he’s found work
And can’t find time to write.’
Her father-in-law spoke looking down
Avoiding her stare
As if blaming earth for his problems;
His wife had been dead for eight months.
‘Father! The hen and now the dog!’
Her voice faded into a whisper.
‘Nomhi, I’m thirsty.’
He accepted a tin of water
Which he gobbled thirstily.
She sighted people coming through the grove
And shook hands with her father-in-law,
They discussed weather, stock and family life,
Then silence.