{"id":118552,"date":"2018-07-17T14:47:39","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T12:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/centenary-of-nelson-rolihlahla-mandelas-birth-a-tribute-in-poems-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2018-07-17T14:47:39","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T12:47:39","slug":"centenary-of-nelson-rolihlahla-mandelas-birth-a-tribute-in-poems-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/centenary-of-nelson-rolihlahla-mandelas-birth-a-tribute-in-poems-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Centenary of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s birth: a tribute in poems | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Centenary of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s birth: a tribute in poems<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Nelson Mandela's legacy in poetry can re-familiarise us with the values he embodied.<\/span> EPA\/Stringer<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The centenary of the birth of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela offers a rich opportunity to reflect on the life of South Africa\u2019s extraordinary political leader and on the legacies of the struggle against apartheid that he and his cohort of fellow activists shaped. Mandela\u2019s life-writing offers a great deal of inspiration for such reflection across a range of themes, including as scholars have pointed out, the question of Madiba\u2019s own mortality. <\/p>\n

Poetry is an under-explored source of additional reflection. Across the arc of Mandela\u2019s defiant resistance to apartheid, through his incarceration, release and presidential term, his life became poetry. The scope of this corpus is enormous, spanning decades and continents alike. <\/p>\n

One major anthology, Halala Madiba: Nelson Mandela in Poetry, contains 96 poems from 25 countries. Published in 2005, it includes work by two Nobel laureates, Wole Soyinka and Seamus Heaney. In addition, it features the work of the black revolutionary Cuban poet Nancy Morej\u00f3n, the Jamaican dub-poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, the Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite, rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur, and Zindzi Mandela \u2014 Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela\u2019s daughter. <\/p>\n

South African poets, including the late poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile, also contribute searing local perspectives. Their texts derive from established traditions of oral poetry, protest poetry and prison poetry in South Africa.<\/p>\n

The Island<\/h2>\n

During the apartheid years, many of the poems in which Mandela appears, imagine or remember him on Robben Island. The island, about 9km west of Cape Town, was used between the 17th and 20th centuries as a prison. Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years behind bars imprisoned on it.<\/p>\n

For poets detained as a result of their political activism, the place of incarceration is also the place of writing. Poets imprisoned on Robben Island alongside Mandela, like Frank Anthony and Dennis Brutus, take the Island as their subject. <\/p>\n

Dennis Brutus (1924-2009), the coloured (mixed race) political activist pivotal to promoting the ban on South Africa\u2019s participation in the Olympics, was arrested and imprisoned on Robben Island between 1963 and 1965 where he occupied the cell next to Mandela. Brutus invokes Mandela directly as both fellow prisoner and figurehead of the struggle. In the poem \u201cRobben Island\u201d written from exile in 1980, the Island becomes a potent site of memory. The poem begins with a slowly unfolding recollection as details of the past move into focus like a replayed, unspooling film. <\/p>\n

Brutus initially evokes the deep intimacy of labouring men bent over the stones in the quarry. The speaker is \u201canonymous\u201d, while the prisoners recalled are initially \u201cfaceless\u201d. Their names and faces only materialise gradually: <\/p>\n

\n

I see the men beside me <\/p>\n

Peake and Alexander <\/p>\n

Mandela and Sisulu <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As the memory sharpens and gains momentum, so too does the speaker\u2019s apprehension of the historic role of the men he names: <\/p>\n

\n

The will to freedom steadily grows <\/p>\n

The force, the power, the strength <\/p>\n

steadily grows. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In Brutus\u2019s poem, Mandela is not differentiated from the other prisoners and is only one of the \u201cmarvellous men\u201d whom the poem celebrates. <\/p>\n

Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian poet, playwright and Nobel Prize laureate who was himself a political prisoner in Nigeria, addresses the figure of Mandela on Robben Island in the 1988 volume Mandela\u2019s Earth. In his poem \u201cNo! He Said\u201d, Mandela assumes mythic status. <\/p>\n

The Island is both a geographic location and an imagined space of resistance. In this poem, Mandela is Atlas shouldering the universe, part Colossus, part Prometheus, part Christ.<\/p>\n

The poem takes as its starting point Mandela\u2019s refusal in 1985 to accept release from jail in exchange for renunciation of the legitimacy of the armed struggle against apartheid. In Mandela\u2019s obdurateness and unwillingness to break faith with the struggle, he becomes an emanation of the granite fixedness of the island itself. <\/p>\n

The poem rejects any sense that the Island has subdued Mandela, as these lines suggest: \u201cNo!<\/em> I am no prisoner of this rock, this island,\/ No ash spew on Milky Ways to conquests old or new.\/ I am this rock, this island.\u201d <\/p>\n

Outpouring of poetic celebration<\/h2>\n

Mandela\u2019s release in 1990 was met by an outpouring of poetic celebration both within South Africa and globally. The Irish poet Seamus Heaney recorded his fierce opposition to the apartheid regime as early as the 1960s. In 1990, he published his play The Cure at Troy<\/em> \u2013 a reworking of Sophocles\u2019 Philoctetes<\/em>. The concern in the play with injury, betrayal, suffering and reconciliation was widely seen to mirror the conflict in Ireland. <\/p>\n

Inspired by Mandela\u2019s release, Heaney later added a chorus to the play, dedicating it to Mandela. In an interview with South African journalist Shaun Johnson in 2002, he makes Mandela\u2019s relevance explicit: <\/p>\n

\n

It seemed to me to mesh beautifully with Mandela\u2019s return. The act of betrayal, and then the generosity of his coming back and helping with the city \u2013 helping the polis to get together again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Although Mandela\u2019s name is not directly mentioned, he is evoked in the now well-known lines: \u201cHistory says, Don\u2019t hope\/ _On this side of the grave.<\/em>\/ But then, once in a lifetime\/ The longed-for tidal wave\/ Of justice can rise up,\/ And hope and history rhyme.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chorus celebrates Mandela\u2019s release but it does so through the lens of political extremity in Ireland. Mandela\u2019s example is held out as one of miraculous possibility attesting to the possibility of conciliation and reparation.<\/p>\n

Mandela is no longer with us. Routine invocations of his miraculous or even quasi-messianic status that became part of public discourse following his release have themselves dimmed and lost their usefulness. But, attending to Mandela\u2019s legacy in poetry can help to re-familiarise us with the values he embodied, renewing engagement with the ongoing imperative to oppose racism in the name of political equality, constitutional democracy and economic justice in South Africa.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

Louise Bethlehem receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union\u2019s Seventh Framework Programme (FP\/2007\u20132013) \/ European Research Council grant agreement 615564. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Karin Berkman receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union\u2019s Seventh Framework Programme (FP\/2007\u20132013) \/ European Research Council grant agreement 615564. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong> The Conversation \u2013 Articles (AFRICA)<\/a><\/small>
\n<\/p>\n

Read more on The Conversation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Centenary of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s birth: a tribute in poems: Nelson Mandela's legacy in poetry can re-familiarise us with the values he embodied. EPA\/Stringer The centenary of the birth of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela offers a rich opportunity to reflect on the life of South Africa\u2019s extraordinary political leader and on the legacies of the struggle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[9131,9753,8890,3948,3942,31411,31410,7706],"class_list":{"0":"post-118552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa-news-2","7":"tag-birth","8":"tag-centenary","9":"tag-conversation","10":"tag-mandelas","11":"tag-nelson","12":"tag-poems","13":"tag-rolihlahla","14":"tag-tribute","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}