{"id":130890,"date":"2019-02-03T18:47:42","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T16:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/the-story-of-an-alliance-between-two-poets-one-cuban-one-south-african-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2019-02-03T18:47:42","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T16:47:42","slug":"the-story-of-an-alliance-between-two-poets-one-cuban-one-south-african-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/the-story-of-an-alliance-between-two-poets-one-cuban-one-south-african-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"The story of an alliance between two poets — one Cuban, one South African | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The story of an alliance between two poets — one Cuban, one South African<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Keorapetse Kgositsile<\/span> Oupa Nkosi\/Mail & Guardian<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s a little more than a year since the death of Keorapetse Kgositsile, South Africa\u2019s first post-apartheid poet laureate. Kgositsile, born in Johannesburg in 1938, became a prominent and vocal activist for the African National Congress (ANC). In 1961, at the behest of the ANC, he went into exile, initially to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, and subsequently to the US where he became involved in the Black Arts Movement.<\/p>\n

In 1990 he returned to South Africa and in 2006 was appointed Poet Laureate. In the many volumes published during his exile and after his return, Kgositsile repeatedly and fearlessly addressed the crimes both of apartheid and of global racism, advocating a revolutionary politics of resistance. <\/p>\n

Kgositsile\u2019s death in January 2018 was mourned across South Africa and indeed across the globe.<\/p>\n

\n

Read more: A tribute to Keorapetse Kgositsile, South Africa’s poet laureate <\/strong> <\/em> <\/p>\n

\n

In a moving tribute in the introduction to Kgositsile\u2019s final volume Homesoil in My Blood<\/em> the poet, novelist and activist, renowned South African writer Mandla Langa draws attention to Kgositsile\u2019s poetic skill and to his unwavering conviction,<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cthat art to mean anything must be involved in social activism.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In a short aside Langa notes Kgositsile\u2019s fertile association with prominent activists and writers across the globe like Pablo Neruda from Chile, and Cubans Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n and Nancy Morej\u00f3n. The brief mention of Morej\u00f3n belies the importance of the relationship between two activist poets, one which has rarely been addressed.<\/p>\n

A consideration of Morej\u00f3n\u2019s engagement with Kgositsile as a fellow poet \u2013 and her visit to South Africa \u2013 shed new light on her poetic practice. It allows too, a reaffirmation of Kgositsile\u2019s uniquely South African voice and to highlight the reach and impact of his transnational status.<\/p>\n

Revolutionary writers<\/h2>\n
\"\"
Nancy Morej\u00f3n.<\/span> Potosino\/WikiMedia<\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Morej\u00f3n, born in 1944, is, with Guill\u00e9n, among Cuba\u2019s most important revolutionary writers: internationally renowned for her work as a poet, critic and essayist, she has been widely translated. In 2001, Morej\u00f3n was awarded Cuba\u2019s National Prize in literature. Issues of race and gender are central to her oeuvre. Through her poetry she acknowledges the centrality and complexity of her Afro-Cuban identity from both pan-Caribbean and pan-African perspectives.<\/p>\n

Morej\u00f3n addresses the origins of her relationship with Kgositsile in a telling anecdote in her essay, \u201cViaje a Sur\u00e1frica\u201d (Voyage to South Africa). In 1987 she attended the International Conference of Writers held in Congo, together with the Cuban poet and translator of African poetry, Rogelio Mart\u00ednez Fur\u00e9. She wrote:<\/p>\n

\n

We went to drink coffee with one of the writers who had intervened very boldly. He was a small, petite man, with broad and thick lips, with a physical fragility that contrasted with the strength of his word and his overwhelming sympathy. <\/p>\n

Fur\u00e9 \u2026 decided to ply this new friend with questions. The last question was filled with anguish since we both expected a tragic response: \u2018Do you know the whereabouts of the poet Keorapetse Kgositsile from Johannesburg? The only thing we know is that he is one of the poets who has been the longest time in exile and we have not heard from him for so long \u2026 Many fear for his life\u2026\u2019 <\/p>\n

With a smile full of mischief, our interlocutor, impassively, replied: \u2018Keorapetse Kgositsile\u2026 that is me.\u2019 At that moment my personal history with South Africa was born. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Translation: Cynthia Gabbay)<\/p>\n

The anecdote conveys Kgositsile\u2019s frequently noted playfulness and the affection he commanded. It equally suggests the high regard in which he was held amongst the global community of writer\u2013activists.<\/p>\n

The importance of Africa, and of South Africa in particular, as a focus of Morej\u00f3n\u2019s poetics of resistance, and the extent of her identification with the struggle is evident in her 1989 volume, Baladas para un sue\u00f1o<\/em> (Ballads for a dream). In the poem \u201cSilent Lullaby for South African Children\u201d , Morej\u00f3n addresses the iniquities of South Africa\u2019s pass laws:<\/p>\n

\n

Mommy had no pass<\/p>\n

and there was no bread.<\/p>\n

Daddy had no pass <\/p>\n

and he was punished.<\/p>\n

Mommy had no pass <\/p>\n

and there was no bread.<\/p>\n

Daddy had no pass<\/p>\n

and he died, slaughtered.<\/p>\n

Mommy had no pass<\/p>\n

and there was no bread.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Translation: Cynthia Gabbay and Karin Berkman)<\/p>\n

The poem makes clear the impossibility of any peaceful sleep for the child who voices the lament. Its evocation of the simple vocabulary of a child and its spare, plaintive refrains serve to accentuate its concern with the poverty and violence that are the legacies of apartheid.<\/p>\n

Travelling across South Africa<\/h2>\n

In June 1992, in the dying throes of the apartheid regime, Morej\u00f3n was invited to deliver the keynote address at the annual conference of the Congress of South African Writers. After the conference she travelled across South Africa, giving workshops and lectures. She was accompanied throughout by Kgositsile, whom she terms her \u201ccicerone\u201d (guide). <\/p>\n

In her essay on this journey, Morej\u00f3n expresses her wonder at the beauty of the South African landscape, and her pleasure at the fraternity she develops with the poet and with her new South African friends. At the same time, her confrontation with the terrifying realities of apartheid induce in her a profound, almost unbearable sense of estrangement. With Kgositsile as her guide, she visited Crossroads, the shantytown near Cape Town. <\/p>\n

She describes an intense loss of bearings, a \u201csensation of living in Hitler\u2019s dream\u201d: the public toilets at the edge of the camp are indefinable, part sarcophagi, part public amenities. The location loses its specificity, at once a dumping ground and a cemetery, the evidence of apartheid as \u201ca diabolical aberration\u201d. <\/p>\n

Morej\u00f3n closes her essay with a tribute to the people she encounters: <\/p>\n

\n

South Africa pulses in my memory for the same story that runs through my own veins, for its art and literature, for the friends of the Congress of South African Writers, for the travelling musicians, the muleteers, the stevedores, the sangomas, the maids who told me their griefs experienced under apartheid, their hopes of making it disappear even after its theoretical death.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Translation: Cynthia Gabbay)<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

Cynthia Gabbay 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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The story of an alliance between two poets — one Cuban, one South African: Keorapetse Kgositsile Oupa Nkosi\/Mail & Guardian It\u2019s a little more than a year since the death of Keorapetse Kgositsile, South Africa\u2019s first post-apartheid poet laureate. Kgositsile, born in Johannesburg in 1938, became a prominent and vocal activist for the African National […]<\/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":[3050,4385,5082,8890,7830,13632,3576,4381],"class_list":{"0":"post-130890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa-news-2","7":"tag-african","8":"tag-alliance","9":"tag-between","10":"tag-conversation","11":"tag-cuban","12":"tag-poets","13":"tag-south","14":"tag-story","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\/130890","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=130890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}