Welcome to South African Poetry - March 2008

4 maart 2008 A young woman was stripped naked as punishment for wearing a miniskirt by a gang of taxi drivers who felt entitled to thrust their fingers into her vagina to teach her a lesson; a group of white students at the University of the Free State broadcast a video of a youth urinating into a brew that was then fed to the kneeling middle-aged black workers who clean their dormitory; and, while a man stood trial for murdering an elderly woman by pouring three kettles of boiling water over her, another couple received the same treatment by intruders in their home. Two-year-old Randolene Fortune was raped and murdered; Julian Lap, 16, was shot in the chest.

But where were our leaders? Jacob Zuma was in Mauritius, trying to squash the evidence in his fraud and corruption charge. Jackie Selebi was taking long leave from his position as Chief of Police, pondering how to wiggle out of charges of defeating the ends of justice. Thabo Mbeki was scratching his head, having given up negotiating with Robert Mugabe.

These gross indignities violate the individual victims and our shared humanity, sounding the death knell to the vestigial illusions I held of living in a progressive nation. If this is the face of the African Renaissance, please shield me from it.

Let me look to the poets for comfort, for comprehension, for compassion. In these shaky times it seems that the deities speak through the poets – speak from the grave – in words that express horror, rage and bewilderment still relevant today.

I look at The Hill Difficulty that we all must scale and ask:

Take the African National Congress:
we once burst our ribs in its praise.
Now we go round in search of it
“Has anyone seen where it’s gone?”

I read The Child Who Was Shot Dead by Soldiers in Nyanga, and wonder, who are the soldiers now?

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

I look to the poets yearning still for a safer, saner world.

To echo the words of Gus Ferguson, it is with a combination of sadness and relief that I take over editorship of the South African domain of the Poetry International Web.

Sad because I am not proud of being a South African right now. Sad because the days of protest poetry must claim a full voice again. Sad because I am scared.

The relief comes because this site has been dormant since Gus left and I am grateful that South African poets have once again this forum for their voices to be heard. Like my predecessor I am anxious about how best to represent South African poets in this hugely complex arena. Fortunately I have a team of capable editors who will advise and assist me in meeting this challenge through a collective decision-making process.

My relief also comes from knowing that the nation’s poets will continue the fine tradition our poetic ancestors began. They will speak truth like those who went before. They will, again, be the pariahs as they proclaim the Emperor’s nakedness, as they will paint the true colours of the bogeymen. They will define the Kingdom of the Rats:

Autumn perhaps. For weeks
I leave anti-coagulant.
The poison disappears
and I measure out more

and more, as I imagine
I feed a colony of rats
melting from the inside
until they are no more

but stain and fur. Underneath
my room, father,
lines of maggots advance
and the catacombs expand.

And I am relieved because the nation’s poets will continue to write Poems Set on Fire:

I shall invisibly follow you into the sacred vaults
Deep in the belly of earth where you hide your burning poems
From a distance watching you raise secret words as the torch
Nay, the comet illuminating the arc to the depths of sunsets

And what sacred vault we have access to!

We are delighted to be the first to publish a new poem from Rustum Kozain. His is a contemporary, relevant and sophisticated voice, rich and multi-layered.

This launch issue excites me because we managed to hear again the voices of the ancestors. Nontsizi Mgqwetho, Ingrid Jonker and Mazisi Kunene, our forebears, were prophets before their time. It is good to celebrate the relaunch of Poetry international Web leaning into them, assured that their wisdom is still available to all who seek it.