Last Thursday I went up to New Haven to talk to a group of law school students about “The Postapartheid in South Africa” (I’ll try and post excerpts from that presentation sometime closer to the April 22 election once I have edited it). Traveling there and back on the train presented the opportunity to catch up with backlogged reading.
A few of these were from a pack of readings I saved from 2003. I was given the pack while writing a chapter for a book about South Africa’s first decade of democracy.
[The Njabulo Ndebele essay I quoted from last week is from the same set of readings.] Compiled by Edgar Pieterse–who also edited the book–the readings included lots of creative writing, including from Ashraf Jamal, Santu Mofokeng, Gael Reagon (on Moses Molelekwa’s suicide), Khulile Nxumalo, Abdullah Ibrahim, Lueen Cunning (now Malika Ndlovo), Keorepetse Willy Kgositsile, Mongane Wally Serote, and Flemming Røgilds. But the piece that stuck with me is a poem, “Impassable Bridge” by Mzi Mahola (it’s quoted in an essay by Kelwyn Sole, about postapartheid poetry published in New Formations):
I phoned for an MP
A former bosom friend.
His secretary asked,
In connection with what?
It punctured my ego,
I felt my manhood shrinking.
I said,
Give him my message
Tell him that poisonous mushrooms
Sprout under rotten logs.
If he asks for my name
Say it was an angered poet.
If you can do that for me
I’ll be OK.
But she was quick to add,
She said,
And lizards don’t fly
For their food
They crawl.
She hung up.
