On October 3, the University of Johannesburg hosted the third annual Keorapetse Kgositsile memorial lecture. This was meant to kick start the 2024 Poetry Africa programme that UJ is jointly hosting with the University of KwaZulu-Natal. This year’s theme is “somehow we survive”, taken from Dennis Brutus’s anthology of poems. The choice of this year’s theme is indicative of the times we live in. In 30 years of democracy, artists continue to navigate precarious work conditions. The celebration of the memory of Prof “Bra Willie” Kgositsile will hopefully put a spotlight on the state of our national artistic endeavours.
This event came after the passing of our eminent academic, scholar, literary critic and mentor to generations of activists, writers and scholars, Prof Muxe Nkondo. In his last days, Nkondo bequeathed to us his magnum opus The South African Handbook of Agency, Freedom and Justice. Justice Albie Sachs writes that Nkondo and his editors marshalled the eagerness of thinkers and scholars throughout South Africa to contribute their thoughts and wisdom to diagnosing and responding to the challenges eating away at the fabric of our country. In the work of both these activists-scholars, we see a determined focus on working with the next generation of scholars and poets. For them, the survival of our culture and the longevity of our national heritage can only be safeguarded if we invest in young people. In this respect, we can all agree that they both acquitted themselves with distinction.
These two giants of our national and cultural life not only defined and framed our national discourse, but their influence was so profound that for many generations, they were the guiding lights without whom the young and old could not dare to imagine a better future. Today, we stand on the broad shoulders of these teachers, mentors, and activists. We are indeed a privileged generation. They taught us that culture, while reflecting the ordinariness of everyday life, also possesses a profound and inspiring transformative power. They opined that culture is a storehouse of past and present ways of being, which, if properly excavated, can elevate people’s aspirations and ignite their imagination, offering a beacon of hope for a better future that we can all contribute to shaping.
Sachs observes: “We all know where South Africa is, but we do not yet know what it is. Ours is the privileged generation that will make that discovery if the apertures in our eyes are wide enough. The question is whether we have sufficient cultural imagination to grasp the rich texture of the free and united South Africa that we have done so much to bring about; can we say that we have begun to grasp the full dimensions of the new country that is struggling to give birth to itself, or still trapped in the multiple ghettos of the apartheid imaginations? Are we, the audience, ready to embrace freedom or prefer to be angry victims?”
Kgositsile was a product of his time. In his works and public roles, he displayed a unique ability to be both an organic intellectual of the broad liberation forces and a public intellectual who, while being the national poet laureate, would remind our republic that it has not done enough to attend to the challenges facing cultural workers. His role as an organic intellectual showed his partisanship to the cause of liberation. He was restless in using culture to create, educate and advocate for a new sociopolitical order. Gwen Ansell writes that the key lessons she and others learnt from Bra Willie were that cultural creation is a political act, that speaking about important truths is a human duty, and that it is a duty to do it well and with meticulous craft. In poetry, he found a way to express and portray the anxieties, hardships, happiness and love in the lives of ordinary South Africans.
Kgositsile was an Africanist at heart. He dug deep to excavate Africa’s long and latent contribution to world civilisation. Kgositsile has much a claim to the notion of African renaissance as other eminent statesmen and women and cultural activists such as Chinua Achebe. Bra Willie is aligned with Thabo Mbeki when he said, “an essential element of the African renaissance is that we all must take it as our task to encourage her, who carries this leaden weight, to rebel”. His work with the black arts movement in the US connected the black diaspora with the struggles of the masses in Africa. He was building on work started by WEB Du Bois, John Langalibalele Dube and Charlotte Maxeke and on the literary front by Can Themba and Bloke Modisane.
In Kgositsile, we recognise a continuum of South Africa’s incredible cultural heritage, such as the new African movement (as recorded by Prof Ntongela Masilela) and the Sophiatown renaissance movement; he was in the front ranks of a movement that eventually defeated apartheid. If the Blue Notes, Miriam Makeba, Jonas Gwangwa and Hugh Masekela stomped the world stage with a unique sound, in the literary field Kgositsile, Lefifi Tladi, Dennis Brutus, Barbara Masekela, Wally Serote and Eugene Skeef galvanised the world through their poetry. The pain and suffering of ordinary Africans under the weight of dehumanising colonialism and apartheid compelled these cultural creatives to look deep into the souls of African men/women to find ways of rebuilding their humanity — true to Steve Biko’s injunction: “In time we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible — a more human face.”
When the constitution states in its preamble that “We, the people of South Africa ... Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country and believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in diversity,” it pays homage to such luminaries as Kgositsile. Kgositsile’s commitment to a shared national identity, unity in diversity and a nonracial future was best captured by Oliver Tambo:“Through struggle, we are cultivating a sense of common nationhood, embracing the entire people, wherein various cultural strains are seen as components of a united people’s national culture rather than works of separate identity. This perspective, where diversity leads to variety and richness in the life experience in society, is crucial in shaping a future nonracial and democratic South Africa. It underscores the value and importance of each cultural strain in our collective identity.”
You and I/ We are the keepers of dreams/ We mould them into light beams
— Lebogang Mashile
Music in Poetry, Poetry in Music
Kgositsile’s poetry is wrapped in sound, which is its essence. It is decidedly jazz in its presentation. Steeped in the jazz blues idiom, he paints a portrait of struggle, hope, courage and the ordinariness of the life of the subaltern classes, which consists of love, loss and happiness in oppressive conditions. His poetry takes on life in its complexity, nuances and contradictions, devoid of a single line of interpretation. The subjects of his poetry are inherently rich and textured beings. To convey all this requires talent and creativity from our artists. In a poem that he dedicates to Ntemi Piliso, he affirms the centrality of sound in his repertoire when he says: “Isn’t sound continuity/ isn’t sound memory/ loving care caress or rage/ sticking our shattered and scattered pieces together.” The blues form is thus a leitmotif of his poetry. It could not be otherwise, as his poetry is steeped in the living conditions of his community — the working people of South Africa. His poetry excavates the blues beneath the underdogs (to use Charlie Mingus’s phrase) of society. The musicality of Kgositsile is acknowledged by Tsitsi Ella Jaji when she says his poems “paid tribute to music’s power to move and motivate the spiritual courage necessary for political action”.
The basslines of Johnny Dyani, the smoky, melancholy voice of Cassandra Wilson, the drumming of Art Blakey, Abdullah Ibrahim’s piano and Mankunku Ngozi’s haunting sound define Bra Willie’s poetry. Oyama Mabandla is on point when he suggests: “We should tap into that ancestral, sacred place for the rebirth we seek. To foster societal cohesion and bliss.” Poetry must rescue our national condition of despair and provide hope that, as a people, we can live meaningful lives and act on our dreams. Indeed, the poet Lebogang Mashile, says: “You and I/ We are the keepers of dreams/ We mould them into light beams/ And weave them into life’s seams.”
For the majority of South Africans, memories of struggle refuse to die. They refuse to be erased, for the promise of freedom remains distant, characterised by joblessness, poverty and worsening inequality
Kgositsile and the Youth
Kositsile’s abiding commitment was to our country’s youth. For this, he is a worthy ancestor of our democratic ideal. His work helps us to discover who we are as a people. Through Kgositsile, the youth can find an unbroken tradition of democratic cultural expression devoid of vanity, show and spectacle. In his poems, our young will discover layers and textures of meanings embedded in our beings as South Africans. In this regard, Kgositsile’s body of work remains our national heritage. Our school system should have his poems as part of the curriculum. This inheritance is for South Africa, the African continent, and the diaspora to hold dear and propagate for future generations. Raymond Suttner invites us to think of the importance of understanding our ancestors. “What they did, ideas which they propagated, are part of what remains with us.”
Kgositsile’s ideas remain with us. We should hold on to them. Their implementation can influence whether our republic, as Langston Hughes asks, will “dry up/ Like a raisin in the sun?/ Or fester like a sore”. We remain positive in the knowledge that Kgositsile’s property, artistic insights and work as our poet laureate constitute a major thrust of our civilisational efforts.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says: “As the national poet laureate, he devoted his time to teaching, imparting skills and knowledge through workshops and public readings, and performing poetry across different platforms locally and internationally.” This burgeoning cultural expression in music (jazz in particular), fine arts, literary works and performing arts has, in many ways, grown despite the lack of government support. More can be achieved if the government puts resources into the arts and creates an enabling space for our artists to work. In this regard, our cultural workers should be included in crafting the national consensus on how we recalibrate the prospects of our republic.
Kgositsile and the National Dialogue
Our democracy has reached stasis, with levels of political participation on the decline, living conditions deteriorating and the political and economic classes unable to satisfy the promise of our constitution. It is a democracy that has lost vitality, ingenuity, creativity and political nous. For many in our society, it has become a deferred dream.
The actions of our political actors constitute a deviation from the foundational values that our republic espouses. Yet, successfully putting together a coalition or government of national unity is a demonstration of the resilience of our democracy. In these circumstances, Prof Archie Mafeje suggests: “In times of conflict, the bard who is conscious of his position would be expected to identify with the general populace.” As a people’s bard, Kgositsile would have sharply criticised our custodians of public power for perverting the laws and the customs of the nation. A return to the source is required. A new beginning will ensure that Kgositsile’s lifetime work inspires generations of cultural workers to challenge the material conditions under which they practise their craft and, therefore, push back on the deteriorating and closing public sphere.
For Mabandla, “given the scale of the challenge, this rebirth will be akin to a spiritual awakening. It requires us to interrogate who we are, what our national purpose is, and what values and mores we subscribe to.”
Our country’s luminaries have called for a national dialogue to develop a common vision, a common commitment and an enduring programme for our country for the next 30 years and beyond. The cultural workers of South Africa are very part of the social fabric of our country. True to his activism, Kgositsile would have been in the front ranks of inserting a cultural dimension to this process; not so much for culture to palliate the hard lives of the majority but to ask difficult questions about how we came to this condition that he describes in the title of his book, The Present is a Dangerous Place to Live.
In 30 years, we have achieved much, yet many aspirations still need to be fulfilled. Ours is an unfinished journey. For the majority of South Africans, memories of struggle refuse to die. They refuse to be erased, for the promise of freedom remains distant, characterised by joblessness, poverty and worsening inequality. Against this background, it is easy to despair. However, amid this precarity that most South Africans live in, our cultural workers continue to ask tough questions and open spaces for creativity, innovation and the search for truth and hope. Our political, business, media and faith leaders must also put their shoulders to the wheel as a creative activity. The proposed national dialogue will only be meaningful by acknowledging culture as a force for good. The youth must seek Kgositsile’s indomitable spirit to challenge the present and craft a better future.
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