Walled: Under The Bridge

Pinked: A Series

“I am not going back to the township”.

Among the most dreaded personages of my childhood were those old toppies my mother called oSkhohlela.

That common, hard core, scar ridden face stud with a single arm who rides an ungreased bicycle every day selling mogodu on credit, in company of whining monstrous green flies.

Yeah, that brother. uMpukane.

Then, there are those who seem to always throw phlegm like pennies into a pond. More so when fucked on some hostel brew stewed from KING KONG Mthombomela mixed with battery acid or other delicacies.

I heard in Klerksdorp they call it Skipa’seantekana.

They can otherwise be ‘your common sip-thieves at every stokvel - aboMaminya; or those ones who incessantly suck their teeth long after that holy communion of iSkobho – aboMavungula.

Hilarious names when one comes to think of them, but an epithet like Makhafula - the spitter - is quite a glaring approximation to one overtly vulgar gesture common down any township street.

aBomakhafula.

I mean, these guys can spit.

Every time they spat was like a grand moment at some spitting Olympics.

We used to joke that some of them could hit a bird dead perched on any branch with their bullet spit, without exhausting a glance.

There is however, a lure of the vulgar that each mind seems to possess; an inclination towards the depraved and even a psychotic yearning for decay.

However, ukuKhafula always remaining an exclamatory gesture of disgust, repulse and a rejection of that which is not palatable in any sense, also can be an acknowledgement of the event of contact with the unpalatable – therefore an equilibrial response in essence. 

We spit out that which feels like a sordid memory, a sort of mandatorily wiped memory; discarded due to decay or a burning sensation that requires release – but a memory whose existence we affirm nonetheless.

The act becomes a removal of any contamination that inhabits our prime faculty of speech - the mouth; an end to halitosis – all fumes that drench our garbage verbatim of social conditioning and drone responsibilities.

Still I wonder, what fuels Makhafula Vilakazi’s regurgitative demeanour, considering that the mouth is associated with a furnace?

What burns within him?

Or rather, what is he attempting to set ablaze?

Why the implicit leniency towards profanity?

Profane speech or obscene words, being reliable disgust elicitors curiously tend to cluster around body-related subject matter, interestingly so that even psychologists have been grappling with the science behind this human inclination.

And obviously Makhafula is not inventing swear words, but merely utilizing an existing lexicon of language developed by an entire species to relate ideas of disgust.

Profanity seems to be a way of sentencing certain undesirables to death.

Some writers argue that this semantic field that spawned taboo words across the world's languages is death and disease, and the human reaction to death and disease; and also the perpetual belief in the vice that the ‘body’ is damned evil.

But, I am curious to know why does Makhafula swear?

Maybe this will help me understand the high appreciation of his expressive poetry throughout the country, and mostly among urban youths.

Maybe I will eventually understand why people are drawn to that which they cannot exclaim themselves, especially when bound by self-inflicted moral constraints of a religious nature.

By some dark luck, I might discover that profanity is 'the magic fuel' that ignites minds into frenzied furnaces of resistance and rebellion.

Or maybe, just maybe, I will be treading that ecclesiastical path of commodifying South African swearwords, the beginnings of patenting languages and dialects – like the Americans have done with words like nigga, bitch, hoe and all the like.

So, seriously, will we be hearing the word ‘Sfebe’ on the airwaves from now to eternity, weaved within baritonic slurs sheared against a fossilised race’s scabby skinned ears?

I guess it is true that ‘Crazy, is a good uniform’.

Makhafula Vilakazi, who is in fact a character from of Matodzi Ramashia’s earlier poem of the same name, has lived and breathed township air since his birth.

He admits to write about what constitutes the existence of the depraved, ‘heavily influenced by the pathetic state of my jobless people languishing in townships without dignity.

And perhaps Zunglish and Tsotsi-taal are best suited linguistic devices for telling such stories, but he basically writes as he speaks.

In the language of uKulanzana or uKugwarana, he speaks on behalf of the insulted member of our tattered social fabric, the rejects and losers if you may.

Much of the profanity, although common place for kasie expression; still remains a subset of a language's lexicon that is generally considered to be very impolite, rude or offensive, but that is the language suited to emasculate the criminal Makhafula from every turn and line written in his attack.

Matodzi recalls that, ‘the one writer who had a real profound impact on me was Oswald Mtshali. I read his poem "an abandoned bundle" when I was still in high school. I really connected with that poem. As time went by I got to know of other legends of the word, Sipho Sepamla, Wally Serote, Chris van Wyk, bra-Ike Muila (this is where I learned that poem can also be written in tsotsitaal), Vonani Bila, Lesego Rampolokeng, Keorapetse Kgositsile.

And all these poets have been dubbed ‘dissident poets’ by literary critics and scholars.

I think Makhafula fits that bill, somehow.

Even though grossly unnerved by new trends of poetic expression in South Africa where ‘young poets these days are really ignorant of the great literary tradition that they should fit into’, Makhafula seems confronted by cloned expressions from the American literary tradition.

‘Rather than being inspired by South African writers to write South African stories a lot of young poets are really just mimicking Americans. As a result you get a lot of Saul William accents, Saul William dramatic pauses, basically a lot of flowery meaningless bombastic bullshit that say nothing about who we are, about our struggle, our triumphs...

But why does offensive expression seem to draw more attention than the floral language of contemporary poetics?

One might say Makhafula not only revels in the relationship that he have with words, with language, with writing, but he also do not privilege "standard" English over more colloquial or vernacular language.

In a conversation we had at The Afrikan Freedom Station he revealed that he is not interested in ‘message poetry’.

‘I write poems based on how I feel at a point in time. I am inspired by people, their struggles, their pain, love, anger, betrayal, hope and despair. I do not have a specific agenda’.

A seasoned performer who has graced stages from Poetry Africa and Day of The Writer to name a few, he still prefers performing ‘ekasie’ because his poetry feels immediate to the vulgarity of township existence.

Though he has enjoyed impressive collaborations with musician Sumthing Soweto, vocalist Khany Magubane and a number of Jazz outfits from Soweto, his musical influences can be said to be vastly rooted in jazz.

His poetry is fast becoming that chronicle of lives in disarray, a testament of the assault on romantic unions and turbulent family dynamics that characterise ‘the lives of black folks’ in an age of material gratification and disregard for human dignity.

Those who acquiesce to his expression of truth about township life remain his most staunch fans, and I hope you can also join the movement to demystify an overly romanticised life of depravity which he so laments.

And maybe even the puritanical will also listen to his album I’m Not Going Back To The Township and decide on a course of action to change the tide of obscurity shrouding young hopes through a life of deferred dreams.

You can follow Makhafula Vilakazi on

https://www.facebook.com/MakhafulaVilakaziPoetry

Remembering Afghani

Remembering Afghani is a conversation between editor and lecturer Moagi M. Matsie and filmmaker Paul Zisiwe. It is discussion based on a film titled Homeless In Afghani, directed and filmed by Paul Zisiwe in 2010. The conversation is centred on the filmmaker’s memories of the subjects of his film, his relationship with them and his eternal quest to track some of the homeless people he knew as a young man. The visual design is a narrative tool devised by Paul Zisiwe, which aims to also entrench the idea of ‘memory as super-impositions or collectives of super-impositions’ within each and every mind that is interested in the recollections of experiences and events.