Mzwakhe

Mzwakhe: An Anatomy of Protest.

I first encountered Mzwakhe when a stanza from one of his poems blurted out of some shriveled speakers of a hostel dweller’s radio. I was raised in a small 1902 erected mining town named Fochville, incidentally surrounded by nine mines including the deepest shaft in the world; and there, a market for Mzwakhe’s protest poetry has beenbrewing. Praise poets, dancers from various cultural backgrounds, an array of self-reflective arts and many a black folk gathered in a single voice; those were the leisure scenes at the hostels around my township.  In retaliation to the cult of beer-halls which was insidiously incepted by the oppressive government claiming to attempt “civilizing the natives’ leisure-time”; was the rise of informal gatherings which highlighted local culture through its artists. The consequential brunt on this sector of society has been that the Black section of the citizenry be without libraries and adequate schools – but theatres of inebriation on every street corner. Narcotic incomprehension also heightened the impediments on the revolutionary art-activists of the time, this meant no "cultivated" minds were accessed because Stokvels were their preferred churches of un-reason.

I should also mention that the hostel-dweller seemed to be the sole favored majority for ideas which most believed needed to revolutionize society as a whole. Mining, being the back-bone of the South African economy for some time also formed the platform for glaring brutalization through excessive labor which we saw paralyze the Black family system beyond reparation. I was immediately predisposed to his haunting narrative strategy which near barbarically tore my silence’s stutter. The dead steam of political naivety which hurled most black youth raised in the 1980’s began feeling the slurs charging them to war even when ‘The Spear has Fallen’. The exploration of the brutal history of the country had yes become somewhat of common pasturage for most orators of the time, but his perversely liberating lines:

Ukugula ko Muntu, ku kugula ko mdeni;

Ukugula ko mdeni, ku kugula ko mphakathi…

Ukugula ko mphakathi, kku kugula ko sizwe;

became the anthem for the newly concientized youths of the post- state of emergency South Africa.

Mzwakhe’s wildly unrepentant analogy of an individual’s raw death being equal to a family’s penury and extinction; outright spear-headed the idea of representational responsibility of art in a time of certain torture, incarceration and detention without trials.

As JM Coetzee once wrote: ‘seriousness is for a certain kind of artists – an imperative uniting the ethical with the aesthetic…’; we also find Mzwakhe’s insistence on personal freedom becoming part reason of his cold combinations of responses to the past, present and even the future. With his prose rhythms reminiscent of indigenous chants and Mbaqanga sounds, we also realize a frontal confrontation of nightmares as if from a spiritualized war dimension – the aesthetic still rending the bleak moral vision infused by dire social conditions.

The theme of atrocity which pervades his works is never dealt with in the abstract, such is how Mzwakhe approached politics – with a naturalist resonance, simplistically tortured to the extend of them becoming self-reflex records. The monologues which surpass the politics’ expiry dates; the non-fictionality within a nearly allegorical sphere of truth’s treatment, all these serving to sustain the sensorial fold around what he uttered which often resembled a predation on truth. The concept of self-censorship as negated by his compulsion meant that all poetry should remain an essential activity of revolutionary manifestation of thought; a call to action, even when faced with the market segmentation which was sustained through propaganda.

Prior to the dawn of democracy brought by the promise of political prisoners’ releases, we find a change in trajectory for the poet – momentary silence. With this silence having being triggered by the disillusionments he observed being ushered through the promise of democratization, he begins a self-reclusion process of counter-voicing the truth as is perceived. We begin to conceive a death of personal truth… the artist seems without substance within the humdrum freedom he also helped chart. Having experienced his popularity being paid for in harassment and degradation directly affecting his family life; his wife assaulted by menials of a repressive system – having been detained numerous time himself; a global view of issues had to ensue through his narratives. Challenging neo-liberal free market politics before their canonization into global ideological image-bank; retaliating at the pillage of the third world by multi-national capitalists… all these politically radical issues he confronted with a freshly peeled eye of a prophet – with a demi-god-like certainty.

In a time of cultural indoctrination through popularist poetics and commercial projections, he chose the hardest methods against ‘devil philosophies’. Poems like ALONE begin to feature in the solace of his solitude. He delves into vaults of inner memory thus the poet embarking on SOLITARY COMBAT against socially inflicted ills.

He begins questioning the institutionalized idea of education; labeling it mass conditioning which he found detrimental to the post-apartheid society charged with actuating transformation. An admittance change also channeled the poet towards methods of melody and lyrical narrative in his works. This I would also attribute the Mother’s Love Complex which Milan Kundera noticed in most Lyrical poets. He becomes obsessed with the land as maternal force so vulgarized and raped in the face of those thirsty for blood through sweat. The Mbube roots in him were taking toll as traditional harmonics begin to feature in his oratory.

The origins of his music are quite ancient in that after co-founding the New World Quartet many musical ventures ensued. The Marabi spirit of Sophiatown could have engendered his long standing relationship with music. Thus, with Change is Pain – a pivotal appraisal of the revolutionary spirit, we see the harmonies of resistance flourish once more.

Through the agonies of the turbulent transformation years, we again experience Mzwakhe through some meticulously composed music, showing a degree of maturity and structure to his art-activity.

Together with Tananas; having charged directly at the non-reformed masses’ psyches… they managed to pave a way for further artists (Lesego rampolokeng and Ike Muila to mention a few) to take the stages without fear of their exhibition spaces being dogmatized by ill moral values of fear. These and other artists will still recall their days in Naledi, the SASM years – when Tsietsi Mashini and fellow comrade Khotso were challenging all social condition under any possible threat. Recalling that the Bantu education when "Afrikaans" medium tuition was already been legislated for Medium High Schools and Primary Schools. The urgent call to action truly challenged all these revolutionary voices to wage war against all institutionalized violence of the regime which Mzwakhe viewed as a ‘Silent Holocaust’.

Let me end this brief overview by writing again the words:

In solitary confinement,

Without a twin-self to conquer the loneliness…

These words could well have epitomized his true sentiments and political sympathy. This vigor and ferocious approach to the reality of community in the transience of culture as a whole remains to be but cherished and held as legacy that all need to entrench in their image-banks…also taking it as impetus for the true manifestation of all revolutionary ideas. Ms. Ngcina Mhlophe is still continuing the revolution for indigenous knowledge systems from the maternal side, as with all other evolution’s mothers who still suffer the brutal symptoms of colonial diseases their counterparts inherited.