Siphokazi Jonas on storytelling, survival and the future of African literature

Siphokazi Jonas is a poet, author, artist and producer whose influence stretches across South Africa and is steadily reaching global audiences. 

With deep roots in storytelling and theatre, she brings a rare power to the stage, crafting performances that linger long after the curtain falls.

Jonas has created and showcased many performances, including collaborations with musicians such as Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse, Freshlyground, Pops Mohamed, Dizu Plaatjies and Dave Reynolds. 

She has become a certified literary sensation. In her recently published book Weeping Becomes a River, Jonas confronts the linguistic and cultural alienation she experienced as a black learner in former Model C schools in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

She fashioned the fragments to reclaim and rewrite her place within a lineage of storytellers in South Africa and she submitted the audio book of Weeping Becomes a River for Grammy Awards consideration.

During the book launch, we chatted about her creative process, her efforts to expand peoples’ perspectives through poetry and the use of folklore to shape societies. 

One of the most notable poets of her generation, Jonas’s work has resonated across literary spaces in South Africa. And this year she was chosen to become a member of the Recording Academy among 3 600 artists who were invited to join.

Born in a dorpie called Sterkstroom in the Eastern Cape, Jonas’s creative influences are broad, but a recurring purpose is amplifying voices often not heard, and her poetry has been used as a powerful platform to share the perspectives and stories of those in the margins of society. 

But, despite having been in the public consciousness for years, Siphokazi is only now releasing her first full collection, Weeping Becomes a River, which traverses subjects of identity, feminism, womanhood, trauma, community and resilience.

How has it been for you to produce such an important body of work and how do you approach writing and deciding who you write for?

“You know! The importance of the work has only become clearer with time because I was writing for myself. It was my outpouring, it was my reflection. In fact, at the beginning, in the early days of the process, I felt like it was out of time, like this is not the most urgent thing happening in the world right now. I had questions such as will it kind of move?

“Will people still want to sit in this particular type of conversation? But it has also been an interest of mine for a long time, my life experience. 

“Therefore, for me, there have been many questions I have had around language and culture that have been ongoing for a long time because it’s my experience.

“Because I have had the experience of going to Model C schools, then the University of Cape Town, where the foundations of the institutions I have gone to are built on white principles and not necessarily built with people like me in mind.”

From a feminist perspective, what does it mean for you to have your mother’s identity echoed and reflected in the book alongside your father’s, especially given how society views these roles?

“My mother’s identity — I mean it’s also not just my mother, but my mother as figure, it’s language as my mother and that plays a very important role. It’s also creativity as my mother.

“There is this last poem in the book called Mending Patterns where I speak about learning about storytelling from my mother, where iinstomi, or folktales, were told by my mother. So, she is such a central figure, even in the driving of the plot in the story.

“Like what happens in one of the poems called The Breathing Hut. She is the one that carries the child, she is the one that holds the decision that will affect the direction of the village. 

“In essence, that is what matriarchs have been doing for centuries in our African societies — to give direction, mend relationships and shape the futures of our communities.

“I have made an effort to reflect two worlds that are often not reflected in the way I did in literature, to talk about my father as well as a present, positive figure. In the poem Kuteda I write about the camera of cultures, which is my father’s experience as a father to girl children.

“But my feminist framework is about centring a young girl, who then becomes a woman, making her complicated, making her push the narrative over just being a victim of circumstance.”

What do you hope to achieve through your retelling and modernising of iintsomi or folktales?

“My intention is to recover what has been but also recreate. The modernising aspect is important because that is where the creativity lies. 

“Folklore is about improvisation, so I am trying to bring that back, but in a more modern setting to achieve representation, because our lives have shifted so much with the ever-changing world.

“I want us to achieve our own Harry Potters in African storytelling and have our brothers and sisters represented in them.

“Also, folktale was meant to speak to society in the time that it was being told. I am also trying to speak with society in the time that it is being told, to speak to our social values, social dynamics and relationships. 

“I am writing to teach about the importance of our languages, cultures and how we plan to pass those days, like what our mothers have done. I am trying to show how our future should be.

“Weeping Becomes a River is this exploration of our experiences of fragmentation — cultural, linguistic and so on. I have something to say about that and I am using folklore to speak to myself and to speak to the next generation and what it means for them to make names for themselves.

“It ends with saying, ‘We are accompanying one another to make home using storytelling and it’s a communal act to make home as Africans understand it.’”

South African feminism has a long, often under-documented, genealogy. Where do you place your work within that lineage and how does it differ from, or expand on, earlier traditions?

“For me, it’s important to look at our mothers and grandmothers, because my feminist tradition exists there even before I read books, for example. Right? Like in my mother saying it was always education first, because they believed that education is a man that will never disappoint you.

“That’s feminism. It is the encouragement to flourish outside of the domestic space. It is my grandmother selling vegetables in the market to feed us and fund our academic pursuits, while my grandfather is working in the mines. That is a feminist revolutionary act.

“So, I think of that level of self-autonomy that women would have had within the limitations of society, but it’s also all these actions of pushing against resistance, which is what I am trying to do in thinking about how I exist. My work is also to say, ‘It does not start with us.’

“There are lineages of women who gave. Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were constantly existing within systems that were trying to break them down, but they resisted. I don’t think it’s possible for me to be a poet who lives over creativity without being indebted to the lineage of women who gave through social and educational teachings.”

What do you hope to achieve with Weeping Becomes a River?

“One of the main reasons is for people to be inspired, to use their history and tradition in storytelling. To give all kinds of prominence to our stories, ones that are taken as seriously as we do with the story of Cinderella and Snow White.

“I want to have global reach, where our stories are honoured and elevated.”

Weeping Becomes a River: Audio Book is out now.