Marion Edmunds
A 67-year old protest poet intends suing the Minister of Safety and Security for the loss of a lithogram and a bundle of notes, confiscated from him by the police in a raid on his house in 1986.
James Matthews, an award-winning poet and author who spent most of his life fighting apartheid, is dismayed at the manner in which the police have handled his requests for his lost belongings, both before and after the 1994 elections. The lithogram and the notes were confiscated along with a number of other items in January 1986 becuase they were said to contravene the Publications Act.
The lithogram, titled Amilka, was a print of a montage of events representing the conflict in Mozambique. And he had hoped to write a novel from the lost travel notes, which documented a visit to Germany and exchanges with artists and anti-apartheid groups, including Swapo, the ANC and the PAC.
Matthews’s attempts to retrieve these items started six months after the raid, when he went to pick up his possessions at the Athlone police station. While retrieving some items, these particular pieces had disappeared and requests for the police to find them have borne no fruit. The police are insisting that they do not have the items, and say they are prepared to fight the matter in court. Almost 10 years later, and after numerous lawyers letters, Matthews is no nearer his goal.
His claim will amount to comparatively little – approximately R6 000 – he says, but he is determined to press on to make a point.
Matthews’s disillusionment is mixed into a deeper bitterness that black consciousness poets like himself do not receive greater acknowledgement from the post-apartheid government.