Makhaya Jwara Deke
When Rains Come by Mzi Mahola (Carapace)
Telegraph to the Sky by Sandile Dikeni (Gecko)
Mzi Mahola’s childhood in the outskirts of Alice in the Eastern Cape and early years as a boxer must have had an impact on the development of his voice as a poet. Village and outdoor life must be the sources of Mahola’s nature images, as in Credence: “It is not these scented fragile flowers / Boastful but with a brief passage/ Nor these bright shiny leaves/ … but the sombre unseen roots/ that afford life for this plant.”
He confronts life with self-assurance: “Even in my loneliness / I remain human/ Tied with a cord of longing/ Yet I’m so scared/ In my loneliness/ I feel the blood in my heart/ Being turned to acid …”(Cornered).
Mahola opens the door to questions that concern not only writers or journalists but also former liberation-organisation members, professionals, activists and so on. In Impassable Bridge he writes: “I phone for an MP/ A former bosom friend/ His secretary asked/ In connection with what?/ It punctured my ego/ I felt my manhood shrinking … / If he asks for my name/ Say it was an angered poet …/ But she was quick to add/ And lizards don’t fly/ For their food they crawl/ She hung up”.
This indicates Mahola’s awareness that in time, space and culture we navigate constantly between inclusion and exclusion, insideness and outsideness.
Sandile Dikeni’s Telegraph to the Sky reflects a patient, carefully considered understanding of a larger, less socially specific order in the world. In the title poem he pleads: “Stay with me/ When the sun rises …/ As celebration to a fading dream/ Will you take my blistered hand to a kiss?/ … we live clich as fact/ and fact as clich … / stay with me/ when the jungle has no tree/ when the wind has no breath …/ stay, so that we sing/ songs from experience/ stay with me/ shall you?”
Dikeni demonstrates that the representation of the human being is central to narratives of history and memory. His work is a roadmap of several themes intertwining to illustrate his own lifeline, demonstrating his own philosophic devotion to humankind and nature. There is an awareness of the psychological and political landscape of our country today.
Here is what he has to say in a poem entitled Biko: “The man is not dead/ He’s in parliament …/ Biko’s gone corporate/ He shakes his head …/ Biko is on stage/ He sings with Sting …/ Biko goes to a shebeen/ He sips a beer/ But mostly he listens …/ Biko directs traffic/ It’s an affirmative action job/ He hates it but he does it”.
Both these books I think are a symbolic acknowledgement that liberation is the never-ending task of self, group and nation and must be self-achieved and self-achieving.