Poet’s anthem adds up now
Reportedly, President Jacob Zuma last week referred to the classic pan-Africanist epic poem by the late Ingoapele Madingoane while addressing a meeting of the ANC Gauteng, though the context is still a mystery to me.
According to the report, in explaining the appointment — later reversed — of Des van Rooyen as minister of finance in December, Zuma is quoted, inter alia, as having said: “I was told I never consulted before making the appointment. I said to myself, ‘Africa my beginning, Africa my ending’.’’
I am glad that the president at last acknowledged, albeit mysteriously, the literary anthem of 1976, symbolised by the collective consciousness of the writing of Ngoaps, as we affectionately called each other as founders of Medupi Writers’ Association. I should know. I am the messenger who elected to transcribe and type the text from the creative handwriting of Mtshana — that was the other nickname we called ourselves then.
I edited it into shape and commissioned Fikile Magadlela (now departed) to illustrate the cover. It was to become the first edition of the Staffrider Series at Ravan Press, where I was also a director.
Gallantly, in 2007, the Writes Associates, under husband-andwife cultural team Morakabe and Sindiswa Seakhoa’s South African Literary Awards, bestowed a posthumous honour on Madingoane.
Poet-musician Mzwakhe Mbuli, through his Vhutsila Arts Ensemble, selflessly also celebrated his “brother in the arts”, Madingoane, at the Siyabakhumbula Awards ceremony of 2010.
The exact phrase is “africa my beginning/ and africa my ending”, Mr President. The original poem by Ngoaps was called The Black Trial, based on his phenomenal one-hander, an excerpt of which was captured on film — now transferred on to a DVD — by Chris Austin and Peter Chappell in 1980 as I Talk about Me, I am Africa, which is housed at the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum in Orlando West, Soweto.
Say it, Ingoapele Madingoane: “i talk about me/ i am africa/ i am the blazing desert yonder/ a tall proud grain amongst the sand”.
We are a few days away from celebrating Africa Day on May 25 and a few weeks before we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the June 16 1976 Soweto students’ uprising.
Regina Mundi church was a witness to the infectious baritone of Ngoaps as he walked in from the eastern main door towards the altar, chanting as if in a trance: “azania here I come/ from apartheid in tatters/ in the land of sorrow/ from that marathon bondage/ the sharpeville massacre/ the flames of soweto/ i was born there/ i will die there/ in/ africa my beginning/ and africa my ending”.
The apartheid regime banned the book barely six months after publication, but by then we had distributed more than 30 000 copies.
Madingoane follows in the footprints of illustrious sons and residents of eSkom — Pimville — such as the Manhattan Brothers, publisher-historian Trevor Dan Mweli Skota, who rebranded the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) astutely as the African National Congress, part of the continent; journalist-writer-historian and translator of Shakespearean dramas into Setswana Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, the SANNC’s first general secretary; and composerteacher Enoch Mankayi Sontonga, whose hymn, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, celebrates its 120th anniversary next year.
Definitely “africa my beginning/ and africa my ending”. It all adds up now. —