South African slam poets aim to tell it like it is

Raising indigenous languages’ profile one of movement’s goals

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA Arms outstretched and eyes locked on her audience, Koleka Putuma is a big stage presence for a young woman barely 5 feet tall. Her voice is velvet. But her words cut like a knife.

Race, religion, womanhood and sexuality: In a society still healing the wounds left by apartheid, Putuma tackles the touchiest subjects with verse that inspires some to stand and cheer, others to blush and squirm.

At 26, she is widely acknowledged as a leading light in a new generation of slam poets using the oral traditions of the country’s indigenous cultures, its dazzling array of languages and blunt honesty as a path to the future. An evening of poetry might include several languages. Poets and audiences may be black or white. And performances may be punctuated by whistles, shouts and applause.

Some poets and educators argue that raising the profile of indigenous languages — and diminishing the dominance of English and Afrikaans — will bridge the gap between South Africa’s haves and have-nots.

“I definitely consider myself the kind of poet that says the things that nobody wants to say, in many ways that can disturb the peace,” Putuma said. “We can get real.”

Take her most famous poem, Water. Starting from a widely held belief that black people are afraid of large bodies of water, Putuma takes aim at the complacency of those who think South Africa’s divisions are a thing of the past:

Our respect for water is what you have termed fear

The audacity to trade and murder us over water

Then mock us for being scared of it

The audacity to arrive by water and invade us.

In Soweto, such language is met by shouts of affirmation. Among South Africa’s young people — including young whites — there is a hunger to find ways to cross the racial divide. But at a 2015 TEDx event in Stellenbosch, a conservative, predominantly Afrikaans university town in the heart of Cape wine country, “the auditorium was silent, some people were turning red in front of my eyes,” Putuma recalled in a blog post.

Organizers asked if they could release a video of the event — without her performance of Water. They didn’t explain why publicly, but Putuma said it was because they thought the poem was offensive. She regarded it as censorship. And she said so — very publicly.

Putuma, who was the winner of South Africa’s first national slam poetry competition in 2014, also has been named one of Africa’s top 10 poets. Her poetry has been in part an effort to find her voice — as a woman and as a black person in South Africa.

“Silence is a thing for us black women,” she said. “The goal for me is to write myself into something, be it into existence. Just to talk.”

South Africans, in their search for self-expression, have been influenced by U.S. slam poets.

“You’ll find that a lot of South African poets have the accent and they’ve got the rhythm of African-American poets,” Putuma said.

She is uneasy about that. South Africa has 11 official languages, its own traditions and a long history of spoken word performance as a tool to reach social goals.

The languages reflect a diversity that South Africa’s white rulers long kept a lid on. Zulu and Xhosa are the most common among black South Africans, accounting for nearly 40% of the population. They are followed by Afrikaans and English, the first language of just less than a quarter of the population. Children who speak anything but English or Afrikaans are taught in their mother tongue for the first three years only — if they’re lucky — a policy that tends to cement the existing socioeconomic hierarchy.

Born into a large family that is Christian and Xhosa, Putuma performs mostly in English. Occasionally she will use Xhosa. She also is a primary member of a group that sings in Xhosa to accompany English verse.

Poets who come from a traditional culture where praise-singing or oral storytelling is prevalent are more likely to draw on that rather than outside influences, said Toni Stuart, a Cape Town poet.

“We have our own culture, languages and styles. South Africa really does have its own roots in slam poetry that is different from in the U.S.,” Stuart said. “Poets have always used their voices and created spaces for discussions and change.

“Poets are naming specific wounds and pains left over from apartheid,” she said. “There’s a lot around identity — where we’ve come from and where we’re going.”

Stuart’s work with a collective of female artists and writers called And the Word Was Women Ensemble received critical acclaim. A non-profit she co-founded — I Am Somebody! — works to foster reconciliation and integration in Cape Town among young people who speak many different languages at home.

Stuart, 34, is also developing a multilingual poetry education project for high school-age students. Born to a family of mixed descent, she grew up speaking English and Afrikaans. She is learning Xhosa.

It’s that mix of languages and the cultures they represent that drew U.S. performance poet Javier Perez to Cape Town.

Perez began writing and performing slam poetry with friends while studying at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. A grant allowed him to travel to study how poetry can pull young people away from a criminal lifestyle.

He said Cape Town is where he has grown the most as an artist.

“There is no other city you can go to and hear four different languages at one performance,” Perez said.

“Poets are naming specific wounds and pains left over from apartheid. There’s a lot around identity — where we’ve come from and where we’re going.” Poet Toni Stuart

CHRIS SCOTT South African poet Toni Stuart performs in Glasgow, Scotland. Stuart says slam poetry has distinct roots in South Africa.