Chapter 13
Oswald Mtshali as a Poet
Although Oswald Mtshali’s poetry has not received much critical attention, especially at the international level, he has however written enough good poetry worthy of serious critical consideration and acclaim.
He was born in Vryheid in the Northern part of Kwa Zulu, Natal University of Witwaterstand was thwarted by the Apartheid policy but he subsequently left for the United States where he obtained degrees at Columbia University
Myshali’s poetic redition includes Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (1971), which was widely praised for its craftsmanship, and Fire Flames (1980) whose focus is a more strident criticism of the South African Apartheid government. Mtshali is famous as a poet who frequently reads his work to both Black and white audiences.
I
As a poet, Mtshali’s verse draws considerably from his indigenous Zulu Flora and Fauna. But essentially his poetic themes embody a celebration of the glory and beauty of the indigenous African cultural landscape (and the dead ancestors), the perniciousness of the European colonial dominator, the evils of the South African Apartheid policy, and the challenges of human existence.
In such poems like “Inside My Zulu Hut,” “The Birth of Shaka,” and “Amagoduka at Glencoe Station,” Mtshali explores the theme of the traditional African cultural landscape that he loves and cherishes. Through these lyrics also the poet profoundly displays is uncanny architectonic skill in the handling of his subject matter.
The poem, “Inside My Zulu Hut” consists of nineteen lines which celebrate the beauty, grace, and serenity of the indigenous African household:
It is a hive
without my bees
to build the walls
with golden bricks of hone.
A cave cluttered
with millstone,
calabashes of sour milk
claypots of foaming beer
sleeping grass mats
wooden head rests
tanned goat skins
tied with reimpies
to wattle rafters
blackened by the smoke
of kneaded cow dung
burning under
the three-legged pot
on the earthen pot
on the earthen floor
to cook my porridge1
Here, in the above lines, we are introduced to the various items and intricacies of the poet’s Zulu hut: they include the “three-legged pot… to cook my porridge,” the “calabashes of sour milk,” the “claypots of foaming beer,” the “sleeping grass mats,” the “wooden head rests,” and the “tanned goat skins”.
Also adding color, respectabity, and dignity of the household objects are the negative vis-à-vis positive images employed to counterbalance each other, apparently in order to portray their celestial charm and grace, such as: a “hive/without any bees,” the “golden bricks of honey,” a “cave cluttered with millstone,” “blackened by the smoke,” and “burning under.” These images animate some of our innate sense, especially those of sight (“bees”), taste (“honey”), smell (“smokes”) and touch (“burnings”).
Also interesting is the various descriptive nature images which the poet employs to strengthen or illuminate his prosodic narrative: they include the “bees,” the “honey,” and the “cave.” Although some authors shy away from the employment of cultural images or the employment of specific natural objects, for Mtshali however, he sees nothing primitive or wrong in the employment of cultural images in his poetics. He joins a long list of African poets who value African culture and traditionalism, including Okot p’ Bitek, Gabriel Okara, David Diop, Birago Diop, and Kofi Awoonor.
In “The Birth of Shaka,” Mtshali discusses, among other things, the concept of courage, which the legendary Shaka displayed, as part of the essence and beauty of the African continuum. In Shaka we find not only courage but also leadership, patriotism, charisma, and heroism.
The above qualities of the Zulu leader manifested themselves early enough at birth. For example, his cry, as a new-born baby, was loud and ferocious (“His baby cry/was a cub/tearing the neck/of the lioness”). Further, the mythological effect of a baby’s cry, in the African cultural myths, which is highlighted here, deserves some explanation; when a baby is born and the baby cries out with a loud tone, it angers good tidings both for the parents and the baby. On the contrary, if a baby does not cry at birth, it suggests bad omen, of which something must be done to make it cry. Sometimes the baby is tapped strongly, or some sacrifices would have to be offered in order to reverse the trend quickly. The stronger the tone of a baby’s cry, the better for its future prognosis.
Each of the poem’s. seven stanzas highlights Shaka’s enduring virtues: the first stanzas focuses on his cry at birth; the second stanza sheds light on his geneology as suggested by his “blood” and “veins,” the third stanza describes the strength of his “heart” which “was shaped into an ox shield/to foil every foe”; the fourth stanza focuses on his “muscles” which his “ancestors forged… into/thongs as though/as wattle bark;” the fifth stanza describes his “nerves” which are “as sharp as/syringe thorns;” the sixth stanzas focuses on his “eyes which are as bright as “lanterns,” while the last and concluding stanza discusses his daring and heroic valor and determination (“Lo! you can kill me/but you’ll never rule this land”).
There is no doubt that this poem is a biographical exposé of the early life of the legendary Zulu leader, SHaka. Iot is also descriptive structurally, as suggested by the descriptive images employed. And finally, it projects a sensibility and vision of a leader of men and women and highlights the various qualities needed for effective leadership.
The poem contains other virtues: Kunen’s power of remembrance and recollection of the past events of history is lucid and precise; his descriptive and narrative abilities are impeccable and his detached rendition of facts and figures, which are detached from emotionalism and baseless sentimentality, makes his narration believable and convincing. Furthermore, the fact that his peotic draws largely from the Zulu folklore and mythology-- which he carefully articulates -- makes him a close observer of his society and as one who has a complete knowledge and understanding of his subject matter. Above all, his positive description of the outstanding qualities of Shaka, also demonstrates his love of his people and the beauty of their cultural heritage.
If we examine the poem for more evidence of the praise of Africa ’s socio-cultural beauty, we find in the poet’s reference to the dynamic role played by the dead “Ancestors” who “forged his muscles” (lines 12-13), and his allusion to the “dark valleys of Zulu land” (line 20). Collectively, these images endow this poem with objectivity, charm, and realism.
Another poem which discusses the cultural beauty of Africa , although in a less vivid and concrete manner, is “Amagoduka at Glencoe Station.” The beauty and charm of the indigenous African topographical cultural landscape is echoed through several images, including “shattered glory of my ancestors” (line 6), the “coalfields of Dunde” (line 7), and the “mountains and hills of Msinga, stripped naked of their green garment” (lines 50-52). Although the negative images predominate in these quoted-lines, it is clear to the objective mind that, at bottom, they shed significant light in a once beautiful cultural landscape.
The last lines of the poem illustrates a nostalgic and spirited attempt by the protagonist to recapture the glory and beauty of the African past:
“Oh! beloved black gods of our forefathers
What have we done to you
Why have you forsaken us--
We’ll return home
to find our wives nursing babies
unknown to us.
but only to their mothers and loafers.2
The above lines, which echoe Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of immorality fro Recollections of Early Childhood,” in its elegiac mood and tone, document an evanescent cultural phenomenon which neither the forces of space nor time can stop.
II
Of the themes which Mtshali explores in his verse, none of them is of a far more profound consequence than the theme of the Apartheid policy in South Africa
In “An Abandoned Bundle, for example, Mtshali takes a satirical swipe at the menace wrought by the Apartheid policy. The theme’s title alludes to two categories of people who are dehumanized and abused by the South African Apartheid government: the abandoned babies of prostitutes who are “dumped on a rubbish heap” (line 18); and the South African blacks who suffer from unbearable neglect, destitution, and other injustices.
The vast array of the negative imagery employed foreshadows the deplorable and depraved state of the Apartheid society3 which Mtshali deplores and which he acidly inveighs: “pus oozing/from a gigantic sore,” “smothered,” “red bandanas of blood,” “squirming bundle,” “based fangs,” “mutilated corpse,” “rubbish heap,” and “human dung.”
Other images of the poem are equally pungent and stirring. The expression, “Scavenging dogs,” alludes to the negative and brutish forces including the police which the Apartheid government used in brutalizing and harassing the South African blacks; the metaphor, “melted into the rays of the rising sun,” suggests the South African black populace whose talents are allowed to waste away like putrid sore; and the phrase. “Baby in the Manger,” echoes the status of Christ when we was a baby?// The irony dramatized by the abandonment of this baby, in contrast to Christ who was carefully protected, makes this lyric one of the most memorable of Mtshali’s poetics. The fact that this baby is “mutilated” further suggests not only the level of man’s inhumanity to man, but also the fact that the society which permits this level of carnage is beyond reform and redemption.
Also interesting is the hypocrisy suggested by the reference to the “White City Jabavu,” an allusion to the black neighborhood of South Africa’s town of Bophota S Tswana where white men pick up black girls for sexual enjoyment. The irony here is that while black girls are a source of pleasure and delight, their black men are a source of evil and contempt.
Another poem which discusses the hypocrisy and crimes of the South African Apartheid government is “Nightfall in Soweto
The second part of the poem, stanzas three, five, and seven, carefully narrate the protagonist’s painful experience as he is relentlessly pursued, “slaughtered,” and “cornered” wherever he goes, especially at night. In these stanzas, the poet employs the first person pronoun “I” to dramatize his experience:
I am the victim
I am slaughtered
every night in the streets
I am cornered by the fear
gnawing at my timid heart;
in my helplessness I languish
……………………………………..
I am the prey;
I am the quarry to be run down
by the marauding beast
let loose by the cruel nightfall
from his age of death
………………………....
I tremble at his crunching footsteps,
I quake at his deafening knock at the door
“Open up” he barks like a rabid dog
thirsty for my blood.
In the above lines, the poet’s anguish is not in doubt: he can only “tremble,” as he feels the heavy weight of the “marauding beast.” Furthermore, his limitations, that is, his “timid heart,” his “helplessness,” and the “deafening knock at the door” are all etched clearly and closely behind his eyes.
The last part of the poem, stanzas four and eight, is a general and rueful commentary about the evils of the mundane world and man’s inhumanity to man: there is no limit to man’s wickness, no limit to the injustice which permeates the entire universal Cosmos.
Man has ceased to be man
Man has become beast
Man has become prey.
…………………………….
Nightfall! Nightfall
You are my mortal enemy.
But why were you ever created?
Why can’t it be daytime?
Daytime forever more?
“Nightfall,” that is, is the monstrous Apartheid policy which has earned the condemnation of the world4. There is no doubt that this poem completely dramatizes everything that is ominous and evil about a government. Which has little or no regard for human value. The image, the “beast,” which the poet employs twice (lines 17 and 21) to characterize Apartheid, not only suggest his contempt but his cynicism about the future prospects of the Black man in a racist society.
The employment of the metaphor, the “dreaded disease/seeping through the pores/of a healthy body,” is meant not only to arouse the audiences emotions but to suggest the seriousness of the issues raised by the Apartheid policy. Much of the poem’s success also rests upon the fact that while the poet highlights the plight of the masses with emotive language (“I am the victim/I am the slaughtered” (lines ten and eleven), he employs savage images to characterize the Apartheid government: the “marauding beast” with “crunching footsteps.” These images not only depict the capricious nature of the South African government but they also suggest its brute naked power.
The lyric, “Ride Upon the Death Chariot,” also discusses the wicked and sharp contours of the Apartheid South African government. The poem, which derives its imagery from the Christian liturgy, celebrates the killing of three innocent souls in a society which knows no love, no justice, and no peace.
While the Christian images employed -- e.g., “Golgotha,” “Caesar,” a “woman came to wipe their faces,” and a “centurion washed his hands”-- enable Kunene to develop his theme of unholy death, unfortunately these innocent victims receive no reprieve or mercy from the state authorities despite their plea for forgiveness or mercy. Worse still there is no priest in attendance to pray for the expiation or remission of their sins: their death is nothing but a pathetic and gruesome expose of the abuse of naked power dramatized by the Apartheid South African government:
We’re hot
We’re thirsty
We’re hungry
(MAP, p. 376)
In the above-quoted lines, there is no love, no justice, and no peace; what there is, is recrimination, violence, and death.
III
An interesting feature of Mtshali’s poetics is his ability to exploit the first person pronoun “I” to his narrative advantage, especially if it meets his personal experience and perspective. Examples of the lyrics where he employs this narrative style are: “If You Must Know Me” and “Just a Passerby”. In these poems Mtshali carefully and meticulously documents with sensitivity and passion the challenges which the Black man, especially in the South African socio-cultural and political setting, must encounter almost on a daily basis.
In “If You Must Know Me,” a poem which employs Biblical images and metaphors to document his inner vision of the Black man’s ordeal since antediluvian period, Mtshali ruefully explains “I am the bitter,” “I bare my heart/to see the flint/to be ignited into a flame” (SAP, p. 261, lines 10-13).
The genesis of man’s condemnation and ultimate ruination can be traced to Adam and Eve when they tasted from the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Aden
Mtshali’s personal experience of the Black man’s plight is more poignantly expressed in “Just a Passerby,” where the first person personal pronoun “I” is repeatedly employed six times:
I saw them clobber him with kieries,
I hear him scream with pain
like a victim of slaughter;
I smelt fresh blood gush
From his nostrils,
And flow on the street.
I walked into the church
and knelt in the pew
“Lord! I love you.
I also love my neighbour. Amen”
I came out
my heart as light as an angel’s kiss
on the check of a saintly soul
(SAP, p. 259)
The poem is suffused with sarcasm and irony. For example, the individual, whose death is painfully celebrated here, is dastardly and cruelly murdered in a South African Apartheid State which, while professing Christianity, yet kills its own people inhumanly: “I saw them clobber him with kieries/I heard him scream with pain” (lines 1-2). Furthermore, the protagonist’s ultimate submission to the authority of a divine being in the face of human cruelty and capaciousness, clearly suggests his maturity and his deep philosophical insight.
The poet also demonstrate his sagacity through his frequent allusions to Biblical liturgy, such as his going to the church to pray both for himself and his “neighbour,” in consonance with the Christian injunction which enjoins us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Finally, the poem displays the irony which the complex universe sometimes demonstrates: the poem’s protagonist, who is Black, now appears to be wiser than his “superiors,” that is, the white elements of South Africa
What can we learn from Mtshali’s poetic art? Mtshali employs encomium and repetition to celebrate the beauty of Africa ’s indigenous cultural traditions, against a backdrop of the cynicism, hypocrisy and irony with which he characterizes European colonialism and the Apartheid South African State. Mtshali is a fine poet who writes with sensitivity, objectivity, and clarity.
Notes
1. Oswald Mtshali, “Inside My Zulu Hut,” in The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beir (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 375. Subsequent citations from the anthology will be included parenthically in the text as MAP, followed by the page number(s).
2. Oswald Mtshali, “Amagoduka at Glencoe Station,” in A Selection of African Poetry, introduced and annotated by K.K. Senanu and T. Vincent (Burnt Mill, Harlow, Essex: Longman Group, 1976), p. 247. Further quotations from his anthology will be included parenthically in the text as SAP, followed by the page number(s).
3. For example, Dapo Adeleke, in his The Legend: Nelson Mandela (Lagos and Ibadan
4. As G.D. Killam and Buth Rowe explain in their study, The Companion to African Literatures (Oxford and Bloomington : Indiana University Press; 2000), p. 29, “The Sharpeville massacre (1960), the Soweto
Works Cited
Adeleke, Dapo. The Legend: Nelson Mandela. Lagos and Ibadan
Killam, G.D. & Ruth Rowe. The Companion to African Literatures. Bloomington and Oxford : Indiana University
Moore, Gerald. & Ulli Beier, ed. The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry. London and New York
Mtshali, Oswald. “Amagoduka at Glancoe Station,” A Selection of African Poetry. Ed. K.E. Senanu & T. Vincent. Burnt Mill, Harlow, Essex: Longman Group, 1976.
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