Interview with James Matthews

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Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org Interview with James Matthews

Author/Creator Magaziner, Daniel (Interviewer); Matthews, James (Interviewee) Date 2006-05-23 Resource type Interviews Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa Coverage (temporal) 1950-2000 Source Private Collection Description Discussed Matthews poetry during the 1970s, as well as the evolving role of art and poetry in post-apartheid South Africa. Considered the impact of poetry and other art forms during the struggle period, as well as his connections with activists associated with the Black Consciousness movement. Discussed Coloured identity as it related to Black Consciousness. Format extent 14 pages (length/size)

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http://www.aluka.org James Matthews 5/23/06 District 6 Museum, Cape Town, SA

A: In one of my books, I write that I wish I could write a poem about a bird, dawn or a bee. Then I look at the people, maimed shackled, jailed, I shan’t write a poem about a bird, a bee or dawn.

Q: Let’s explore that. Is there something wrong about writing a truly aesthetic poem in a situation of political responsibility?

A: For me at that stage, it’s a luxury that I refuse to accept. I see myself not as a poet who, I’m going to be very harsh, who writes art for art’s sake. Too many violent things happening to people, that the horrors of apartheid and I indulge in writing a poem, a pastoral poem … no. I rejected the whole concept, in fact, I rejected the whole concept of being a poet.

Q: How did you see yourself then?

A: What I write expresses a feeling. I express the suffering of people and also the hatred of people towards a racial regime. I need to report the outrage, the anger, the willingness to fight – if not with physical things, then the poet must use his words. That’s how I see myself and I still see myself. I have just written a 2000 word piece for a book that’s coming out probably 6 months and I made it clear with lost lines that as long as people are suffering, and as long as certain politicians are bloated from their arrogance, feeding on the suffering of people, I shall then and still be a dissident poet.

Q: During the seventies, though, at the same time that you have this dissident poetry, let us say, you also have the rise of what are called the “Soweto poets” who deal with politics – people like Mtshali and Serote and others …

A: Can I switch this off for a moment? [microphone switched off while he critiques a number of well known poets from the 1970s]

Q: When you say non militant poets, what do you mean?

A: During the period that you’ve mentioned, I found poets little better than poetry, but for me it wasn’t the poetry that was needed. They are fine poets – some of them are lyrical in their expression – but certainly they are not saying what I feel strongly that people want to hear. Some of these poets were very much taken up by the pseudo-liberal whites – it suited their purpose to have a black poet and here was a black poet. But … and also, those books were bought mainly by your liberal … pseudo liberal whites, not the blacks in townships. When I brought out “Cry Rage” it was a watershed, it showed where black poets should be going and how – not necessarily my words, but the direction they should be going – that was important.

Q: To kind of ask about the production of “Cry Rage,” and you are saying it was a watershed. Why did you choose to write the poems in English? A: Rather odd, since English is the language that I write in and I speak.

Q: But you said you were interested in a non-pseudo liberal white audience; English poetry, in SA, was largely the area of English pseudo-liberal whites.

A: Yeah, but I think you’ve got it wrong in that sense. A vast amount of, to use the term ‘Coloureds,’ speak English. English is their language – it’s not the reserve of the white. I know for people from outside, always for them they find it difficult like the question you ask. But what did you expect a guy like me to write? Which language?

Q: I’m asking not because of the language I expect you to write, but in a lot of the BC cultural production, things like, let’s say, Cry Rage, popular theatre, protest theatre, Shanti and various other plays – they’re all in English. I find that interesting because I expected that if you wanted to communicate with people a lot of people don’t speak English.

A: You’ll be surprised again by virtue of how you want to get about. If you want to get a job you can’t go and speak Xhosa, you must communicate in English and that goes for your Zulus. Who owns the areas of production? Mainly whites. To illustrate the language, I’ll use an analogy – in Namaqualand there are older people who speak Nama and the younger people refuse to get into the language because they are saying the same thing that I said – how do I go to an employer and speak Nama? It’s a matter of economics.

Q: Under apartheid, then do you think that you and others chose English rather than Afrikaans?

A: Let’s get back to the Soweto Uprising. The Soweto Uprising, apart from the other ills, was mainly caused by apartheid [sic] being taught and enforced as the main language. When you use English as the medium, there are more publishing houses dealing in English books rather than Afrikaans and few Afrikaans publishers would publish what we write. The fact that I had to publish myself was that the mainstream English publishers won’t use my stuff.

Q: What did you, when you were writing this dissident poetry, as you call it, what did you think it would achieve?

A: Firstly, to give expression to things that a lot of us are fearful of saying out loud. Doing that, I would hope that more people would unite themselves in what we are, saying unite themselves – it doesn’t matter what your personal politics might be. At that period, ANC was not the big thing amongst people, particularly amongst the youth; AZAPO, BC was the in thing. But the poetry that I write, I hope it to be a unification of different beliefs. Like for instance, when the Soweto revolution erupted, firstly ANC tried to get on the bandwagon by trying to state that they were indirectly responsible; they were not. It was the work of dissident BC poets. What we achieved, I can accept they term it the Soweto revolution, but it was a revolution that was spread all over South Africa, but our poetry united the Zulu youth, young boys, girls, with Indians or a Coloured counterpart. Their parents weren’t aware of what was happening, with the eruption, even the parents were shocked to see how united these kids were. These kids were attending meetings in schools, church halls – this was the big thing. Q: When you were writing and you said you wanted to express the unity in this poetry, during this period, the term that was often used was “conscientize,” that you wanted to conscientize people. I’ve often wondered, with culture, in terms of – explain to me the connection between someone reading a poem and an event like an uprising where people are resisting? How in your mind, as a poet, as a creator of this voice, did you see that connection?

A: There’s no problem to it at all. Again I must, I can understand you seeing it from the outside, but from the inside, some of us weren’t interested in the whole poetry bag – we were just writing things – others labeled it poetry – stupid observers said “protest poetry,” which is such a bullshit term. We’re not protest poets, we’re dissident poets. There’s a vast difference. We are angry, we are not protesting against what was happening, we’re fighting against what’s happening. That’s why I constantly use the term I’m a dissident poet, not a protest poet. The whole concept is … it’s like, let’s go back to your Baptist church, where they’re saying the closeness between what they’re singing and the feeling of the people. That’s part of it. Also for myself, the whole situation for my blackness at that period, what was happening in Senegal, Leopold Senghor, Negritude, Diop and there’s another one … and, the militancy of the Black Panthers situation. That was my thought.

Q: Let me kind of follow in that lead. What brought you to this sort of poetry? What was your background? How did you arrive, at, let’s say, “Cry Rage”?

A: I am not intellectual and thank heavens I am not part of the academia. Some such bullshit terms for me to be in. I am from poverty, I know hunger, I know all the desperation of seeing of what’s happening in our streets. The good thing for me was that I was able to read at an early age – thirteen, fourteen – I’d already read [ ], I read Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis.

Q: Where did that come from? How did you get access to these books? How did you know these were books worth reading?

A: No, I’d go to a library. I was eager to read more about what’s happening outside, the outside things shaped me, helped me to express, helped me to see clearly what was happening. And, uh, Ngugi also fascinated me, Dostoyevsky had a powerful effect. The whole motivation of that period was also the Black Panther situation in America, was a very forceful thing for us. We knew the Black Panther situation can never win, the militancy saw that the might of America was far, far more powerful – and not to forget that the CIA played with drugs in the black community. We were fairly – I was fairly steeped – into what was happening. I tried. I first wrote because of my background, my short stories dealt mainly with poverty. I then became more interested in trying to write about the political situation, how it effects and not too much the political situation with slogans – the people’s sayings, the people’s suffering and not an ideological party.

Q: How do you effect that change, because I know in your short stories from the Sixties, they’re similar to Drum era short stories, in a sense – there’s that revealing of what’s happening, of how people are living, which is in essence political, but it’s not the same …

A: Have you read Asikhelwa? That’s obviously a story about the time of the bus boycott. But it still, I agree with you, still has not the militancy of “Cry Rage.” Q: How did the transition to militancy occur in you?

A: My anger. My anger. And I could see that if I write a short story, I’m not well structured to make it and also be creative, but with a poem, it’s a different area and for me it [worked better] than a short story. I form a structure of my own. My poetry in “Cry Rage” – structure, use of words – are far different to poetry that I wrote at a later stage, that speaks about the same thing, but it was that I couldn’t prevent the growth in me. ‘I saw similes, metaphors, became easier for me to handle, but at “Cry Rage” I was not at that stage, so “Cry Rage” is like using a saber and now, in later poetry, I’m using a rapier. [Fencing thing?] Yeah. You see. [Much more fine.] You see? You see? That’s the difference of approach. At first I was a bit fearful because I know, I was almost fearful that I would leave people behind, not being able to understand, but thank heavens people are far more intelligent than I assumed.

Q: Excuse my ignorance for this, but did you – were there precedents either in South African poetry or were you reading international poets that you saw as being examples to emulate?

A: Examples, but not to follow. I had to do my thing. [Who were some of the people?] I was surprised, I read Ho Chi Minh and lot’s of time in Ho Chi Minh, in his poetry, was favorable towards America … I think I came across one or two poems that he spoke favorable about Abraham Lincoln and I couldn’t understand. Here this rebel poet whose whole actions are anti-American. I’m also reading Neruda.

Q: So those were the examples. What about within SA? Was there a poetry tradition of that? I know there was the Zulu poets like Vilakazi and Dhlomo?

A: Yeah, but then again, my point was no militancy. That was my point. I think I come … but I read Zulu poets like 18th century [sic] who spoke eloquently about their blackness, but it was just their pride of being black, not defying those who despised blacks and that was not enough for me.

Q: It wasn’t simply race poetry in that sense?

A: Opposite, because they only spoke about it while our poetry embraced all blacks because of the vote, we did not gear our output to a particular ethnic group. If I use the word Coloured there must be a specific reason to why I’m using it.

Q: What about that issue of using the word Coloured or the word Black? During this time period – published in ’72 and so you were writing it beforehand – to what extent within your community, within the Coloured community around the Cape and CT in general, had the term black got into common discourse?

A: No. Because of the whole divisions made by apartheid, I have to generalize, if you trace the position of Coloured … whites used the Coloured as a buffer, particularly here in the Western Cape. So like if I’m a matriculant, I pass my Standard 10, and I’m Coloured, I could get a better job, I could become a teacher, I could become a plumber, if I’m a Xhosa I pass Standard 10, I will probably end up as a petrol pump attendent. Now, during that process, some Coloureds being fed all that propaganda had a feeling that they’re better than the Xhosa because of this whole role of division. It’s a wrong attitude to take, but it’s an understandable attitude to accept and analyze because it gave them a better economic level to live on. And then the same thing would apply within the Coloured going on with pigmentation, you’re colour, they would pass themselves off as white for the same reason. Again, the Coloured at that period could not accept – he rejected black. It was our persistence in our poetry, the younger people, it’s always difficult for the older people to understand changes, they’re set in their habits and to be told we are one group, for the conservative Coloured is an affront. And unfortunately this whole thing hasn’t been wiped out despite where we are now. Older people are still talking as Coloured. I don’t see anything wrong with being Coloured, except I’m a … firstly, as to we are Coloured, if you go to Asia, the mingling of the white and Asian, the offspring are Eurasian, in Mississippi, New Orleans, your Creoles, in Brazil you’re Mulatto, you go to Canada, the offspring of the Eskimo and a White – Mentes. We still parochial in our thinking – generalizing – we think we’re something special and because of this division made, we assume that we’re better than the guy downstairs. BC, it’s whole idea, was to unite all of the people without the franchise – even a Chinese could be black under the premises! Of course they opted out – although not accepted as white, they were treated as white.

Q: Honorary whites. This idea of blackness as a social grouping …

A: It’s not a social grouping. Blackness, then I need to explain blackness, blackness is the embracing of people who did not have the franchise.

Q: Ok, as a legal grouping? [Sorry?]

A: It’s an acceptance that we didn’t need the outside world to tell us where we are, what we are. We define ourselves what we are. This has been the problem all over when you colonize, you decide what the oppressed should remain, where they live, who they should marry, even to the extent of the religion that he should have.

Q: When these ideas are developing – the Non-European Unity Mvmt had been around of course – [and they dropped the Non-European part – the New] Unity movement. During this period you start to see SASO and things like that? What were you doing? How were you in contact with these changing ideas?

A: For me it wasn’t changing ideas. I knew where I was going, I do not need to belong to a group, I do not need to belong to an organization. I’ve never been part of a political organization, I learned a valuable lesson while still a youngster of about 13, 14. I had a mentor – he’s dead now –Wolfie Kodesh – he was a Communist – and he explained to me the whys of our situation, that it is not only a racial thing, it’s also a class thing, so at that stage I began to see beyond just the color situation and after he taught me, I still refused to be indoctrinated as a communist. I knew from the beginning my mind should be my own. There are a lot of things that I believe in, but not necessarily because …

Q: Did you have relationships with political groups or were you always trying to be aloof of that? A: Not aloof, when you state aloof, it’s not, I could understand what they’re doing, I can believe in things what they’re doing, but I won’t participate as a group member.

Q: What did you do when you were writing poetry? What was the mechanics of your life, before the publishing house, what were you doing for employment?

A: I was working as a messenger at the newspaper. Ironically, then I started to get into short story writing and here I’m a messenger that I’ve sold more stories to the newspaper than these guys who are reporters – it’s such a bullshit! I knew that I had this urgent need to be a writer! I couldn’t see myself. All the working jobs I’ve had, even with being a messenger, was for a newspaper. I graduated after that working for Golden City Post and Drum and ended up working for Muslim News, another newspaper – I never really did anything else. But all the time I was more than aware of what was happening here and if I had words, my words could only be used and should only be used to fight the system.

Q: Did you ever encounter people who disagreed with you about the use of words? Said, I want to compose an ode to a butterfly and that’s ok?

A: These are alright. I don’t impose myself on how other poetry expresses itself, but I make it quite clear as to how I express myself and if I can influence others, I will. That’s why I edited Black Voices Shout because again no mainstream publishing house would publish that. The only reason why SPROCAS did not publish it was because they had a big money problem with the banning of “Cry Rage” – it was a big financial loss for me them. I came to them and told them this is what I want to do, and they said no, you have to do it on your own. I did it on my own with knowledge of how to do it!

Q: To go back to the method question. Why didn’t the fact poetry was not typically used for dissidence, let’s say [for?] for being a dissident. There wasn’t that much precedent for it. Why poetry? Why not polemic? Why not editorials?

A: Editorials belonged to newspapers and newspapers are owned by the system. And I can’t see myself writing bloody letters. Poetry is direct – like the banned “Cry Rage” – people remember this poem, they tell me it from memory, younger guys younger than I will still recite a verse. I was in a car with a friend of mine stopped at a traffic light and a Xhosa guy rolls down his window and starts reciting the first two verses of my prison poetry – now that’s important! I’m certainly not interested in the vanity of being a poet.

Q: Is that why in the preface to “Cry Rage” you called yourself a man … [of no account! Exactly!] What did that mean?

A: That I’m not going to be taking any of this bullshit of your ego.

Q: It’s interesting to me because I thought that was an interesting thing to call yourself, because so much of BC rhetoric was saying, we are people of account, we are not non people?

A: We are people of account in our fight. I do fight. My words are my weapon. It’s like I’m just using a rather silly analogy, it’s like I’m a gunfighter, I’m all dressed in black leather two guns, to say look at me, I’m a gun fighter.

Q: In that sense, that becomes the account?

A: Yeah, not what I’m doing. I’m parading.

Q: What led you to seek publication with SPROCAS?

A: It was the only area that would – would have the guts to publish it. I couldn’t even imagine going to any of the mainline publishing houses.

Q: How did you find out about SPROCAS? They hadn’t published many things before hand?

A: No, no they had. [The reports?] Yeah, mainly reports. [interruption] They brought numerous books on the poverty situation, all things in those areas. But they did not bring out creative stuff in that sense so my poetry was the first, which after they changed SPROCAS became Ravan press, but that was the first. They were the only people that would look at the stuff and publish it.

Q: When the book came out in 1972, what was your responsibility for the distribution of the book. It is politically contentious material – what was the press docket for that?

A: They had no problem. Again I must speak from an ego point of view, if the system hadn’t banned it, that book would have sold far more copies than Mtshali’s book. While it was still available, more black cats read that than Mtshali’s book.

Q: Did you encounter positive feedback from people? What sort of responses did you get?

A: When you say positive feedback, again it becomes academic bullshit as we’re sitting. Let’s see what did that book [say] about it. It’s what cats on the corner are saying, it’s cats having meetings are saying, cruelty ! I am very anti-academia, I’m very anti-intellecualism. I wrote a line the other day that – “is intellectualism the whorehouse of the mind?” [laughs]

Q: Yes! I’m happy to participate! What about in terms of the government?

A: It gave me endless delight.

Q: What would happen?

A: ‘Firstly, the banning of “Cry Rage.” [How long was it in circulation?] Two weeks! We brought out “Black Voices Shout” – two weeks! ‘My mail was being kept back, ‘if I had a telephone, my telephone would have been tapped. But these were things that – no problem! With the prison poetry, two weeks! And that’s it. It was because of my writing and not because I belonged to a political to do that I spent time with some of the others in Victor Verster and I have no problems. Q: Was there ever a moment when you said to yourself it’s not necessarily worth it to have my writing banned? [Never.] How do you explain that?

A: How could I not write with what was happening? Despite what’s happening to me, again I’ll have to use the thing, I’m a man of no account, I’m not important, but what I’m doing is possibly important.

Q: At the same time, so many other people who potentially saw what was going on, were aware, but there was the ethos of put your head down and go about your business, don’t stick your neck out there and get in trouble? [What business? I didn’t have any business except what I’m doing.] So there was no sense of self preservation? [No! What the hell!] How did you position yourself vis-à-vis the BC as it developed? I’ve seen your letter that you wrote to “Chimurenga” [Biko]

A: I think those cats are fucking up the whole Biko issue. They asked me to write a piece and I think they expected me to write one of those glorious things, but that was highlighting how Biko’s whole thing, is being besmirched.

Q: Tell me about that.

A: Luckily Biko and myself had one meeting. [When was this?] It was way back before he was killed. It was at this place in EL, we went to the funeral of Mapetla Mohapi, a meeting was set up for Biko and myself. He was banned and he also didn’t care then about [being banned]. He stayed in EL. I came there much later and I’ll never forget – he was wearing one of those old army heavy coats and a balaclava. The first thing he said to me was “at last I meet the infamous James Matthews.” We took out a bottle of whiskey and we drank and we spoke about what does BC mean and how is it going to end when we have freedom. Both of us, we had no doubt we will be free, we didn’t know how or when, but we will be free. But we do after that. This is the reason that I wrote that letter – that when we are free, color is not of importance. I could never try subscribe to BC now. It’s a reason I changed the publishing house from BLAC to Realities. I will never now – and not only now – sometimes move to where I think it is, where I should be, I will never now write a poem black is beautiful – people are beautiful. You couldn’t have said that during that period. That would have been a luxurious premises and it could not be true.

Q: Do you think that race is no longer a reality that needs to be explored?

A: It is only we still use racist terms our government, our guys haven’t moved beyond that. When the president and so makes an absurd station about the rainbow nation and this shit is perpetuated by this rainbow nation which compartmentalizes people in the same bullshit as what went before. My first thing that really bugged me badly was the Codesa thing – why did we have to stick to this name of South Africa? If you had any knowledge of the Winds of change when MacMillan came to Africa, instances Gold Coast became Ghana, Tanganyika’s Tanzania, [Dahomey became Benin]. Jah. You see? Why do we still have to be SA? SA is a position on a map. It can’t possibly be the name of a country. We’re Azanians and this is what I’m still fighting and if we are Azanian, the acceptance of Azania, you could be an Azanian of Afrikaner stock, an Azanian of Zulu stock, a Pedi, a Xhosa, or Coloured, to use the term, or Jewish! Born here, third generation or whatever – you’re an Azanian of Jewish stock! We should not have all this bullshit. We look at ourselves as Azanians.

Q: When did that idea start to generate, of changing the name to Azania?

A: We at the BC, we had it all the time from the beginning. Those kids who died in Soweto, if you had gone into their minds, Azania would be the cry that they were crying.

Q: Why Azania? Why not another name?

A: Azania is an area outside the border of SA. I think one of the reasons why the ANC doesn’t embrace Azania, I could be wrong, there was a lot of slave trading. This is another issue that blacks refuse to face – that blacks were also responsible for selling their brothers into slavery and no one wants to talk about it.

Q: So by not pushing the name, they’re pushing aside the legacy.

A: Jah, but we, I think, some of us, slave trading wasn’t an important factor and Azania is more important to us. Even AZAPO, in their name.

Q: Let me go back to this question of you and Biko shared similar ideas about blackness and what would happen after liberation. At the time, did you, you say that you would no longer use black and beautiful now, but for someone who wrote poems saying stop using skin lighteners, how does that no longer play a role? Is black now beautiful and we don’t need to talk about it? Or was that just a political imperative at a particular time?

A: I don’t think it has so much a political connotation – the term black, again as I said, was unity. Zulu could be whatever so long as he did not have a vote. It didn’t have a political ideology attached to it so much as an unification of us. I’m black but I don’t need to push the whole issue – it’s no longer that important for me.

Q: When you looked in the 70s, when you would go back, you say that in the 70s you knew liberation was coming even if you didn’t know when and how; you knew it was coming. When you were writing poetry about it and talking to people about liberation, what did you think it would look like?

A: I had no idea. Only that we would be free. What we do with our freedom is what we should be doing now.

Q: What did it mean “we shall be free?” How would you know when you would be free?

A: The great day for me and for many of us was the vote for the first time. That was the first step that we taking, we don’t need to be tied down to the Bantustan vote or whatever that is. We are as free as a white is in that sense. Be able to stay where you want to stay; be able to work whatever your qualifications. What you do with your personal freedom is a different issue.

Q: In that sense can you say that SA is free simply because of the franchise? A: We’re free on the political level to an extent, yes. But again, the personal issues we still haven’t amongst us got rid of the whole racial things, where particular working class and some of our younger Coloureds are also into some bullshit about ‘darkie.’ Go into the township like Langa and the same thing would apply – they would call me ‘bushie’. That’s why it is imperative that we come across as Azanians so that colour and ethnicity is no longer important. For me it’s still “a luta continua.”

Q: Do you still write poetry that is “a luta?”

A: Not as much as in the past. I’m working on poems about the Palestinian issue, trying to express that the Jew and the Arab are cousins, the land should be their land – it’s the same thing, while I see it from the outside point of view – it’s the same thing with the Afrikaners and the Bantustans. Palestine is a Bantustan! There’s a guy who I just can’t get the name of this Jewish woman lawyer who represented the Palestinians! And I’m sure there are many Jewish people who are on the side of the Palestinians; they might not be that vocal and I can understand possibly why, because the extremists in Israel are as bad as the extremists here! The other poem also I explain that the main sufferer in the issue between Palestine and Israel is peace – peace is being slaughtered and I was attacked here and I found it a new thing – the poem was in the Mail & Guardian and I was attacked for expressing what I expressed.

Q: This question of peace being slaughtered. Over the course of the 70s in SA and in Southern Africa, you start to see more and more violence. [Exactly.] What was your response to violence? How did violence figure into to what you thought you were doing?

A: It is almost a paradox. My poetry advocates violence and yet I am against violence. How do I see it … violence inflicted upon people by the oppressor, it doesn’t matter which colour, I still need to write about the genocide in Rwanda. I did a piece highlighting the fact that the Western world at that period disregarded Rwanda – their consciences are no longer pricked by why what happening. Bosnia was on screens and Rwanda is pushed aside. And then basically the most of the time the attitude that the Western world takes as far as Africa is concerned.

Q: What did you mean that you advocated violence but were against violence? [On a personal level.] What do you mean you advocated?

A: ‘Rage sharp as a blade to cut and slit and spill blood for the blood spilled over three hundred years.’

Q: To play devil’s advocate, that’s poetry, that’s not saying, let’s all go out and get guns and go shoot ‘one settler one bullet.’ Or is it the same?

A: It’s exactly the same. But not everyone is a Boer; that poem is again directed against the racist regime.

Q: Let me ask you. In the mid-70s. [Matthews interrupts.]

A: In Harlem I read these words and words of a similar nature and there was a vast number of youth in the audience and afterwards they all crowded me because they saw and felt a similarity what I said and what they felt about their situation. They asked me – have you got any white friends? And I said yes, and they couldn’t understand. How could I have white friends when I advocate ‘burn baby burn.’ My anger is directed against the regime, not against the individual person. When people like Bram Fischer, like Wolfie Kodesh, like numerous other whites on an individual basis did so much. In ‘Cry Rage’ also there was one poem about white students on the steps of the cathedral. I asked myself where am I, because they are there.

Q: What was your response then to, especially in the period after Soweto with the younger generation, it does become ‘one settler one bullet’, no dialogue? I’ve had interviews with people involved in Soweto and asked, what do you think of whites and they’ve said ‘it’s simple – I wanted to kill them.’ What is your response to that?

A: Well, you have to read ‘No Time for Dreams’, you’ll have to read … so it’s important when it comes out to buy a copy of the book. It will answer some of the questions. Again, I have to repeat to you that I don’t belong to a group. ‘Will the [ ] be paved in blood again.’ This a protest against when I thought was a needless protest of students. [In ’76?] Later.

Q: What did you think when you saw the student protests in ’76?

A: On my side, I might have curbed some of the things. The one mistake – or I made – I should have wrote poems against the burning of schools, against the burning of books. It’s such a regrettable situation. But then these, the youth, were so inflamed that rationality was beyond them. So there was a case of take a stone and throw, but then again it’s such an emotional thing that this is what I need to do regardless of what is going to happen.

Q: Let me go back and ask the question I was going to ask a minute ago. In the mid’70s when people like Moodley and Cooper are on trial, in the transcript one of the things that’s most interest is that the government is trying to prove when you say ‘burn baby burn…’ that that is the same thing as giving someone money with which to buy a gun and instructions to go shoot someone. It is the exact same thing to committing the violence. How would you have responded?

A: At that time I would have said let’s buy more guns.

Q: You think that they should have been found guilty, that the charge was true?

A: Jah, jah. And I wouldn’t really have objected to it. You see, this is the situation that we realized that death is round the road. You didn’t have to bother about all this bullshit if you’re going to be killed. That’s it. It is the key because we believe in what we’re doing, that’s whole [unclear] If I randomly – and I can only speak for myself – if I went out and shoot you and kill you – why? Just because you’re a white? I needed a far more stronger reason for killing you. But within the broadness of the racist regime, it’s a different issue.

Q: Did you think that when people you know are starting to be killed, when school kids are starting to be killed, did you think about your own death in that sense? A: I think in one of my poems I said the same thing, that death is just a stone’s throw away or down the road. There’s a difference, I suppose. I did make a point about the Unity Movement who I labeled as parlor patriots. They knew all the theories of the revolution, but they never dirtied their hands in the revolution.

Q: So getting dirty, then, meant, potential death? I guess I don’t understand how that Unity movement, how that worked?

A: As I said, the Unity Movement, you could ask any person about what Marx said, or Lenin and they had all the answers for you. They would theorize how the revolution should be run, but they never took part in the revolution – very few of them. Even up to now, there’s no way I could ever bother myself and it’s not a matter of arrogance, it’s just a matter that they were, in my estimation, insignificant.

Q: Given all that’s happened, given how time has interceded and the changes the country has undergone, how do you identify yourself now? I’m thinking back to the man of no account? How has it changed?

A: I do have time now to write poems about my age – ‘age is a beautiful face’, the delight of being old, among the elders who sit and weave glorious thoughts in our fabric. I wrote love poems! [cites some verse.] I would not have written those things in the struggle period.

Q: What has changed to allow you to write them now?

A: Perhaps I’m growing older, and there’s less and less sense of the violence inflicted upon us by the state; there’s certainly the violence of poverty, which the state has not done much to eradicate. I wrote in ’72, I think, a lot about the Dimbaza, the children, and ‘the fields are fertilized by the bones of the ancient ones …’ Nothing has changed and that was in ’72, more than thirty years ago.

Q: Do you think it will change?

A: It must change.

Q: Does that mean that it will? I’m thinking that you said you and Biko had conversation and were both confident that ‘freedom would come,’ notwithstanding that to some degree it has, there’s the franchise [Yeah] will the other sort of freedom …

A: That is why there are people like myself who will not be caught in those ideological traps, ideological outposts and that is why I could never be part of the groups that use the terms of the past and some of them still display racism in their attitudes.

Q: I want to go back to when you said that Biko was “besmirched” in current day politics. What do you mean by that?

A: They never went beyond what ‘should be.’ They’re still trading on ‘we’re black.’ I am very strongly in this situation, there’s no need for blackness, it just becomes a bigger laager than the Boer laager and this is exactly what they’re doing. And when the president can speak about blackness and he does not group Coloureds or Indians in his blackness. That’s a mutation off of what we meant of being black.

Q: How would you best then commemorate BC or someone like Biko? What is the best monument to that?

A: Not to perpetuate that whole blackness; that scene is done with. We will perpetuate the memory of Steve Biko, as the statue was erected to him. But not the continuation because we’re free! I don’t want to be part of BC now. It does sound contradictory.

Q: It’s interesting. One of the things I’m interested in is that BC does not fit in with ANC and PAC.

A: It never fitted in with ANC.

Q: And so that it, because it doesn’t have an ideology, it’s not to supposed to perpetuate itself.

A: Exactly as I said! With freedom, why do we need to be addressing ourselves in a particular colour, why?

Q: To go back into time, why was it important then to write poems celebrating black women, in the natural sense? [Laughs..] and then poems against things like hair relaxers and skin lighteners. Why in that time why that specific argument …

A: Because they were trying to turn themselves into pseudo-whites. I even hit out on Percy Sledge coming here. [Cites some verse.]

Q: I’ve read the newspaper coverage of his visit. They used him to sell furniture in Jo’burg – this is Percy Sledge saying, I dig this bed, baby.

A: I know. The reason why in most areas like that, you’re suffering, you’re badly treated because of your colour and your political perceptions has not furthered beyond that and here you find Percy Sledge – big black cat from America, blah, blah, blah – so emotionally you’re drawn to this bullshit about thinking about it. Nina Simone all my books – the prison poetry is dedicated to Nina Simone – and in all of my books there are at least one or two poems on Nina. When I listen to her sing ‘Mississippi Goddamn’, ‘Pirate Jenny,’ ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, but particularly ‘Mississippi Goddman’ – I mean it expresses so much!

Q: What about it?

A: Again, her whole outrage and her willingness to fight. And ‘Pirate Jenny’ turning against her keeper.

Q: So it comes down then, in a sense, to outrage, to crying out against …

A: Not only to cry, but to rectify. That’s the whole basis of ‘Cry Rage’, that’s the whole basis of being a dissident poet and not a protest poet – ‘my words become bullets and the poem is a pistol.’

Q: Thank you very much.