Single Cycle Degree programme in Lingue Letterature Europee Americane e Postcoloniali Final Thesis Mzwakhe Mbuli, “The People’s Poet” Keeping South African Oral Traditions Alive Supervisor Ch. Prof. Marco Fazzini Assistant supervisor Ch. Prof. Shaul Bassi Graduand Linda Gnoato 846037 Academic Year 2017/2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: From the Threats of Apartheid to the ‘Rainbow Nation’. A Historical Overview…………………………………………………….5 1.1: From the origins of the apartheid policies to ‘Sharpeville’. ………………………………………………………………………………………..5 1.1.1: Premises. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..5 1.1.2: The World Wars. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….6 1.1.3: The establishment of apartheid. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………7 1.1.4: The formation of the PAC and the Sharpeville massacre. ………………………………………………………………………………………....9 1.2: The 1960s. South African independence and the Rivonia Trial. ……………………………………………………………………………10 1.3: The 1970s and 1980s. The Soweto uprising and the states of emergency. ………………………………………………………11 1.4: The 1990s. Glimpses of hope. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….14 1.4.1: The early 1990s and Mandela’s release. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..14 1.4.2: From the 1994 democratic elections to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. …………………………………...…..15 1.5: The twenty-first century. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..16 Chapter 2: The Oral Tradition. Origins, developments and contemporary trends. …………………………………………………………………..21 2.1: Genres and developments. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..22 2.1.1: The encounter between oral forms and colonialism. ………………………………………………………………………………………………..24 2.1.2: The oral traditions of the Xam/Bushmen. The earliest examples. …………………………………………………………………….….25 2.1.3: Praise poetry. The Shaka epic of the Zulu. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….28 2.1.4: The encounter between orality and Christianity. Hymns. ……………………………………………………………………………………….33 2.1.5: Black Consciousness and recent oral poetry trends. ……………………………………………………………………………………………..…37 2.1.6: Oral poetry in the 1980s and 1990s. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….42 2.2: Further features of African orality. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………44 2.2.1: Rhetorical features. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….44 2.2.2: Themes. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………47 2.2.3: Ethnical traditions. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..48 2.3: Poetry and music. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….51 2.3.1: Music within voice. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..51 2.3.2: Sung poetry. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………..52 2.3.3: South African examples. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………..53 Chapter 3: Mzwakhe Mbuli. The People’s Poet. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………55 3.1: The People’s Poet. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………56 3.1.1: Mzwakhe’s first approaches to artistic performance. ………………………………………………………………………………………………56 3.1.2: The eighties. The rise to success and the dangers of apartheid. …………………………………………………………………….…….58 3.1.3: The nineties. The ‘Mandela turning point’ and the ’98 trial. …………………………………………………………………………………..60 3.1.4: Mzwakhe’s career after prison (2003 – 2010). …………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..65 3.1.5: Contemporary Mzwakhe (2010 – present). …………………………………………………………………………………………………………...….66 3.2: Oral, literary and musical influences in Mzwakhe Mbuli’s career. ………………………………………………………………………….71 3.2.1: Oral influences. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……71 3.2.2: Literary influences. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………74 3.2.3: Musical influences. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………80 Chapter 4: An analysis of Mzwakhe Mbuli’s poetic work. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………86 4.1: Performance and oral poetry. Mzwakhe Mbuli’s case. ……………………………………………………………………………………………...87 4.1.1: The performative element in oral traditions. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………...……87 4.1.2: Mzwakhe Mbuli in performance. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………88 4.2: A selection of Mzwakhe’s poems. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….90 4.2.1: Change Is Pain (1986) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….91 4.2.1a: ‘Behind The Bars’ ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...…92 4.2.1b: ‘The Day Shall Dawn’ …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….95 4.2.1c: ‘Now Is The Time’ ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..100 4.2.2: Unbroken Spirit (1989) ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..103 4.2.2a: ‘Alone’ ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…104 4.2.2b: ‘Accused’ ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….107 4.2.2c: ‘Crocodiles’ ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………111 4.2.3: Resistance Is Defence (1992) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..116 4.2.3a: ‘Land Deal’ ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………..117 4.2.4: New Perspectives. Mbulism (2004) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………..122 4.2.4a: ‘Rape’ ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..122 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….129 Appendix (A)…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..131 Appendix (B)…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..133 References and bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….135 Mzwakhe Mbuli, “The People’s Poet”. Keeping South African Oral Traditions Alive. Introduction The research that I have carried out on South African history and literary traditions, and on Mzwakhe himself, has proven to be extremely captivating on different levels, as I have broadened my knowledge not only on historical and social issues such as racial conflict, but also on the African literary and musical traditions, which still preserve and cherish the communicative and empathic power of orality. It has offered me the opportunity to reflect on how a language such as English, which came to South Africa as the colonisers’ linguistic medium, can now channel and convey messages of resistance and hope. English, nevertheless, is not the first European language to have arrived in the lands of southern Africa. What is now known as the Republic of South Africa began its history of colonialism way before the arrival of the British: ‘the cultural history of South Africa has always been one of a multilingual composite, within which English South African culture is merely one part of a broader historical-cultural happening’ (Gray 1979:2). As Gail Nattrass reports with clarity in his book A Short History of South Africa (2017), the first European visits date back to the final decades of the fifteenth century, when Portuguese traders stopped at the Cape on their way to India, the same pathway that would be travelled by English and Dutch fleets at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is only in the mid-1600s that the Dutch established large-scale settlements at the Cape, thus beginning their cultural and linguistic domination. These Dutch settlers were called ‘Boers’, and soon submitted the local tribes of Hottentots and Bushmen. Nevertheless, it is not earlier than one century later, in 1795, when the British started a period of occupation that persisted until 1806, the year in which they gained complete control of the land from the Dutch and proclaimed the Cape as a British Colony. It remained part of the British Commonwealth until 1961. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the South African territory saw itself stolen from the local kingdoms – Zulu, Thlokwa, Ndebele, and Sotho – and debated 1 Mzwakhe Mbuli, “The People’s Poet”. Keeping South African Oral Traditions Alive. between the ruling and cultural hegemony of two European communities: on one side the English- speaking settlers and British missionaries who had just declared their governmental dominion, and on the other side the Dutch/Afrikaans-speaking descendants of the previous colonisers. English and Afrikaans have since then been the two most spoken European languages, coexisting along with Indian – brought by Indian workers in eastern South Africa – and the indigenous African languages. It is this cultural-linguistic landscape that must have suggested to Stephen Gray the term ‘multilingual composite’; it is this ‘multilingual composite’ that later developed into a ‘rainbow nation’, as Mandela would proudly say. However, despite these optimistic views, it is widely known that the coexistence of languages and cultures in South Africa has not always been peaceful; Michael Chapman (1996) states that South Africa’s history has always been characterised by racial and ethnic conflict, and Itala Vivan (1996) describes South Africa as a country where ‘Africans have been ripped off of their land and citizenship right by Europeans, and 1 where Africans have resisted throughout the centuries with every means at their disposal.’ Further well-known examples of a violent coexistence are attested by the Anglo-Boer wars and