Dr Lindiwe Mabuza, poet, editor and ambassador, 1938–2021

At the end of yet another difficult year, I was greatly saddened to hear of the death of Dr Lindiwe Mabuza, a.k.a. Sono Molefe, on 6 December 2021. She was 83.

Many people and organisations – far more important than uHlanga, and far more intimately involved with Dr Mabuza’s life and work – have left tributes since her death. I have never suffered the death of an author before, and I have found it tremendously difficult to address, but I shall try nonetheless.

I was privileged enough to work with Dr Mabuza during the project which saw uHlanga, in collaboration with Dr Uhuru Phalafala and with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, re-release Malibongwe, a book of poetry written by South African women, who were chiefly in exile during the Struggle. Mabuza, working under the nom de plume Sono Molefe, had commissioned, collated and edited the original book, which was eventually published under the banner of the ANC throughout Europe in the 1980s, and which we eventually brought out in its first South African edition last year.

We have not just lost a great South African, but a great poet, editor, organiser, journalist, freedom fighter, and, eventually, ambassador for the democratic nation that her life’s work helped to bring into being. A life such as hers can’t be encapsulated in a pithy statement. Our democracy was, as she prophetically wrote in the original foreword to Malibongwe in 1982, “a victory no power on earth can deny the people of South Africa”. May you rest peacefully in your victory, Dr Mabuza.

I would like to send my condolences to Dr Mabuza’s family and friends in this painful time.

–NM

Poetry London reviews Musawenkosi Khanyile and C.J. Driver

As part of Poetry London’s landmark 100th issue, Canadian-Scottish poet Tarn McArthur has written a glowing review of Musawenkosi Khanyile’s All the Places and C.J. Driver’s Still Further: New Poems 2000–2020.

McArthur writes that “Musawenkosi Khanyile casts a dappled light on his country’s rural, township, and urban livelihoods to unveil how a society’s fragmented state is mirrored in the psyches of those who suffer its social and economic stratification.”

About Driver: “As with many whose personal histories have been scarred by civil strife and sacrifice, a part of what sustains the self within these poems is the solidarity found amongst friends and family, along with a sustained devotion to those who have passed away.”

The full review may be found here.

Announcing Ilifa by Athambile Masola and Unam Wena by Mthunzikazi A. Mbungwana – iincwadi zethu zokuqala ngesiXhosa!

uHlanga are proud to announce the publication of our first two books ngesiXhosa, Ilifa by Athambile Masola and Unam Wena by Mthunzikazi A. Mbungwana.

Publishing in isiXhosa is something we’ve always wanted to do, and finally we are bringing out two books of original, contemporary imibongo yesiXhosa by two fantastic young talents.

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Athambile Masola is perhaps best known as a writer of essays, but in Ilifa, her debut collection of poems, she freely and fruitfully explores the realities of love, morality and pleasure in a dangerous world.

Unabashedly modern in style and contemporary in her outlook, Masola looks with fresh eyes at the ways in which South Africans’ freedoms are still restricted by their circumstances – particularly by poverty and widespread abuse against women. Equally, however, these poems extol the possibility of healing through allowing one to listen to oneself.

Masola gifts us with an isiXhosa that is written as it is spoken – as a language that is urban, alive, and a reflection of the time and place we live in; a society in which freedom continues to be conditional.

© Nonzuzo Gxekwa

Masola, descended from amaGcina and amaBhele, grew up in East London. A Mandela Rhodes Scholar, Masola researches the literary careers of historically ignored black women writers.

She is the founder of Asinakuthula Collective, as well as a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Cape Town. Her work has been published widely in journals, newspapers, and online. This is her first collection of poems.

(Funda le nkcazo ngesiXhosa apha.)

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Mthunzikazi A. Mbungwana is also no stranger to South African literature, having self-published her first chapbook Umnikelo in 2015. In Unam Wena, however, she reaches new levels, developing her style with a loaded winsomeness that has no parallel in modern isiXhosa poetry. With a remarkably poised voice, Mbungwana makes poems that are as assertive when they are explicit as when they are subtle.

Here is no easy comfort about love’s lasting ramifications, nor the sometimes tender but ultimately stifling idea of home. Nevertheless, Mbungwana captures the giddy ramblings of a desirous heart, as well as delving into the weighty histories of familial love and scandal, brandishing an isiXhosa that is both deeply literary and gloriously vital.

With poems that echo out into each other, and lines insistently rooted in their imagery, Mbungwana finds a way through the eternal and internal contest between the opposing forces of glory and pain, in the process making her own mark in a long and proud poetic tradition.

© Oz

Mbungwana is a part-time teacher in the Creative Writing Department at Rhodes University, where she also received a Masters in Creative Writing in isiXhosa. Her writings focus on themes of home, dreams, and everyday black queer life.

Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, such as New Contrast, Atlanta Review, Our Words, Our Worlds: Writing on Black South African Women Poets 2008–2018, and To breathe into another voice: A South African Anthology of Jazz Poetry. She was born in Upper Indwe, Cala.

(Funda le nkcazo ngesiXhosa apha.)

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Civil disturbances and other events of national disruption aside, both books will be available from the first week of August in all good bookstores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. They are distributed to those bookstores by Protea Boekhuis Distribution.

Outside of South Africa, all of our books are available through the African Books Collective.

Maneo Mohale wins the 2020 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry

Photo by Andile Buka

uHlanga is proud to announce that Maneo Mohale has won the 2020 Glenna Luschei Award for African Poetry for their debut collection Everything Is A Deathly Flower.

The Glenna Luschei Award, named after the U.S. American philanthopist and administered by the African Poetry Book Fund at the University of Nebraska, is a prize of US$1000 awarded annually for an outstanding book of poetry by an African writer. The 2020 award, announced on 4 June 2021, was judged by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, who said about Mohale’s collection:

“What is poetry but a manifesto of love, an invitation and an outpouring of struggle? As we roam the pages of the collection, we witness the love of land, of nature, of humanity; one is shown pain turned into raw beauty. The collection stood out because of the author’s commitment to the image, to the story and to language itself.

A gifted poet will, in this world of distractions, compel the reader to listen deeper, to filter out the verbosity of the market and the barrage of restrictions that humans place upon language, to find the voice of memory, a sound so close to silence.”

We are very grateful to the African Poetry Book Fund for this honour, which is the second Glenna Luschei Award won for a book published by uHlanga, the first being Collective Amnesia by Koleka Putuma, who won the 2017 award. Mohale’s collection was edited by fellow uHlanga poet Francine Simon, and we also thank her for her contribution to the project.

In addition, this accolade caps off a year of great success for uHlanga, completing a clean sweep of the three most prominent poetry awards that our books were eligible for during the last calendar year. Mohale joins fellow award-winners Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, winner of the 2020 Ingrid Jonker Prize for Zikr, and Musawenkosi Khanyile, winner of the 2020 South African Literary Award for Poetry for All the Places. Khanyile and Mohale were the two other finalists, in addition to Bamjee, for the Ingrid Jonker Prize.

Everything Is A Deathly Flower is available in all good bookstores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, and everywhere else through the African Books Collective.

And – lastly – congratulations to Maneo!

Announcing Still Further: New Poems, 2000–2020 by C.J. Driver

uHlanga’s first book for 2021 – and C.J. Driver’s first full collection of poems since 2005 – is cause for celebration.

Selected from the many poems Driver has written and published in magazines, booklets, and anthologies since his professional retirement in 2000, Still Further manages to take in the international scope of his many careers: as anti-apartheid activist, teacher, headmaster, and – of course – as writer and poet.

While showing an impressive range of formal poetics, weighty philosophy, and Driver’s trademark political forthrightness, this is a book bound by love, replete with reflections on family, companionship, and old friends remembered. Imbued with a sense of history – not to mention an ample wit and sharp eye for irony – this collection does not just portray one of South Africa’s great living poets; Still Further is a testament to the value of people – no matter how great or humble – whose shared lives and histories make one’s own life worth living.

Affirming, immersive, and generously conceived, this is a must for any serious reader of English poetry.

Author photo by Douglas Reid Skinner

C.J. Driver, always known as Jonty, was born in Cape Town in 1939. He was President of the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students in 1963–4, and during that time was detained in solitary confinement by the security police. The renewal of his passport was refused when he was at Oxford in 1967. He became stateless for five years. His first two novels were banned in South Africa and, even after becoming a British citizen, he was refused permission to visit his home country until after the end of apartheid.

Driver has been a productive and increasingly celebrated writer, publishing five novels, two biographies, two memoirs and twelve collections or booklets of poems. He was a teacher for many years, in Africa, Hong Kong, India and England, latterly a headmaster. Since his retirement from teaching in 2000, he has been a full-time writer. He lives with his wife in East Sussex, England.

This book will be available mid-April in all good bookstores in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. They are distributed to those bookstores by Protea Boekhuis Distribution.

Outside of South Africa, all of our books are available through the African Books Collective.