Sotho

On my poetry blog, Poéfrika, I’m trying to collect 52 poems that are in my opinion the most representative of Africa. A few are mine (hey, I’m trying!). They really are the ones I’ve worked on the most. Now, do you have one from anyone that you think I should include? If so, send it to me and I’ll be happy to consider it. In the end I’d like to have 52 awesome Africa-inspired poems linked to on my website. A poem per week. Here is the not-quite-finished list. Click away and enjoy.

• Week 01: The profile on the pillow
• Week 02: Wrath
• Week 03: Sunrise
• Week 04: Confession
• Week 05: Butterfly
• Week 06: All the same
• Week 07: Still I rise
• Week 08: Where have you gone?
• Week 09: Saturn’s Child
• Week 10: Thetsane blues
• Week 11: I, Too, Sing America
• Week 12: A Poem for the innocents
• Week 13: Africa
• Week 14: Preface to a 20-volume suicide note
• Week 15: Feeling fucked up
• Week 16: Facing it
• Week 17: Plea
• Week 18: Song of sunrise
• Week 19: Their behaviour
• Week 20: Easy skanking
• Week 21: Dark August
• Week 22: Song, somewhere near Roma
• Week 23: Stars of stone
• Week 24: I want to write
• Week 25: White canes bend at two places
• Week 26: The bean eaters
• Week 27: Land
• Week 28: Telephone conversation
• Week 29: Moments
• Week 30: Arriving at the night fire
• Week 31: Sunflowers
• Week 32: In the kitchen
• Week 33: Frederick Douglass
• Week 34: Adolescence II
• Week 35: Your presence
• Week 36: There it is
• Week 37: Like a beacon
• Week 39: The grotto of Chehrabad
• Week 40: Notes from my mother’s village…
• Week 41: Love after love
• Week 42: The lost baby poem
• Week 43: I know why the caged bird sings
• Week 44: Bachata
• Week 45: Tourist
• Week 46: Men flow like rivers
• Week 47: Hematidrosis in the olive grove
• Week 48: The sophisticated skinhead
• Week 49: Word speaks
• Week 50: Grace
• Week 51: If you want to know me
• Week 52: Come

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Stephen calls him a silky soul singer, which I think is a darn good description. He was born Marvin Pentz Gay, but stuck an “E” to his surname to avoid misunderstandings. Remember I heard it through the grapevine? He followed that up with a string of successes like You’re all I need to get by in 1968 with Tammy Terrell, What’s going on? in 1971, Let’s get it on in 1973:

“Let’s Get It On” is a 1973 number-one single recorded by American soul singer Marvin Gaye for the Tamla (Motown) label. The title song of the album release of the same title, “Let’s Get It On” held the number-one position on the Billboard Pop Singles chart for two non-consecutive weeks in September 1973. In its first time at number one, it replaced “Brother Louie” by Stories, and was replaced by “Delta Dawn” by Helen Reddy; it then replaced “Delta Dawn” and was finally replaced by “We’re an American Band” by Grand Funk Railroad. Written by Marvin Gaye and Ed Townsend, and produced by Gaye, it was the most successful single ever released on a Motown label.
[source…]

After several other hits like Got to give it up, a funky dance groove, and Sexual healing, perhaps his most famous hit (partly for being the most recent in memory), Marvin descended into drugs and booze, and fears that someone was out to kill him. In 1983 he did a version of the Star-spangled banner, the American national anthem. He finally moved in with his parents and was shot dead by his preacher father on 1 April 1984, a day before his 45th birthday. He is sorely missed. Most of this information and more can be found on Wikipedia.

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Tsidii Le Loka, originally from Lesotho, South Africa, but now living and working in theatre and TV in New York City, is to work with Highland Council’s Mairi Mhor Gaelic Song Fellow, Fiona Mackenzie.
[source…]

That’s like saying, “Whitney Houston, originally from The United States, Canada, but now…” C’mon people, check your facts!

Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father, who died when she was six, was a Xhosa. Her professional career began in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers, before she formed her own group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of South Africa.

In 1959, she performed in the musical King Kong alongside Hugh Masekela, her future husband. Though she was a successful recording artist, she was only receiving a few dollars for each recording session and no provisional royalties, and was keen to go to the US. Her break came when she starred in the anti-Apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa in 1959. When the Italian government invited her to the premier of the film at the Venice Film Festival, she decided not to return home. Her South African passport was revoked shortly afterwards.

Makeba then travelled to London where she met Harry Belafonte, who assisted her in gaining entry to and fame in the United States. She released many of her most famous hits there including Pata Pata, The Click Song (Qongqothwane in Xhosa), and Malaika. In 1966, Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba. The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under Apartheid
[more…].

What I personally remember of Miriam is the voice, and the way she was beloved. My folks listened to her at the same time as they listened to Jim Reeves (go figure), and the two form the basis of my pre-teen musical heritage, together with my mother singing around her chores, around her cooking, singing Sesotho traditional songs or Miriam’s Xhosa songs: The Click Song, or Khawuleza. Beautiful woman. Happy birthday to her.

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Until December 31^st, 2007, Canopic Jar will be accepting submissions of poetry, fiction and visual art. No more than five poems, no more than one short story, no more than five visual pieces. Click here to submit (and scroll down for English).

I’m in Pambazuka with a poem…

Probable look of Jesus

“There’s a reference in Paul which says it’s disgraceful for a man to wear long hair, so it looks pretty sure that people of that period had to have reasonably short hair. The traditional depictions of Jesus with long flowing golden hair are probably inaccurate.”

Deciding on skin colour was more difficult, though. But the earliest depictions of Jews, which date from the 3rd Century, are - as far as can be determined - dark-skinned.

“We do seem to have a relatively dark skinned Jesus. In contemporary parlance I think the safest thing is to talk about Jesus as ‘a man of colour’.” This probably means olive-coloured, he says. [source]
…………………………

No one took time to tell me that the picture of the blue eyed, blond haired ‘Jesus’ hanging from the wall in my parent’s living room was actually the family member of some European artist from the 16th century who was commissioned by the leaders of the white church to paint the Son of God in the image of a white man in order to enslave and dominate the original people of the scriptures. So I grew up thinking that I was God’s little nappy headed step child. [source]
…………………………

“. . . Jesus and his family spent more than a fleeting moment in Egypt. It is not inconceivable, for example, that Jesus might well have learned to walk and talk right here in Africa. Further, Jesus and his Jewish family, being Afro-Asiatic in colour and culture, would have appeared more chocolate-brown than Caucasian in complexion — more like a typically miscegenated African American, Kenyan Kikuyu or South African ‘coloured’.” (Gosnell L. Yorke, “Biblical hermeneutics: an Afrocentric perspective”, Religion and Theology 2/2 (1995), pp. 145-158; reproduced on-line at http://www.unisa.ac.za/dept/press/rt/22/theol2w.html)
…………………………

In the December 2002 edition of Popular Mechanics, Jesus was shown as looking like a typical Galilean Semite. Among the points made was that the Bible records that Jesus’ disciple, Judas had to point him out to those arresting him. The implied argument being that if Jesus’ physical appearance differed that markedly from his disciples, then he would have been relatively easy to identify. [source]

The image in question is the one shown here.
~Ed.
…………………………

Conservative Christians generally believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. They accept the statements in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived. That is, Jesus’ conception did not involve male sperm, This would imply that God either:

• Created an living embryo with a unique human DNA in one of Mary’s fallopian tubes.
• Created special DNA which fertilized an ovum produced by Mary’s body.

Thus, Jesus would have had DNA that was either 50% or 100% created uniquely by God. If so, then Jesus could have had any height, hair color, eye color, skin hue, style of nose, etc. He may or may not have resembled a typical Palestinian from 1st Century CE. [source]
…………………………

Rethabile’s editorial:
So this is what folks have been saying about the race and colour of Jesus of Nazareth. Will we ever know for sure? Do we care? I’d venture to say we probably don’t. The deal, as far as I’m concerned, is that many of you out there will readily consider close to the truth this image, and not this one. Why is that, considering the region Jesus came from?

Science and computer programs say Jesus probably looked more like the image at the top of this post, than a blue-eyed, blond-haired man. So why is the world flooded with images of the latter and very few of the former? You tell me.

But I digress. I wanted to say that the deal for me is the fact that many use this ubiquitous image to fortify their personal beliefs about race: If even the Son of God is Caucasian, … (please add the rest). As more and more “evidence” piles up about the probable appearance of Jesus, perhaps more than a few racists may look at other races differently, and perhaps with a little more respect.

We shouldn’t really care what Jesus looked like; but now, all of us shouldn’t care. And nobody should use whatever physical image of Jesus is floating around in art galleries to further their beliefs about mankind.

A picture is a strong message, and one that is easily registered and remembered (it speaks a thousand words). Given what we’ve been shown over the ages, does what scientists suggest as Jesus’s image surprise you, shock you, revile you? Or none of the above? Care to tell us something about it?

UPDATE:
I urge you to try a meme that I’ve put up on my other blog. The result may just stun you. Here’s the link: Christ! Another meme.

Mosotho horseman

Lesotho’s national anthem’s first verse says Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntatà rona, or Lesotho, land of our fathers. The music was composed by Ferdinand-Samuel Laur (1791-1854) and the lyrics were written by François Coillard (1834-1904), two Frenchmen. The freshly independent Lesotho adopted the tune as its national anthem in 1967, a year after gaining independence from Britain. You can listen to the anthem on the government website.

The two French fellows who penned it did a pretty good job. I quite like the way it sounds. The mothers, though–there are no mothers? We’ll let that slide. Sometime in the future, though, we’re gonna have to tinker with that line so as to include our mothers, who actually do the donkey’s work but always get the lesser of everything. The issue is the same in almost every document written before, and even during, the twentieth century, partly because the majority of human beings believe God is a man.

Is Lesotho the land of our fathers? We know that our fore-parents came from up north somewhere. My very own ancestors, Bakhatla or Bakgatla, came from Botswana. I’ve always heard talk of Ntsoana-Tsatsi, a place where the Basotho supposedly came from.

“Ntsoana-Tsatsi” sounds like “From the Sun”, so it could mean the East or the North-East. When I was in Nairobi, Kenya, I met a guy from Zambia: Mukelabai XXXXXXX. What was funny was the fact that he would stare at my brothers and me when we spoke. We became friends and stayed in contact for many years after that, for Mukelabai was a Lozi and could understand almost everything we were saying.

The Balozi from Zambia, it turns out, decided to go down South, and eventually formed a big chunk of what is today the Basotho nation. At least that’s what one school of thought says. Mukelabai sings the Lesotho national anthem like it was the Zambian national anthem. Why? Because of François Coillard. The anthem author had adventures all over southern Africa, especially in Barotseland, and must have written the tune in Silozi / Sesotho. The group that stayed around Zambia still sings it, as well as the one that trekked south! So who are we? Do we own this land enough to call it Fatše la bo-ntatà rona?

What about the bushmen (Baroa in Sesotho, Basarwa in Setswana) we found there? Isn’t it the land of their fathers more than it is the land of ours? I think we ended up blending with Baroa, which would give all of us together some right to the land and justify some of that first verse, Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona. Apparently

one important site of early settlement was Nts’oana-Tsatsi near present-day Vrede in the northern Free State. Archaeological investigations have revealed that this area was settled as early as 1350, probably by the Bafokeng clan. These were the pioneers of the Sotho groups who settled much of the Free State and Lesotho. They lived closely with the Baroa as well as with the ancestors of the Baphuthi, who were the first Iron Age peoples to settle by the Caledon River Valley. The northern half of the Free State is the true heartland of Sotho settlement. Lesotho, as we know it today, was the southern frontier of this civilization although the upper portion of the Caledon River Valley was very rich and fertile

The above excerpt also identifies Ntsoana-Tsatsi, which is where my mum had always taught me was the origin of the Basotho people. A myth by many standards. But judging by the age of the Basotho nation, I guess we do come from the North-East or the East somehow, and I guess we do have legitimate claim to this land and can go ahead and call it Lefatše la bo-ntat’a rona. The next verse is Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona, or Among worlds it is the most beautiful.

What does one say about one’s country but that it is the most gorgeous of all? I certainly am not going to say that it is the ugliest. Yet, looking at that second verse of the national anthem’s first stanza:

Lesotho, fatše la bo ntat’a rona
Hara mafatše le letle ke lona

I have often wondered what we mean to say. You and I have already agreed that yes, we can lay claim to the land and call it Land of our fathers, the first verse. Which gives us the right to make another claim: Among worlds it is the most beautiful, the second verse. We’re lying through our teeth. We’re lying to ourselves and we’re lying to the world, because we do not believe what we’re singing. How do I know? If we believed what we were singing and really thought our country was the most beautiful in the world, then

We’d do a lot towards keeping it that way.We would be selfless, and go out of our way to help unfortunate Basotho. We would plant trees all over the place, instead of uprooting them. We would not have burned down Maseru, the capital city, because we’d lost an election. We would not be running away and draining Lesotho of its grey-matter. We would not suffer from IPS, Inverted Pyramid Syndrome, but back and support everything local. We would not have killed other Basotho for political gain. We would not throw paper and other rubbish in the street but in the rubbish bin.

That’s how I know. And I hereby ask you, when you hear yourself chanting that second verse of the first stanza, to wonder what it is you are doing for Lesotho that gives you a right to proclaim its beauty before the world. As much as we have agreed that we can safely say the land is ours, I disagree as to its purpoted absolute beauty. Beauty, like love, must be maintained through deliberate action.

“I’m washing my car because I want it to look beautiful.” When you’re done washing it, then you drive it to town to boast, because at that instant you do believe it is beautiful, because you’ve done something to gain the right to believe that it is beautiful. Why should it be different when it concerns a country? You shine your shoes regularly, you whiten your “liteki” (sneakers) and iron your shirt to a crease. When you go out at night wearing those clothes you feel handsome, you feel that you can conquer love, you try to conquer love. Why should it be different when it concerns a country?

We’re lying to ourselves and to the world. One of our common goals must be to ensure that Lesotho remains or becomes the most beautiful we can make it. Beauty rarely comes with the package. How? Look at the list above and start making that 2nd verse of the 1st stanza true.

Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona,
Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona,
Ke moo re hlahileng.

Verse 3 is pretty straightforward. We’ve already talked about verse 1, Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona, and verse 2, Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona. This is therefore verse 3, Ke moo re hlahileng, or It is the place of our birth.

Why shouldn’t it be? I was personally born there, at Scott Hospital in Morija. My parents were born there, in the Quthing district on the southern tip. It is, it seems, the place of our birth. But we are supposed to have come from up north or north-east, if you recall. Ntsoana-Tsatsi, to be exact, and we found Baroa (Bushmen) inhabiting the area that is present-day Lesotho. In Sesotho, “boroa” means south, so that Afrika-Boroa is South Africa. Baroa means People of the South. They were there when we arrived! We were going down south and they were there people of the south.

We were born there but of course one of the prior generations must have got “naturalised.” Oh, it happens all the time. New-comers integrate their new societies frequently, and usually even become more nationalist than the folks that were already there. When the new-comers butcher the already established people, though, and grab their land, naturalisation it is not. New-comers to the American continent hacked and decimated the people they found there. I am told we lived and inter-married with the Bushmen so that we became one: Basotho. Ke moo re hlahileng.

Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona,
Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona,
Ke moo re hlahileng,
Ke moo re holileng.

Verse 4 is in a way a continuation of verse 3. Ke moo re holileng, or It is where we grew up. I personally grew up and became a responsible and conscious human being outside Lesotho. But I don’t suppose that’s what the lyrics relate to, since they are more figurative than Cartesian. I believe that a non-negligible minority of Basotho teenagers either left of their own desire or were driven out¹. Either way they, just like me, grew up outside Lesotho. So what does the verse mean, then?

As far as I’m concerned, it is true that the most visible part of my growing up happened in exile, which means my voice deepened, I grew a beard, I almost doubled the size of my shoes, I got sloshed for the first time, and I became a hopeless fan of woman. But almost every seed was planted, and the seed-bed itself remained, in Lesotho. That’s where I first met hope, felt the joy of belonging, faced desperation, knew fear, and touched compassion.

Perhaps things like these happen in other places, too. But my own seed-bed was no doubt Lesotho, so in essence that’s where I grew up².

Mum and I were driving north up Kingsway, toward home, having packed the Datsun pickup van with stock for the family shop. I glanced at the clock. Maseru was unusually deserted for six p.m. Perhaps there was a curfew that we hadn’t heard about. Or perhaps it was due to the unfriendly looking clouds, stationed across the skyline as far as I could see.

–*It’s going to rain…,* I must have thought aloud.
–*What?*
–*Ah, it looks like it’s going to rain,* I said.
–*Don’t worry. We’ll have finished unloading with the first drops.*
–*I sure hope so.*

We drove past the bakery on the left and the new shopping centre on the right. There was hardly anybody even there! We zoomed past the hardware store where a woman was sitting in front on the pavement with small mounds of potatoes for sale, and headed for Mafafa and the Cathedral roundabout. And Mum jumped on the brakes and brought the rickety Datsun to a noisy stop, and me out of my dreamy stupor. She was looking at me, or rather through me at something I could not comprehend. It was my turn to say what. So I did.

–*What?*

She stopped looking at whatever it was in me or behind me, dipped her hand into her purse and gave me a zoka, a five-cent coin.

–*Get me some potatoes with this.*
For some reason I just took the money and got the potatoes, two mounds, without bringing it to her attention that we had several sacks of the stuff in the van. I did ask her a day or two later, because I was genuinely intrigued. And her answer placed me a step further on my way to becoming a responsible and conscious adult, without actually growing an inch³.

So, yes, in my case, and I suspect in many other cases, I did grow up in Lesotho, although I physically grew up elsewhere. And I suspect this of any place that has such a mixture of seed-bed and seed.

¹ There is no more driving out of Basotho. That nasty bit of our history petered out with the first democratically elected government.
² I’m not suggesting any correlation between this verse and how Basotho children are brought up or grow up. I just happen to believe that I actually grew up in Lesotho, although puberty came afterwards.
³ It is a true story, if you were wondering.

Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona,
Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona,
Ke moo re hlahileng,
Ke moo re holileng,
Rea le rata.

Verse 5, Rea le rata, is not yet true. It translates into We love her, or She is dear to us.

1. Lesotho, land of our fathers,
2. Among worlds you are the most beautiful,
3. In you we were born,
4. In you we grew up,
5. You are dear to us.

Anything or anyone that man loves becomes an object of obsession. A car, a pair of shoes, a lover, the self. The latter are pampered and taken care of in unimaginable ways, but Lesotho isn’t on that list and Lesotho isn’t pampered in any way by any man, woman, girl or boy that I know. If you pamper Lesotho the way you pamper things you love, let me know. I’ll pin a medal of honour on your chest.

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Michael Jackson

The other day I was talking to a colleague of mine about music. Sting had just made some claim about how his music would leave a lasting impression on the world. Approximately, we said (R=Rethabile, C=Coworker):

R: I don’t think that’s right. His music was popular in the 80s, but that doesn’t spell everlasting fame.
C: That’s right. Now, people like the Stones…
R: The Beatles…
C: Bowie, surely.
R: Michael Jackson…
C: ?!?!
R: Many people don’t like his music, but the man has influenced a whole generation and brought in a style. I’m sure we’ll be talking about his art long after we’ve stopped talking about Sting.
C: Do you really think so? Michael Jackson?
R: I really think so, yes. I think he’s an incredible artist, an incredible dancer.
C: There’s Led Zeppelin.
R: Stevie Wonder.

And it went on for a while. I was determined not to mention white artists any more, to see if my colleague was gonna ?!?! me every time I came up with a black artist’s name. He didn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t mention Bob Marley and Aretha Franklin and Miles Davis and Fela.

In any case, I realised that it was mainly the mention of Michael Jackson he disagreed with. My colleague isn’t alone, I’m sure. But for me there’s no denying that Michael Jackson revolutionised music all by himself, and did it against the backdrop of rap and hip-hop, just emerging in the 80s. Michael Jackson is

• ABC, I Want you Back, I’ll be there
• Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground), This Place Hotel, Can You Feel It
• Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, Rock with You, Off the Wall
• Moonwalking
• Thriller, the album (the best-selling album in music history)
• Thriller, the video (the best-selling music home video ever)
• Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, The Girl Is Mine, Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean, Human Nature
• Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, on 25 March 1983
• I Just Can’t Stop Loving You, Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel, Man in the Mirror, Dirty Diana. The album “Bad” still holds the record for generating more number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 charts than any other album [1]
• We are the World
• King of Pop
• Jam, Why You Wanna Trip On Me, In the Closet, Remember the Time, Heal the World, Black or White (The première of “Black or White” was broadcast simultaneously in 27 countries on November 14, 1991 with an estimated audience of 500 million people — the largest audience ever to view a music video.) [2]
• Blood On The Dance Floor, Is It Scary, Ghosts.
• You Rock My World, Cry, Butterflies
• And he dances. He shuts himself up at the house in a room that has no mirrors—”Mirrors make you pose,” he has said—and cuts loose to his own music or to the Isley Brothers’ Showdown, practicing what Dancer Hinton Battle calls “moves that kill. It’s the combinations that really distinguish him as an artist. Spin, stop, pull up leg, pull jacket open, turn, freeze. And the glide, where he steps forward while pushing back. Spinning three times and popping up on his toes. That’s a trademark, and a move a lot of professionals wouldn’t try. If you go up wrong, you can really hurt yourself.” [3]
• Michael Jackson is currently working on a new studio album. The new album has been in production since May of 2006. The album is being recorded in Dublin, Ireland and Las Vegas by Jackson and co-producers will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas, Rodney Jerkins, Teddy Riley, Ron “Neff-U” Feemster, and many others. [4]

So brace yourselves, people, it looks like we’re going to be entertained again. After the conversation with my colleague, I thought it was unfair that the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin should be notched higher than Michael Jackson, as far as music legacy is concerned. Of course, there are tastes but, although I do not dig the music of Led Zeppelin or ZZ Top, I recognise the weight of their impact. The whole idea of legacy really should surpass taste and the colour of the artist. If it was unfair, then I had to write a poem about it. I wrote Keep on with the force. The title for my poem comes from the lyrics of Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. What thinkest thou about all of this?

Keep on with the force

Moon people
Live in souls
On samara wings.

The day the djembe died
I lay on the land and sought
To keep on,

Inter our chorus
In corners, address the need
To act.

At the risk of
Sparking a riot, the dancer
Snaps fingers

With delight and
Dressed like moon critters
We stamp air.

Steps have been hit,
Few greater than what we do
In this crater.
© Rethabile Masilo

Maya Angelou was born on 4 April 1928, as Marguerite Johnson. She knows why the caged bird sings, and is only one of two American poets to write and read an inauguration poem for a president. The other one was Robert Frost for John Kennedy. Happy Birthday to Maya.

Maya has said,

• History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
• I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world’s variety and uniqueness.
• For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.
• Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.’
• Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
• I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.
• Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ - which comes right after being a natural heart surgeon.
• We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.

A short biography of Ms Angelou says, “Internationally respected poet, writer and educator, Maya Angelou has given us such best-selling titles as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin’ and Swingin’ and The Heart of a Woman. Multi-talented, she produced and starred in the great play Cabaret for Freedom and starred in The Blacks. She wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia and was both author and executive producer of a five-part television miniseries, Three Way Choice.

Miss Angelou’s accomplishments have earned her the La Home Journal Woman of the Year award in communication an Matrix Award in the field of books from Women in Communication She received the Golden Eagle Award for her documentary, Americans in the Arts, produced by PBS. She is one of the women admitted into the Director’s Guild. In 1974, she was appointed by Gerald Ford to the Bi-Centennial Commission and later by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year.

Her personal outreach to improve conditions for women in Third World, primarily in Africa, has helped change the live thousands less privileged. Here is where she gives with all her heart and soul. [Source]” And lastly, here is another of her poems:

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Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Still I Rise

Literary blog offers free short story and poetry eBooks by Africa writers

Cape Town, 20 March 2007 — South African author Byron Loker has begun a literary blog based in South Africa which features free short story and poetry eBooks by Africa writers. New and established writers can get their work published on www.iBhuku.com which also aims to keep the Southern African book-loving community up to date with regular news on all things literary.

iBhuku.com is working with writers and publishers who can provide short stories and poetry via email for publication. In November 2005 Byron was instrumental in helping the National Library of South Africa design and stage the exhibition ‘Books in Bytes - Reading the Future’. The exhibition was held at the library’s Cape Town campus with the aim of offering an experience of the many innovations that are available to those who want to read for pleasure.

iBhuku.com currently features short fiction by Byron Loker (whose debut collection of short stories, ‘New Swell’, is published by Double Storey Books), promising Johannesburg based young writer Karen Runge and established authors Rosemund J. Handler and Evans Kinyua. Evans Kinyua is the Kenyan author of ‘Flight From Fate’ and runs a media and communications company in Nairobi. His iBhuku.com short story chronicles the antics of two young European expatriates who cosy up to corrupt powers that be. Rosemund J. Handler lives in Cape Town and has had short stories published in South Africa and the USA. Her first novel, ‘Madlands’, is published by Penguin and has achieved critical acclaim. iBhuku.com also features poetry by Rethabile Masilo and Olu Tolu-Omole.

Very few African publishing companies are making the wealth of South African and African literature available in eBook format. iBhuku.com aims to rectify this situation. ‘Ibhuku’ is the Zulu word for book, an obvious adaptation of the English word when it was introduced in colonial times. iBhuku.com denotes a uniquely African identity while maintaining allegiance to the traditional associations of the word ‘book’, as well as alluding to the neologism ‘eBook’. An eBook is a digital version of a print book or document that you can download from the Internet and read or listen to on a PC or handheld device such as cell phone or PDA. There are no postage charges and no waiting. You can buy or download an eBook for free and start reading immediately!

Visit www.ibhuku.com or email editor at ibhuku dot com for more information and submission guidelines. Essays, photography, artworks, reviews, events, interviews, reportage, editorials, news and commentaries are also welcome.

Byron Loker has a Masters degree in Creative Writing (with distinction) from the University of Cape Town and a diploma in film & television production and has worked and travelled in the UK and USA. He is currently a research consultant for MBendi.com – a leading African business, travel and tourism website. His writing has been published on Litnet.co.za, in New Contrast and various South African business publications. Visit www.byronloker.com for more information.

I’ve been tagged. Sokari tagged me to write “works of art that made a difference in your life.” Tough tag, and it has taken me a while to get around to doing it. I will look at it from two different points of view. Without being in any way full of myself, the art that has made a difference is the poetry that I write myself. I’ll tell you why in a minute. The other art is too wide to consider seriously. I have been slapped by music, painting and writing.

I lost members of my family, who were killed at a very early age. I believe that if I had not started writing poetry I would have gone under with grief. Poetry helped me focus and channel my energy correctly. Without it, the outcome is even today unthinkable.

As far as I’m concerned poetry, then, was therapy to me, and continues to play this important role in my life. I’ve exorcised my thoughts and my consideration of death by writing about death (one, two, three, for example).

As I say above, I’ve also been slapped by music (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Al Jarreau), and by painting (Guernica, Van Gogh’s stuff, Munch’s stuff). Theme albums do it for me, and perhaps the most influential in my life remains Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. It was political and tree-hugging and inquisitive, and yes, soulful and groovy. The message of his theme, protect the planet and love your neighbours, came to me loud and clear, and today when I listen to that album i still hear him asking us to save the children, save the babies.

Stevie Wonder picked up on the theme thing and worked a few messenger songs into his albums. Perhaps the most famous (and least loved by me musically) is Happy Birthday, written for the birthday of Martin Luther King.
[www.blacklooks.org]

Here’s why I’m happier today than I was yesterday: http://lifela-tsa-sesotho.blogspot.com

Bushmen have much desert in them;
from birth they hold a manifesto
in their head, a tribal oath, an old
undying truth that we’ve always been
told about, how they honoured the
first-born sun.

The hills hold caverns grandpa Seth
once walked me up to see, to trace
the curved walls with my eye. He said–
he said his dad once made a bushman
jump with a spoken Lumela! from behind,
time when these grottoes lived with
people.

Like — I really want to go to the Kalahari
where children still romp the sand, where
like photons moons move across heaven
meeting shadows halfway, seeking the day.

That image of you, Africa, when to sundown
you settle down beside a fire, is my
rusting photo, the ghost of a song coming
from deep you and bidding jive along.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

PS: Check out Poéfrika

Dans l’envie de m’abattre
tu m’as nourri, toutes ces années
j’attends ton coup pour vaincre mes craintes,
toi, le bourreau, et ta muleta — moi en taureau.
Tu m’appelles, sans cesse tu m’appelles
pour qu’on danse tous les deux sous ce soleil
vers la fin. Comment y résister?

Cependant, c’est toi en ami
qui m’emmène à la maison où j’écris
ces quelques mots lassés par le temps.
Sache que je n’accepterai pas une mort
à étapes, une déchéance quelconque sans frappe.
Un coup, et tout ce moment est à nous
entre ici et les ténèbres.

Cette épine dans ma chair, elle mérite
les olés du public, c’est un coup de grâce
qui laisse à l’amour seul le soin de fleurir.
J’envisage souvent les grêlons ruinés par
les fleurs sur lesquelles ils tombent.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

In need of me dead and done in,
you nurtured me for years and got me here
to make me yours.

Your scarlet muleta flaps a call,
you in the end lead me home
and that is all.

Let us therefore dance to the finish,
the mood of this sunset in abundance,
for I will have no death in stages.

One blow should make this ours,
thorn thrust into flesh, cheers all around,
A coup de grâce for love, for ages.

Often I have envisioned
hail being torn apart by the flowers
it is falling upon.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

Selection   votes is great for Lesotho  67% 31 is unnecessary  22% 10 is bad for Lesotho  11% 5 46 votes total Poll powered by Pollhost. These results are subject to error. Pollhost does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

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The voters have spoken, and a majority of them say that Lesotho is right to have two official languages. My view is that it is necessary to have Sesotho and English as official languages, but not necessarily great. Let’s face it, it’s getting harder and harder to do commerce without the use of English.

The French can do so quite safely, for many around the world at least understand French. Not too many “get by” in Sesotho.

Despite our two official languages, we’re not bilingual. We speak English and Sesotho. Those Basotho that are truly bilingual have usually followed a path that veers from the usual one, either by studying abroad for a considerable period of time, or actually moving to go live and work there.

There is another factor, however, and it is cultural. And painful. Sesotho is disappearing — slowly but surely. Quick, in Sesotho how would you say, “Last year we borrowed money from the bank, but the interest rates were too high for us.” That’s what I mean. It is becoming easier and easier to speak a mix of both languages, and unfortunately it is English that is winning outright.

Some say, “Learn a new language and get a new soul” (Czech Proverb). True. But I think I’d rather (re)learn my own language and keep my soul intact.

On a rainy day Melissa and I arrived to find only 15 to 20 children, and no teachers. So we sang some English songs with them for a long time and then they treated us to some Basotho songs.

‘Basotho Bana’ means ‘Basotho children’ or ‘children of Lesotho’.

Actually it’s ‘Bana ba Basotho’ and it does mean Basotho children. One thing we do in Lesotho is sing all the time. Everyone belongs, or has belonged, to a choir. Everyone sings as they walk or work. And within the group, everyone knows which voice to sing: bass, tenor, alto, or tsoetse, the high-pitched tone typical of young lads. See a previous post on music in Africa.

I was directed to Geoffrey Philp’s weblog by Stephen Bess of Morphological Confetti, another blog to check out. Geoffrey’s writing exudes the islands of the Carribean, Jamaica, to be precise, so I immediately blogrolled him for mine and my readers’ sake. You see, I may know the music of Jamaica inside out, but there must be something more in the culture and in the language, and at the least, Geoffrey procures me that much. He’s thinking of putting up a poll

"on Rastafari that [he] would be very much interested in your views as a Kenyan (the poll will still be anonymous, but you can leave comments on the page) and which [he] would like you to share with other Kenyans, and maybe word will get over the border to Ghana and perhaps down to Lesotho…"

When the time comes I will post a reminder for y’all to go down onto the island and vote. In the meantime, do check out the blog and read on.

In southern Africa we used to take every foodstuff we could lay our hands on, dry it or salt it, and stash it away for use during the lean winter months or for travel. Biltong is the world famous dried meat, or "Lihoapa" in Sesotho. There are also dried apricots or peaches, which we call "Mangangajane". And then there are "Lithotse":

LITHOTSE

1 cup seeds from a fresh melon or pumpkin
2 tsp salt 

Wash the seeds well, rubbing to remove any pulp. Stir salt into the wet seeds. Heat on the stove a dry, empty pot or large skillet — preferably cast iron. Add the salted seeds. Cook for 6 or 8 minutes over moderate heat, stirring continuously. Seeds are ready when they have cracked open. They are meant to be savoured one at a time, rather than in handfuls.

This recipe is from The Africa News Cookbook, African Cooking for Western Kitchens, Published by Penguin Books in 1985-86, Edited by Tami Hultman, Designed and illustrated by Patricia Ford.