On 23 March 2012, the venerable South Africa poet, Keorapetse Kgositsile gave a reading at the University of Texas, Austin. He was the guest of the English department of the university which was one of several universities and institutions that are hosting him on a reading and speaking tour facilitated by the Pan African Literary Forum. He has already read — according to the programme, though I did not confirm this from him — at Virginia Technical University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the Hammer Museum near UCLA. On Monday, he will be at the Miami University in Ohio (I did confirm this!), and, subsequently, be at the University of Vermont (28 March), the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (the following day, appearing with Sonia Sanchez), the National Black Writers conference at Medgar Evers College (31 March), Labyrinths Books in Princeton (2 April), George Washington University (3 April, morning), Library of Congress (afternoon), will be privately hosted by Doleen Perkins-Valdez in the evening, at the College of Staten Island and his alma mater, the New School in New York (4 April), U Penn (5 April), give a lecture at CSI San Francisco (7 April), at the Institute of American-Indian Arts (location unknown to me) on 9 April, Vanderbilt (12 April), NYU (13 April) and Rutgers-New Brunswick (16 April).
On 23 March 2012, the venerable South Africa poet, Keorapetse Kgositsile gave a reading at the University of Texas, Austin. He was the guest of the English department of the university which was one of several universities and institutions that are hosting him on a reading and speaking tour facilitated by the Pan African Literary Forum. He has already read — according to the programme, though I did not confirm this from him — at Virginia Technical University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the Hammer Museum near UCLA. On Monday, he will be at the Miami University in Ohio (I did confirm this!), and, subsequently, be at the University of Vermont (28 March), the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (the following day, appearing with Sonia Sanchez), the National Black Writers conference at Medgar Evers College (31 March), Labyrinths Books in Princeton (2 April), George Washington University (3 April, morning), Library of Congress (afternoon), will be privately hosted by Doleen Perkins-Valdez in the evening, at the College of Staten Island and his alma mater, the New School in New York (4 April), U Penn (5 April), give a lecture at CSI San Francisco (7 April), at the Institute of American-Indian Arts (location unknown to me) on 9 April, Vanderbilt (12 April), NYU (13 April) and Rutgers-New Brunswick (16 April).
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I have given his itinerary because you MUST go and hear him and, afterwards, shake his hand (then be sure to compose a line or sentence with that hand before washing it) if he comes to your neck of the woods. Kgositsile is one of Africa’s and the world’s illustrious literary figures, his career spanning Africa and the Black Diaspora (he was one of the moving forces of the Black Arts Movement).
I had the pleasure of meeting the amiable and avuncular Kgositsile, fondly known as Bra Willie, during my recent and first visit to South Africa to participate in the four-day Soyinka Festival, hosted by the University of South Africa in Pretoria to mark the 25th anniversary of the first black Nobel prize in literature. Looking so spry and dapper that you would be a good ten years off the mark guessing his age, he had surprised everyone by claiming that he had never written an anti-apartheid poem. This was a passing remark regarding an award bestowed on him at home in honour of his literary contributions to the struggle to end that inhuman policy that, to the shame of humanity, lasted too long. The conference schedule had not allowed any meaningful mingling time, only enough for me to pay homage with a copy each of my first two collections, Homeland and Other Poems and, naturally, Madiba. It was the highlight of my maiden visit to a country I had inhabited for so long in my imagination, starting with my time as secretary-general of the Students Union of the University of Benin, during which I presided over a secretariat named after Nelson Mandela. That was when he informed me of his impending reading and lecture tour of the US and I promised to make the half-hour trek from San Marcos to Austin on 23 March 2003.
It was an evening well spent. A soft spoken man with a fine sense of humour, he spiced his readings with memorable anecdotes, and you could tell how long he has been dedicated to the Word with poems to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and the mention of names with whom majority of those in the room couldn’t claim familiarity. Bernth Lindfors, now emeritus professor at UT, was the first to ask a question when it was time for Q & A. He wanted to know if Kgositsile might remember the literary figure who said quite a while ago, that every writer’s view is propaganda. This, of course, is a paraphrase. Kgositsile claimed not to know that personage, but agreed that in whatever a writer avows, he or she is either “proposing, affirming or opposing” a point of view, and so does propaganda for that viewpoint. At which point Lindfors announced, You are the one who made that claim. Precisely in 1971, during a roundtable of South African writers that included Mazisi Kunene, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Dennis Brutus, one other and Kgositsile himself. And he had the transcript of the conversation as a gift for Kgositsile. Lindfors, noted for his literary sleuthing (not to say feuding sometimes!) could have been a lawyer. The disclosure elicited laughter from Kgositsile and the audience alike. It was clear that forty-one years hence, the man had proved consistent.
When the laughter had died down, and one more question had been asked and answered, I sought to know from Kgositsile what he considered the greatest challenge, from the angle of literary vision, to a South African writer today. In particular, to himself, as a writer whose reputation had long been established prior to 1990 when he returned from a three-decade-long exile and who is not only the Poet Laureate of the post-apartheid South Africa but is also a prominent figure in the public sphere (he serves as a special advisor to the minister of arts and culture).
It was indeed a challenge, he acknowledged. The media waits with bated breath for any remark critical of the government and cites it as proof of the collapse of the historic alliance of the ANC, the South African Communist Party and COSATU (Coalition of South African Trade Unions) that played a pivotal role in the struggle for a black majority government. As if there had never been differences among the members of the alliance. In the course of his response, Kgositsile spoke of how the Rockefeller foundation had once asked him for a sheaf of anti-apartheid poems to clinch a grant or fellowship that was his for the asking. He had demurred because — wait for it — he hadn’t ever written any such poetry! It was my chance to seek clarification. Ever since my encounter as a secondary school boy with his poems in anthologies, in particular the poem “Point of Departure: Fire Dance Fire Song” included in Soyinka’s Poems of Black Africa, I had considered him an anti-apartheid poet. And though I didn’t say this, I also recalled the younger South African poet/performer, Natalis Molebatsi, expressing a similar incredulity at the Soyinka festival in Pretoria. Would he elaborate on this claim, I asked.
He would, gladly. At the time he went into exile in 1962, there were no blacks or whites in South Africa; only Africans and Europeans. But then the gale of nationalism sweeping across the continent had led to the slogan of “One man one vote” —regrettably, women weren’t mentioned. And this was the beginning of the fear of the Boers and other white settlers. They would be out-voted! And so began the policy of apartheid. “So, you imply that you were anti-racist, and not merely against a racist policy?” “Yes,” he said. What is poetry without the splitting of verbal hairs — without the delicacy and surprise of the finely nuanced utterance? Once again, the man had proved consistent.
We retired to the nearest watering hole on campus — the AT&T Centre. Kgositsile, the UT Austin English department dons: Lindfors, Barbara Harlow, Neville Hoad, Meta Jones, Snehal Shingavi, together with my colleague from Texas State University, Nelly Rosario and her daughter (who, I assure, imbibed only a licit beverage), as well as Rosario’s Brooklyn pal, the teacher and community organiser, Lumumba Bandele.
As he tours the US, and enacts a tour of his exemplary life as poet, activist and humanist, may his every audience be worthy of his words. Do go and listen to him, I say again, if he stops near you.
Let me leave you with this short poem of Kgositsile’s:
Mandela’s Sermon
Blessed are the dehumanized
For they have nothing to lose
But their patience.
False gods killed the poet in me. Now
I dig graves
With artistic precision.
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