“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions are now manifest has constructed the arena of politics on ground overshadowed by centuries of metropolitan capitalist development, thereby denying them recognition as legitimate politics. Blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated, the class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that blacks are predominantly proletarian, thought this is true…”- (Frank Talk Staff Writers in ‘Azania Salutes Tosh’ – circa 1981)
front cover:
Tosh by Steve Gordon
back cover:
Kippie by Basil Breakey
Collected Poems by Mafika Pascal Gwala (SAHO, 2016)
This volume of Mafika Pascal Gwala Collected Poems edited by Mandla Langa and Ari Sitas is an important contribution to restore the power of the voice of one of the most influential poets and political activists in the 1970s and 80s.
Gwala's two books Jolinkomo (1977) and No More Lullabies (1982) were met with muted applause. By the time a collective book, Exiles Within, was published, the allure of black writing was in decline. The struggle got ugly, and the words uglier. Gwala entered the fray of the simmering national discontent by working alongside many who were trying to modify the rising authoritarian popularity of Zuluness. His and Liz Gunner's Musho! (1991) made the case for an imbongi tradition "from below"