“…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
Everybody is a Bridge by Anton Krueger (Botsotso, 2023)
The same poet who observes that “everybody is a bridge/’’ then asks in Zen-fashion, “Is it me, or is it you?/ are you reflection or projection / or the light that’s shining through?’’ can also note in a very down-to-earth way, that “If we hadn’t robbed the car washers of their coin/they might not have turned so mean, you know? / Let them earn a little income, bra/ If we’d chiselled our hearts open, tried to see it from the middle/we’d have softened just a little.”
And so, while keeping the big picture of the difficulties before us unflinchingly, Anton imbues such philosophical and political statements with images of very real people and their struggle for survival. But this is one aspect of his writing. As importantly, through these ‘poems, prose- poems, notes & fragments’, runs a whimsical sense of his youth and later years as a white South African whose numerous relatives and friends make their appearance in the form of anecdotal history turned into poetic narrative. In this way, the collection is varied, and very personal and true to Anton’s past and present, a very satisfying buffet that offers a unique taste of his Buddhistic soul.