“…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
The poems in Mzwandile Matiwana's first book cover a range of subjects, including love, prison, poverty, and religion. Mzwandile Matiwana's poems are deeply felt lyrics, displaying surprising shifts of tone. Many of them were written from prison. They cover a range of experience - love, prison life, poverty, religious feeling - with rawness and delicacy.
Mzwandile Matiwana was born in 1967 in Port Elizabeth, and writes in both English and Xhosa. His poems have been published in Kotaz, New Coin, Timbila, Botsotso, Fidelities, donga, southernrain, Carapace and Sweet. He is a member of the UWA Writers Group in New Brighton and has run creative workshops with children at the St. Christophers Street Children Shelter and Ethembeni Enrichment Center.