“…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
In this memoir of the 1970s in New Brighton – the largest black township built by the apartheid system outside Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) – family relations and the development of the writer’s political consciousness and organizing abilities at the American-owned Ford Motor Company factory take centre stage. Lyrical and often colloquial, sprinkling his English narrative with isiXhosa, Mpumelelo Cilibe gives us a vivid and very honest picture, both of his personal life and his role as a leading regional activist. Irrespective of where he found himself, he always maintained his independence of thought and action, and by the late 1980s, noting the problematic behaviour of many activists who were ensnared by the apartheid authorities, elected to largely withdraw from political life. The social and literary power of this work thus lies in its description of the challenges of growing up in a period of growing resistance to white rule and shows how a resolute individual navigated extreme currents in order to make a contribution to the general struggle and yet keep his personal integrity.