“Three generations of white South African men were bound together at that table. Vermuelen was the first generation. He defined Africa, made it safe for Basson to defile. I was the last generation, the last to grow up in segregated neighborhoods. Between us was the silent photograph of Wouter Basson. Like a distant father, Basson was absent at the dining table.” – Henk Rossouw (Hole in the White ‘Hood). Also Mahmood Mamdani on Bantu Education at UCT, Gael Reagon on sisterhood, Binyavanga Wainaina on dis-covering Kenya, Gaston Zossou on African intellectuals and more…
Cover:
Strange Fruit by Lewis Allen
I Lost a Poem by Mzwandile Matiwana (Deep South, 2005)
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.