What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe? The latest issue of Chimurenga provides alternatives to prevailing educational pedagogy. Through fiction, essays, interviews, poetry, photography and art, contributors examine and redefine rigid notions of essential knowledge.
Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it. All entries are regrouped under subjects such as body parts, language, grace, worship and news (from the other side), numbers, parents, police and many more. Through a classification system that is both linear and thematic, the textbook offers multiple entry points into a curriculum that focuses on the un-teachable and values un-learning as much as it’s opposite.
Inside: Amiri Baraka waxes poetic on the theoretics of Be-Bop; Coco Fusco flips the CIA’s teaching manual for female torturers; Karen Press and Steve Coleman instruct in folk-dancing; Dambudzo Marechera proposes a “guide to the earth”; Dominique Malaquais designs the museum we won’t build; through self-portraits Phillip Tabane and Johnny Dyani offer method to the Skanga (black music family); and Winston Mankunku refuses to teach.
Other contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Akin Adesokan, Isoje Chou, Sean O’Toole, Pradid Krishen, E.C. Osundu, Salim Washington, Sefi Atta, Ed Pavlic, Neo Muyanga, Henri-Michel Yere, Medu Arts Ensemble, Aryan Kaganof, Khulile Nxumalo and Walter Mosley amongst others. Cover by Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani.
Amandla Embongi by Menzi Thango (Bhiyoza Publishers, 2019)
The poet is an eloquent speaker. The poet uses a figurative language, poetic language and literary techniques. For example, you find a king called a bull, calf, heifer, buffalo, beast, lion etc. The poet is a brave man, wherein in the ancient times he was a man who did not look aside when the king went astray but rebuked him. Likewise, when a king did well, the poet praised and praised everything that had happened. Kings loved poets because of their courage. Hence the author of this book titled his book ‘Amandla Embongi’, which is translated as ‘the power of the poet’. The poems found in this book are modern poems which speak to the present time. The poet uses a poetic language to rebuke the society. (Title is in isiZulu)