The African Rivermoss

The time just after the First World War was a spring time not only for Xhosa politics but literature too. Just before the war, there was the foundation of the South African Native National Congress, which became known as the African National Congress in 1923. And there was a proliferation of native newspapers.

Umteteli was prominent among the newspapers then. It went on to become a seed for others, like Imvo Zabantu Abantsundu. The editor of Umteteli was none other than ‘uNzululwazi’ (which means deep knowledge), the most renowned poet of the nation since then, SKE Mqhayi. Mqhayi is fondly known as the Shakespeare of Xhosa literature.

Prominent among Umteteli’s contributors was Nontsizi Mgqwetho, who contributed more than 90 poems to the paper between 1920 to 1929. Before then no black woman had published poetry so voluminous.

In the Xhosa tradition there is a saying: umtana uyalilandela igama lakhea child follows the meaning of their name. There was something tragic about Nontsizi’s life whose name means ‘the one affiliated with sorrow’. The sorrow was more of a torture of a soul who lived under the eye of God and the enlightening demands of literature.

Often, in her writings, she is caught up in a moral dichotomy, the curse of not really belonging, having to castigate both white oppression and a black self-seeking callous attitude that often makes the oppressed prey on each other, especially the weak.

Like most educated black people of the time, her convictions, political and otherwise, were almost inseparable from her religious beliefs and commitments. And her impeccable honesty can be seen in her narration of the anti-pass demonstration she was part of in 1929:

On 3 April 1929, we the leaders of the nation marched with a mass of people to the Fort [Johannesburg], where we were going to wait for the dawn of Africa, the lifting of the burden of the pass from our shoulders. We had high hopes, truly believing that this burden would fall once we’d scale the hill Difficulty.

We got there and stood around, wondering what to do next. What did we see? Another hill Difficulty suddenly confronted us, sowing confusion. Cops on horseback charged us down, at full tilt, like bats out of hell. Our leaders took to the hills before those horses reached the Fort. They made no bones about their fear, saying they had been pounded by the cops at Fordsburg the day before. They just left us there in the mess they’d invited us to. I tell you truly my people, it’s only through the power of God we survived that mess.

I guess the confrontation with the police was not always the stuff of heroic tales the history books would have us believe. Only poets can bring us these honest admissions, and thank God for their saintly souls.

Mgqwetho was clearly a tortured soul, frustrated by the male dominance over women in her time. It meant that she could never really live by her pen, no matter how attracted she was to the idea. And she was also compelled to use masculine language to express herself, since she wrote more in the genre of a traditional Xhosa imbhongi.

Though a committed Christian, sometimes she was unable to reconcile her religious beliefs with her political anger: Heed its word and heaven’s lost, / It’s spear that wheels and stab us: / The land of Phalo’s on its head / From the hypocritical cant of white man’s gospel.

She decried the loss of values that came with urbanisation and thought the solution came with returning to more traditional ways, without necessarily disposing of the Bible, which was more in line with Ntsikana’s teachings: You see my people, we’re growing old, / The truth has left us long time ago, / The Truth is bound in Bible covers / Also swathed in custom blankets.

Oh peace, Nontsizi, African rivermoss, / Woman, the winsome song of your voice / Sets Africa’s walls thrumming,/ Utterly shamming all the lads. / We’ll hear of the day of your death, Nontsizi. / The commando’s horse has lost its way. / Oh, peace! And to you, Ntsikana, / Who prophesied in thorn brakes.

(With gratitude to Jeff Opland for the painstaking work he did in researching Xhosa poetry and putting it on the map again.)