Creative Cape Town

photo by Yasser Booley

@ CTICC
26th September 2010

I thought it would be lame. You know, wailing women bemoaning their bleeding bits, or angry men waving fists at dead dictators. Poetry Africa was so far from that, I ate my words, and came away thinking ‘this is the South Africa I want to live in, this is the world I want to build on’ – a world where people are brave, honest, open and accountable.

The Cape Town satellite leg of the Poetry Africa 2010 featured guest Cape Poets and a core of touring poets. The delivery was professional and unusual, and their opinions as varied as their pimped out wordplay.

Mbali Kgosidintsi was scintillating with a sure delivery and an analysis of her own relationship with hope. Lebo Mashile had all the elements of good poetry and great performance in place and moved mountains and hearts with her tongue. Gcina Mhlope scolded and cajoled and coaxed and complimented in isiXhosa, and Mutabaruka (Jamaica) was a force to be reckoned with.

We had love poems from James Matthews, the oldest poet present, and by far the trendiest cat in his ebony leather jacket and air of wry humour. Malika Ndlovu’s magetic chant of “truth is both spirit and flesh” were entrancing until MC Pitika Ntuli, who doubled as both a praise singer, an add-on poet and a joker, had to put on his timekeeper’s hat and remind her that truth is also keeping to your set length . Pity the production didn’t practise what it preached. At two and a half hours running time, we had to use our shirts and sleeves to mop up our tears of laughter and sadness from the magnificient material.

The insights on stage were sage, sexy and simple. Barolong Sebeni told us of women, black dogs and black hair, and was by turns hilarious and hair raising. Mama C, an African-American turned Kenyan, examined the loss of heritage and the gaining of self, the loss of self and the gaining of insight – a process important in reimagining heritage to suit the self. And in the play-off between Ewok (South Africa) and Comrade Fatso (Zimbabwe), the audience was pitted against its own preconceptions of both countries.

This was the 14th of its kind, a project lovingly nurtured by the Centre of Creative Arts at the Universiryt of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban. This year it partnered with the fairly fresh African Arts Institute http://www.africanartsinstitute.org.za/ in its mission to celebrate the beauty and power of poetry. The African Arts Institute is not just another arts organisation with a long winded name and short lived fame. One of its projects is the large and lovely “From Africa With Laugh” that had Baxter in stitches a few months back, and the Institute holds regular, monthly networking sessions for people involved in leadership positions in Cape Town’s arts and culture sector.

With the talent and troubles we call our own, we need poets. Africa is potent, and hope is on the guest list.