iLiso Magazine #2

ILISO ISSUE 02 07/20 QHAMA ZONDANI

LESEGO THOLE

OFENTSE SESHABELA

SANKARA BIZELA

PAINTING BY PJ ROCC

Soul-to-Soul: an editor’s note WORDS BY Vusumzi Nkomo & Sisonkepapu

uMavusana noSisonkepapu, with Nkosi X, late 2018.

Location: Observatory, Cape Town.

Lunch: Plant and biscuits.

Sisonke: Eluhambweni lakho emhlabeni, you’ll come across many teachers. Ubukho wandibuza nawe bhuti, mhlawumbi the work of art is only but a reflection of the inner-self, yabo. So it is okwakuphumla after you breathe in. So how I feel mna is different people at different stages get to different levels of being able to breathe in or breathe out. . .caused by many many factors, to be breathing in the way that I am. There are certain lessons that people can only learn by themselves, nokuba angaxelelwa kangakanani na, yabo, nakanjani na, uyabo. But there needs to come something in their consciousness that shifts so much, yabo, imenze athi! (*a snap*), without feeling defensive.

Silence.

Sisonke: I think ibuyela kulanto ye-energy, yabo. It’s different ways of interacting but abantu abaninzi sometimes, instead of truly appreciating the text for what it is really intended. But they are distracted by the energy because they feel it is after them, yabo. So, how can we work with the energy.

I think there is something very beautiful about something like iTai Chi, as a form of breathing, of understanding energy and how it moves, and how you also carry your own and how that also becomes an imprint yabo, on to other things, on to other things, on to other things, yabo. I’m learning a very quiet language which speaks to the soul, through the soul, with the soul, as the soul, soul-to-soul, without anything else that will distract the message that needs to get out, despite anything. I’m learning that, and I’m learning that it requires a lot of silence.

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Sifundisana njani, sikhulisana njani, truly, truly, uhm, and just being aware that lamntu nguwe nawe, mhlawumbi nguwe at some other point eluhambeni lwakho nawe. We always constantly vascilating between those worlds, it's like, the more you move in the dimensions, the more we are open to love as a dimension, yabo, and how love recognizes everything as one, yabo, and it does not seek to hurt but only seeks to open other avenues of itself, a complete realization and appreciation of everything, yabo. These are things we need to learn and overcome, whether these things are happening to us sisakhula, ngoku sisakhulayo that perhaps deep inside we never reconciled, for whatever reason but we need to transcend constantly, constantly like asikwazi ukubasendaweni ey’1.

It’s the ying and the yang: kumnyama kuyakhanya, yabo. It’s those two polarities that create reality. But then another thing I’m trying to learn is that ukukhanya yintoni nah? ‘Cause each space in itself, comes a different energy. . . .back to the rhythm again. . .ilapha ngaphakathi, the things you feel, you transcend, and the things you are yet to feel, yabo, njalo-njalo.

Vusi: let’s move back a bit. I’ve been thinking kakhulu bra ukubone, some of those things bendicinga xa siphinde sadibana; there's this idea, andiyazi bendincokola nabani, there’s this word, 'authenticity', that keeps springing, keeps appearing kwiindawo endikuzo.

There was one discussions (at CTIFMF) on ‘Positioning Africa’ and there was one on ‘Intersectionality, what not,’ ‘emerging Black women filmmakers’. But there was this recurring theme of authenticity, us and our authentic selves, telling authentic stories, true African stories, which means one and the same thing, it’s a synonym for the other.

I then began thinking how uSlasha, in this case, steps outside of this understanding of the ‘inner-self’, even though explicitly akatsho yena, I’d love to have this conversation naye, how he steps outside and says (almost in conversation with afropess, of course), the Black has no ‘self’ to discover, against the violent technologies of the world, the Black has no ‘self’ to discover, yabo. I think he moves from that position, even though you’d find in his idea that there could be a self, he’s dealing, battling with

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this thing but I think its important that he’s moving from this position that there is no self to discover, the self has been shattered, destroyed, the subjectivity for us, is not really a subjectivity at all, and been something I'm dealing with: from which position should I come?

Audio missing. . .

Sisonkepapu is a multidimensional conduit that explores storytelling through writing, photography, film and conceptualisation. His work explores spatial and emotional temporalities by interrogating/ engaging ideas of everydayness, the real and imaginary, dreams, the unseen, as well as the sonic, mythical and cosmic.

Sisonkepapu is the founder and director of ISPILI Network, living and working between Mthatha, Rhini neBhayi.

Stellenbosch (is) Surround(ed): Settlement (in) cinema, intsomi and white imaginary WORDS BY Vusumzi Nkomo

In settler colonies fortification can also be mystified; there’s the fort that protects, by way of bordering, the nation state.

There’s the Fort that marks (and demarcates) territory, barring and Othering. (I’m thinking of fort as the outline of the nation, and Fort as marking occupation within the settlement). The power, that is technologies, deployed to make this state-of-things within, beyond, the nation state, are inextricable. The ideas of extension (or fantasies of expansion) of the fort and Fort are governed and regulated by the same logic, white supremacy.

Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, in Politics Surrounded1, exhume Michael Parenti’s theorization of the cinematic portrayal of colonial settlement and the ways in which points-of-views are inverted, warped, to obscure the central antagonism that structures the relationship between Settlers and the indigenous people, to invert aggression and self-defence. In Shaka Zulu (1987), a television

series directed by South African filmmaker William C. Faure (an adaptation of American writer Joshua Sinclair’s novel of the same name), an enclosed white Settler encampment is represented as space/place surrounded by natives, by King Shaka Zulu in particular.

Based on the accounts of British ‘traders’, the film’s narrative strategies reveal something quite tragic about representation and something quite essential to the destruction of the natives (a destruction that is of the corporeal as much as it is of the territory). Shaka Zulu, and by extension the natives, are positioned as (potential) aggressors who have settlement surrounded, they are problems personified, in the surround, and, as Fanon would have it, they are phobogenic objects bearing doom to the settlement. No lies detected here. Moten and Harney argue that settlement really is surrounded by the thing it encroaches on. This thing bears seeds of its (settlement’s)

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destruction, because it must be destroyed. Settlement is always “surrounded”, writes Moten and Harney, and “is besieged by what still surrounds it”.

In one of iintsomi zikaDyakalashe and Mvolofu, the Pair give in to hunger and approach the nearest farm populated by sheep. Fence stands erect, arrogantly splitting the world into two compartments, their side and (against the) farm’s inside; so they carve an opening on what seems like an impenetrable divider and move into the world of plenty.

They bring terror to the meek sheep, a (seemingly unintentional) declaration of war with the Farmer. uMvolofu attacks and feasts on the spot. uDyakalashe, the cunning cat, attacks and throws over the fence. Farmer appears with a gun spittin’ fire firing. The Pair run for the fence, uDyakalashe escapes through the small opening and uMvolofu, who has gained considerable weight, is caught and killed.

There are multiple ways of reading this story. But it becomes clear that, first and foremost, the settlement (the farm) is maintained and can only be maintained by violence. uDyakalashe noMvolofu watch the affluence, the abundance, of

and in the farm, and, because of their ‘transgression’, they are condemned to death. In this act of killing, the Farmer’s vocation, a militarised vocation, is that of self-defence. The surround, the beyond, is a place of ill-repute, conceived as that of aggressors who must be starved of life. So aggression (by Farmer) against them is, well, self-defence. But the Pair still insists on moving into the farm with full knowledge of the antagonism between them and the farm. This move is animated by a territorial claim and insistence on life against death, an interdiction of the “hydraulics of terror” (Wilderson III) that makes possible the social death of those in the surround. The Pair surrounds the settlement. The Famer’s response should not shock anyone.

We, with Shaka Zulu, the Pair, & all those in the surround, have the settlement surrounded. The settlement is surrounded. We are around settlement. Are organizing in the surround to surround settlement. I can’t stress this enough, settlement was always bound to be surrounded since it inherently encroaches. This is #JozitoStellenbosch.

Moten, Harney. 2013.

Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study.

Winnie Mandela Bewitching History and the Nation [excerpt] WORDS BY Sinethemba Sankara Bizela

The 2nd of April 2018 marks the day of Winnie Mandela’s physical departure, two years ago. There are so many departures that mark her life: leaving Bizana to Johannesburg to study medical Social Work; leaving the Madikizela family to join the Mandela’s through marriage; leaving her children to two year solitary imprisonment; forced to leave Soweto to be banished in Brandford, Free State; forced to leave her marriage (through separation and divorce), and finally dying on the 2nd April 2018. Most are forced departures, dislocations.

This also rhymes with her symbolic deaths she suffered under a racist apartheid regime and her patriarchal organization: banishments, torture, solitary confinement, smear campaigns and misinformation by Stratcom (an acronym for Strategic Communication, a media propaganda machinery); the demonization and disfigurements

from UDF (United Democratic Front) and some liberal bloc within the ANC that were intimidated by her militancy and radical nature to the extent of reducing her to a lunatic, and an appendage to Nelson Mandela and a footnote in history of the liberation struggle (whereas a critical history of South Africa reveals her as one of the protagonists in the struggle as such).

The passing of Winnie Mandela buttresses her symbolic deaths, suggested by her representation in the public sphere that borders on present absence, which marked her entire political life.

Another aspect of her spectral presence surfaces through her status as a member of parliament under the former president Jacob Zuma presidency: she became a member that never sits in the National Assembly, an honorary status which highlighted her spectral presence. In the public sphere, Winnie’s life evokes one of

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Shakespeare’s character, Sycorax, in the play The Tempest. Even though Shakespeare is ambiguous about her racial identity, I interpret her as a black woman due to her demonization and silencing in the play.

However, she powerfully haunts the island and the speeches of the male characters as a character herself who is excluded in the dramatis personae but talked about. We are told in the play that Sycorax was banished in Algiers due to the allegations of witchcraft, so she dies of ageing and her son, Caliban, inherits the island but gets enslaved by Prospero, an Italian duke, who usurps the island. A tale of colonial conquest, indeed. We know of Sycorax as a “witch” in Prospero’s uncontested narrative about her and the island.

To identify Winnie Mandela as a Sycorax figure, then, is to recognize and invoke the transhistorical significations that may be relevant to a woman’s social position globally. If the mechanisms with which to silence Sycorax come in the form of allegations of witchcraft and her subsequent death due to ageing but never succeed, then Winnie Mandela shares precisely such uncanny present absences as a

woman activist facing banning, demonization and solitary confinement under apartheid regime. Her effacement is enacted by race and gender due to racism and patriarchy of the apartheid government and the ANC, respectively (and this is not to say that the apartheid does not have its own). The latter does this by forcing her to the shadow of her husband, Nelson Mandela, thereby making her to enter the history of the liberation struggle based on her marriage and as a “mouthpiece” to the then incarcerated husband. But like Sycorax, Winnie Mandela’s spectral presence haunts the public by writing herself back into that very history.

The specter of Winnie continues to haunt not only the masculinized nationalist discourse but also the kraalification of party politics of the ANC, an organization that has never had a woman president or secretary general 100+ years in existence. Winnie story resonates with the masses of black women who suffer suppression and facing epistemic, economic and physical genocide as a class. However, her spectrality is a source of power; with it comes irrepressibility, haunting oppressive ideologies

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like patriarchy, and resisting entire effacement.

Winnie Mandela’s power to haunt our history and thereby bewitch the nation floats into view at FNB Stadium as the crowd cheers almost in pandemonium while her daughter, Zenani, delivers a eulogy in her funeral. A kind of cheering Winnie Mandela enjoyed herself from the branches of the ANC as she entered extremely late in the gatherings of her organization. Through the speech of her daughter, the specter of Winnie Mandela bewitches the berserk crowd as Zenani cautions us about uncontested history thereby enabling her mother to figuratively emerge out of Nelson Mandela’s shadow: To identify Winnie Mandela as a Sycorax figure, then, is to recognize and invoke the transhistorical significations that may be relevant to a woman’s social position globally. If the mechanisms with which to silence Sycorax come in the form of allegations of witchcraft and her subsequent death due to ageing but never succeed, then Winnie Mandela shares precisely such uncanny present absences as a you will be forgiven for thinking that [the liberation struggle] was a man’s struggle and the men’s

triumph; nothing could be far from the truth. My mother is one of the many women who rose against patriarchy, prejudice and the might of the nuclear arms’ state to bring peace and freedom we enjoy today…. As she [Winnie Mandela] said in her lifetime, “I am a product of my country and the product of my enemy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Sinethemba Sankara Bizela is an activist and writer based in Cape Town. He was born in King William's Town and holds an MA in Literary Studies. He studies in Rhodes University and University of the Western Cape, and his research interests are on South African Studies, inspired by Postcoloniality, Marxism and Feminism.

Loving Thokoza: A masterpiece WORDS BY Qhama Zondani

Mandla N of Black Brain pictures has once again given us something to think and talk about. His first feature film comes nothing short of what we have come to expect from him as a creative. Loving Thokoza is a film set in the period of the democratic transition in 1994 in a township called Thokoza, which highlights several underlying themes about the kind of South Africa that we still have today, twenty-six years after the formal end of apartheid. Enhle Mbali Mlotshwa, Hamilton Dhlamini and Mduduzi Mabaso are some of the most recognizable talents from the cast of this film, with fresh talent also featuring. It is said that the film was shot in nine days, yet it is still one of the best films to come out in recent times especially with it being set in the democratic transition period.

Loving Thokoza has characters that we can all relate to, especially if you are from the

township.

Whilst many have ambitions of leaving the township, we all know that one uncle whom we are convinced has the brightest mind in the community, yet he has amounted to nothing but a hopeless drunkard. We all know of at least one grootman who is well known for having been a freedom fighter but is not on the gravy train, he is the one we all rely on for umrhabulo as they say. We all know a kid who has grown up in the township and seen all the nuances of life in the ghetto such that when they make it to university, it is seen not only as a victory for the community but also as one more person who has a better chance of leaving the hellish zone right?

These are the types of characters we encounter in Loving Thokoza where the masterfully executed character played by Enhle Mbali Mlotshwa – Charlotte Grootboom - is a recently

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graduated English teacher from Fort Hare University who has ambitions of being the poster child for the new South Africa. In 1994 it would have been a huge achievement for a black person to teach in the former white schools, they would also automatically carry the burden of transforming this new environment. Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it? We have all been told that education will somehow magically change our condition as black people. As a young black graduate, however, Charlotte is quickly reminded that she is black in a South Africa which structurally maintains the relic of its recent past. In this time she learns a very important lesson on how her beloved uncle Darlington whom she has always looked up to had fallen from grace, at the cost of appeasing whites, and surrendered to the bottle, she quickly gains a new perspective on following her teaching ambitions and accedes to teaching in the township.

Charlotte invests in the lives of her pupils and goes as far as creating a debate club to help boost her prospects of gaining

recognition from the white schools. Besides, isn’t it all too familiar that women in the professional environment have to adopt an almost superhero status to get the basics done? Then there is Charlotte’s childhood friend, a domestic worker who also does all in her power to take care of her family, such that it even lands her in jail. This is perhaps what many movies in the same category and with all the prevalent themes, from racism to tribalism and inequality so sharply miss.

Are we appreciative enough of the many women in our communities who constantly make sacrifices for others to have a better life? From what started as a personal ambition for Charlotte quickly became what I think many women go through even today, they become superheroes who constantly put others first in a society that refuses to change for the better.

With her debate club, Charlotte skillfully empowers kids who were destined for failure to stay true to themselves and recognize the value of learning through their experience of life in the township.

This embodies Charlotte Maxeke’s words;

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“this work is not for yourselves - kill that spirit of self and do not live above your people but live with them, if you can rise, bring someone with you” which is also featured on the official trailer.

In this process of embracing her role in the community, Charlotte falls in love with comrade Moscow, that APLA veteran we all know to level the sharpest critique of post-1994 South Africa but is also frustrated because this democratic South Africa has no space for many like him who fought for liberation.

Moscow is compelled to participate in crime as a way of claiming his share in the new South Africa, he too develops a keen interest in Charlotte and plays his part in helping her pursue a vision. Moscow is the one who cements the idea that whilst many may try to use the township for selfish ends, many remain stuck there with not many options, a situation which is still true to this day.

Think about South Africa today, twenty-six years after apartheid, what is the reality of the youth? How many unemployed graduates do you know? What are the cultural activities in our

schools and how seriously are they taken? Why is racism still a reality? Did the 1994 moment change anything for the black majority? These are some of the questions that the younger generations will ask themselves after watching this film, the paradox is that these were the same questions that were posed before the democratic dispensation… and more recently, the most important voices - the youth – from diverse walks of life have agreed that 94 changed fokkol! A statement which rings true today.

Requiem for Ngqawana WORDS BY Qhama Zondani

Those who have lived long enough will know that the mention or thought of New Brighton almost always comes accompanied by a distinct audiovisual. Be it the frequent hustle and bustle, gunshots and screeching wheels even the black music which remains a celebrated feature. Whichever you immediately identify with New Brighton has always been a township that has given us much a history than we are prepared to reflect upon. From fashion to drama to black music New Brighton remains a social and cultural nucleus in the Eastern Cape.

Today we reflect on one of the most potent gifts which came in the life of Zimasile Wilson Ngqawana. Exactly nine years ago today we learnt of Ngqawana’s transition, and exit from this realm, which I imagine would have been a peaceful one as he

appreciated that someday he would have to “drop the body” and had made peace with the process.

Having lived a life that has touched many in the way that he did this day must be a constant reminder that Ngqawana remains an important figure in the present. Having grown up in New Brighton and taken a very difficult yet principled decision to dedicate his life to music Ngqawana’s journey couldn’t have been an easy one, from not being able to complete school, to convincing his parents that he intended to pursue music full time, going to great lengths to polish his craft and eventually pursuing formal training.

This life came, as Ngqawana understood, with the responsibility of enabling others an avenue to reflect on the kind of society we live in through his own

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experiences. Perhaps transmitting to us through his music in the form of a personal philosophy now known as Zimology, the trials and tribulations faced by Ngqawana led to him to be deliberate about making sense of the world. An evident feature in Ngqawana’s music through all his albums was featuring hymns a distinct which came as a means to connect to the universe. This spiritual feature in his music is what set him apart as a musician, it is almost difficult to listen to a Ngqawana piece and remain the same after that experience. Ngqawana for us could be that figure which Aime Césaire identifies as one who must be those great reserves of faith, those great silos of strength where people can draw the courage in critical moments to imagine their destiny and define the future.

he had the opportunity to crystalize his own musical identity which he termed “Ingoma”.

Ingoma may have many meanings for different people but for Ngqawana was the totality of his musical and life experience, from childhood to formal music education and the mastery of his musical genius.

It is then that Ngqawana went on a quest to dig deeper within himself with his debut album, exploring his “cultural” and African identity. He did this of course whilst appreciating its limitations and in fact, later in his life would admit that that stage of his life had passed, and he had moved into exploring new realms. In fact, for most of his life, he did not conform to the categories imposed by society, yet he was very observant and took up the task of making sense of society through his music with ease.

Here we encounter a man who has properly contemplated society through his journey, many may not know but Ngqawana was not entirely happy with the outlook of formal education as it was designed to push him away from himself. It is only after his series of international scholarships and workshops that

In his Zimology album, for example, Ngqawana had a song named “Baby Angelina” which was composed in memory of a three-month-old baby who was brutally murdered on a farm just as South Africa was celebrating the advent of a democratic breakthrough.

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experiences. Perhaps transmitting to us through his music in the form of a personal philosophy now known as Zimology, the trials and tribulations faced by Ngqawana led to him to be deliberate about making sense of the world. An evident feature in Ngqawana’s music through all his albums was featuring hymns a distinct which came as a means to connect to the universe. This spiritual feature in his music is what set him apart as a musician, it is almost difficult to listen to a Ngqawana piece and remain the same after that experience. Ngqawana for us could be that figure which Aime Césaire identifies as one who must be those great reserves of faith, those great silos of strength where people can draw the courage in critical moments to imagine their destiny and define the future.

he had the opportunity to crystalize his own musical identity which he termed “Ingoma”.

Ingoma may have many meanings for different people but for Ngqawana was the totality of his musical and life experience, from childhood to formal music education and the mastery of his musical genius.

It is then that Ngqawana went on a quest to dig deeper within himself with his debut album, exploring his “cultural” and African identity. He did this of course whilst appreciating its limitations and in fact, later in his life would admit that that stage of his life had passed, and he had moved into exploring new realms. In fact, for most of his life, he did not conform to the categories imposed by society, yet he was very observant and took up the task of making sense of society through his music with ease.

Here we encounter a man who has properly contemplated society through his journey, many may not know but Ngqawana was not entirely happy with the outlook of formal education as it was designed to push him away from himself. It is only after his series of international scholarships and workshops that

In his Zimology album, for example, Ngqawana had a song named “Baby Angelina” which was composed in memory of a three-month-old baby who was brutally murdered on a farm just as South Africa was celebrating the advent of a democratic breakthrough.

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In this song, you can hear the anguish coloured by the dark and heavy piano sound and can’t help but wonder why such an innocent soul had to go in that way.

Equally important however was Ngqawana’s quest to empower fellow musicians. His “fellow travellers” as he dubbed them were perhaps part of an important part of his life, having reflected and criticized the estranging education system he took it upon himself to establish a platform for exploring more fulfilling methods of education. We must say boldly that here Ngqawana was practising a nonhegemonic pedagogy whilst we see many merely deploy this dialogue as a metaphor in recent times. You see what makes Ngqawana’s philosophy – Zimology – even more significant today is that it invites the individual to look inward find and make peace with the self before we ultimately sacrifice the self, into a terrain of selflessness.

One undeniable fact remains, and it is that our society has not changed much for the majority.

Therefore, with all the problems facing society today, maybe we

could take the inspiration from Ngqawana’s musical expressions more literally and push to a less explored terrain of selfdiscovery moving towards selflessness It is in the music, but we have to take it beyond and venture as Ngqawana would say “do the impossible” because the possible has not served us.

We have to constantly question the ethics of the society we have created for ourselves and perhaps the invitation is to stay true to these teachings and make the fundamental changes that will gift us a new society.

Ending this world; Beginning again WORDS BY Lesego Thole

Come on, let’s live!

Riots in the mouth Pandemics in our hearts Flowers torn from the arms The constitution is bondage Social contracts to empires Days when you smile Feel the heart, address the stares Hear the quiet old mine town breath Dirges from underneath From covered tracks Lost dockets, burnt manuscripts Questions can no longer address this Spirits can no longer fight Coltrane resonates the least

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Revolution is no longer a speech It is the seasons that bring relief Not property and its full plate of deceit Not wandering nights wandering minds Your 11-year-old sisters recollect All the times they died In your dreams you see it all Not the violence of Hegel The terror of Dessalines There is not enough life here Palettes of death Unresolved tenderness I must die so I & I can live Dyani & his backyard secrets

Dyani’s fingers bleeding

Dyani seeing death on that stage Many have died While that is the case, many must live!

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Deep in the heart

battles of ideas left a mark deep in the heart the child who sings becomes the city that bleeds deep in the heart there remains love cities of terror petals in parks deep in the heart remains ashes, ashes, deep in the heart.

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Exorcise the saviour inside - prayer

it is this world of a few that has killed so many

it’s not waves it is wails from the oceans my comrades say

martyrs, messiahs we don’t need you anymore

it is a world we dream of that comes from the drums, the wounds we breathe with the birds we live with ghosts

martyrs, messiahs we don’t need you anymore.

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Ending this world

Ending this world Means mass rebirth Means no life here Only palpable could-be’s Dread, No rent today Souls on fire The embrace of Land and air Ending this world Beginning again To an invasive history Whose arms will carry us Through the unknown forests Of freedom, improvisation Breathing and play Outside the market Means death of black Death of human, race, caste

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Species, the Darwin Taxonomy Armageddon conspiracies We must listen to Cassandra Vandalize the Gregorian charts There is a rapture

In the misery An insatiable desire

In the zeitgeist Tubman on the run Cecile’s hymns light the way End of the world Means earth brings new days.

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Right & Wrong

Whether we were wrong or right The moon’s plate would attain fullness Tonight, we were under a few stars Under a new plight Could it be that eyes don’t see unless The heart bleeds All of these veins on the skin Connecting to where they begin Could it be that it has always been this way Ideas tear, nations grow old, riots go on The heart believes in a revolution Everything else is hear say & ephemeral poems in song Follow the age-old tale As old as spirits flowing in the body All of the flames inside this sex bed Must light up the darkness that persists

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The state sanctioned medicine kills School shoes bring joy But there will be no material reading of history Only intimacy in this quest Only lasting what ifs...

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The Bridge

When it came out the mouth It was not enough Notes transcribed from the heart Inside the bridge on bra Hugh’s stimela Where feelings carry no words Only codes from yesteryear & rambles from the prophet They send placards to attack us Letters to the sky Letters against political systems Fire from the messengers Wish we didn’t have to talk & you would still feel me The accuracy of no tongue.

ABOUT THE POET Amongst many other cosmological gifts he bears, Lesego Thole is a poet who writes poems for the senses and dreams against the world.

To wallow in the Void WORDS BY Vusumzi Nkomo

“Vertigo must have seized them…” 1 I want to argue that Nkosi X’s VoidTape is a project of Vertigo, which is to say, it is a consequence of the disorientating effects of ‘worlding the world’ in Black, as a Black (in Cape Town). I want to argue that Nkosi X’s VoidTape occupies the abyss that occupies us: It is in the Void that we must resist, that we must be, dance, sing, produce life, refuse and struggle. Nowhere else but in the void, for the void is everywhere.

The heart of the project, its pulse and passion, Beautiful Corpse, sits about half-way through the album. After a hard-hitting 3 minutes of heavy truths, a punchy and sonic saunter, (unbearable)Blackness laid bare before us; an impassioned pessimism that shits at liberal ideas of bourgeois individualism & ‘against all odds’ triumphalism, evocative & soul-stirring &

heartwrenching honesty, debilitating destitution that has perennially (that is, since the colonial encounter) haunted Black creative/cultural production, the possibilities and impossibilities of filial and familial integrity, Home as concept and space/place, Black death as given-guaranteed, the impossibility of Black (free) speech and all its oxymoronic possibilities under white supremacist capitalist hydraulics of coercion in a City that is resistant to change. After all this, we are still plunged into a void, dark space of silence with nothing to hold on to; a Hold.

It is this space that haunts: a haunting space and nonexplanatory denouement at the end of a song. It is dark in tone and hue, spectral and confusing, silent and pensive, and is the space upon, and from, which the rest of the album is conceive, a well in a Hole that waters the rest of the ideas that have come to constitute VoidTape.

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Thinking about this album means thinking through this darkness (and social death) and as Mbembe suggested2, to “assume. . .and live with it.” It is the knowledge of one under a kind of spell, an imbalance, a collision of a subjective vertigo and objective vertigo, as Frank Wilderson III says, “a dizzying sense that one is moving or spinning in an otherwise stationary world”, while simultaneously in a sensation that “one’s environment is perpetually unhinged” and “a life constituted by disorientation rather than a life interrupted by disorientation.”

It is no shock that Enter The Void, the song before Beautiful Corpse, is titled that way. The void is where we can dream about escape (and entertain fantasies of fleeing as fugitives), dream about Angels, a New Life, groove, Soul, Love and Waterfalls. And dream about chasing Freedom.

1 Wilderson, F. 2011. The Vengeance of Vertigo: Aphasia and Abjection in the PoliticalTrials of Black Insurgents.

2 Mbembe, A. 2003. Necropolitics.

When Fire Meets Paper: An Interview with Ofentse Seshabela WORDS BY Vusumzi Nkomo & Ofentse Seshabela

Ofentse’s show at Eclectica Contemporary invites us into a conversation about the precarity of Black life, the imminence of Black death, the rot of and in civil society, a rot that is the condition of possibility for this collective death. But his work, the world(s) in his work, is also peopled by Blacks insisting on life against the grain. Though his figures’ identities are concealed, faces unmade, enigmatic faces; we fill them up with our faces, faces we know, faces of Black bodies that roam the ghetto which occupies Ofentse’s pieces, a ghetto, a setting, which is chillingly symbolic of the rot that is PostApartheid Apartheid South Africa (or simply POSTASA).

Umzi Watsha.

Fire, as the artist wants us to believe, is not only a facticity but a necessity. His medium, through which he advances his practice, marries fire with paper and the result are subjects and property

that look ablaze and in a kind of motion, a vibration.

Unemployment, power & politics, protest, militarisation, all occupy the grand conceptual apparatus undergirding Democrazy, his bold attempt to create a body of work that mirrors the state of the State, while grappling with the legacies of this our settler colonial nightmare; what of the past, as it collides with the present?

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Vusumzi Nkomo: From the title of the project, to the titles of the pieces, humour and irony are employed to make necessary political interventions. How important was this to you?

Ofentse Seshabela: Democrazy was actually my second choice title of the show. I had initially decided to title the show "A State of a State".

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This title, however, did not resonate with the show in a manner I had anticipated. The idea was to have a catchy title, which would easily grab one's attention at first glance and also, at the same time, deliver a sense of the ideas I am grappling with as an artist. So I feel Democrazy did just that. It is important to always find a relatable way of unpacking serious issues that concern society. This is where satire comes at play. The whole composition of each individual piece is entirely deliberate as you know, humour and irony is very popular in dealing with sociopolitical issues. So yes, the manner in which I used this element is that I decided, for instance, to use the names of common structures as a way that would pose a striking statement which addresses the daily lives of people living in the environments I chose to base my focus on. This was/is very important to me in my work, as I always strive to use any visual opportunity in my artworks in a way that would either inform the viewer or just merely question the norm.

VN: The obfuscation of faces in Democrazy creates a sense of mystery, annulling our desire to identify with your subjects. Talk to me about this aesthetic

choice and its intended meaning, within the broader conceptual framework of the project.

OS: The ‘obfuscated faces’ of my figures, I refer to them as "black spaces", or "black faces", or "blank spaces". I use this motif in order to allow the viewer the space to identify themselves in these subjects. I refer to the faces as spaces, because it is symbolic, to me, as "head spaces". Now, a head space could be considered as one's mind or thinking space.

In my own analogy, the mind is equivalent to the universe, or the galaxy rather. It is a vast infinite space which is filled with pockets of the unknown. The "blank spaces" are also metaphoric for actual environmental spaces where one would usually find the subjects I am portraying, hence I also refer to them as "black spaces".

The term "black spaces" is also derived from the race of the subjects presented. Black spaces, as a concept, is of great importance to me and this body of work, as it highlights our history as black people and our relationship to spaces.

With this idea of black spaces, I critique the politics of spatial

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occupation unto black people which stems from a history of separation and displacement.

This notion further zooms in on the economical barriers which highly affect the occupation of spaces and places based on class and social conventional standards.

VN: You have a keen interest in the banal, the everyday common person. I’m interested in their (suggested) heads, they have a smokey effect about them, as if smoke is oozing from their heads, creating a halo around them. This elevates them to the level of the mystic(al). What did you wish the viewer drawers from this aesthetic choice?

OS: The righteous presence of the smoke, not only on the figures' heads, but all over their body, is an effect I enjoy the most, achievable with this technique. I feel that the "oozingness" represents the aura of the subjects. I am one person who is highly intrigued by the existing energies around us which are invisible to the naked eye. This notion is of great importance as I see value in people. Not value which is classified in a monetary sense, but spiritual value. As a black man, I am aware of the

supernatural spiritual wealth my people possess and I feel like the smokeyness around the figures is a dope visual embodiment of the energy we harness and carry around as a people.

VN: Your relation to ‘property’ in the project is interesting.

Ashy, shadowy, ghostly, your buildings evoke a sense of fire, or the catastrophic event of a house/shack on fire, proof of these structures’ inhabitability.

Can you share why was this specific visual treatment of property-on-fire so important (even though the shacks aren’t exactly burning)?

OS: Well, I think given the medium that I use, the ashy, shadowy, ghosty effect almost comes as organic. This is the result of the treatment in fire meeting the paper. The use of fire as an artistic medium, I link it as a metaphor to the notion into which, in rural areas, after the turn of a season, especially the winter season, the dead grass/crops in one's yard or surrounding areas is usually burned down. This is done in order to encourage growth of the grass/crops in the new coming season. I find this idea as very fundamental in our daily lives in relation to our history and how our lives are constructed in the

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time frame we exist in. In order for us to experience a fresh new kind of growth and progress, things need to be burned down and totally eradicated, because it is very difficult for the old and the new to functionaly coexist in one space. So one has to go and that, in this case, is the old.

VN: The ‘candle smoke’ meets brown paper in the creation of your pieces. And anyone who grew up in a shack will tell you of the trauma resulting from any careless marriage between candles and shacks, the flammability of Black people’s homes/lives. Why was it important for you to recreate this reality through this specific technique?

OS: From narratives derived from history and even current affairs, it is common knowledge that black lives are very fragile and highly sensitive. Stories of shacks burning down due to negligence grace news bulletins every now and again. When communities demonstrate due to lack of service delivery or whatever broken promise between government and the people, tires are burnt as well as cars and properties. So within black communities, there seems to be a very interesting and questionable

relationship between people, fire and violence. In the case of my artworks, I think the fire from the candle creates an environment which is almost symbolic of a copy and paste of our lived realities as a people. Honestly, this idea is something which isn't premeditated, but comes across as natural given the technique used. I think it works very well in order to create other familiar links from reality to the conceptualization of the final artworks.

VN: Wat Soek Jy Op My Land references, through chalk-like text, Orwell’s “1984” and the debilitating dystopia that runs through the novel. What sort of analogies were you drawing between (post)apartheid South Africa and Orwell’s narrative of authoritarianism?

OS: I find the slogan of the ‘Party’ as very interesting as I feel that it was relevenant during the time the book was written and it is still relevant even today. If you think about it, the treatment of war as being peaceful is reflective of our normalization of living in a world that is governed by very absurd systems. Furthermore, I will always state that I see the world as a gigantic battle field. This idea forms the foundation of my work.

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The need for one to wake up everyday and go to work at a job that they do not enjoy is a battle many of us are fighting. All of this happens with an objective to maintain peace. I call this normalizing the crazy. The slogan also makes me question the degree of freedom we have as individuals living in postapartheid South Africa. Yes, we might be free to exist in spaces we were once subjected to occupy, but if one is conscious of their poor financial status, are they free to go to Sandton or V&A Waterfront for whatever reason?

I do not think so, because (1) one needs to take into account their exterior presentation and if it fits/relates to the majority of the people that occupy these spaces.

(2) One has to consider their financial standing and then determine if they will be able to afford products and services that are up for sale at these spaces. (3) How does one even get to these spaces? So, in my understanding, the kind of freedom which we are being offered comes with its own terms and conditions that are to be considered in almost everything that we do. Civilians' careless tendency to be ignorant of serious issues that concern them is one active mechanism that cements the control and

domination of imperialist systems unto us. The glorification and promotion of ‘Western culture’ is something which is unconsciously practised amongst Black communities. This is supplemented by the lack of "giving a damn" by people in general. I see the above mentioned points as being deeply woven within the fabric of society.

In “1984”, surveillance is also a dominating theme. Surveillance is very evident in our daily lives.

From CCTV mushrooming in the white suburbs to our smartphones recording each and every step we take. Our lives have turned into a big, wide stage and everything and everyone is being recorded as they perform.

VN: Taken as a whole, Democrazy invites us to think of the South African present as made possible by a long historical violence, statesanctioned military repression.

How important is a nuanced reading of South Africa’s history as it constantly collides with the present?

OS: History informs the reasons why things are in their state today. It is due to situations we have faced, and our reaction to them that has culminated in the

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way we live and behave the way that we do. We are a country that has been governed by violence for many years. We, as a people, responded to the system with violence. So I am not surprised that today we think that violence is our go-to solution for any burning situation we might find ourselves confronted with. So as much as language forms part of our heritage, so does violence.

Democrazy aims to explore this notion of violence which is infested into our daily lives. I’m not only referring to the chaotic state of a convention, but also a personal, self-inflicting type of violence which often manifests into the unfair treatment of people that surround us.

Democrazy aims to celebrate those among us who have been successful in demonstrating a subversive resistance which echoes from the basic fundamentals of carrying out the events on a daily.

VN: You mention elsewhere Fela’s impact on you for this project specifically, further proof of his resurgence in the public imagination. Why was it important for you to use him as your creative reference point?

OS: Fela is very crazy! I think I can relate a lot to Fela as an artist and

as an African man. I love his ability to self-express his utmost full potential with no shame. I think Fela would go as far as performing naked on stage. Fela is way beyond the edge. And I love that. I love his energy. Fela is politically and socially vocal. Fela does not shy away from real visible issues that affect him and his people.

Fela is the voice of the people and I love how he can articulate real scorching subject matter and diffuse it into music. I think it is absolutely phenomenal. Fela remains a beacon of hope for Africa. Fela, to me, resembles a true definition of a real artist. I have no reason not to admire and be inspired by Fela. Fela is great.

Fela is an African Giant. Fela is my Father.

VN: There’s a certain familiarity about your work, and A familiar Sight advances this so well.

Speak to me about ‘familiarity’ as a dominant motif in Democrazy.

OS: Familiarity is definitely a dominant factor in Democrazy.

This is absolutely intentional and is bound to the fact that space and people form the core of this body of work. Now, with space, there is a lot of familiarity in spaces due to economical and land politics.

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What I mean is, a space which is meant for rich people will always look like a space meant for rich people. A space which is meant for poor people will always look like a space meant for poor people. The latter works in two visually distinct parallels. Space and environment in this sense constitutes the content that occupies the mind and we will always see it as what it is and what it stands for.

VN: ‘Power’ is juxtaposed with people engaged in resistance in Prosecute State Capture Culprits. Tell me more about this contrast.

OS: PROSECUTESTATECAPTURECULP RITS is the first artwork I completed for Democrazy. It came after having a frustration from the buzz around the Zondo commision at the beginning of 2019. I was terrified for the fact that the commision had been running for just over a year, a lot of damning information had been revealed to the public about prominent politicians and business people recklessly bending laws and easily escaping the jaws of justice. I did not and still do not understand how and why hasn't there been any high profile arrests that have been

made of culprits that have been inflicted of this saga of maladministration and the obvious looting of state resources. So this artwork was a form of protest to heighten the seriousness of witnessing the privilege of politicians dodging the ends of justice. The idea with this piece was to make it highly dramatic. I had imagined a cluster of imagery and colour which represents the visuality of an active protest.

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