REMEMBER TO RE-MEMBER - MEMORY IS A WEAPON
She trudges on narrow footpaths to school
invisible young [wo]man
but with teachers
who inspire that the sky is limitless
A child of the dream
She wants the earth and the stars
And the beautiful heavens
She wants to be free
And she wants the possibilities
That freedom brings…
She does not want to be defined
She does not want to be limited
She does not want to beg for
her humanity[2]….
She is shunted to The
Island[3]
a discarded military barracks
where the sky is overcast
the stars distant
This at the time of “The Dark Years”[4]
on that other Island
Seagulls over the lime quarries
Country of my Skull[5]
When there are No More Lullabies[6]
She listens on the steamboat
to the Heart of
Darkness
The Horror the Horror
Forever haunted in the
fallow years that follow
Consuming the years of
plenty
She slowly learns to
breathe Fanon’s prayer
in different ways over times and spaces
Oh my body, make me always a [wo]man who questions[8]
Following the insider outsider warrior woman
she writes of Sisters
In search of “Home” Homing Homecoming
Lives of Grace and Grail
Writing back to the Beloved Country
Sisters
who
REFUSE the longing
for ancestral shores but carry their
homes on their backs
REFUSE
to be tongue-tied
Manacled in grid-iron
Living in the false cocoons
of the oppressors’ lies
REFUSE
to mirror back
the grotesque images
that kraaled body and mind
into allotted spaces
who living and writing against the grain
see Freedom’s cause
the Pain of Being
as their identity
who have much to teach us each living day [10]
She journeys From Freedom to Canefields[11]
goes in search of her grandmother
crossing the kala pani
living in a state of familiar
temporariness [12]
permanent sojourner in the land of her adoption
the land she tills toiling for tea for Empire
She returns to other Seedtimes[13]
Planting in the back garden with her father
Where are the green fields where she used to roam
She remembers the tamarind tree in her grandfather’s garden
Allured by the girmit days of a fellow traveller in far-off
Fiji[14]
She goes in search of more mothers’ gardens
Sojourner Truth Mary Prince Eva Krotoa
Saartjie Baartman Monica Wilson Pandita Ramabai Miriam Tlali Charlotte Makeke[15]
And listens more intently
to the ancient song-lines
Womanspirit across time and
space
Lives of Love and Courage[16]
rediscovering the ordinary
the daily rounds of heroism
in backyards and across neighbours’ fences
from Katlehong
to the Casbah
from the Castle to the Cape Flats
She writes a song for
Sarah
A canticle for the many Sarahs across
the land
Come let us praise our mothers of yesteryear
Mothers valiant in the time of our desolation
Refusing the badge of slavery
Borne by the haunting of ancient oceans
tossed by the winds
Tilling the orchards and vineyards
You sang the Lord’s song in a foreign land
The land of your birth
As you struggled to live a difference
that has no name
and too many names[19]
Mothers in lamentation
weeping for your Absaloms[20]
bereft at street corners
searching for dreams elusive
in the land that denied its own offspring
Living, loving, lying awake, longing,[21]
You kept alive heart and
hearth
waiting for your prodigals
wandering in search of tomorrow
and tomorrow
and tomorrow
Come let us praise our Mothers
who carried us on their backs
as they stooped at the rivers of blood
Mothers who sang hymns
the freedom songs of our ancestors
Sacred Songs and Solos[22]
Hymns of solace for believers
From the Valley of Mercy
To the limestone mountain plains
You never lost faith
In the wilderness of our long sojourn
You did not eat the bread of idleness
you gathered fynbos and lavender
during the time of famine
strength and dignity were your clothing
You opened your mouth with wisdom
and the teaching of kindness
was on your tongue
Now that the winter is past
The voice of the turtledove is heard in the land
And the vineyards are in blossom
Your face no longer graces our table
But your spirit lives on
In the children who sing your praises at the gates
And in the wind that blows over the motherland[23]
Kindred womanspirits have come to take you home,
Where the ancient mountains shout out your name[24]
You must be born again she hears
And she is born again
And again
Innumerable times
With water and with fire
From the haunting of the Heart of Darkness
Of her earlier years
She journeys to the forest
ventures into the deep
And enters the Heart of Redness
Learning to live in the past in the present
At once belonging and not belonging
Led by the stars across the
Southern sky
writ large with criss-crossings of Negritude and Coolitude [26]
on the waters below
forever dispersed buffeted
Scattered in the gales of continents
In the currents of colonies[27]
She refuses to corral the coral
imaginary
In a perpetual voyage in and voyage out
the incessant need to belong
to belong to the nation
to Return to her Native Land[28]
a home so deeply riven so precarious
time of the dark Firebird[29]
Time of the Butcherbird[30]
and to re-create a single planetary home
and to live the bond of the Blood Knot
….
*****
The Programme Facilitator, Prof Rajendra Chetty,
Family and Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am deeply honoured to receive
the Gold Medal Award from the English
Academy of Southern Africa. Thank you to the Academy family - Prof Rajendra
Chetty, The President; Prof Rosemary Gray, The Honorary Secretary; and all the
members of Council. I have been greatly enriched through my sharing in the life
of the Academy.
Thank You to the past Academy presidents,
with whom I have worked closely – Prof Mbongeni
Malaba, from UKZN; the late Professors Colin Gardner [from the
University of Natal, and UKZN] and Stanley Ridge [from UWC].
I must acknowledge the wonderful support the
English Academy has enjoyed in KwaZulu-Natal - support from the University of
KwaZulu-Natal, the Durban University of Technology, the Consulates of India and
the United States in Durban, Maritzburg College; and more broadly, from
the 1860 Heritage Centre, the
Durban Municipality, and the Minara Chamber of Commerce. Among some of the
Academy highlights have been commemorations of Shakespeare, Tagore, Professor
Margaret Lenta, Lewis Nkosi, and Aziz Hassim; and Teachers’ Conferences at
Maritzburg College.
I am deeply grateful to all those who are
here tonight, and those who are joining in virtually. You have all, in
different ways, journeyed with me, and it is something that I greatly
value. A special Thank You to Mr
Thayalan Reddy, and Dolly Reddy, for inducting me into the world of the English
Academy.
On this occasion, I wish to
remember my late husband, Herby, who was always there, at Academy events, and
to thank my beloved families for their support
in all I do. I also thank the Imbongi,
Mawande Tshozi, for his dramatic Praise Song, which included my parents and
grandparents.
I wish to share
this Award with my wonderful grandchildren, Mira and Seth, who are here this
evening, and Leah and Adam, who are joining us virtually from Johannesburg. The
other day, my grandson, Seth, said at the dinner table: “Mummy, Mummy, I won a
prize”! And I was tempted to say,” That’s very good my boy! Now, eat your
carrots!”
I would
also like to mention young Aaryan Pillay, who is with us this evening. And dear Ronnie and Kay Govender’s
grandchildren – there are 10 of them - as well as their 5 great-grandchildren.[33]
YOU are all THE CHILDREN OF THE DREAM,
that Ben Okri writes about, and whom I quoted earlier.
And to re-phrase Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the Aboriginal poet,
whom I also quoted earlier:
“Let no one say the future is dead…
The future is all about us and within…
*****
In Conclusion, it is a special privilege to be sharing
this occasion with a Memorial to Ronnie Govender. Herby and I were privileged
to attend the Academy event at the Playhouse in Durban, when Ronnie Govender
was awarded the Gold Medal, in 1999. Over the years, we had attended all his
plays in Durban, as well as the many Retrospectives of them, superbly animated
by Pat Pillai and Jailoshini Naidoo, among other.
I look forward to Niren Tholsi’s Memorial Lecture; I commend
him for his astute and critical writings on Ronnie Govender in the Mail and
Guardian. We also appreciate the scholarly work that Professor Rajendra
Chetty himself has done on Ronnie Govender over the years. Special Thanks to
him, UWC, and the English Academy, for all the planning for this very special
event here, at this most beautiful Venue.
*****
Ronnie Govender was one of those writers who trusted his INTUITION, which
guided his sense of justice, in its different manifestations; and we celebrate
that this evening.
Ronnie Govender taught us to REMEMBER …TO RE-MEMBER.
He taught us that MEMORY IS A WEAPON.
[DON MATTERA,
who, sadly died two weeks ago, taught us this in word and in deed.]
So I have chosen to conclude with words that
speak to me personally, against the sediments of my own history and
circumstance. They also reflect the mission of
Ronnie Govender, who urged us - against the persistent onslaught of
apartheid and colonial denials of SELF - that your encounter with your
submerged self, your submerged world, is deeply SACRAMENTAL.
This is the other meaning of living AT THE
EDGE…
when the periphery becomes the Centre. This is a return to the Self, at a
personal level, as much as a return to communal configurations we are
challenged to constantly create and re-create…
This is also the RETURN that Lebogang Mashile
passionately writes about..
“after they have…
Broken the seam of your sanity
And glued what’s left together with lies…”
The moving lines are from Derek Walcott, the West Indian poet and
playwright and Nobel Literature Winner [1992]:
LOVE AFTER LOVE
“The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own front door,
in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s
welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who
was your self…
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all
your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the
bookshelf,
The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.”
This is a RETURN TO THE SELF
From the ZONE OF NON-BEING
THIS IS THE SONG OF THE SOUL
THIS IS THE SONG OF THE
ATMAN…
………….
Thank You
Composed for Jonathan D Jansen’s biography [with Naomi Jansen] of his mother, Song For Sarah – Lessons from My
Mother. 2017. Johannesburg: Bookstorm.
Ronnie
and Kay Govender’s children are Dhaya, Pregs, Pat and
Samantha.
See Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984.
