‘Why Are You Here?’: Multiculturalism and Migration – A Study of Migrant Poetry From South Africa

Abstract

The primary aim of this study is to contextualize contemporary migrant experience in South Africa and the diverse and creative ways this has been captured in poetic forms. The whole notion of postcolonial mobilities within the globalized context of the all-subsuming movement known as globalization, has been employed by these poets. With Africa itself – to paraphrase Manthia Diawara (1998) – often characterized as a continent sitting on top of infectious diseases, strangled by corruption and tribal vengeance, and populated by people with hands and mouths open to receive international aid – the migrant’s experience in South Africa provides a basis for the interrogation of the intractable term known as globalization or what Fredric Jameson (1998) has described as ‘a sign of the emergence of a new kind of social phenomenon, and one that falls outside the established academic disciplines’. Rodwell Makombe’s terse haiku-like poem entitled ‘Why are you here’, among other contributions in the anthology, Splinters of a Mirage Dawn, summarizes the migrant’s experience: ‘Please Sir, I can’t go back to that country/Look at the boils on my back/If you send me back there, they will finish me off’ (Makombe 20). Where ‘that country’ is located remains an object of mere speculation but the migrant parades unabashedly the ‘boils on my back’ as an identity – an identity which the people ‘waiting to finish me off’ are ready to reinforce if ‘you send me back there’. To inhabit ‘riparian zones’ as another contributor to Splinters of a Mirage Dawn, Sarah Rowland Jones (21), has termed it, ‘ … those which threaten infestation,/are subject to compulsory removal’. From this perspective, the study examines globalization and the cultural, political and intellectual space it occupies, including the transcolonial situation it animates. Mapping the transcolonial situation implies an awareness of the local emergence of difference or what Fredric Jameson describes further as ‘specificity’ against ‘the old universalism that so often underwrote an imperial knowledge/power system’ (Jameson xiii), among other conceptual axes. The poets employ a combination of poetic forms and artistic experimentations, ranging from the Haiku and Spoken Word Poetry to Performance Poetry and African oral traditional modes, to convey the varied and diverse range of the migrants’ experience.

Keywords:

• Globalization
• migration, multiculturalism, transcoloniality, poetic forms

Notes

1 The bitter failure of ‘rainbowism’, to paraphrase Moolman, constitutes one of the basic premises of the creative and critical disquiet of the ‘fallist generation’; a generation ‘marked by the characteristics of youth culture, and by the markers of the fallist generation that has recently risen to prominence (#FeesMustFall, #RhodesMustFall etc)’. (Moolman 2)

2 In her acclaimed collection, The Sun and her Flowers (2017), Rupi Kaur displays the hallmark of the fallist generation and one of her primary conclusions is that:

  ‘perhaps we are all immigrants

  trading one home for another

  first we leave the womb for air

  then the suburbs for the filthy city

  in search for a better life

  some of us just happen to leave entire countries’.

3 ‘Xenoidiotics’ is d’Abdon’s coinage and certainly refers to the xenophobic attacks in which South Africa has been caught in recent times and ‘afrophobiacs’ probably refers to those in the New South Africa who do not believe in a Pan-African consciousness. From the mundane to the philosophical, xenophobia in South Africa today is taking several dimensions. Leading writer and painter, Breyten Breytenbach articulates the philosophical premise of the contemporary malaise while journalist and media commentator Fred Khumalo supplies the cultural and political arguments. For detail see, Breytenbach (2014) and Khumalo (2014), respectively.

4 For detail see Angelique, Chrisafis (21 July 2003). ‘Don Quixote is the world's best book says the world's top authors’, The Guardian (London). Retrieved 13 October 2012.

5 In postcolonial terms, ‘hybridity’ can be described as: ‘new transcultural forms that arise from cross-cultural exchange. Hybridity can be social, political, linguistic, religious, etc. It is not necessarily a peaceful mixture, for it can be contentious and disruptive in its experience. Note the two related definitions: catalysis: the (specifically New World) experience of several ethnic groups interacting and mixing with each other often in a contentious environment that gives way to new forms of identity and experience. creolization: societies that arise from a mixture of ethnic and racial mixing to form a new material, psychological, and spiritual self-definition’. Accessed 24 April 2014 http://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/postcold.htm

6 Here at last is the only hint or revelation that ‘that country’ is indeed the politically and economically embattled Zimbabwe where it was announced recently that: ‘Harare — JUDGE President Paddington Garwe has been promoted to the Supreme Court and was sworn in yesterday by President Mugabe while Justice Rita Makarau takes over as head of the High Court. Justice Garwe becomes the seventh judge on the Supreme Court bench’. Accessed 4 June 2014 http://allafrica.com/stories/200607070516.html

7 ‘The negotiations which led to the Lancaster House Agreement brought recognised independence to Rhodesia following Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965 … It was signed on 21 December 1979’ For detail see, Matthew P. (2004: 25). Ending Civil War: Rhodesia and Lebanon in Perspective. London: Tauris

8 ‘Ubuntu … is a Nguni Bantu term roughly translating to “human kindness.” It is an idea from the Southern African region which means literally “human-ness”, and is often translated as “humanity towards others”, but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity”’. “About the Name”. Official Ubuntu Documentation. Canonical. Retrieved 5 January 2013

9 According to Verashni Pillay, ‘Hillbrow is striking from afar. Its tower and apartment blocks form Johannesburg’s iconic jagged skyline as displayed on postcards and glimpsed from the cloistered northern suburbs. But up close, the tower is obscured by tightly packed apartment blocks, many dirt-streaked and dilapidated … Hillbrow is where you get hijacked, raped and murdered. It's where uncontrolled revellers drop fridges from high-rises on New Year's Eve and the middle class dare not tread’. For detail see, http://mg.co.za/article/2013-09-20-00-hillbrow-where-cops-do-the-work-for-drug-lords

10 ‘Kwekwe town was founded in 1898 as a gold mining town, and hosts Zimbabwe's National Mining Museum. The town remains an industrial centre of the country. The name stems from the Zulu word ‘isikwekwe’, which means ‘scurvy’, ‘mange’ or ‘scab’. Popular belief states that Kwekwe is named after the croaking noise made by the nearby river's frogs’. For detail see, Clements F. 1963. THIS IS OUR LAND: Stories and Legends of the two Rhodesias. Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, 43.