Malibongwe: Poems from the Struggle by ANC Women

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 Langa is a township in Cape Town. It was completed in 1927 and is named after Langalibalele, an isiXhosa speaking chief who was exiled on Robben Island in 1873 for his resistance against the Natal government (South African History Online).

2 This is an expression that Fassie uses in her song.

3 Following the feminist and academic Pumla Dineo Gqola in the article “Ufanele Uqavile: Blackwomen, Feminisms and Postcoloniality in Africa” (2001), I combine the words ‘Black’ and ‘women’ in order to highlight how race and gender cannot be treated as mutually exclusive for Blackwomen.

4 In the book chapter titled “Constructions of the Black: Reading Louis Armstrong Alongside Brenda Fassie and Zim Ngqawana as an ‘Other's’ Inscription: The Dead do Speak” (2021), the percussionist and scholar Tumi Mogorosi states that in her demise, the mother in Fassie's song is in the ‘non-position of the non-being who is unable to ‘be on time’ for her child, due to the incapacity for being present or alive’ (2021, 46).

5 In an upcoming book chapter titled “Representing Princess Magogo in the Opera Princess Magogo kaDinuzulu” (2002), I refer to the idea of martyrisation in relation to the historical figure, Princess Magogo. I argue that the manner in which her history is inscribed through the aforementioned opera as well as ‘Zulu’ historiography normalises the idea that Blackwomen are sacrificial figures for the benefit of others, especially men. In addition, I have placed the phrase ‘Zulu’ in quotation marks because multiple scholars have interrogated the homogeneity of Zuluness.

6 See the scholar and academic Siphokazi Magadla's article “Theorizing African Women and Girls in Combat From National Liberation to the War on Terrorism” (2020, 6).

7 The storyteller, orator and writer Gcina Mhlophe refers to the idea of ‘history-telling’ as a way to highlight the significance of storytelling in the making of historical narratives. Refer to the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD1ENtLgseQ for more information.

8 See Magadla (2020, 1). In her work, she proposes that there is a continued ‘denial of [African women and girl's] contribution to direct combat’ (ibid). She also asserts:

The roles of African women and girls in war and conflict, especially after the Cold War, have provided abundant examples of the ways in which war efforts rely on ideas of femininity and masculinity that are simultaneously reproduced, reconfigured, and ruptured in the social and political economy of war. They have been central in challenging established ideas about the places where war happens and those participating in it. (ibid)

9 When I use concepts from isiZulu or Nguni languages at large, I do not italicise them unless they signal a book title or some form of a title. In the essay “Much with the Dead and Mum with the Dying, or Rigidities of rationalism, Camaraderie Criticism and Contemporary South African Literature,” the novelist Unathi Slasha proposes that italicisation, glossarisation and translation of indigenous African languages (into English) is ‘a practice that perhaps implicitly acknowledges the marginal status of [these languages]?’ (2018). Therefore, as a writer who uses concepts from isiZulu and Nguni languages at large, I resist the practice of writing as though indigenous African languages are an appendage.

10 See the anthology Our Words, Our Worlds: Writing on Black South African Women Poets, 2000–2018 (2019).

11 See the historian Nomalanga Mkhize's reflection on this term in her “John Langalibalele Dube Memorial Lecture” which was presented at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on 17 September 2020. Refer to the following link http://www.cihablog.com/john-l-dube-lecture-2020-prof-nomalanga-mkhize/ for a transcript.

12 A phrase used by the pan-Africanist Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe to define true leadership.

13 See Cabral (1973, 62–63).

14 See the following link https://thecommune.org.za/com-events/book-launch-malibongwe/ for more information about the virtual book launch held on 18 September 2020 at ‘The Commune’.