Mohammed Khelef Ghassani’s “Kwetu”: poetry, place, and liberation

Abstract

This article explores the themes of freedom and enslavement in the poetry of Zanzibari poet-journalist-activist Mohammed Khelef Ghassani. Starting from the layered meanings of the Kiswahili adage “Mwacha asili ni mtumwa” [he who abandons his origins is a slave], adaptations of which figure prominently in Ghassani’s most famous poetry collection, N’na Kwetu: Sauti ya Mgeni Ugenini [I Have a Home: Voice of a Stranger in a Strange Land], the article elaborates a balance Ghassani seeks to maintain between different and overlapping notions of freedom developed against histories of slavery in Pemba, the threat of assimilation in Germany, and ongoing suppression of political speech in Zanzibar. The poems include reflections on violations of foundational rights and state-sponsored violence against which the poet’s genealogical, literary-linguistic, and affective claims to both community belonging and individual free speech stand as firm counter-resistance, declarations of freedom against another kind of slavery.

Keywords:

• Swahili poetry
• Swahili literature
• political poetry
• freedom
• Zanzibar

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The author’s fourth collection, Machozi Yamenishiya [I Have Run Out of Tears], initially self-published in 2016, was republished by Dar es Salaam-based publisher Mkuki na Nyota in 2019.

2 The prize was renamed the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize in 2022, after the primary prize sponsor’s parent company.

3 Here I refer to the poem “Wanangu Nisameheni” (My Children Forgive Me) and in particular the lines: “Nyumbani mulishaota, mizizi ‘kazama chini/Nikaja nikawachota, hawang’ozoa kwa kani” [At home you’d already sprouted, roots plunging down / I came and dug you out, forcefully tore you from the ground] (N’na Kwetu 88).

4 All translations in this paper are my own, unless otherwise specified.

5 “Kwao” is the third person plural possessive, comparable to “kwetu”, i.e. their place.

6 My addition here of the clause “there is a we” (as I have done in the title) is an attempt to mitigate the loss in translating kwetu simply as home and add back in, at the least, its sense of collectivity. Inevitably this results in another loss. In the original Kiswahili line the word “hasa” reflects emphasis and specificity—something like “I have a true home that is truly mine/where I truly belong.”

7 Juneteenth is a holiday and celebration in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. The name combines "June" and "nineteenth,” in commemoration of the anniversary of “General Orders No. 3,” issued by a staff officer acting under the direction of Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas. The first line of the order stated “in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, ‘all slaves are free’” (Cotham xix). Juneteenth became a federal holiday in the United States in 2021.

8 I use “slave” here as my English translation, both in the poem and in explicating the proverbs, a choice that accords with nearly any Kiswahili-English dictionary available, but a weighty choice none the less, and one which obscures the historical contexts of the range of context-specific social positions within Swahili societies that could be termed mtumwa, which while classed and racialized, cannot be reduced to hierarchies of race alone. Indeed, these historical complexities are the subject of extensive scholarly study. See, for instance, Eastman, Fair, Glassman (1995), and McMahon.

9 I spoke specifically with poets and respected Swahili elders Abdilatif Abdalla and Mahmoud Mao about this and addressed the question several times to the Watetezi wa Kiswahili Tanzania (Defenders of Kiswahili, Tanzania; WAKITA) WhatsApp group, a digital space where Kiswahili word and phrase origins and meanings are often discussed and debated, as well as discussing the proverb with the poet himself.

10 Arnold Koenings links this late twentieth/early twenty-first century political context directly with the history of Pemba’s treatment by the Zanzibari government in the immediate aftermath of the Zanzibar Revolution of 1963, during which Pembans were subject to brutal violence and “punishment” for their perceived failure to participate in revolutionary action. “No matter what an individual’s political views were, the very fact of being Pemban was enough to make them potential ‘traitors’” (166).

11 Of course, as Nathalie Arnold has reminded me, this same naming gesture could also mark a substitution of “nchi” [country] for “mji” [town] and point back to an earlier moment of political conflict within Zanzibar in the late 1990s, wherein the saying (and song lyric) “wasohaya wana mji wao” [the shameless have a town of their own] was harnessed to violently eject Pembans from social and political life on Unguja, prompting the response in lyric form “Tuna mji wetu: Zanizbar” [We have our town: Zanzibar] (personal communication; “Placing the Shameless”).

12 According to Human Rights Watch, the 2015 election marked “a sharp backslide in respect for basic freedoms of association and expression” including new legislation repressing independent media, NGOs, and opposition groups, as well as crackdowns on individuals and organizations perceived to be critical of the government. The presidential election in Zanzibar the same year was unexpectedly annulled by the Zanzibar Election Commission, and the re-run in 2016, which went to the ruling party candidate in a landslide, was deemed “illegal” and boycotted by CUF: “During the re-run, according to media reports, Zanzibar authorities arrested opposition members and banned public rallies … suspended [and raided] radio stations … [and] In at least one case, unknown men abducted and threatened a Zanzibar-based journalist for covering the elections” (“As long as I am Quiet, I am Safe”).

13 This marked shift in noun class is used to imply the monstrousness of these individuals, to distance them from utu or humanity. There is an irony built in here, as the subjugation implied by watumwa is transformed into violent perpetration.

14 For more on the relationship between ubuntu in various Bantu knowledge systems, including utu in Kiswahili, see Ogude; for more on the distinction between Kiswahili utu and ubinadamu, see Kresse and Rettová.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Meg Arenberg

Meg Arenberg is a postdoctoral research fellow in the African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures Department (AMESALL) at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and a literary translator from Kiswahili to English. Her primary research interests focus on the intertextual relationships between Europhone and Afrophone African texts, Kiswahili poetics, and digital media. Her previous work has been published in PMLA, Research in African Literatures, East African Literary and Cultural Studies, and Postcolonial Text.