Traditions of Poetry in Natal

Abstract

We have been facing a 'brilliant chaos' of words, for the last few years have been tremendous for poetry in Natal. But we have also been reeling from collisions between two poetic traditions a scripted and an oral one. And both traditions have been colliding in the context of political and labour initiatives in the area. The two primordial poles of the 'oral' and the 'written' stand opposite each other drenched in prejudice: after all, a hundred years of work in plantations, in sugarmills, on the docks and inside factories have torn the traditions apart leaving but little room for interaction. For example, Lawrence Zondi, the most 'natural' and 'oral' of contemporary labour poets one of the most rooted political and labour leaders in the Midlands, the area's oral historian and intellectual pours scorn on all those 'Englishmen' in his orations: those black scribes who have been distanced from the people.1 For example, Alfred Qabula, another labour poet, also orates against education that emasculates traditions. He insists that he only praises 'rough hands that hold the plough' in his work.2 On the other hand, our educated scribe shrinks away from the vernacular noises of oral poets, responding against something 'tribal', something 'apartheid-induced', something that is narrower than a wholesome national spirit. What both traditions are in danger of missing is that they share an 'unconscious surplus' of creative energy. I shall proceed in the pages that follow to offer a more conscious assessment. And, I will venture later a further argument: that unless these territories are understood, we cannot even begin discussing the strength of 'people's poetry' in Natal and its own internal criteria of excellence. The fate of oral as against scripted creators was separated, parcelled and dispatched down different emotive paths. The former followed ordinary people from the countryside to their hostels and compounds; from there, to the townships and back. It followed the trials of the Zulu Royal House, of the chiefship system, of