Our very first entry into Africa Vs North America Anthology is from the Veteran South African Poet and Publisher with Botsotso Arts Link, Allan Horwitz
PRIMARY FACTS
‘Introduction to Marxism’ – workshop for civic activists held in a junior school classroom at Bramfischerville, Johannesburg (December, 2012)
Faces alert but after the first words
turn away regard other things other sights
distant but close thoughts take over the classroom
who can understand this life
beyond the needs for food shelter warmth power
and the great mating emotion?
Outside a running a screaming for means masses marching for basics
police and lawyers bargain with teargas and half-truths
the new black rulers legislate predatorial combat
deny sharing is more efficient and useful
than hoarding and lording
the faces in front of me now swing to the mine dumps
next to their small houses
the shacks on which
dumps spew dust at spring’s start
mining company will not grass them nor give them up
but the community is organized
and here i am in this place of glaring need
to play a part in widening
breaking the bounds
` the want the absence the still-born the limping
barely believed ambition
and i wonder: can i really add?
spin concrete from theory for spiritual grandeur
build it on funeral-meat queues joblessness
fatty chicken soggy with brine rat shit random fathers
soap opera cheap washing powder
despite the handshakes of old neighbours
and the hurried breathing of first love and some success
in keeping blacklisting from the door
and can i fill out and bring to life words
class privilege corruption revolution
resistance decay decency pride
having regard to generations of anointers and usurpers
hero worshippers and betrayers
generations of take and take more
genocide migration stock theft and insurrection
Looking about the room
i imagine Marx and Engels watching the white drawn
faces of the sons and daughters of working England
those armies of stunted black toothed laborers
trudging back to their hovels in the gloom of gaslight
the two grey bearded emancipators silently counting the thin ribs
under their coal-stained rags
and then facing this class room
what would they say to this gathering of Africans
newly freed of the yoke of slavers and kings?
how would they advise these newly commoditized?
these workers and their managers
still laughed at by the captains of spice ships
oil tankers and the mineral world
would they still urge a dictatorship of the dispossessed?
the centralized certainty of enlightened self- interest?
would they have the strength to thrash the comprador class as it cruises?
and to make certain
train a bald security service to guard the Liberation?
Mention of Fanon has driven talk to revolutionary violence
Azania has many martyrs
the rhetoric canonizing their blood-soaked vests
cannot tarnish their heroism
even as the Big Men Mbeki Zuma
self-destruct
then talk turns to tenderpreneurship
those dining out business class/affirmative class
on the gravy train
is that not first choice for the ‘colonized mind’
ignorant of Biko’s Black Consciousness?
but what has this to do with you white boy?
you who cannot tolerate the notion of killing for freedom
can your philosophy free people of colour?
can there be colour-blind bondage?
what right have you to speak?
you
with your silver spoon and degrees
An hour before lunch the citizen-workers of Bramfischerville talk
about what they wish
to change and so
heal the stress lines fracturing
their lives
thereafter
the soul will digest policy
plan sewers and tar roads
many other ‘deliveries’
to this township on the edge of Africa’s grandest ‘boom and bust’city
this township pledging loyalty to a legacy
naming itself in his honour
but who was Bram Fischer?
who was the man who carried this name?
and i describe that white Afrikaner
Marxist who lived his principles
spent many years above and underground
defying the racists
spent many years in jail once they caught him
and affirm: he is with us today in spirit and he is still saying:
‘What is needed is for White South Africans to shake themselves out of their complacency, a complacency intensified by the present economic boom built upon racial discrimination. Unless this whole intolerable system is changed radically and rapidly, disaster must follow. Appalling bloodshed and civil war will become inevitable because, as long as there is oppression of a majority, such oppression will be fought with increasing hatred.’
and i add: accept nothing blindly from figures of authority
spend time with your family organize your community
find the powers that make you objective
free of sentiment and greed
build the power that delivers the good(s)
emulate Bram Fischer he of impeccable character
as Nelson Mandela declared
"Bram was a courageous man who followed the most difficult course any person could choose to follow. He challenged his own people because he felt that what they were doing was morally wrong. As an Afrikaner whose conscience forced him to reject his own heritage and be ostracised by his own people, he showed a level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself. I fought only against injustice not against my own people."
but even as these ghosts speak
i wonder:
Bram
bourgeois lawyer son of the nationalist elite
man in mourning for the death of the woman he loved
man almost broken by her death by drowning in a river when their car hit a cow
in the middle of the night on their way to their eldest daughter’s twenty-first birthday
there in the karoo on the road to Cape Town
and how was he to live without her and the struggle for freedom so long and hard and the odds so
unbearably high?
(this being 1964)
would you be at ease sitting in a small corner with a smoky fire
lives counted coin by coin
till there isn’t even taxi fare to go and look for a job?
would you sip Coke and eat fried chicken and white bread with your bare hands?
would you sit with the child-mother and her widowed mother
and speak of their historic duty
while the buzz of crony capitalists drowns out the mandate?”
and i ask this
as i mourn the fact of your passing
before that day twenty years later when there came an end to the cruelest forms of domination
Afternoon darkens
air fills with the scent of coming rain
at the edge of the city-sprawl houses begin to close doors
the group yawns stretches its legs
the date for the next session left to the chair of the civic association
i get into my car
i will drive back to my book-lined house in the city thinking
of the comment made by a young man in a yellow t-shirt
sitting near the back next to a very quiet girl with small breasts
“thanks thank you for coming
we are learning but make no mistake
you leave us here with our problems
not even God can solve because he made us
and we humans are rotten with the apple we ate”
driving back to my island in the green belt of the city
i think:
perhaps we haven’t eaten enough
Dim light over the slime dumps
rows of serrated edges yellowy and trapezoid
wind will come up offer minute flecks of gold dust
gristle that blinds that lines the throat
so the people of Bramfischerville can’t see or swallow their porridge
there will be follow ups ongoing sessions
maintaining a core of activists will not be easy
but right now i must be careful
ahead is a road block the cops are looking for cooldrink
i open the window
in the distance the lights of Joburg’s twin towers blink
i drive towards them
foot on the accelerator
the past and the present stumble into each other
i smile and salute
as my foot presses down
slowly
PRIMARY FACTS
‘Introduction to Marxism’ – workshop for civic activists held in a junior school classroom at Bramfischerville, Johannesburg (December, 2012)
Faces alert but after the first words
turn away regard other things other sights
distant but close thoughts take over the classroom
who can understand this life
beyond the needs for food shelter warmth power
and the great mating emotion?
Outside a running a screaming for means masses marching for basics
police and lawyers bargain with teargas and half-truths
the new black rulers legislate predatorial combat
deny sharing is more efficient and useful
than hoarding and lording
the faces in front of me now swing to the mine dumps
next to their small houses
the shacks on which
dumps spew dust at spring’s start
mining company will not grass them nor give them up
but the community is organized
and here i am in this place of glaring need
to play a part in widening
breaking the bounds
` the want the absence the still-born the limping
barely believed ambition
and i wonder: can i really add?
spin concrete from theory for spiritual grandeur
build it on funeral-meat queues joblessness
fatty chicken soggy with brine rat shit random fathers
soap opera cheap washing powder
despite the handshakes of old neighbours
and the hurried breathing of first love and some success
in keeping blacklisting from the door
and can i fill out and bring to life words
class privilege corruption revolution
resistance decay decency pride
having regard to generations of anointers and usurpers
hero worshippers and betrayers
generations of take and take more
genocide migration stock theft and insurrection
Looking about the room
i imagine Marx and Engels watching the white drawn
faces of the sons and daughters of working England
those armies of stunted black toothed laborers
trudging back to their hovels in the gloom of gaslight
the two grey bearded emancipators silently counting the thin ribs
under their coal-stained rags
and then facing this class room
what would they say to this gathering of Africans
newly freed of the yoke of slavers and kings?
how would they advise these newly commoditized?
these workers and their managers
still laughed at by the captains of spice ships
oil tankers and the mineral world
would they still urge a dictatorship of the dispossessed?
the centralized certainty of enlightened self- interest?
would they have the strength to thrash the comprador class as it cruises?
and to make certain
train a bald security service to guard the Liberation?
Mention of Fanon has driven talk to revolutionary violence
Azania has many martyrs
the rhetoric canonizing their blood-soaked vests
cannot tarnish their heroism
even as the Big Men Mbeki Zuma
self-destruct
then talk turns to tenderpreneurship
those dining out business class/affirmative class
on the gravy train
is that not first choice for the ‘colonized mind’
ignorant of Biko’s Black Consciousness?
but what has this to do with you white boy?
you who cannot tolerate the notion of killing for freedom
can your philosophy free people of colour?
can there be colour-blind bondage?
what right have you to speak?
you
with your silver spoon and degrees
An hour before lunch the citizen-workers of Bramfischerville talk
about what they wish
to change and so
heal the stress lines fracturing
their lives
thereafter
the soul will digest policy
plan sewers and tar roads
many other ‘deliveries’
to this township on the edge of Africa’s grandest ‘boom and bust’city
this township pledging loyalty to a legacy
naming itself in his honour
but who was Bram Fischer?
who was the man who carried this name?
and i describe that white Afrikaner
Marxist who lived his principles
spent many years above and underground
defying the racists
spent many years in jail once they caught him
and affirm: he is with us today in spirit and he is still saying:
‘What is needed is for White South Africans to shake themselves out of their complacency, a complacency intensified by the present economic boom built upon racial discrimination. Unless this whole intolerable system is changed radically and rapidly, disaster must follow. Appalling bloodshed and civil war will become inevitable because, as long as there is oppression of a majority, such oppression will be fought with increasing hatred.’
and i add: accept nothing blindly from figures of authority
spend time with your family organize your community
find the powers that make you objective
free of sentiment and greed
build the power that delivers the good(s)
emulate Bram Fischer he of impeccable character
as Nelson Mandela declared
"Bram was a courageous man who followed the most difficult course any person could choose to follow. He challenged his own people because he felt that what they were doing was morally wrong. As an Afrikaner whose conscience forced him to reject his own heritage and be ostracised by his own people, he showed a level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself. I fought only against injustice not against my own people."
but even as these ghosts speak
i wonder:
Bram
bourgeois lawyer son of the nationalist elite
man in mourning for the death of the woman he loved
man almost broken by her death by drowning in a river when their car hit a cow
in the middle of the night on their way to their eldest daughter’s twenty-first birthday
there in the karoo on the road to Cape Town
and how was he to live without her and the struggle for freedom so long and hard and the odds so
unbearably high?
(this being 1964)
would you be at ease sitting in a small corner with a smoky fire
lives counted coin by coin
till there isn’t even taxi fare to go and look for a job?
would you sip Coke and eat fried chicken and white bread with your bare hands?
would you sit with the child-mother and her widowed mother
and speak of their historic duty
while the buzz of crony capitalists drowns out the mandate?”
and i ask this
as i mourn the fact of your passing
before that day twenty years later when there came an end to the cruelest forms of domination
Afternoon darkens
air fills with the scent of coming rain
at the edge of the city-sprawl houses begin to close doors
the group yawns stretches its legs
the date for the next session left to the chair of the civic association
i get into my car
i will drive back to my book-lined house in the city thinking
of the comment made by a young man in a yellow t-shirt
sitting near the back next to a very quiet girl with small breasts
“thanks thank you for coming
we are learning but make no mistake
you leave us here with our problems
not even God can solve because he made us
and we humans are rotten with the apple we ate”
driving back to my island in the green belt of the city
i think:
perhaps we haven’t eaten enough
Dim light over the slime dumps
rows of serrated edges yellowy and trapezoid
wind will come up offer minute flecks of gold dust
gristle that blinds that lines the throat
so the people of Bramfischerville can’t see or swallow their porridge
there will be follow ups ongoing sessions
maintaining a core of activists will not be easy
but right now i must be careful
ahead is a road block the cops are looking for cooldrink
i open the window
in the distance the lights of Joburg’s twin towers blink
i drive towards them
foot on the accelerator
the past and the present stumble into each other
i smile and salute
as my foot presses down
slowly
