Conversation with Bulelwa Basse

Title: Gathering Spirit: Arriving to Self
Date: 30 March 2013
Time: 14h30
Venue: Steve Biko Centre Auditorium
Moderator: Mandla Mbothwe

As part of the Ginsberg Easter Festival, the Steve Biko Centre is proud to host a dialogue with Bulelwa Basse. Basse is the Founder of Lyrical Base Project, an arts and culture organisation which seeks to elevate the profiles of writers from marginalised communities through community-publishing projects and performance poetry (merged with music, dance, visual arts) at cultural and corporate events.

She has collaborated nationally with various arts education institutions and literary establishments, such as Kgare Ya Africa, Centre for the Book, South African Museums’ Education Department, Cape Town Language Committee, Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, Artscape Theatre, Badilisha Poetry and the City of Cape Town (Communications & Events Dept), in the capacity of Creative Writing Facilitator, Published/Performance Poet, Programme Director, Guest Speaker and Events Co-ordinator.

Her writing has been published by the Poetry Institute of Africa, University of KwaZulu Natal Press, Department of Arts and Culture, The British Council, Oprah Magazine and Glamour Magazine.

Basse is passionate about aligning herself with women empowerment projects such as Bona Magazine's Women Empowerment Club, True Love Magazine's Winning Style and Move Magazine's empowerment initiatives, for which she's both hosted and performed her poetry as a motivational tool.

It is this very passion which catapulted Basse’s career into Brand Ambassadorship, where both emerging and established business began to engage her ability to creatively communicate company ideals to a cross-cultured market/audience:
Your Business Association and Indigo Brands have been such independent entities with which Basse has aligned her own public disposition.

It wasn’t long before Basse’s dynamic talent resonated with the rest of the corporate industry, where she’s emceed and performed at Transnet’s 150 years of service excellence awards ceremony, which accentuated her Corporate Emcee trademark, attracting multi-media houses (Marketing/Advertising/PR). A summation of experiences which inspired Bulelwa to re-launch her own production house.

Though Basse’s work spans across multi-disciplines: Education, Arts & Culture (Literary & Performing Arts), and Corporate Industry - the common denominator is her purpose of being in-community. And Bulelwa Basse Productions precisely allows her to resourcefully encapsulate and house all her diverse, yet inter-related pursuits.

Her creative and business path has seen her represent her country as an arts and cultural-exchange ambassador in India (Coimbatore and Kerala) and tour the UK (England). But South African stages have always been her favourite arena of her work at play:

As former Editor of Muse, an online poetry publishing and profiling magazine, Basse earned herself a performance platform on, Poetry Delight, where she's affectionately known on stage as, Miss "Sassy" Basse, following her satirical poem entitled: My Lyrical Sass, which confronts the societal nature of portraying women as sex-objects.

Basse’s stance: When the Universe compels you to live up to your purpose, there is no grey area to confuse the plot!

The Ginsberg Easter Festival: Ukuvuselela Ubuntu Eluntwini

The Steve Biko Foundation, will host the third annual Ginsberg Easter Festival, Resurrecting the Village Spirit, in the Ginsberg Township of King William’s Town from March 29-30. With events taking place at the recently opened Steve Biko Centre, and in open air venues throughout the township, there will be a wide variety of activities for Festival goers of all ages.

The Ginsberg Easter Festival is an annual program of SBF’s Performing Arts Programme. It is intended to encourage community participation in events that build unity and advance social development.

This year, the Festival will take its audience on a journey of self-realization and discovery, a process described by Steve Biko himself as the quest for a true humanity. Showcasing productions shaped by popular symbols, images and communal voices, this journey will explore the collective stories, popular memories and history of the region. These memories will be used as a platform to reflect on today’s pressing issues, resurrecting the spirit of community from its historic landscape to the contemporary urban village.

The Festival will include interdisciplinary performances by leading local artists, with more than 350 artists taking part in performances at over 40 sites. Alongside dialogue, dance, visual art and poetry, the Festival will also feature storytelling.

The Ginsberg Easter Festival is presented by the Steve Biko Foundation in partnership with the British Council of South Africa, the Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council, Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM) Civil Services, Rhodes University, BCMM Department of Economic Development Tourism, the Ginsberg Taxi Association and Umnombo Omtsha Creative Arts.

For bookings and programme information, members of the public should contact Mr. Jongi Hoza, SBF Programme Officer, on 043 605 6700 or via email at jongi@sbf.org.za.


ENDS


For media inquiries please contact Ms. Dibuseng Kolisang, SBF Communications Officer, on 011 403 0310 or via email at dibuseng@sbf.org.za. Alternatively information can be found on www.sbf.org.za.

Fighting Apartheid With Words: Chinua Achebe

"How much credence can a victim of racial oppression place on the disinterestedness of any member of the oppressor group who is, or claims to be, a liberal sympathiser while enjoying the benefits conferred automatically on him by his skin colour? Is it fair that the victim should be saddled with the additional burden of sorting out this ambiguity when all his energies should be channelled into his struggle?
…I really don’t think that the awkwardness in their (the liberals) condition should be blamed on the likes of Steve Biko, but rather on those whose racial arrogance, greed and stupidity made skin colour such a red flag in the first place…In a decent , humane society, Steve Biko would have been cherished as a young man of great promise;…”


Professor Chinua Achebe at the third annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture, 2002

Postscript: Chinua Achebe, 1930-2013

March 22, 2013


By Philip Gourevitch


Chinua Achebe, who died in Boston today at the age of eighty-two, was a few weeks shy of thirty years old when Nigeria was granted independence from the British Empire, on October 1, 1960, and he was already acclaimed, worldwide, as the preëminent novelist of “black Africa.” The British publisher Heinemann had brought out Achebe’s first novel, “Things Fall Apart,” only two years earlier, and it had to have been the first African novel that many of his admirers—on the continent and off—had read. The sure tragedian’s authority with which Achebe tells the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo elder of immense strength and pride, a figure of heroic qualities within the traditions of his culture, who is ill-served, brought low, and undone by those same qualities in his first violent encounters with colonial power, has ensured that still today, with more than ten million copies sold, “Things Fall Apart” remains the best-known work of African literature.

The great African novel? The book could as truly be called a great novel, period. Many writers would prefer to carry that badge of universality, but Achebe—who has gone to his grave without ever receiving the Nobel Prize he deserved as much as any novelist of his era—has said that to be called simply a writer, rather than an African writer, is “a statement of defeat.” Why? Because his project has always been to resist emphatically the notion that African identity must be erased as a prerequisite to being called civilized. Growing up as what he called a “British-protected child” in the colonial order, the young writer came to see that the Empire’s claim that Africans had no history was a violent, if at times ignorant or unconscious, counter-factual effort to annihilate the history of his continent’s peoples.

Achebe made his case in many forms—essays and lectures, interviews and acts of protest, and as an ideologue and propagandist for the failed Igbo-nationalist secessionist state of Biafra—but he made it most cogently on the final page of “Things Fall Apart.” With the reader in the full emotional grip of the many dimensions of Okonkwo’s epic fate, the author boldly and deftly adds another, shifting to the perspective of a colonial governor who considers Okonkwo’s story good material—“perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph”—for the book he is planning to write: “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.”

Having, with his first effort, created a permanent place for the African novel in the world literary canon, Achebe continued to be a prolific imaginative writer, producing novels and stories that evoked, in a range of voices, the trials of Nigeria’s pre-colonial and colonial history, and the traumas of its post-independence ordeals: from “No Longer at Ease” and “A Man of the People” in the sixties to “Girls at War” and “Anthills of the Savannah” in the aftermath of the Biafran war. But the fact that he must be remembered as not only the father but the godfather of modern African literature owes at least as much to the decades he spent as the editor of Heinemann’s African Writers Series. In that capacity, Achebe served as the discoverer, mentor, patron, and presenter-to-the-world of so many of the now-classic African authors of the latter half of the twentieth century. The series’s orange-spined, generously inexpensive paperbacks carried a stamp of excellence that drew readers everywhere to essential works by writers as varied as Kenneth Kaunda, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Dennis Brutus, Tayeb Salih, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Ousmane Sembène, Wole Soyinka, and Nadine Gordimer, to name but a few: it is an extraordinary legacy.

As a storyteller, as a voice of his nation, as a cultural impresario, an intellectual combatant and provocateur, Achebe gained with age the status in Nigeria of a bard and a sage that the modern world rarely affords to writers. After suffering terrible injuries in a car crash, he spent much of his time in the last decades of his life in America, where he settled into long-term professorships at Bard College and Brown University. But when he returned to Nigeria he was received as a national hero. Crowds of thousands—sometimes tens of thousands—gathered to pay tribute to him. The adoration hardly softened him, though. He was, in his old age, as much a scold to his compatriots as he had ever been in his youth.

I met Achebe a few times in his wheelchair-bound American years. When he gave you his hand it was at once firm and soft and notably warm. He had a gentle presence—a man fully capable of wit and mischief and open laughter, but whose default expression, at ease, was one of sympathetic melancholy. His voice was another matter: low-pitched and rich and adamant. When he spoke, it was with great command and unmistakable music. In Boston, in 1999, at a celebration of the centennial of Ernest Hemingway’s birth, I had the honor of sitting on a panel with Achebe, on the subject of writing about Africa. He was as cogently withering about Hemingway’s Africa—a place he could not recognize because there were no speaking Africans there—as he was, in one of his most famous essays, about Joseph Conrad’s. At the end of the session, the floor was opened to questions. An evidently confused woman in the audience took the opportunity to ask “In what sense are you writers about Africa?” The other panelists—Nadine Gordimer and Kwame Anthony Appiah—were too baffled to respond. Not Achebe. He leaned into his microphone, and very slowly and melodically, with rolling “R”s and drawn out “O”s, roared: “Read. Our. Books.” The woman said, “But I’m asking you.” And Achebe said, “I’m telling you: Read. Our. Books.”

What better epitaph for the man, and what better way to remember him: read his books.

For more, read Ruth Franklin’s 2008 piece on the influence of Achebe’s novels.

This article was first published in The New Yorker at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/03/postscript-chinua-achebe-1930-2013.html

Steve Biko Legacy Classes

The Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, continues to facilitate legacy classes exploring the role played by Bantu Stephen Biko & Black Consciousness in the South African liberation struggle.

Below are images from previous sessions


For bookings you may contact Mr. Jongi Hoza on 043 605 6700 or jongi@sbf.org.za during office hours.

We Remember the Sharpeville Massacre

In 1959, a breakaway group from the ANC, the Pan Africanist Congress held its first conference in Johannesburg. At this conference, it was announced that the PAC would launch its own anti-pass campaign.

Early in 1960 both the ANC and PAC embarked on a feverish drive to prepare their members and black communities for the proposed nationwide campaigns. The PAC called on its supporters to leave their passes at home on the appointed date and gather at police stations around the country, making themselves available for arrest. The campaign slogan was 'NO BAIL! NO DEFENCE! NO FINE!' The PAC argued that if thousands of people were arrested, then the jails would be filled and the economy would come to a standstill.

Although the protests were anticipated, no one could have predicted the consequences and the repercussions this would have for South African and world politics. An article entitled 'PAC Campaign will be test', published in the 19 March 1960 issue of Contact the Liberal Party newspaper describes the build up to the campaign:

"..the Pan Africanist Congress will shortly launch a nationwide campaign for the total abolition of the pass laws. The exact date on which the campaign will start is still unknown. The decision lies with the P.A.C. president, Mr. R.M. Sobukwe. But members say that the campaign will begin 'shortly - within a matter of weeks".

At a press conference held on Saturday 19th March 1960, PAC President Mr. Robert Sobukwe announced that they were going to embark on an anti pass campaign on Monday the 21st.

According to PAC leader Robert Sobukwe's 'Testimony about the Launch of the Campaign':

"...the campaign was made known on the 18th of March. Circulars were printed and distributed to the members of the organisation and on the 21st of March, on Monday, in obedience to a resolution they had taken, the members of the Pan Africanist Congress surrendered themselves at various police stations around the Country".

At the press conference Sobukwe emphasized that the campaign should be conducted in a spirit of absolute non-violence and that the PAC saw it as the first step in Black people's bid for total independence and freedom by 1963 (Cape Times, 1960).

Sobukwe is quoted as having declared that "African people have entrusted their whole future to us. And we have sworn that we are leading them, not to death, but to life abundant. My instructions, therefore, are that our people must be taught now and continuously that in this campaign we are going to observe absolute non-violence."

On the morning of 21 March PAC members walked around Sharpeville waking people up, urging them to take part in the demonstration. Other PAC members tried to stop bus drivers from going on duty; the result was that there was no transport taking Sharpeville residents to work in Vereeniging. Many people set out for work on bicycles or on foot, but some were intimidated by PAC members who threatened to burn their passes or 'lay hands on them' if they went to work (Reverend Ambrose Reeves, 1966). However, many people joined the procession quite willingly.

Early on the 21st the local PAC leaders first gathered in a field not far from the Sharpeville police station, when a sizable crowd of people had joined them they proceeded to the police station - chanting freedom songs and calling out the campaign slogans "Izwe lethu" (Our land); "Awaphele amapasti" (Down with passes); "Sobukwe Sikhokhele" (Lead us Sobukwe); "Forward to Independence, Tomorrow the United States of Africa".

When the marchers reached Sharpeville's police station a heavy contingent of policemen were lined up outside, many on top of British-made Saracen armored cars. Mr. Tsolo and other members of the PAC Branch Executive continued to advance - in conformity with the novel PAC motto of 'Leaders in Front' - and asked the White policeman in command to let them through so that they could surrender themselves for refusing to carry passes. Initially the police commander refused but much later, towards around 11h00, they were let through. The chanting of freedom songs was picking up and the slogans were being repeated with greater volume. Journalists who rushed there from other areas, after receiving word that the campaign was a runaway success, ... confirm that for all their singing and shouting the crowd's mood was more festive than belligerent (David M. Sibeko, 1976).

By mid-day approximately 300 armed policemen faced a crowd of approximately 5000 people. At 13h15 a small scuffle began near the entrance of the police station, a policeman was accidently pushed over and the crowd began to move forward to see what was happening.

To read more witness accounts of the Sharpeville Massacre, click on the 'Witness accounts' tab above.
According to the police, protesters began to stone them and, without any warning, one of the policemen on the top of an armoured car panicked and opened fire. His colleagues followed suit and opened fire. The firing lasted for approximately two minutes, leaving 69 people dead and, according to the official inquest, 180 people seriously wounded. The policemen were apparently jittery after a recent event in Durban where nine policemen were shot.

Unlike elsewhere on the East Rand where police used baton when charging at resisters, the police at Sharpeville used live ammunition. Eyewitness accounts attest to the fact that the people were given no warning to disperse. Eye witness accounts and evidence later led to an official inquiry, attested to the fact that large number of people were shot in the back as they were fleeing the scene. The presence of armoured vehicles and air force fighter jets overhead, also point to unnecessary provocation, especially as the crowd was unarmed and determined to stage a non-violent protest.

According to an account from Humphrey Tyler, the assistant editor at Drum magazine, "The police have claimed they were in desperate danger because the crowd was stoning them. Yet only three policemen were reported to have been hit by stones - and more than 200 Africans were shot down. The police also have said that the crowd was armed with 'ferocious weapons', which littered the compound after they fled.

I saw no weapons, although I looked very carefully, and afterwards studied the photographs of the death scene. While I was there I saw only shoes, hats and a few bicycles left among the bodies. The crowd gave me no reason to feel scared, though I moved among them without any distinguishing mark to protect me, quite obvious with my white skin. I think the police were scared though, and I think the crowd knew it."

Within hours the news of the killing at Sharpeville was flashed around the world.

Other protests around the country on 21 March 1960

To read more about the protests in Cape Town.
On the morning of 21 March Robert Sobukwe left his house in Mofolo, a suburb of Soweto and began walking to the Orlando police station. Along the way small groups of people joined him. In Pretoria a small group of six people presented themselves at the Hercules police station. In addition other small groups of PAC activists presented themselves at police stations in Durban and East London. However, the police simply took down the protesters names and did not arrest anyone.

When the news of the Sharpeville massacre reached Cape Town a group of between 1000 to 5000 protestors gathered at the Langa Flats bus terminus around 17h00 on 21 March 1960. This was in direct defiance of the government's country-wide ban on public meetings and gatherings of more than ten persons. The police ordered the crowd to disperse within 3 minutes. When protesters reconvened in defiance, the police charged at them with batons, tear gas and guns. Three people were killed and 26 others were injured. Langa Township was gripped by tension and in the turmoil that ensued, In the violence that followed an employee of the Cape Times newspaper Richard Lombard was killed by the rioting crowd.

References

Time Magazine, (1960), The Sharpeville Massacre, TIME magazine online, 4 April

Apartheid Legislation in South Africa [online], Available at: africanhistory.about.com [accessed 10 March 2009]
A short history of pass laws in South Africa [online], from South African History Online, Available at: www.sahistory.org.za [accessed 11 March 2009]
Chaskalson, M (1986) The Road to Sharpeville, African Studies Seminar Series paper, Wits University, Available at: wiredspace.wits.ac.za/ [Accessed on 2 March 2011
Cross, T "Afrikaner Nationalism, Anglo American and Iscor: formation of Highveld Steel and Vanadium Corporation, 1960-70 in Business History", 1 July 1994. Available at: www.highbeam.com/ [Accessed on 2March 2011]
David M. Sibeko (date unknown). The Sharpeville Massacre: Its historic significance in the struggle against apartheid. Article available from SAHO archive.
Giliomee et al. (2007), New History of South Africa. Tafelberg Publishers: Cape Town. p. 334- 336
Historical Papers Archive of the University of the Witwatersrand [online] Accessed at: wits.ac.za and SAHA archive [link no longer available]
History of the African National Congress [online], available at: sahistory.org.za [accessed 10 March 2009]
History of the Pan Africanist Congress [online], available at: sahistory.org.za [accessed 10 March 2009]
Maaba, BV, The PAC's War against the State 1960-1963, in The Road to Democracy in South Africa: 1960-1970, pp258-266
Muendane, N.K. (1999) Focus: 'Human Rights? Human Responsibilities', Tribute, March.
Muller, Prof CFJ. (1981) 500 years: A History of South Africa. Third Revised and Illustrated Edition. Published by H. & R. Academia: Pretoria. p. 499, 500
Ndlovu, M.S (1998) The Soweto Uprising: Counter Memories of June 1976. Ravan Press
New Age, 1 August 1957
Pan African Congress [online] Available at: pac.org.za [Accessed 5 March 2009]
Pheko, M. (2000) Focus: 'Lest We Forget Sharpeville', The Sowetan, 20 March.
Pogrund,B. (1997) Focus: 'Prisoner 1', Sunday Life, 23 March.
Plaatjie, T. (1998) Focus: 'Sharpeville Heroes Neglected', The Sowetan, 20 March.
Reverend Ambrose Reeves (1966), The Sharpeville Massacre - A watershed in SouthAfrica. Article available from SAHO archive.
Sharpeville Massacre, The Origin of South Africa's Human Rights Day [online], available at: africanhistory.about.com [accessed 10 March 2009]
Thloloe, J. (2000) Focus: 'Lest We Forget', Sunday World, 19 March.



Article Retrieved from http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960

FrankTalk Radio Dialogue: Policing in Post Apartheid South Africa

On March 19, 2013, the Steve Biko Foundation, in collaboration with YFM, will host the sixth session of the FrankTalk Radio Dialogues. Titled after the pseudonym under which Biko wrote, FrankTalk is designed to engage young people in discussion on salient issues impacting South Africa’s political, economic and social development.

Under the topic, Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa, the next dialogue will create an opportunity for constructive dialogue by bringing the police and the citizens of South Africa together. This comes after South Africans have voiced concern regarding the conduct of police officers following the death of Mozambican taxi driver, Mido Macia, the Marikana Massacre and the death of Andries Tatane.

Please join us as part of the Live Studio Audience.


Invited Panelists:
Mr. Zweli Mnisi, Spokesperson of the Ministry of Police

Mr. David Bruce, Independent Researcher on Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice

Mr. Tshepo Ntokoane, Founder of the Andries Tatane Foundation

Moderator: Faith Mangope, YFM DJ

Date: Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Venue: YFM studio, 4 Albury Road, Dunkeld Crescent,
South West Blocks, Dunkeld West, Ext 8, Sandton
Time: 18:00 for 18:30



Please RSVP to Dibuseng Kolisang via email: dibuseng@sbf.org.za or call on 011 403 0310 to indicate your attendance

SAPS Vision and Mission: A Lived Reality?

The Constitution of the Republic of South African, 1996 (Act 108 of 1996) stipulates that the South African Police Service has a responsibility to:
• prevent, combat and investigate crime;
• maintain public order;
• protect and secure the inhabitants of the Republic and their property; and
• uphold and enforce the law.
• create a safe and secure environment for all people in South Africa.
• prevent anything that may threaten the safety or security of any community
• investigate any crimes that threaten the safety or security of any community
• ensure criminals are brought to justice; and
• participate in efforts to address the causes of crime.

To fulfil in the Mission of the South African Police Service, all the members are subjected to a Code of Conduct.

The official Code of Conduct of the South African Police Service was introduced on 31 October 1997. The Code of Conduct is a written undertaking which each member of the South African Police Service is obliged to uphold, in order to bring about a safe and secure environment for all people of South Africa. Every member of the South African Police Service must make the Code of Conduct part of their code of life, principles and values.


We ask, is this an experienced reality by the people fo South Africa? Join us for the next FrankTalk Radio Dialogue as we bring South Africans and the Police together in constructive dialogue.

The Vision and Mission was retrieved from http://www.saps.gov.za

FrankTalk Radio Dialogue: Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa

On March 19, 2013, the Steve Biko Foundation, in collaboration with YFM, will host the sixth session of the FrankTalk Radio Dialogues. Titled after the pseudonym under which Biko wrote, FrankTalk is designed to engage young people in discussion on salient issues impacting South Africa’s political, economic and social development.

Under the topic, Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa, the next dialogue will create an opportunity for constructive dialogue by bringing the police and the citizens of South Africa together. This comes after South Africans have voiced concern regarding the conduct of police officers following the death of Mozambican taxi driver, Mido Macia, the Marikana Massacre and the death of Andries Tatane.

Please join us as part of the Live Studio Audience.

DATE: Tuesday 19 March, 2013
VENUE: YFM studio, 4 Albury Road, Dunkeld Crescent,
South West Blocks, Dunkeld West, Ext 8, Sandton
TIME: 18:30 for 19:00

Limited Space!

Please RSVP to Dibuseng Kolisang via email: dibuseng@sbf.org.za or call on 011 403 0310 to indicate your attendance

Call for Submissions: Africa and The Glittering Prize

Opportunity Closing Date: Monday, April 18, 2013
Opportunity Type: Call for Submissions

“The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa – giving the world a more human face.

We have set out on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere on the distant horizon we can see the glittering prize. Let us march forth with courage and determination, drawing strength from our common plight and our brotherhood.”
Steve Biko

May 2013 marks the 50th Anniversary of the formation of the Organisation of African Unity which subsequently evolved into the African Union. Accordingly, Steve Biko Foundation is calling for reflections on Africa’s place in the world under the heading “Africa and The Glittering Prize.” Submissions may focus on any field of African development; but of particular interest are issues that resonate with African liberation and seek to evaluate the place, in the global sphere, of the African continent and the people of African descent, namely:
 African Nationalism
 Political and Economic Independence
 Political and Economic Cooperation
 Language
 Culture
 Education
 Identity
 Access to Healthcare
 Poverty
 Governance


Submissions will be published in the May issue of the Steve Biko Foundation’s FrankTalk Journal, as well as on the FrankTalk Blog.

The length of the submission should be between 1000 and 2500 words in MS Word.

Papers should be submitted to Dibuseng Kolisang at dibuseng@sbf.org.za. Alternatively, papers may be faxed to +27.11.403.8835.

For more information email Dibuseng or call on +27.11.403.0310.

The Steve Biko Foundation (SBF) is a community development organisation inspired by the legacy of anti-apartheid activist Bantu Stephen Biko. For more information on SBF, please visit www.sbf.org.za.

A Revolutionary Woman

By MARWA SHARAFELDIN 30 November 2012


Part of a series of poems by African feminist writers for 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence.

You talk to me about your austerity measures
The need to copyright my past, present and future
To relieve your financial crisis pressures
I have to tighten my belt and work hard
For somehow, I have to save the banking system
So it can save me and my daily, hard work pleasures

I am told that the financial architecture is designed
So that abundance overflows
from rich to poor,
strong to powerless,
man to woman,
But all I can see in your architecture ... is bad plumbing
Clogged pipes everywhere
Congested with your investments
And my assortment of hard-earned debts

But you better watch it, for you really can’t beat me
I’m used to tying your free trade with my free labour
Your market economy with my care economics
Your fiscal policy with the welfare of my tenderness...
But not for you, for those I love...
And in my love lies my revolution
So don’t get too comfortable
Because I am a revolutionary woman

Did you know of the kind of world that I desire?
My fickle warrior heart, and my eyes that shine like fire?
My dancing step and my strong working hands?
That knead our freedom together without tire
My deep wild laughter
At the colourful dreams to which I aspire?
Don’t let my thunderous silence fool you
For I shall never honour your economic ceasefire
Don’t get too comfortable
I’m a revolutionary woman

I am all too aware that you need me
Can you survive without my loving free labour?
Without the royalty of my generous nature?
Can your empires last one second if I decide to with-hold
The abundance of my one dollar?
What if all of us decide to do so?
What happens to your profits
If my womb decides to hibernate
No more babies for this world
And no more consumers for this market
What if I ... decide again to Occupy?
A new market, a new system, a new justice
Never forget
Your power comes from my acquiescence
To my legion of beloved friends, sisters and mothers
‘The street is ours!’...once said an old ancient mama sage
Its true you know, all it takes nowadays, is one facebook event page
Let us then see you cower ... under the surge of this woman power
So don’t get too comfortable
I’m a revolutionary woman

Untamed minds and boundless dreams
Ablaze with all possibilities
Equality justice and solidarity
Connecting our joint bloodstreams
I pluck the stars and scatter them around us
Its an old protection ritual for the adventurous
Be prepared...
For I know the smell of revolution when it’s a brewin’
Don’t get too comfortable...
‘Cause in front of me lies, a terrifying bunch, of revolutionary women.


This poem was originally published in Development 55, (September 2012).

Phenomenal Woman

By Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Maya Angelou

Biography of The Week: Ladipo Solanke

Chief Ladipo Solanke was born in the Yoruba town of Abeokuta, Nigeria around 1886. He was the second child and only son of Adeyola Ejiwunmi and her husband, who had adopted the name of Paley from the Scottish missionary who had raised him. He was educated at St Andrew’s Training Institution, Oyo, Nigeria, and at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1922. Later that year he travelled to England, completed his legal studies at University College, London (1923–8), was temporarily employed as a teacher of Yoruba at London University, and subsequently qualified as a barrister.


Solanke’s experiences of poverty and racism inspired him to organize other Nigerian students in Britain, and with the assistance of Amy Ashwood Garvey he formed the Nigerian Progress Union in London in 1924. In 1925 Solanke and Dr Bankole-Bright founded the West African Students’ Union (WASU) in London. Under Solanke’s leadership WASU became the main social, cultural, and political focus for west Africans in Britain for the next twenty-five years. It served as a training ground for many future political leaders, and played an important role agitating for an end to colonial rule in Britain’s west African colonies.

Solanke became one of the main propagandists of WASU, and in 1927 published United West Africa at the Bar of the Family of Nations, a demand for the recognition of equal political rights for Africans. Throughout his life he wrote many letters and articles demanding self-government for the west African colonies, especially Nigeria, and essays on traditional Yoruba institutions and culture. He was the first person to make a radio broadcast in Yoruba in June 1924, and, styling himself Omo Lisabi, made some of the first Yoruba records for Zonophone in 1926. In 1945 in Nigeria he was awarded the Yoruba chieftancy title atobatele of Ijeun.

Solanke was at the forefront of WASU’s attempts to establish a hostel for west African students in London. Between 1929 and 1932 he embarked on a fund-raising tour of west Africa, and became the warden of the WASU hostel that was opened in Camden Town in 1933. He returned to Britain with his future wife, whom he married in 1932, Opeolu, née Obisanya (b. 1910), the first matron of the hostel and mother of his three children. As a result of this tour, WASU branches were formed throughout the region, and Solanke and WASU were able to establish significant political contacts with anti-colonial forces in west Africa, and provide the link between them and the anti-colonial movement in Britain. Solanke also completed a further fund-raising tour of west Africa during 1944–8, prior to the opening of WASU’s third London hostel at Chelsea Embankment in 1949.

Solanke’s activities on behalf of WASU periodically brought him into conflict with the Colonial Office and sometimes with other black leaders in Britain. However, as WASU secretary-general, he was also able to establish the union as a significant anti-colonial and anti-racist organization in Britain. During the Second World War Solanke established closer relations between WASU and several leading members of the Labour Party’s Fabian Colonial Bureau, including Reginald Sorensen, who subsequently became godfather to one of his children. As a result of these links a west African parliamentary committee was established, with Labour MPs as members, that enabled WASU to act as a more effective parliamentary pressure group.

During the 1950s, due to political differences within WASU, Solanke was gradually marginalized from the central role he had once enjoyed. He continued to run a student hostel in London and formed his own breakaway organization, WASU Un-incorporated, which he led until his death from lung cancer at the National Temperance Hospital, St Pancras, London, on 2 September 1958. His funeral and burial took place on 6 September at Great Northern London cemetery, Southgate.


Biography Retrieved at http://wasuproject.org.uk/2012/01/29/key-figures-ladipo-solanke/

Steve Biko Legacy Classes

On March 8, 2013, the Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, will facilitate legacy classes exploring the role played by Bantu Stephen Biko & Black Consciousness in the South African liberation struggle.

Facilitator: Mr. Jongi Hoza

Visiting Schools:

Imingcangathelo (Alice )

Thubalethu (Fort Beaufort)

A.M.S. Sityana (KWT)

St Thomas (KWT)

The visiting schools will also take a tour of the Biko Heritage Trail and explore the life and lessons from the South African freedom fighter, Bantu Stephen Biko.

For bookings you may contact Mr. Jongi Hoza on 043 605 6700 or jongi@sbf.org.za during office hours.

We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For

Poem for South African Women

By: June Jordan
Presented at The United Nations, August 9, 1978.

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open
eye

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea

we are the ones we have been waiting for

from Passion (1980)