Iimbali zamanyange

historical poems
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-84701-444-3
Verlag: James Currey

Buch, Englisch, Band 2, 306 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 591 g

Reihe: Publications of the Opland Collection of Xhosa Literature

Eight of David Livingstone Phakamile Yali-Manisi's narrative poems, in isiXhosa and English translation, with a comprehensive introduction

David Livingstone Phakamile Yali-Manisi (1926-99) was a Thembu imbongi, the most powerful exponent of the art of praise poetry in the Xhosa language, in the second half of the twentieth century. His literary career, however, was blighted by circumstances beyond his control, and he died in total obscurity. Manisi was obliged to seek his audiences throughout the lifetime of South Africa's reviled policy of apartheid, and the poet's reputation, initially full of promise, waned as a consequence. He was a lifelong supporter of Nelson Mandela and the author of the earliest poem in praise of Mandela (1954), but he was never able to fulfil his ambition of performing a poem in honour of Mandela in a liberated South Africa.

Manisi exhibited a marked penchant for extending the panegyric mode of the imbongi into explicit narrative; he also displayed an astonishing capacity to compose poetry in the act of performance. This volume presents eight of his narrative poems in isiXhosa and in English translation. Four of them are drawn from his earliest published books, together with the complete text of his epic poem on the War of Mlanjeni, published in 1983; also included are three remarkable spontaneous poems produced with little forethought. The poems address events in the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, and feature blunt assessments of figures such as Ntsikana, Ngqika, Nonesi, Sandile, Sir Harry Smith, Nongqawuse and Sir George Grey. David Yali-Manisi ardently anticipated the restoration of black control under those imprisoned on Robben Island, fighters for liberty quite as heroic as the crane-feathered warriors of the nineteenth century. His poetry, both written and performed, plumbed the past to inspire resistance to present injustices.

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: Southern African Development Community

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Opland, Jeff

Maseko, Pamela

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword by Peter T. Mtuze
Introduction

1. UNtsikana oNgcwele: Holy Ntsikana (on events that occurred c.1800-21)

2. Idabi lamaLinde: The Battle of Amalinde (1818)

3. IMfecane yamaNgwane: The Ngwane Mfecane (1828)

4. Imfazwe kaMlanjeni: Mlanjeni's War (1850-3)

5. Ingxaki eyasenzakalisayo: The problem that wrought our destruction (1856-7)

6. Idabi laseGwatyu: The Battle of Gwatyu (1878)

7. Imfazwe yamaQwathi: The Qwathi War (1880)

8. Amaqabazana ngabaThembu: Thembu spatterings (c.1770-c.1880)

Biographical appendices

Sources

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Maseko, Pamela
PAMELA MASEKO is Executive Dean of the Humanities at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa.

Opland, Jeff
JEFF OPLAND held appointments at the University of Cape Town, University of Durban-Westville and Rhodes University and taught at the Universities of Toronto, Yale, and Leipzig as well as Vassar College before his retirement.