Stranger at Home. Ashlee Neser
205). Mqhayi also wrote many izibongo, one of which, Umhlekazi uHintsa (1937), commemorates the assassination of Paramount Xhosa Chief Hintsa. Arranged into eight cantos, the poem won the May Esther Bedford competition and, in Wandile Kuse’s assessment, ‘sustains the viability of the oral techniques of praise poetry in the written form’ (1983: 132). The poem was later republished by Lovedale Press, and is striking for its multiple modes of address to different South African audiences and to international publics, like the British. The poet also recorded two poems in a studio in 1932 or 1933 as part of a project aimed at recording traditional Bantu texts; Mqhayi’s sound recordings were published in 1934 and discussed by Opland (1977) in an article.
The range and volume of Mqhayi’s published output, when combined with his prolific performance career, supports Jordan’s assertion that the poet’s ‘contribution to Southern Bantu Literature is easily the largest and most valuable’ (1973: 105).7 Having inherited obligations to the chieftaincy, Mqhayi had also been educated in a Christian system of schooling. He felt that Britain, in which he had invested considerable faith, had failed Africans in 1910 when the Union of South Africa was formed. The accommodation black writers found between African concepts like ubuntu, and Western imports like Christianity and liberal humanism, enabled many of them to use Western discourses to bolster African claims to unity. In the early decades of the twentieth century, black writers became increasingly preoccupied with the question of how to unite and liberate black South Africans and, as Chapman notes, their writing ‘became discernibly more Africanist’ (1996: 203).
In 1921, the Johannesburg newspaper Umteteli wa Bantu was established by the Chamber of Mines. It would publish many hundreds of praise poems that, according to the long-established conventions of the oral form, explicitly discussed politics. The paper was established to mediate race relations in industry: in its bulletin of aims, published on 30 August 1924, Umteteli claimed ‘to preach racial amity … to emphasize the obligations of blacks and whites to themselves and to each other …’ (Couzens 1985: 91–92). Although the paper eschewed criticism of the mining industry, it was liberal in orientation and opposed the colour bar in industry. It was staffed by black intellectuals, like HIE Dhlomo, the influential Zulu poet, and gave considerable room to poetic expression. Among the paper’s regular contributors was the prolific female poet Nontsizi Mgqwetho, who published Christian-oriented political izibongo exclusively in Umteteli between 1920 and 1926 and, after an unexplained hiatus, between 1928 and 1929. Mgqwetho championed Umteteli as an invaluable medium of expression for black writers – certainly, as a woman poet Mgqwetho was afforded by the paper a unique opportunity to ‘speak’ as an imbongi.
Mgqwetho’s repeated calls for black unity were couched in Christian terms, but although the ANC shared her religious discourse, Mgqwetho regarded the organisation and its organ, Abantu Batho, as being ineffective in their attempts to rally and unify black communities. Duncan Brown details the rivalry between Umteteli and Abantu Batho on this score, and shows how several black intellectuals of the 1920s were embroiled in arguments over how best to organise and inspire black constituencies. Many of these debates took place in newspapers and were reflected in printed izibongo like those written by Mgqwetho. In a 1920 poem, for example, Mgqwetho accuses the ANC of sowing division, citing ‘rabble rousers’ within the Congress who ‘sermonise/and grab headlines’. ‘And as a result,’ she goes on, ‘Natal Congress walked out,/and Free State walked out,/and there the Cape’s splinters splinter’ (in Opland 2007: 18). The poet’s advice to her people is announced in a poem published in January 1924: ‘All black nations must merge,/our only strength lies in unity:/ press on until you face each other,/stop your bobbing and weaving’ (in Opland 2007: 92).
Mgqwetho’s calls for black unity and her conviction that chieftainship was established and mandated by God foreshadow part of the agenda and worldview advanced by Manisi in his izibongo. Although Manisi read Mgqwetho with great pleasure and approval, he encountered her poems only after he had begun working with Opland, several decades after their publication – because of the ephemeral nature of newspapers and the generational gap between the two poets, Manisi never read Mgqwetho’s poetry when it was current. That Manisi’s poetry seems to reflect Mgqwetho’s in many ways suggests the strength of the Christian liberal, proto-nationalist intellectual tradition that Manisi inherited from his Lovedale education and to which Mgqwetho was constantly exposed in newspaper debate.
In addition to the poems he contributed to Umteteli, with its wide readership8 and urban industrial base, Manisi sent several izibongo to the Mthatha newspaper Umthunywa. Published in isiXhosa and English sections, Umthunywa focused on local happenings and personalities in Transkei and East Griqualand. Whereas in Umteteli Manisi could address the South African context, the more parochial character of Umthunywa gave expression and audience to an enduring concern in his poetry with the local, with the landscapes and communities of home. Nevertheless, Manisi sent relatively little poetry to Umteteli and Umthunywa. When compared with the considerable and consistent publication of original izibongo in periodicals by poets like Mqhayi and Mgqwetho, Manisi’s contribution seems unremarkable, or perhaps surprising, in view of his seriousness and tenacity as a publishing poet. As my earlier resume of his published poetry suggests, Manisi seemed to decide in 1955, the year in which he officially broke from Mathanzima, to write poetry solely for book publication, whatever the considerable obstacles to such an ambition. There are several related reasons why Manisi chose this course.
Les and Donna Switzer (1979: 11) argue that the 1948 election, which brought the National Party to power, ‘was the beginning of the end for the protest journals’, which, together with the rest of the black press, came under white supervision. The entrenchment of Bantu Education in 1953 legislation ended missionary control of newspapers and placed papers like Imvo under Tanda Pers, a subsidiary of Afrikaanse Pers, the government’s press. Under such conditions, Opland argues, ‘Xhosa readers no longer felt inclined to contribute literature in any great quantities to newspapers’ (1998: 261). In summing up the value of the early Xhosa newspaper industry, Opland suggests the scale of the loss suffered by the Xhosa writers of the 1950s, who could no longer rely on the newspaper as a forum for adult exchange:
[Newspapers] brought Xhosa literature to maturity at the turn of the century before Xhosa books had appeared on any large scale. Newspaper bridged the gap between oral and written modes, created a literary community, and provided material for many books by most of the major Xhosa authors and editors. The work of many of the major Xhosa authors can be found only in newspapers. And above all, it is only in newspapers that we can find, for a time, free literary expression produced by adults for adult readers. (1998: 261)
Manisi wrote adult and political poetry and always sought, although infrequently found, an adult readership. The decline of the Xhosa newspaper industry and its co-option by the government’s agenda discouraged Manisi from sending further poetry to newspaper editors. He no longer felt that he was part of a national Xhosa literary community.
Some papers, like Umthunywa, which was published in Mthatha, continued to solicit literary contributions. Yet, as far as we know, Manisi sent no further izibongo to his local broadsheet. His early newspaper poetry was concerned with local Transkeian figures like Mathanzima and Sabatha. Manisi’s retreat from local newspaper publication can also be interpreted as comprising part of his withdrawal as Mathanzima’s imbongi. The newspaper is public, political property that circulates among contemporary audiences. Since izibongo is a correspondingly urgent political form, it is difficult to see how Manisi could have withdrawn from Transkei politics without forgoing newspaper publication, unless he adopted a public position against Mathanzima. As Manisi’s frequent returns to Mathanzima’s court suggest, despite his disapproval of his chief’s policies and complicities, his feeling on the subject of loyalty was highly fraught and he may not have wanted to submit his personal conflict to public scrutiny.
Manisi’s self-distancing from Mathanzima must be understood in the context of the new political phase in South Africa in which apartheid’s cornerstones, including Bantu Education, were being laid. Geographical segregation depended on the government’s purchase of support from chiefs in rural areas, where homelands were to be established. Manisi’s growing sense of Mathanzima’s complicity with Pretoria placed