REVIEW

Speaking in Tongues - the Baobab Has a Story to Tell

Veteran wordsmith and poet Sandile Ngidi was never really lost to literature but in the trenches after others dusted their army boots and fatigues and swapped them for Versace suits and comfortable offices in skyrise buildings.

I used to meet Bra Sandile at book launches and other literature functions, but never really had enough time to engage him on what he was up to until I found a beautiful journal of South African New Writing in my mailbox titled Baobab.

Now Baobab is not really a journal of new writing as that title might be suggesting, that belongs to wordsetc, though not exclusively ‘new’ writing. Baobab is what the literary community of this country ordered in 1994 to articulate everyday literature issues but was only delivered fourteen years later – courtesy of visionary Dr Pallo Jordan’s progressive Department of Arts and Culture.

The one that bumped into my mailbox was the launch issue which was for Autumn 2008 and featured on its cover winner of the inaugural Daimler Chrysler Award and poet Gabeba Baderoon.

As if that teaser alone was not enough to get me hooked it featured fresh writing from prolific gifted wordsmiths such as the man who advises the minister of Arts and Culture and our poet laureate Prof Keorapetse Kgositsile, Chairperson of the South African Literary Award (SALA) Adjudication Panel Vusi Mchunu and all those you thought were lost in the annals of our literary maze.

This is a well of unadulterated wisdom, where you go to quench your literary thirst after 40 days in the desert. I would strongly prescribe this journal for Julius Malema, because this is where he’ll get his overdue initiation into manhood and unconditional respect for adults.

In his essay The Ideology of Reconciliation acclaimed author of Mandela’s Ego and many books Lewis Nkosi looks at our selective amnesia and subjective spirit of forgiveness. We forgive the Boers and fail to forgive ourselves. His essay takes the reader into a self-introspective journey where you should ask yourself what’s the point of whispering every morning ‘forgive us our trespasses’ while you can’t forgive yourself.

Nkosi writes, “however, even more disturbing is the suspicion that these days to be ‘consecrated’ as a true representative of our country’s literary culture you must promote what has become the state ideology of ‘reconciliation’. It is unlikely that any work that does not embody this ideology can ever win any of our major prizes”. That’s his gripe while also acknowledging that Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull deserved every award it won, without really indicting it of falling squarely into this category of ass-lickers.

Scholar Andries Oliphant takes a trip into the making of modern literature, which borrows a tremendous lot from earlier authors of Africa’s hunger for freedom and self-determination – the original patriots. He, like a surgeon fresh out of medical school cuts through Wole Soyinka’s Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems with a precision last seen in circumcision schools.

In concluding his analysis he writes, “in a world that remains charged with the archaic and stubborn will to dominate, old-style imperialism has given way to supranational reconfigurations of the world as a space of finance, labour, resources and markets. This is the world into which Mandela was released”.

Actually there is more nectar in this book to brew 50000 litres of an alcoholic drink, enough to get the whole ANC Youth League conference sloshed. Between these pages you engage with literary brewmasters like Janice Warman, Hugh Mdlalose, Ntongela Masilela, Kole Omotoso, there’s also a feel good factor with Bra Sandile’s profile of Afro-Chic sensation Lira and many more.

Baderoon wonders in Suddenly Everything, “in a country of raw, torn divides, this is not a simple assertion. In writing poetry, we turn our insides out. This exposure makes poets vulnerable. What if people think our interior is indulgent? Or dangerous? Or absurd? Should we protect ourselves, cover up the emotions?”

Without giving everything away there’s a classical Kgositsile poem titled, I know a Few Things. “my sister who knew/ that just trying to stay alive/ in the streets of Chitown/ was like guerilla warfare says/ if the shoe fits/ it might be yours…my brother says/ silence is death by default/ and so I know I am alive/ because it is my voice/ that startles me now with/’DAAR IS KAK IN DIE LAND’”

I know how this book got to me, through the mail but I truly don’t know how it can get to you because while it claims to retail at R20, I haven’t seen it at Exclusive, CNA or any of the many bookstores where I enjoy my espresso. Drop them an email at editor@baobabjournal.co.za

However, truly Bra Sandile put together an extraordinary title that should stand its own against the tens of titles clattering shelves out there. Honestly I still wonder how Daily Sun still manages to sell when South Afrika has such thought-provoking writings in circulation.

REVIEW

Timbila Six (6) is here

After an almost forever lull that could have unsettled even a vulture Timbila 6 A Journal of Onion Skin Poetry finally rolled off the presses and hit the streets running late last year. Polokwane based but with tentacles as reaching as an octupus Timbila Poetry Project has been compiling this wonderful poetry anthology featuring who's who of alternative world writing for the past ten years, only interrupted by individual collections that steal the thunder from this always welcome compendium of literary excellence.

Timbila 6 was edited by Vonani Bila and Mark Waller and features 48 critical bards, two short stories, three essays and profiles of Mpho Ramaano (Talks with the Sun) and Magamana Eric Lubisi, a painter. It is a bulky 313 pages thick with works that probe, jests, mourns, bemoans, massages, heals, pokes fun and just plainly goes all out to unsettle people from their comfortable zones, whether it's a couch infront of a plasma screen or s bench infront of a transistor radio. Very few anthologies have carried 168 poems in one book, especially when poetry has to share space with prose. Some of the poets featured in this anthology and their literary styles are analysed by veterans such as Gary Cumminskey, Mzi Mahola and Spree MacDonald.

Interestingly enough this volume features among the poets Mpumalanga’s prolific journalist, gifted artist and motivational speaker Tshwarelo eseng Mogakane, for the first time published in a mainstream (though Timbila believes it's more alternative as in left) anthology in South Afrika. Mogakane contributes a healthy eight poems and for those who don’t know him well there’s an intense interview with him featured in Timbila 6. “beautiful woman/ and her beautiful man/ we lie on an ugly casket/ that appears like a beautiful bed/ filled with wreaths and bouquets/ flowing with electrical blood and toxic kisses/ urban mistletoe, we dive in matrimonial satires” he writes in Kamikaze Sex.

He’s got such probing poetry throughout his installment with titles like In My Own Image, Tha sun would not rise, Redemption of a dead ego, Piano Violence, Fat Poets, Ugly Poets and others.
Another Mpumalanga poet gracing the hallowed (some say 'august') pages of this anthology is Kopano ‘Soul Ink’ Dibakwane who contributes a hefty 12 poems dedicated to his ghetto, his self-destructive lifestyle, the girls he loved, his paranoia, his suicidal thoughts and the one that got away with a name Nomfundo, which loosely translated means 'the educated one'.

Wrestling his demons Dibakwane writes in lines from my heart, "mama I’ve just turned 21/ but you probably ain’t proud to have a failure for a son/ lately I’ve been fondling papa’s gun/ ashamed of the kind of man I’ve become”. On another poem he flip-flops and takes the political route, “black consciousness is my religion/ for i represent the slave/ that the master never sold/ i was sent to deliver a message/ from our angry gods”. This is the man who apologized to God for having a crush on his guardian angel.

Timbila 6 is made up of such beautiful, diverse, thought-provoking and deep works of literature. It features amongst other poets African National Congress Youth League Spokesperson Floyd Nyiko Shibambu, June Madingwane, Alan Finlay, Alan Kolski Horwitz, Mxolisi Nyezwa, Mzwandile Matiwana and many others. The editor, in his usual leftist trip wrote of the sociopolitical status quo, “Gender equity may be in line, but I sometimes hear of hungry bosses snatching the panties of vulnerable pretty and sensuous thighs behind closed doors, in what are called job interviews. There’s blackouts in all government buildings, but blowjobs and bleeding hears to unreported”

It’s of such high quality that National Library Services and its provincial sisters will be doing an injustice to the country's learners and book readers if they doesn’t prioritise it in their next shopping list. It retails at R160, 00 and is available at all good stores. To fathom where to pick a copy please call (+27) 015 291 2088 or emailing timbila@telkomsa.net.

REVIEW

Hope you can take to the Bank? - wordsetc

Can a Black man get into the White House on a ticket of Hope and Change alone? Okay, let me rephrase it; can one nigger fool more than three hundred million smart (sometimes ignorant) folks who have always voted along racial lines to sneak into the White House unnoticed by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the White Supremacists dressed in fatiques and flack vests and armed with AK47s in Texas and New Orleans and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)? Is Malcolm X smiling or frowning? How about Martin Luther King and Louis Farrakhan?

wordsetc tries to solve these riddles in its latest installment of this outstanding South African Literary Journal. Actually I’m proud it’s South Afrikan because its level of journalism is just outstanding. It pulls no punches as it cuts into the heart of Obamania in 74 pages. Barack Obama has mesmerized the whole world so much that people didn’t mind dying for him. However in the South Afrikan context someone said that no matter how many people believed in his story of Hope and Change, and no matter how many South Afrikan celebration parties were held attended by political heavyweights from both sides of the divide the truth remained that; if he tried to contest an election in South Afrika there’s no way in hell he could beat Jacob Zuma and his machine gun, even with his Hope and Change inspirational messages.

Nazi Germany’s Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebels were such men; folks with the ability to move people to tears and anger through their oratory skills. However oratory skills don’t run countries or save economies from recessions. Oratory skills can get anyone (as proven by linguistically-challenged George Walker Bush) into the White House but they can’t keep you there beyond four years. Four years is a long time when you are planning to invade Pakistan on a deficit-ridden economy.

When asked about his expectations of Obama Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin put it mildly; to paraphrase him ‘the greatest disappointments have always come from the greatest expectations’. Wow! How cold and callous, you wonder. He’s a realist I reckon, love gets you high and full of hallucinations and incapable to litigate – love and cocaine are the same, both capable of igniting unnecessary euphoria.

wordsetc, while obviously in an ‘Obama is Hope’ mood and mesmerized by his (Black) magic decided to pitch both the optimists and the pessimists in one issue and let you, the reader be the judge.

First, this issue’s editor at large, who is also a prolific writer of books probing his country and its promise in-depth is a sure optimist. Mike Sager writes in his guest editorial about the morning of the election. The wait, anticipation, the fear, desperation, prelude to a civil orgasm, spirit, rooms built for disappointment in his family’s heart and then, “Rebekah popped the cork on some champagne. As Obama spoke, tears ran down my face”. That was Mike’s moment when he felt so supremely proud to be American, particularly a Black man in America on his way to the White House. Father of funk George Clinton must have punched the air since he proposed more than a decade ago that the White House must be painted black.

Interesting enough, while Mike compares the American euphoria that saw even Reverend Jesse Jackson and Oprah Winfrey shedding tears to our own Mandela moment he is wise and realistic to raise critical questions, “can one man change the course of the world’s history? Can he even change the course of the nation’s?”

Then land rights activist and prolific writer-editor of Biko Lives! Andile Mngxitama tries to answer those questions for Mike. In his article Obama. Yeah, right he takes that which would have been a KKK position had he not been black with rooted struggle credentials. Rooted because he’s brave enough to call Colin Powell what he really is, ‘a butcher and war criminal’. He spares Jendai Frazer while also questioning what made Condoleeza Rice cry?

Bra Andile is brave to raise that which everybody avoids – America’s eternal god-ordained position on the Israeli-Palestinian question. But he does that by juxtaposing Obamania with Mandelamania. Fifteen years ago Nelson Mandela found himself in the same position as Obama, a Black man inheriting a white legacy and expected to make it work for darkies. It’s like Mahmoud Abbas put in charge of the Palestinian Authority with a mandate to rein-in on on Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizzbollah, Al Aqsa Martyr’s Bridgade and the armed resistance wings of his Fatah faction only to be assassinated once that has been achieved and apartheid could continue unabated and without a fear of Katyushas fired into West Bank settlements.

On Mandela’s Messiah status Andile is crudely blunt, “after twenty-seven years in prison, Mandela walked out only to legitimize the historical brutalization of Blacks; he extended a hand of friendship to those who pillaged, robbed and raped”. This is something most scholars have been afraid to say; that the biggest traitor of Black people’s aspirations to be something in South Afrika was beloved Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. The reason why so many Black people are still living in low-cost houses, unemployed, domestic servants, poor, using unroadworthy taxis, paying bribes to public servants, killing each other at such an alarming rate, dying of AIDS is because of Mandela’s obsession with being a president against all odds.

But Andile does not just relish shooting Mandela as a holy cow, or for sadistic Pan-Africanist reasons but goes deep to explain why Obama will, like another democrat Bill Clinton dismally fail in his mission to pacify the Middle East. You don’t pacify a zone by bringing a knife to a fist fight. You don’t give Israel weapons of mass destruction and Palestinians ‘hope’ of a Bantustan while what they need is self-determination, a navy to defend their territorial waters in Gaza and an airforce to do the same. He touches on the faces advising Obama on policy and central to his ‘doomed’ administration; Rahm Emanuel, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lawrance Summer and Paul Volcker. He omits the woman who said she harboured ambitions of obliterating Iran, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now what is a nigga to do when he’s surrounded by the KKK and Freemasons?

Then wordsetc has inspirational essays from other pseudo-optimists like Jacob Dlamini who has lived in the US for donkey-years but still refuses to call it home. He explores his love-hate relationship with the Land of the Free. “I like the fact that I can do things here I would be loath to do in Johannesburg, like take long walks at night or go jogging up the local hills at dawn”. True, but they used to lynch Negros taking late night walks and jogging on hills. This is to say that Americans made an informed decision to fix their own problems and reclaim their neighbourhoods, effective non-partisan street committees for residential areas, whether projects or townships, holding police officers and teachers accountable for lack of service delivery, establishing functional municipalities which are not used to reward branch comrades as is the case here, but fail to deliver on their basic mandate, provision of water, electricity and gabbage removal services.

Actually I can dissect this whole journal in this post but that would be doing you an injustice since you still have to buy it and critically read for yourself. A couple of teasers; contributors in this stellar issue include Mike’s wife and academic-intellectual Rebekah, author Juan Williams, former NYPD sergeant Karen O’Connor, economist Dr Jullianne Malveaux, student Kingsley Kanu Jr, consultant Sharon Otoo and her son Tyrell, author Chika Unigwe, author Kathryn White, Democrat Monica Stewart, author Barbara Nussbaum, journalist Andrew P. Jones, author Sandisile Tshuma and author Judith Browne.

I can see you shaking in your boots because wordsetc starts to resemble Vanity Fair and the literature pages of New York Times whereby if you don’t have a book on the shelves your chances of publication look slimmer. Right, that’s what makes wordsetc a worthy read; you know content is generated by people who know how to do it, people who have been criticized, gold that has been put through fire, diamond that’s been through the Kimberly Process, unlike the plethora of newspapers and magazines we have in South Afrika whereby anyone with a typing certificate and is a so-called celebrity is given an opportunity to critique Trevor Manuel’s Choice Not Fate.

Daily Sun and its weekend sister wouldn’t survive in this country if all newspapers and magazines started using published authors as book reviewers, film and documentary makers as film critics and musicians who have sold more than 50 000 units per album as music reviewers. We would all be too intelligent for our own liking and vote not along tribal, loyalty and disgruntled lines but who has the capacity to fulfill their promises and what do I personally want as opposed to what the party wants for me.

Books reviewed in this edition include all Obama’s books, The Scent of Bliss by Nthikeng Mohlele, Not With Silver by Simi Bedford and a whole lot including titles from Kate Morton, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Mandla Langa, John Carlin, Sindiwe Magona,Uwen Akpan, Eliza Graham, Simon Winchester and Sean Badal.

Okay, it’s supposed to be a teaser as publisher Phakama Mbonani and the crew once again outdid themselves, by producing an issue so juicy and informative it is for keeps. I’ve already bought a frame for it and will re-read it in 2012 when we audit Obama’s performance without frills and emotion.

On such a note one is tempted to quote Bra Mike once again on his analysis of his beloved America which is still full of Jim Crow, “Racism is woven deeply into our social fabric. The fear may be irrational and ignorant, but it is present nonetheless”. And we wish Obama Good Luck! With Tzipi Livni and Benyamin Netanyahu, he’s gonna need lots of it.

wordsetc retails at R49, 95 and is available at reputable book stores. Ask for it by name.

REVIEW

The Second Coming of Tshwarelo eseng Mogakane

Four years ago a letter writer in City Press chastised artist and media practitioner Tshwarelo eseng Mogakane about his much publicised simulated heresy, “The bible is not subject to private interpretation”, the obviously shook fundamentalist writer wrote. After this public rebuke Mogakane retreated from the religious discourse for some time and nothing was heard of him except bylines in national newspapers as a journalist.

This year he returns in his much-anticipated second coming as The Awesome God with a thought-provoking DVD titled Stop Messing Around, Success Is Yours. This time he is not poking fingers at the Bible or preaching sacrilege but out to share what he calls God’s Detailed Plan for your Life. He is unashamedly poking fingers at some pastors' greedy practices though.

The 45-minutes long DVD is in essence motivational talk using biblical figures and references to indicate every individual’s space in the universal matrix. You were put here for a reason remember? Mogakane argues that many people are poor today because they have succumbed to what is called 'the law of social science' which he disputes is absolute but subject to challenge. He argues that there's nothing cast in stone until you see a stone where there's none.

Wearing green work overalls, a yellow helmet and shades he preaches his stinging sermon from the comfort of his Divine Construction Ministries which this published poet, enterpreneur and recording artist claims will manifest into a broad church that does not accept tithing but instead encourages its flock to go out and be rich instead for its own good and not the pastor's.

Money is the underlying theme of this DVD. “They are drinking their Three Ships which are drowning their families” he warns about the nouvre riches indecent behaviour. It is the one hypocritical statement in the DVD since Tshwarelo does enjoy drinking his Ships, either one, two or Seven almost everyday. He challenges parishioners to move from giving to pastors to taking for themselves, not from the coffers though as disgraced ANC spindoctor of bad repute Carl Niehaus got the hard end of the stick for having sticky fingers.

“We must first take before we give, you can’t go to the toilet to fill your stomach but you must fill your stomach first to go to the toilet”, he says as he warns against tithing before the parishioners are wealthy. This statement rings truer to those accessing director's and staff loans from conglomerate churches like Rhema.

Arguing that God is giving people a businessplan which he calls OSI-EFE, or ‘don’t eff (fuck) around’ he says the CC-Syndrome has had many people claiming to be on the way to making money by registering CCs without building relationships like the biblical leper at the well. The poor leper couldn't be rolled into the pond because there was no one from his kin to help him, so before you tender for that SAA catering contract worth R365 million you must have Khaya Ngcula to roll you into the pond for your leprosy (poverty) to be healed. Without a Nqcula you'll always wonder why some people's condition received attention while you are forever at Tender Briefings.

Mogakane’s sermons are inarguably what the country needs at this time of financial global recession, debt-ridden families, Trevor Manuel's impending departure, politicians who believe they automatically make good businesspeople by arguing when asked what they'll do after politics that they'll go into business as if being a businessman was a natural progression while it takes a certain savviness that either you have or you don't, and trying academic challenges.

Slain Black Consciousness protégé Steven Bantu Biko once wrote in his essay We Blacks, “the anachronism of a well-meaning God who allows people to suffer continually under an obviously immoral system is not lost to young blacks who continue to drop out of Church by their hundreds”.

Biko would have loved what Mogakane did in this well-edited and packaged DVD which comes with intoxicating music. It’s motivation taken to another level.

It retails at R40 with previews available at www.makgema.blogspot.com. It’s another production of the Dwarsloop based Mega-Mak Entertainment.

TRIBUTE

In Loving Memory

On the second week of January my three years old nephew passed away in a car-accident in Kokstad. For the first time in my life I realised that I am human and am able of being shocked and traumatised. I'm not yet fine but in the heat of the pain I managed to write this poem. Hoping it can be your comforter as well in your time of need, when you remember those who never made it home.

arrested development
(for reatlegile mashego
2006.04.09 to 2009.01.10)

‘butterfly kisses’ be your uncle’s lullaby
cuz tonight i’m not ready to say goodbye
mchana let’s call this a farewell
in my mind you ain’t gone nowhere
you still here i’m still here together we here
it’s only distance between us that robs us of hugs
would let go of your mortality & hold on to memories
if memories multiplied were equivalent to your smile
you not eternal in my epidermis but every breath i take
you’re forever you ain’t a tattoo you’re a star in the sky

‘butterfly kisses’ be the last song i hear
you sucking your thumb boy
wonder what pleasure you drew there
what’s good for the goose can’t be good for the gander
the nectar in your finger is but the fuel of our puzzle
when kids’ journeys get interrupted my demeanor shifts to self-death
where’s the glory in staying when my nephews are leaving
nobody should see they end in they nappies
let them sin first give them reason to perish
we want reasons to understand why the thief steals @ night

i no longer treasure memories like a poem i wrote
i hug tips of bleeding pens for they carry my pain
worship ink on white pages it exorcises my demons
shed not tears for children who die without a cause
rather massage my misery with Vaseline like a scar on my face
i’m still the son of Jehovah believe in eternal life
look forward to paradise though my life defies resurrection
my heart can’t stop beating ‘til i wave a white flag
i ain’t got a white flag so i’m living forever

yours mchana is arrested development
it’s prune them while they still young
the only way to kill a nation is to snuff out its babies
a spanner thrown in the works to stop a wheel from turning
a journey interrupted in obvious fear of the future
yesterday i looked @ your small shoe nearly shed a tear
this morning i woke up to polaroids of your last stay in the morgue
you didn’t look @ peace though they say you rested
i took a look @ what you left though you had nothing
you’re the son of your uncle you’re the beat of my heart

‘butterfly kisses’ forever echo in my heart
it’s not a song i’m singing but an ode to a beloved
it’s early days this is just how i’m feeling right now
letting go never my priority but i’m losing a lot
life is a casino you never win forever gamble
that which we love get taken away
that which we hate get multiplied by seven
smiles on pictures are the jewel we treasure
times shared in the living are the wealth we keep
hoping someday somewhere somehow we meet again

PS. Today I saw your Death Certificate
‘CAUSE OF DEATH: UNNATURAL CAUSES’
wonder why cuz you’ve been taken by the designs of man

PREVIEW

Can I get An Encore?

On February 4th at 20h30 etv screened Jay-Z's biofilm Fade to Black, his attempt to sell to the world the false story that he was leaving the rap music industry and also the making of his final Black Album. It's an inspirational biofilm of his travels while making the award winning album and the prolific producers he worked very closely with, amongst them hitmakers Timbaland, Pharrel, Kanye West and many others who took part in what he called 'the movie'.

Sean Carter, who was conceived under a cycamore tree and born in November 3rd, 1973 in Brooklyn is undoubtedly a trendsetter without really trying hard. While some people have said he's a cocky nigga who never really believed he could make is someday, one can read signs of faith in his earlier releases though. Earlier on he never really had beef with his father until he saw capital in it and told us that 'poppa left me/ momma raised me' and later told his mother 'as a man i apologise for my dad'.

He is the nigga who said he produced gees like sperm and later played monopoly with real cash. Tell me you don't think that's a little prophetic and I'll tell you that the same Jiggaman, on his Hard Knock Life album was out telling all and sundry that 'if my situation ain't improving/ i'm trying to murder everything moving' while at the same time hustling with his Rocca Fella Records. That was before he told his mom that he wanted to buy her a home while not knowing that it would be in Rome.

I'll risk being crucified for being Old Skool by claiming that Jigga was really made by the Blueprint albums, which for the first time saw his videos being allocated bigger budgets and video director Hype Williams being roped in to direct them. Big Pimpin' was a hit with its misogynsit video. While the shift from the somewhat street Hard Knock Life to Blueprint came with more glitz and sass, it was his lyrical style that revolutionised his muse. Suddenly he was about 'he's okay but he's not real/ jay-z's that deal/ with one in the chamber never fear for war squeeze that steel'. While everybody thought he was on the rise with apologetic songs like Song Cry which some claimed was an exploration of his relationship with curvesious and luscious rapper Foxxy Brown there were those who said Jigga's woman has always been RnB singer Blue Cantrell.

That was until Nas revealed in Ether, his battlesong that 'Foxxy got you hot cuz you kept your head in the puss'' that everybody was like, 'wow Jiggaman has been shady all along', what with Foxxy being Kurupt's fiance and allegedly bonking DMX. But when things started moving fast and his long time partner Damon Dash came into the picture and it looked like no one could stop them from taking over the world. Suddenly Dash was being more popular than Jay even though we last saw him sloshed on Big Pimpin'. He revolutionised the white sporty.

They did eveything under the sun, stakes in clubs (40/40), clothing (RoccaWear), beer (Armadale) and many other things that was spinning cash like sperm for them. They were on the roll like two dice from the palm of a cheat - dibhombhayi. Then RnB singer Aaliyah, Dash's fiance passed on and it seemed like Jay's partner wasn't taking the strain like a 'hood nigga. Jigga dropped a classic verse in a song that commemorated her.

No one could have seen it coming that sooner than later they would be on each other's throats with Jigga leaving to head Def Jam Records as President and Dash taking half of everything they owned. Jigga was soon shouting 'silent partner/ why do i hear you so loud'. Okay, Dash can't sing so there was no way to retaliate, not even with his chihuahuas trying to bark at Jigga.

Jigga made more albums that made him more cash because as president he could control how they have to be marketed and promoted. He made more cash and attracted paid-girlfriends. He was no longer creeping with Foxxy or Blue but RnB singer Beyonce Knowles, the super-hot part of the Destiny's Child trinity. They made Me and My Girlfriend, a remake of Tupac Shakur's alter-ego Makaveli's Me and My Girlfriend.

And then Jigga discovered tropical Rihanna who sold like hot cakes, kept the Rocca roster and publishing rights while he was presiding over Def. Then one morning he decided to retire, or rather to sell to the world the story of his retirement. This was after his falloff with lifepartner Dash, beefs and make-ups with Nas, interploring Notorious BIG on every hit song he made and indicating he was about to sell off 40/40. Jigga woke up one morning and commissioned a camera crew to follow him as he recorded his Black Album over a few months. He brought the curtain down with a show at Madison Square Gardens in New York, the city he claims to be its king.

There's a telling line on the doccie when he observes all the people who came to see him say goodbye and he says it's not a special thing for white groups like Limpkin Park to fill Madison Square Gardens but for a boy from the 'hood, it's an achievement.

Of course it was an achievement for a Hawaaian soapie fan from the projects. Jigga never left after toasting with his Rocca staff, dropped the baggy and switched to suits and karftans. Everybody should have figured when he sang 'Encore' and omitted the verse about 'this is the victory lap and I'm leaving'. He came back to get married, release more albums and make more beautiful music. February 4 was Sean Carter night on etv,

'Hoping DJ Sbu Leope decides to be his own man instead of idolising Jigga to the point that he wants to be everything he is, including filming his boring little life. Jigga is in the US of A (Land of the Free) and you are in R of SA (Kill for Zuma) broer, his president for the next four years is flamboyant Barack Obama while yours is charismatic Jacob Zuma. Get it broer? Chalk and Cheese?'

FACT

State of Our Literature
I was recently interviewed about whether there is a literature Renaissance in South Africa or not. And with the State of the Nation Address on Friday I decided to post my response on this blog about what I told a reputable newspaper about what I think is the state of our literature

Indeed yours is a broad question which I will attempt to answer in this little essay below;

The dawning of political freedom obviously came with a lot of other freedoms, especially expression and literature. Another one of those was the growing of the pool of books that one could use to model narrative styles and themes. Suddenly there were Wole Soyinkas, Ngugi wa Thi'ongo's, Tsitsi Dangarembgas and Doris Lessings. There was suddenly an explosion of opinions and expressions from people who otherwise couldn't have had the platform to speak. However the bigger question is whether post'94 there has really been the kind of reawakening that warrants being called a renaissance.

True, some genres, which were for some time marginalised either due to too much political attention were finally freed. Lesego Rampolokeng's Horns for Hondo was a good read in the dark days and Mzwakhe Mbuli's poetry book was a critical read but very few poets came out lest they invoke the ghosts of Verwoed and Vorster. However like I say they were just drops in a big ocean as many critical voices were either in prison or exile. The truth is that there were equally good writers then who decided not to offend the powers that be by writing their thoughts about the then status quo.

Most of the literature then was either banned or coming from exile as ownership of such thoughts was as criminal as possession of cocaine to possess.

I would be optimistic to allege that there is a renaissance, although very limited of it. It seems to either be moving at a snail's pace or to be stuck somewhere. With the scores of writers who have recently emerged there has also been a spirit of elitism that seems to be a spanner in the works of this train everyone is trying to move forward. Good literature has come out which has added much needed colour to the literary landscape of this country but we equally have bad literature which has dented the portrait.

The reason I say it has come with elitism is that some artists who would rather be contributing to the development of the landscape suddenly become celebrities the minute their books hit the shelves. And while literature is still in the trenches, they are already waving victory flags prematurely. At the end there is a serious celebration of mediocrity because if there are mediocre writers, there is a myraid of mediocre literary reveiwers who will pass off anything written by their circles as good. Thus, the quality is dangerously compromised.

That is the flipside of this beautiful toddler renaissance. Almost anyone with a story to tell can be published, often without adding colour to the landscape but simply because there is a Book Fair coming and the publisher has bought a bigger stand and it needs books to fill. Such literature comes and passes by without leaving footprints. We only hear about them during the fair and after that they are nowhere to be found. In this sense books are coming out for the sake of expediency but we are not moving forward. That we are moving will be determined by the quality of the literature that we produce and its staying power.

Again, that there is an awakening will be seen with the reading culture that characterised the 1970s and '80s, that is still there in some African countries like Kenya. The same spirit that saw young people (mostly boys) in schools battering and reading James Hadley Chase novels as if they were a passport to heaven should be recaptured before any renaissance can be celebrated.

Authors of note like Phaswane Mpe and Sello Kabelo Duiker came at the right time and left before we could see more quality work coming out of them. They were flickers of light that never really glowed to our satisfaction. Authors of the 1950s and '60s produced excellent literature that is still the benchmark for today's writers. Ken Themba's The Suit is still rated as one of the best short stories to the point that Siphiwo Mahala's The Suit Revisited couldn't cause a dent on its beauty. And Mahala's short story is actually very strong and the narrative is outstanding but it only suffers because of the benchmark.

Which should raise a question, if indeed we are right there is a renaissance, can today's writers rest assured that whatever they produce now will be as worthy as Down Second Avenue by Prof Eskia Mphahele or Miriam at the Marketplace by Miriam Tlali?

There is rather literary miscarriage unfolding. I should mention that there is something out there to celebrate but it comes once in a while and there is no assurance that it can be sustained if the foot is removed from the accelerator pedal. One of the reasons why I would say there is a miscarriage is the level of elitism that has engulfed the arts, most notably in Gauteng.

Recently at the South African Literary Awards there were notable absent faces which, based on their contribution to the landscape should value such occassions. People coming from other provinces perceived them to be the hosts and should have been at the awards but they were not. They were absent because they were not nominated or their friends were not nominated. They were absent because for them the SALA is not relevant until one of them is nominated. And these are the people who everybody thinks should be part of the renaissance or even steer it. However these are the people who are killing the baby before it's even born and christened.

Authors like Kopano Matlwa, Mmatshilo Motsei, Kgebetli Moele, Niq Mhlongo, Zukiswa Waaner and a few others are today's torch bearers who can only make the journey enjoyable and the renaissance feasible if, at all stages they remain rooted to the ground to simplify it for equally younger writers to approach them for mentorship roles. Otherwise, five, ten, fifteen years from now, it would seem, nothing has changed and we will be back to square one.