REVIEW

Free At Last

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho spent eleven of his twenty-seven years of life imprisoned at Kutama Sinthumule Maximum Security Prison in Makhado. During these long captive years his spirit has roamed free as he found solace in his creative juices.

Mukwevho was released last November on parole. When he walked out he had already published his poetry in Timbila Volume 6, which was published in 2008. In one of his honest poems titled something, Mukwevho writes, “waking up/ early in the morning/ rushing to town to sell some carry bags, toothbrushes:/ small business means/ small money/ better off than stealing/ something that leads us to jail”

He is a creative soul who also writes short stories and novels. As if resembling the Biblical Jonah who was swallowed by a fish when he tried to dodge his calling Mukwevho pursued creative writing with UNISA while incarcerated. When he walked out last November a national publishing house had already offered to publish his first novel. The writer couldn’t be kept down as prison walls also failed to suffocate the writer in him.

Eight months after he was freed Mukwevho published his first collection of short stories titled A Traumatic Revenge. The book with the scary yet attractive cover is made up of eleven short stories critiquing society and how it conducts itself in different situations.

Jigsaw in the Sky is a heart-warming story about xenophobia towards Zimbabweans. It objectively enquires why people see the difference in the next instead of the similarity.

The kind of language we Speak tells the story of a student protest that ended with the death of a learner. Mukwevho’s versatility as a writer is explicit on this short story where the narrative is in first person and he successfully takes the role of a woman named Zodwa.

Defeated explores the abuse that some wealthy people subject vagrants when they offer them money to sodomise or even to watch them have sex with their dogs. While the story might raise racial temperatures, it’s the honesty with which the author narrates it that will melt even the coldest heart.

All Mukwevho’s stories have a moral to them. They are all rooted in society. Intriguing that he moves his storylines from town to town and even writes about inventions and innovations of the past ten years. Given that he spent all these years behind the ugly walls of Kutama Sinthumule, Mukwevho’s exceptional storytelling skills come out glaring. Few people would find inspiration in a space designed to break a man’s spirit.

A Traumatic Revenge sold a hundred copies at its Makhado launch a month ago and Mukwevho has indicated that he is willing to tour the country during the month of September to read in libraries and community centres.

Libraries wanting to invite Mukwevho for a reading of his book during September can arrange with his publisher at Timbila Publishing 015 291 2088 – Vonani Bila.

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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.