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Next to Nelson Mandela, performance poet and musician Mzwakhe Mbuli may be South Africa's most beloved citizen. A grassroots superstar, uMzwakhe is the kind of celebrity for whom one name is sufficient. |
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What has happened to Mzwakhe Mbuli lately is more bizarre and would have brought many people to a breaking point, but he is a warrior whose greatest strength is an unbreakable spirit. From October 1997, he was been held for almost two years in Pretoria, first at Central Prison and then Maximum Security. In August 1999, he was transferred to Leeukop Maximum Security, in Bryanston, South Africa.
Mzwakhe's trial for armed robbery concluded at the end of March 1999, after he was denied bail and held for a year and a half. Convicted on circumstantial evidence, he was sentenced to thirteen years in prison. He was assigned to a hard labor division and very severely restricted.
Despite the facts of the case indicating innocence, the guilty verdict rendered by the magistrate was no surprise. Nor was the hefty sentence of thirteen years--eighteen, with five suspended. Apartheid may have left the statute books in South Africa, but it has not left the so-called independent judiciary. This time, the people's poet unfortunately has gotten tangled up in it, and at a time when crime has been high, and a framed celebrity has provided a means of setting an example.
Mzwakhe Mbuli's importance in South African culture has extended far beyond protest, but he is also far more than just an entertainer. In South Africa, performance poetry is not just entertainment. It is a means of reaching the people. Unlike most artists, Mzwakhe is not dependent on electronic media. Unlike most poets, he is not even dependent on printed words. He and his followers recite poems from memory. In fact, unlike most poets, he therefore has many people who cannot read among his legions of fans.
Mzwakhe draws on traditional amaZulu upbringing and puts his own spin on the classic tradition of praise poetry. He also writes music and poetry in a thoroughly modern style which is all his own. The praise he gives when praise is due is rivaled only by criticism he places where it is deserved. Mzwakhe has been consistent in speaking out against corruption and injustice in all forms and in all arenas.
The "king of rap" of South Africa can rap with the best of them, in many languages. This is not a hiphop thing, although he is undeniably hip. This is a thing of telling it like it is, like it has been, and like it ought to be. Although his work speaks volumes about problems past and present, it is fundamentally prophetic.
It may seem that poetry was a luxury in South Africa's most turbulent times. The reality is that Mzwakhe's poetry gave an agonized population hope and courage for sustenance during the struggle which brought down apartheid. His poetry has built strength for nation-building. Mzwakhe has always spoken out for those who for reasons of ethnic or other difference feel ignored or forgotten.
This is no conventional poet lodged in academia, or even an unconventional one whose social criticism laid over his music might make him a regular on late-night talk shows if he were in the U.S. This is a poet dedicated to serving people who possess little materially but who proudly claim a poet as their very own. What does such a poet do in South Africa, where people have been under assault for decades, and where a whole nation now struggles toward recovery?
Mzwakhe Mbuli earned the unofficial title of "people's poet" by helping a bereaved nation bury its heroes, great and small. His work in the struggle for justice made him a national leader. At a time when funerals were the only events where black people could gather and talk to each other, Mzwakhe was a galvanizing force amid chaos. Somehow weaving poetry around unbearable tragedies, he delivered countless poetic eulogies when people close to those who died were too traumatized even to speak. He and his words against apartheid were banned. That didn't stop him from appearing at rallies to energize the people. To avoid arrest, he developed skill in disappearing into crowds after performing poems.
For his service in the movement for justice, Mzwakhe was one of the few artists asked to perform at Nelson Mandela's Inauguration, where he performed a multilingual praise poem to introduce the President:
Let me dedicate my poetic praise
Comrade Mandela, you are like an oak tree
After the Inauguration, Mzwakhe enjoyed even greater popularity, shifted gears to build the new nation and became a self-described "confidence builder."
Not everyone wanted a new nation, of course, and resistance to change took some perverse forms. Hard drugs hit the nation with force around the same time as the change in government, creating increased poverty, crime, suffering and corruption. Mzwakhe became involved in the anti-drug movement.
When Mzwakhe was in Swaziland to perform for the Swazi king at an anti-drug event, the head of the Royal Swazi Security Police gave him information to give Mandela about South African officials involved in the drug trade. True to his outspoken nature, Mzwakhe revealed he had information and would tell the President.
Little progress was made on the investigation into the attempt on his life. Mzwakhe was understandably critical of police. He talked with South African officials about Swazi information. They advised him to see the President. He tried, but Mandela was out of the country.
An associate of Mzwakhe's suggested they go to Pretoria to see a man who claimed to have information about an attempt to murder Mzwakhe. The next day they and another associate went to Pretoria where a man met them and threw a bag into the car. Moments later, they were pulled over by police and arrested for robbing a bank. The bag turned out to contain money from the bank. Police claimed they found a grenade and an unlicensed gun in the car.
The people, of course, have not forgotten him. Thousands visited him before the trial. Helen Suzman, the octogenarian former member of Parliament, was his most frequent visitor.
Before trial, Mzwakhe appealed for transfer so he could meet more easily with his attorneys, away from the throngs of visiting fans. On leaving court, he was attacked by three Afrikaner police officers when he complained of handcuffs being too tight. He was sent back to Central Prison.
It remains unclear when Mzwakhe Mbuli, despite his status and his record of public service, will find justice in the new South Africa. On appeal? After the election? To some extent, this may depend on public response to the current situation.
It is hard to understand why top officials have allowed him to be treated so badly. It is particularly puzzling why a President who experienced the horrors of prison in South Africa would allow his friend to be abused this way.
During apartheid, his talent for telling the truth made him an enemy of the State. After detention for 176 days in solitary confinement, he was released and not charged. Then, that was normal.
Izigi (Footsteps) ~ Mzwakhe Mbuli
To the symbol of resistance.
Let me dedicate my poetic praise
To the symbol of hope and prosperity.
Let me dedicate my poetic praise
To the fountain of wisdom and inspiration.
I talk of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
The leader that stood the test of time.
Like gold and diamond
In order to be refined
You have gone through the fires of time.
You have survived all kinds of weather
(...continues)
In 1996, someone fired nine bullets into his car while he was in it, attempting to assassinate him. That was the third attempt on his life.
Despite status as a national leader and lack of a criminal record, Mzwakhe was denied bail five times, in lower and higher courts, on the grounds that he was "a likely candidate for flight," even though he never fled the country when the apartheid government hounded him and ruined his life. He was placed in a maximum-security prison, initially in a cell near the gallows, with apartheid era killers as cellmates. Conditions in which he has been held seem more befitting apartheid than a new South Africa. Crowded into a cell with sixty-five people sharing one toilet into which water must be poured for flushing, the people's poet has learned firsthand more than anyone would ever want to know about what it is like to be thrown into a dungeon.
What is abundantly clear is
that, like Nelson Mandela,
Mzwakhe Mbuli is like an
oak tree which has survived
all kinds of weather.
He has been refined, like
gold and diamonds of South
Africa, by the fires of time.
As Mzwakhe himself
said years ago:
"Leaders are not born;
they are produced
by experience."