This Land Is My Witness

The idea to compile these poems was conceived in the week before the South African State President was to deliver his "State of the Nation" [SONA] address in parliament on the 12 February 2015. As the hype of the SONA intensified, so did the poet's resolve to give his version of the state of the nation. With these poems, the writer sought to exhibit what the state of the nation was at the time when each one of them was written. Herein lies the answer: to address the South Africans. The poems therefore provide a sense of where and what South Africa was before the advent of democracy and what it has become 21 years after the demise of apartheid. Presented sometimes in heightened and simple realistic intonations, the poems trace the writer's frame of mind and the people's experiences at a particular point, freezing the moments to give a reflection - hence "This Land Is My Witness: Poems on the State of the Nation" title. Each poem is however a scene or playlet and monologue capturing the state of affairs in order to evaluate what South Africans are facing. Holistically viewed, it is a call for citizens to critically reflect on themselves and their state of consciousness in order to take action.The first performance of these poems was at the District Six Museum Homecoming Centre in Cape Town on the 13 February, 2015, the day after the President's SONA address. Another reading took place at the National English Literary Museum [NELM] in Grahamstown, as part of a Rhodes University conference titled "An Arc to the Future: Preserving and Promoting Orature in the South African Literary Imaginary" held on September 9-12, 2015. The sequence is the same as that of the readings presented at both events, with the exception of two poems which have been added. For those who are not intimately au fait with what happens in South Africa or cannot understand some of the words taken from various South African languages there are detailed notes on the poems at the back of the book.
About the Author: Maishe Maponya is one of South Africa's foremost cultural icons - a playwright, theatre director, poet and cultural activist. Some might see him as South Africa's Neruda or Lorca. In 1985 he became the first black recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award. He was a founder and director of the performing arts group, Bahumutsi. His plays have been performed locally and internationally and include "Gangsters", "Dirty Work", "Busang Meropa" and "The Hungry Earth". Other more recent theatre works are "Place of rock: how the land was stolen", based on the stories of Sol Plaatje's, and a one-hander about Steve Biko, called, "Song for Biko". Maponya has a Master of Arts degree from Leeds University, U.K. and was appointed a Lecturer in Drama at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where in 1995 he published a collection of his dramatic work, "Doing Plays for a Change". He is currently working on a new play entitled Mannenburg.