Oral Poetry from Africa
The fourth in a series of six poems from the Xhosa poet Melikhaya Mbutuma, this was recorded five months after the third poem (see also parts one and two for the background and parts five and six for the rest).
The rulers amaze me in their understanding of man,
The genii have confounded me in their conception of the sanctity of man.
Three Zulu hymns. Isaiah Shembe, the founder and leader of the Zulu Church which bears his name, wrote many hymns. In them, Zulu and Christian traditions are united to express the aspirations of an exploited people.
I shouted day and night:
Why did you not hear me?
An extract from a Sotho Praise-Poem from Lesotho. In 1926, there was a succession dispute over the Paramount Chieftaincy in which the Roman Catholic missionaries supported Chief Seeiso’s rival.
Seeiso accepts no cowards;
The children of the family of Mary he rejects:
An extract from a Xhosa Praise-Poem addressed to Kaiser Mantanzima by the Praise-Singer Phakamile Yali-Manisi. It explains the present disastrous position of the Xhosa people as a consequence of the alliance between the missionaries and Sir George Grey, Governor of Cape Province 1854–61, in seizing Xhosa land and destroying the Xhosa economy.
It all started with the conversion,
We accepted the conversion in the belief that we were accepting God…
