Oral Poetry from Africa
I am grateful to Professor Zodwa Motsa for providing us with the following poem, the praises performed after the inauguration of King Mswati III of Eswatini (also known as Swaziland) in 1986.
Mswati the black one amongst the ashen
Warrior stick of horns who settles not in gourd-drums
But enters in the seed-bushels of the buffalos…
This is a second version of the Praises of Sobhuza II. This version of Sobhuza’s tibongo, sung by Mhlabeleli Dlamini, another member of the royal house, focuses on the later part of Sobhuza’s reign after his position had been secured.
The hurrying one of Mahlokohla
Who hurries to Egypt…
Sobhuza II (1899–1982), one of the most remarkable Africans of the last century, was king of Swaziland for 61 years. Educated at the Lovedale Institution in South Africa and an early member of the African National Congress, he was at the same time a passionate traditionalist, pledged as he once put it “to extricate Africa from this idea of one man one vote”…
