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“u-Grand, Malume? (Zulu slang: are you ok, Uncle?) is dedicated to two uncles who were victims of the antiapartheid struggle. The poems are my way of bringing Jabulani Maswanganye’s spirit back home; he joined Umkhonto weSizwe, went to exile in 1977 and never returned.
The same poet who observes that ‘Everybody is a bridge’, then asks in Zen -fashion,
“Is it me, or is it you?/ are you reflection or projection / or the light that’s shining through?’’ and can also note in a very down-to-earth way, that “If we hadn’t robbed the car washers of their coin/they might not have turned so mean, you know? / Let them earn a little income, bra/ If we’d chiselled our hearts open, tried to see it from the middle/we’d have softened just a little.”
