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A yellow haze hid the kopjes. A lonely farmhouse on the arid veldt.
Madge sighed. Too hot and still, as hours gnawed away at the blistering ranch.
She could smell the dust.
No rain. Another drought.
Too familiar, the ground was cracked, the sad garden insulted her, breathed dry futility. She tried to wait patiently, to force coolness over her, to wait for Ted, to relax with him on the veranda, to have their drink.
Just to sit. There would be very little to say. The air was too heavy, like the day.
Expectation as a human feature is naturally flawed. This entity, very easily and perhaps deceptively so as someone more cynical might say; promises a lot without any guarantees that the promised or anticipated will be fulfilled. Thus disappointment is usually experienced in the end when our expectations are not met. To minimise the full impact of disappointment in case the desired outcome does not materialise, we are often encouraged to “manage our expectations” by not having much expectation in the first place or none at all.
Botsotso has long admired the work of the late Angifi Proctor Dladla, and valued him as a friend, artist and cultural activist, so we were very excited to receive a copy of his epic satirical poem, Maxwell the Gorilla and the Archbishop of Soshanguve, from Kelwyn Sole. This highly original and trenchant poem about the chaos of post-liberation (or rather ‘’half-baked’’ liberation) is a model for poets/writer in dealing with the pain and frustration of our current paralysis in terms of achieving a ‘better life for all’.
