The Alkalinity of Bottled Water

Description

Makhosazana (Khosi) Xaba is a well established poet, writer and gender activist. Her work touches on a many aspects of South African life including the deep alienation that many who stand for social justice feel from the ANC’s neo-colonial state. The all-pervasive corruption that resulted in state capture and the corporate and individual greed that underlies it, are key subjects for her poems but this collection also encompasses her relations with lovers and friends and the physical landscape as it inhabits the cityscape. The horror of rape and the struggle for lesbian and gay rights forms another powerful component. The book’s three sections divide the themes and ‘feel’ of the poems without being too rigid. Written in free verse that is sometimes close to prose-poetry, the poems carry statements without being ponderous. Khosi Xaba writes with the assurance of experience and conviction. As an ex-MK fighter, she has travelled a long road and her objective to keep a literary record of these unfolding times, is a very worthy one.