Day of the African Child: "Poetry for Progress"
Zimbabwe's Comrade Fatso, renegade street poet (photo courtesy of Comrade Fatso/MySpace)
By Rebecca Park, Contributor
On June 16, 1976, frustrated black students rose up against apartheid-era education in what was intended to be a peaceful protest in Soweto, South Africa. But when confronted with the police, the march erupted into violence, as hundreds of students fell in what became an orgy of mob brutality. Today, this landmark struggle against racial oppression is honored worldwide as the Day of the African Child. In Washington, DC, the historic date was commemorated with a poetry reading featuring award-winning South African poet Dennis Brutus at the U Street café Busboys and Poets.
Hosted by multiple organizations—including Split This Rock, Institute of Policy Studies, TransAfrica Forum, Africa Now! Radio, Haymarket Books, and Africa Action—the evening combined poetry with progressive politics. But the relaxed, casual reading room invited plenty of good-hearted humor that prevented any overwhelming self-righteous heavy-handedness. An artist like Comrade Fatso (the stage name of Zimbabwean street poet Samm Farai Monro) easily alternated between politically changed rhymes about the destructive repression of his home country’s dictatorship with jokes about his drinking and wordsmith potential, wryly observing that you “can be very good when you are very dead.”
The event’s highlight was a teleconference with famed poet and activist Brutus, originally scheduled to appear in person but unable to due to health reasons. Towering over the audience on a projection screen, the 84-year-old was literally larger than life; a portrait of graceful aging that keeps on fighting against that good night. Sharing stories of imprisonment alongside Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, reflections on decades of fighting for human rights and poems spanning his forty-plus year career, he was more than just an impressive presence. He was a distant beacon of hope, a vessel of wisdom, a shimmering image and unworldly glow, a man both near and far, inspiring whatever generations may come.
And inspire he did. The rest of the program was dedicated to younger poets, coming from near and far to share their spoken words. What emerged was an inter-generational dialogue between the classical vanguard of Brutus and the avant-garde artists of today. “Tonight is about the present, and tonight is about the future,” Briggs Bomba of Africa Action emphasized during his introduction of Brutus.
Multi-talented poet Anna Mwalagho performing
(photo courtesy of www.annamwalagho.com)
A poet like Anna Mwalagho of Kenya bridged Brutus’s heritage to the present day, updating his themes of social justice for 21st century forms. Combining traditional African musical traditions with American hip-hop and spoken word, she chanted, sang and rhymed with a powerful confidence. A poem like “I Have a Dream,” owed as much to Martin Luther King Jr.’s quest for civil rights as it did to the rhythms of her homeland. The easy blend of two continents made her message of African strength all that much stronger for her diverse audience of Americans and Africans.
In two hours the café crowd caught a glimpse of an explosive exchange: Africa and America, one generation and another. But it wasn’t a violent combustion; instead, it was a productive meeting of elements, the kind of reaction where both parties end up enriched afterwards.
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