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Contents
editorial
IMRAAN COOVADIA
Living with sorcerers
ZEINAB SHAATH
The Urgent Call of Palestine
ALLAN BOESAK
“HOW LONG FOR PALESTINE?”
MAKHOSINI MGITYWA
The Crux of the Matter
MALAIKA MAHLATSI
On the genocide in Palestine and the death of academic freedom and democracy in Western universities
BRANKO MARCETIC
Israel’s Gaza War Is One of History’s Worst Crimes Ever
CHRIS HEDGES
American Sadism
ARYAN KAGANOF
On Power and Powerlessness: Genocide in Gaza Through the Lens of Afropessimism and Decay Studies
MICHAEL SFARD
We Israelis Are Part of a Mafia Crime Family. It's Our Job to Fight Against It From Within
Theme Gaza
ZEENAT ADAM
Gaza and the Graveyard of Excuses
MAHMOUD AL SHABRAWI
Writing Between Fear and Survival
GOODENOUGH MASHEGO
Why I can’t condemn October 7
GARTH ERASMUS
Lamentations for GAZA
SALIM VALLY and ROSHAN DADOO
Africa’s strong bonds to Palestine
ZUKISWA WANNER
A Common Humanity
MUHAMMAD OMARUDDIN (DON MATTERA)
A Song for Palestine
TSHEPO MADLINGOZI
Ilizwe Lifile/Nakba: Le-fatshe & Crises of Constitution in (Neo)Settler Colonies
SINDRE BANGSTAD
Palestine, Israel and academic freedom in South Africa
GWEN ANSELL
Resistance music – a mirror reflecting truth; a hammer forging solidarity
FMFP (FREE MUSIC FREE PALESTINE)
Listening as an anti-colonial way of engaging
ATIYYAH KHAN
A movement against silencing: What the genocide in Palestine has taught us about journalism
ASHRAF HENDRICKS
Visual Memoirs of Solidarity with Palestine in Cape Town
ATIYYAH KHAN
GAZA: Where wearing a PRESS vest is a death sentence
VISUAL INTIFADA
NARRATIVE REPAIR
SHARI MALULEKE
A Prayer to the Olive Tree
THANDI GAMEDZE
Jesus of Occupied Palestine
NATHI NGUBANE
MALCOLM X IN GAZA
MARIAM JOOMA ÇARIKCI
The dark side of the rainbow: How Apartheid South Africa and Zionism found comfort in post-94 rhetoric
CRAIG MOKHIBER
The ICJ finds that BDS is not merely a right, but an obligation
ROSHAN DADOO
South African coal fuels a genocide: BOYCOTT GLENCORE NOW
IMĀN ZANELE OMAR
From the ground
DEAN HUTTON
Who would you be under Apartheid?
galleri
SÍONA O’CONNELL
Keys to Nowhere
SAMAR HUSSAINI
The Palette of Tradition and other, earlier works
SLOVO MAMPHAGA
Chronology of the Now
DEON MAAS
The Resistance
OLU OGUIBE
A Brief Statement on Art and Genocide
CANDICE BREITZ
8 may 2025 Berlin
ADLI YACUBI
A Moment Is On Its Way
TRACEY ROSE
If Hitler Was A Girl Who Went To Art School (2024-2025)
borborygmus
CHARLES LEONARD
Zeinab Shaath : the famous Teta
THE ALDANO COLLECTIVE
Withold
DIMA ORSHO
Excerpts from Half Moon, a film by Frank Scheffer
GARTH ERASMUS
Where is God?
LOWKEY FEATURING MAI KHALIL
Palestine Will Never Die
CHRIS THURMAN
Intertexts for Gaza (or, Thirteen ways of looking past a genocide)
KEENAN AHRENDS
The Wandering Dancer
NATHAN TRANTRAAL
‘D’ is vi destruction
INSURRECTIONS ENSEMBLE
Let Me Lie To You
RODRIGO KARMY BOLTON
Palestine’s Lessons for the Left: Theses for a Poetics of the Earth
MARYAM ABBASI
Drums, Incense, and the Unseen
frictions
HIBA ABU NADA
Not Just Passing
NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF
The Visible and the Unspeakable (For Mahmoud Khalil)
MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
Before You Kill Them
ABIGAIL GEORGE
4 Struggle Songs for Palestine
MIKE VAN GRAAN
4 Poems for Gaza
EUGENE SKEEF
To The Demise of War Mongers (a suite for the people of GAZA).
ALLAN KOLSKI HORWITZ
Gaza: two poems
MALIKA LUEEN NDLOVU
At the end of a thread, holding my breath, beading
NGOMA HILL
From the River to the Sea
JESÚS SEPÚLVEDA
Gaza 2024
ARYAN KAGANOF
GAZA (body double)
VONANI BILA
Under Rubble
JACKSON MAC LOWE
Social Significance
FRANK MEINTJIES
5 poems from A Place to night in
DIANA FERRUS
Burdened man
claque
FINN DANIELS-YEOMANS
‘If Cannes did not want to go to Gaza, Gaza had to go to Cannes’: Institutional Censorship at Film Festivals post-October 7.
FRANK MEINTJIES
Abigail George’s SONGS FOR PALESTINE - "struggle poems" in an age of livestreamed genocicde
PHILLIPPA YAA DE VILLIERS
ukuphelezela and Nida Younis’ Two Bodies/Zwei Korper
RUTH MARGALIT
Writing the Nakba in Hebrew
NATHAN TRANTRAAL
Ons is gevangenes van dit wat ons liefhet: Magmoed Darwiesj gedigte in Afrikaans
HEIN WILLEMSE
Frank Meintjies: a mature poet, intellectually astute with a refined social, political and ecological consciousness
M. SOGA MLANDU
'Tell Them I Am Dead’: Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana’s Dark Lines of History
NIKLAS ZIMMER
Détourning the cut
ekaya
LYNTHIA JULIUS
I believe the children for the future
JENNIFER KESTIS FERGUSON
Nikita
CHERYL DAMON
No Ordinary Rage
SKHUMBUZO PHAKATHI
Don’t forget Phila Ndwandwe
INGRID ORIT HURWITZ
SHATTERED
STEVEN ROBINS
The blindspots of Zionist history and the ‘ancient scripts’ of primordial Jewish victimhood
LIESL JOBSON
Sorrowful Mysteries
herri
Towards a Preliminary Archaeology of herri
off the record
STEPHEN CLINGMAN
The Voices in My Head: Reflections on South Africa, Israel, Palestine, Gaza
ANNI KANAFANI
Ghassan Kanafani
FILMS
by Palestinian Women
STEVEN ROBINS
Re-reading Jabotinsky’s The Iron Wall in the time of genocide in Gaza.
JANNIKE BERGH in conversation with HAIDAR EID
Even Ghosts Weep in Gaza
ASHRAF KAGEE
Three friends in Gaza
AMIRA HASS
"Resist the Normalization of Evil": On Palestine and Journalism
GEORGE KING
Fields, Forests and Fakery: ‘Green Colonialism’ in Palestine
HEIDI GRUNEBAUM
The Village Under the Forest
MEIR KAHANE
Jewish Terror: A JEWISH STATE VERSUS WESTERN DEMOCRACY
FRANK ARMSTRONG
Ireland and Palestine: A Crucial Vote Awaits
NIKHIL SINGH
The Siege of Gaza 332 BC
feedback
DENIS EKPO
1 April 2025
DEON-SIMPHIWE SKADE
23 March 2025
LIZ SAVAGE
10 January 2025
CEDRIK FERMONT
10 August 2024
AZSACRA ZARATHUSTRA
6 August 2024
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Facebook
PhD
COLE MEINTJIES
Power in Relation to Life and Death: Israel's genocide in Gaza
the selektah
CHRISTINA HAZBOUN
Palestinian Women’s Voices in Music and Song – 2025 version
ATIYYAH KHAN
IQRA!
hotlynx
shopping
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contributors
the back page
MICHAEL TAUSSIG
Two Weeks In Palestine
GEORGE STEINER
This is called History
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NATHAN TRANTRAAL

Ons is gevangenes van dit wat ons liefhet: Magmoed Darwiesj gedigte in Afrikaans

Toerie digter Magmoed Darwiesj ses jaa oud was, hettie Israeli Army Birwe ge-occupy en geraze. It wassie plek waa Darwiesj gebore was en grootgeraak et. Sy familie, soes anne Palestinian families het geflee vanafie inevitable massacres wat sou follow. ’n Jaa later kommie familie trug narie land as “illegals,” en settle in Dayr al-Asad. Maa hulle terugkoms val byte die timeframe vannie census soe, hulle wôtie ingetel innie families wat gebly et ennie massacres survive et ie. Instead earn hulle ’n niewe label, “internal refugees.” Legally geclassify as “present-absent alien.” Dai drie woore as jyrit opbriek: present, absent, alien is miskien die beste beskrywing vannie gedigte wat Darwiesj later sou skryf. Die storie van Darwiesj se kinne jare sal vi Kafka envious maak.

Magmoed Darwiesj se gedigte het openly rebel tienie Israeli occupation van Palestine, en hy moes eventually in exile gan. Maa hy het nooit ophou trugskryfie. In tyd het hy een vannie Arabic wêreld se most loved en respected digters gewôd. ’n Poet wat loved is dee kinnes en adults alike. Darwiesj, die author van several novels en 20 poetry collections is dood in 2008 anne hat anval. Maa hy losse literary legacy wat vi decades nog sal resonate mettie Arab world. die Vlug van ’n Vreemdeling isse anthology van Darwiesj se collected poems in Afrikaans, vetaal dee Bester Meyer en ytgegie dee Naledi.

Die leit motif van gevangenis is belangrik om te vestaan as jy Darwiesj lies. Omdat Darwiesj tot in sy essence ’n mens trapped in confinement is, waa oekal hy might gan. Exile, it seems, warp die wêreld, en ve’anne die familiar confines vannie hys into symbols van liberation, tewyl die broader expanse ’n sprawling open air tronk wôd. In sy gedig, Die hoep-hoep, offer Darwiesj ’n glimpse into die feeling van displacement:

Ons is gevangenes van dit wat ons liefhet,
dit wat ons begeer
en dit wat ons is.

Darwiesj was die reluctant representative van sy mense, soes explored innie 2014 documentary Write down, I am an Arab. Innie film express Darwiesj candidly,

“I don’t like to represent. I barely represent myself.”

En tog represent hy met al sy gedigte die plight van oppressed Palestinians. Dié sense van imprisonment rear wee sy kop innie forbidden love affair tussenie Palestinian, Darwiesj en sy Israeli lover, Tamar Ben Ami. Oo wie hy van sy mooiste gedigte geskryf et. Die mees renowned van die gedigte, Rita en die geweer isse aching poem oo longing en separation,

Tussen my oë en Rita
is daar ’n geweer —
en wie Rita ook al ken
gaan kniel en aanbid
die heiligheid
in die heuningkleur oë

Tussen ons
is daar miljoene swaeltjies
en beelde
en baie rendevouz
onder skoot
van ’n geweer —

Die spector vannie Israeli occupation van Palestine is ever present in Darweisj se gedigte. Dit issie tronk wat hy nooit kan escape ie. Sy taal en images is bound an en intertwined mette forever oolog. Liefde, estrangement, loss en politics intertwine seamlessly dee Darwiesj se body of work. Elke gedig bear traces van al die elements, al oscillate hulle in prominence vanaf een gedig narie volgenne. It is no surprise as hy ’n gun introduce inne love poem. It is expected. 

It is onmoontlik om sy gedigte te categorise in binary terms. Die universality van Darwiesj se writing extend yt sy metaphor van Palestine as sy lost Garden of Eden. It isse metaphor vi alle displaced mense. Whether ôs praat van refugees, offie descendants van slaves wat liewe as second class citizens innie land waa hulle gebore was.

Ek is ’n Adam van die twee Edens —
Ek het die paradys twee keer verloor.
Verdryf my daarom stadig.
En vermoor my stadig.
– onder ’n olyfboom –
saam met Lorca.

Binne die Afrikaanse literatuur is daa stêk ooeenkomste tussen Darwiesj se approach en dit van Kaapse Afrikaans writers. Most apparent in sy gebryk van free verse, maa oppe dieper level in sy manier van metaphor gebryk, en hoe die gedigte gedryf wôd dee ’n musicality en rhythm. Die skrywer is self aware van sy rol as digter, soes beautifully vasgelê innie gedig, Die Dobelaar:

My enigste hand in (’n)(dié) gedig
is om die ritme te gehoorsaam,
om haar beweging aan te voel,
een gewaarwording
wat in ’n ander verander
en voorgevoel wat betekenis openbaar:
bewusteloos in die eggo van woorde —
my self se toonbeeld
soos dit homself her-vestig
vanaf my “ek” na ’n ander —
my vertroue en hunkering
na fonteine van water.

It het my lat wonne of rhyme schemes en experimental forms miskien die domain is van peace time poets. Darwiesj isse war time poet, die chronicler vanne occupation. Sy weapons is sy woore. En mens kan sê, dat woore nie rêrag weapons issie, maa neither isse klip assie enemy ’n tank ry. Darwiesj se gedigte hettie natural beauty vanne olive tree, sy complex geometry hidden agte supple curves en warm texture. Die gedigte is simple genoeg virre kind om te vestaan en diep genoeg virre philosopher om velore in te raak.

Bester Meyer se vetaling van Darwiesj se gedigte is commendable al issit ’n bietjie workmanlike. It suffer klein bietjie asse result vannie feit dattit vetalings is van Engelse vetalings, ’n copy vanne copy, die sharpness vannie woore slightly diminished met elke pressing. Maa dai issie om te sê dat die gedigte sy effectiveness veloo nie. Bester se vetaling is soe loyal annie text soes mens possibly kan wies. Darwiesj isse belangrike skrywer, en een wie met South African readers deeply sal resonate. Bester se vetaling kan net die Afrikaans literature enrich.

Oppe final note, kon ekkie help ommit inherently strange te vind om Darwiesj se gedigte wat grootliks gan oo Israeli Apartheid te lies in Afrikaans ’n taal wat historically deeply rooted in Apartheid issie. Maa miskien is daa iets appropriate, selfs hopeful innie irony. Magmoed Darwiesj se gedigte het Afrikaner nationalism survive, om gelies te wôd inne niewe Syd-Afrika, miskien sallit eendag gelies wôd inne niewe Palestine.

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RUTH MARGALIT
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