GEOFF MPHAKATI & ARYAN KAGANOF

Bra Geoff Mphakati

Ah you could never live in South Africa and be involved in the arts and not have a political dimension or dynamic – unless you were unconscious of course!

Lefifi Tladi

I told this priest I was dreaming of God yesterday. I remember his name, Father Mathias; and he was asking me “how did he look like?” I said “no she was black!” and he got so angry and said, “that was the Devil’s wife you were dreaming of!” (laughter) Can you imagine! “That wasn’t God, actually have you seen a black angel in your life?” And I was just seven years. I said “no father”, he said “that’s why we only preparing you to get to the less hellish part of hell. Heaven, you’re not going!” (laughter)

Bra’ Geoff Mphakati

I remember in the sixties I walked into the OK Bazaars in Pretoria and I said to the sales lady… I don’t even know what the item was that I wanted, so I tell her, I tell her in English, so the first thing she does is she turns around and says, “Can’t you speak Afrikaans?” So instead of answering her that I can actually speak Afrikaans, I started asking for that item in three or four of the indigenous languages and then she said, “What are you saying?” Then I said to her,” I’m doing you a big favor, I’m talking to you in a language that isn’t my own language, and you dare to ask me to speak Afrikaans? And now I’ve asked you for the item that I wanted in four of our Indigenous languages and you haven’t understood me. You are ungrateful!”

Lefifi Tladi

O SILENT GOD, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days—
Hear us, good Lord!
We are not better than our fellows, Lord, we are but weak and human men.
When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed:
curse them as we curse them,
do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence and
Is this Thy justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence,
and the innocent crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty?
Thou Knowest good god A city lay in travail,
God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder and Black Hate.
but we know that you’re not one of them, that
bloodless and heartless thing that we know that
in Thy soul’s soul sit some soft darkenings of the evening,
in silence, oh silent god.

Bra’ Geoff Mphakati

I managed Dashiki until it was banned and went underground, until some of its members had to leave the country and go abroad, the others went underground within the country. I was managing the Dashiki then because it was important and highly imperative for me or somebody with the understanding and the consciousness of the political dynamic involving Dashiki….and Dashiki became vocal as far as the arts were concerned, opening up and saying what they felt about the state. They didn’t now go into the back rooms and the back yard and hide themselves – they came open. All of their performances they were very very vocal, and this is why they started burning their fingers.

Lefifi Tladi

Cause now we were going to schools really motivating the kids, and when 1976 happened in Soweto then we said well if it’s in Soweto we’ll take it out here. We were burning all these buses and some schools and we were highly highly causing commotion…ultimately we were picked up, all of us but then we went on trial and we got the bail….but during this period of this bail, Shahn Sheti who was our lawyer said that you know your case has been changed from public violence and arson to sabotage, so the mildest sentence you’ll get is about eighteen years.

Lefifi Tladi

Our spears are immersed in blood we are on the war path of blood river,
the distance is long the distance is strenuous but our courage is thriced
for the jet planes fly over Umgungundlovu.
We are the elephant we move the way of no return.

DJ Rude Boy Paul

A gentleman by the name of Lefifi Tladi will be joining us on the other side of the news bulletin, a world renowned artist and poet who has been in exile for over thirty years so he definitely has a story to tell ..

Lefifi Tladi

No actually, Lefifi means darkness but not the darkness you’ll find in cupboards and things like that, like the darkness after sunset, and then Tladi means lightning.

Kgafela oa Magogodi

You Know Lefifi as you may know came out of what we call the black consciousness tradition, came out of the seventies, went to exile I think in 1976.

DJ Rude Boy Paul

That’s almost thirty years out there.

Kgafela oa Magogodi

Yes he has been based in Sweden I think for thirty, since 1980.

Lefifi Tladi

Twenty-four years.

Kgafela oa Magogodi

Oh yes so that for me, it’s great to be here with him and you know and share him with the Y generation, He’s from the Toyi Toyi generation.

Lefifi Tladi

We didn’t know much about ourselves and instead of looking to others, to Europe, then I was collecting a lot of material of contemporary African artists and then from there we had few exhibitions all over the place and from 1980 I got a scholarship to study in Sweden, to 86.

DJ Rude Boy Paul

What did you study exactly?

Lefifi Tladi

Art history, but it’s a wrong name actually, its European art history because there are no Africans in those books of theirs. (laughter)

Lefifi Tladi

But I think its unfortunate it’s a very sad period for me today because the day before yesterday my guru Geoff Mphakati passed away… so that is the thing that has put my energy levels at quite a low level, because he’s a guy who actually uplifted our consciousness as artists….he made us understand the meaning of being of an artist because we have this simple kind of negative tradition of if a child is dull witted let him go into the arts…

Geoff Mphakati

Lefifi and company, but mostly Lefifi, is what my wife calls my instant children. Lefifi was dumped on my lap by his uncle after he was kicked out of school because they thought he was dumb, they said he was stupid. So I took him on and started piling book after book on him, he lapped them up like nobody’s business. Right now the mentor is like the student and the student is like the mentor.

(pause)

Geoff Mphakati

I think one of the most crucial issues, now this I’m directing at artists, whether they be poets, dancers, visual artists you know, all of the art forms, literary arts. It boils down to one thing – freedom means money. In other words artists create for an elitist group. Artists have never been able to address themselves from a socio- economic and a political perspective because if they had artists wouldn’t be in the limbo they caught up in right now. It’s who do I sell my work to next, to get a couple of dimes.

Lefifi Tladi

Because we were working within a political context, you see.

Debs Matshoba

Revolutionary music and poetry.

Lefifi Tladi

I mean people when they came into Dashiki they knew it was a conscientisation programme.

Afurukan

Good afternoon and welcome, welcome, thank you very very much for coming out …for hearing the call, for coming to share with us what is truly South Africa’s most raw and undiscovered, unearthed talent mixed with something legendary… something fresh, something a lot of us still don’t know anything about and we are so open minded to learn. Today we are honoring Mr. Lefifi Tladi. I know a lot of you are going, who is that? Yes Mr. Lefifi Tladi, I do not have the right I believe because I’m to young to actually say anything about him so as time goes by I’ll get somebody on stage who will give us proper introduction of Mr. Lefifi Tladi.

Lefifi Tladi

The way Kgafela reads poetry inspires me. I’ll read a short poem that I like. It illustrates the depth of our language [Setstwana], it goes like this.

Toro, A Thorn fig, not toro, a dream.
To vomit God is to cut off the wings of angels, is to make a hole out of dreams of slavery.
It is to free ourselves to breathe through the third eye, unpicked by the thorns of the thorn fig (Foreign elements)…
…or to put it another way.
When God vomits I cut off the wings of angels…
… I drill holes for you to dream in.

Lefifi Tladi

I wrote this piece as an exercise in cryptic writing. I’ll have to put on my glasses to see what I’ve written. (laughter) This one also needs to be understood by listening carefully to the intonation of the words… because what is important with these poems is to listen deeply. We’ll start with one that goes like this …Which means I should explain this very clearly now…it means…you see…

Lefifi Tladi

To blind the eyes of bald headed soft-chested twins.

Kgafela oa Magogodi

That was the mother fucking tongue!

Otsile Ntsoane

Lefifi Tladi has written fantastic Sesotho, Setswana poems; I mean metaphorically, he’s galactic traveling above the cosmological levels…but unfortunately the professors of Setswana and seSotho don’t want to open their brains to recognize him and say bring those poems home to be published, read and be taught in school. Now another question some of the guys were asking “hey now I’m struggling to publish indigenous language, to publish an anthology, I want know how am I going to publish. Lefifi says “well look I have written poetry many years ago, I mean I’ve never published, but if you get published in twenty years…

Lesego Rampolokeng

… or if by 2050 you are not published, you have failed!

Lesego Rampolokeng

From the human animal, to the imperial cannibal, the raptor is in flight, larking sight …
on dynamite, now the rhymes glow see how the rhythms flow in the vein of violence…
…now silence is a song turning the wrong king Kong out of Etosha Pan into a satellite dish …
I move in whirlpools of riot, demon light, demented cry, demented die but I
I
I
I cut
lord, demon lie, demented cry, demented die but I cut…
Demon light, demented cry, demented die but…
…I’m a poem taking form beyond the napalm storm,
I’m a moving mosaic, a sonic volcano while they hop till they drop the atom bomb
cut,
and out.

Lesego Rampolokeng

To be honest I don’t think that I would have attempted to take the first step into the poetic word… or into that terrain where the mind gets to be pulled apart, gets to be dissected and opened out, and left bleeding and pumping for people to eat off, were it not for him…(points to Lefifi) …I doubt it very much, because at the time I had of course had been exposed to the Shakespeares, to the dead white romantics and such like and I hated poetry…I don’t know if I’ve changed, I perhaps still hate or perhaps still hate even much more… because for me it was something that was alienating for me even the nursery rhymes that we were taught bah bah black sheep……I looked at that stuff and I could not identify with the sheep, I was much more of a mountain goat…(laughter) …you know so when he burst upon the scene and into my consciousness I had to embrace that and get myself married to it and that’s why I’m here…

Lefifi Tladi

Now I talk about our visit to our second place where our spirits interpret…
…to us the depth of our dream visions through the third eye of our souls…
…3D vision which clarify our dreams and allow those who hear through their third ear to speak in ancient tongues…
…tongues of fire without smoke because this is the place where nervous systems are perfected…
…where the radio waves settle where there is no depth, nor width nor weight of the existing things…
…those who reach out to these places are indeed the true messengers…
…let us open our third senses so as to understand what it is we should do at the place where we are…
…because this life is not a thorn fig but a dream…

Motlhabane Mashiangwako

I became a visual artists in Geoff’s house you know. One day we paid Geoff a visit and we found these artists in Geoff’s house and look, it was fantastic. They were using Geoff’s main bedroom as a studio… and that is where I first picked up a piece of paper. I mean I was among the heavy guys like Winston Saoli, Fikile Magadlela…and a lot more others like Lefifi Tladi, Gilbert Mabale and so on, there was music happening, there was the visual arts happening and…somebody gave me, allowed me a piece of paper which I took and I started drawing…and what I drew on that piece of paper was a foot with an eye, you know, and roots coming out of the foot. So the next painting what I later entitled “Nkosi Sikelela e Africa” It was a head of a woman with parted hairs, you know, and a lot of lips around it, you know which represented, the islands around Africa and this face was in tears. That was the African continent or the matriarchal Africa mourning the loss and the suffering of her children and that was in 1974 in Geoff’s house.

Lefifi Tladi

What we were doing in terms of this kind of paintings was that we were laying a foundation that gives a broader scope of how we perceive our future, you get it? And unfortunately it didn’t filter down because we got independence and independence simply means: what the Westerners or the imperialists do is when they see that you’re about to get your freedom they give you independence, and independence simply means they give you the machinery that they were oppressing you with so you oppress yourself.

Mac Manaka:

I feel like grabbing liberation by the throat,
choking until it until it speaks the truth
until it admits that it was paid to fool us with the idea that we are free…
cause if we are why do we wake up to morning news
about the struggle that continues
attracting issues
and more issues.
Who am I in this life story?
I feel like a puppet playing on guitar strings composing instruments with a torture tongue
and listening to the wind reciting poems of fallen heroes…
while trying to break chains
that enslave brains
because in this land liberation is an elusive image
hidden behind empty promises of freedom…
tattooed on a timeless bomb and any minute from now
it will explode
into a thousand pieces of hope.
My question is
will we still cope?
They said I am free,
free from what?
‘Cos some are still caught in that Bantu art.
They said I am free,
free from what?
‘Cos some are still caught in that Bantu art.
Free from the teacher who gave me four
cause she had
issues with Madiba…
free from the white man who stole the rhythm of marimba,
the ethnic sound of mbaqanga
and the beat of a gumboot dancer…
yes I feel like grabbing liberation by the throat,
choke it until it speaks the truth
about soldiers in that boat
about..
the Cape’s racist leather coat of Jan Van Riebeck…
and so change and expand
are my biggest priority
while I emancipate myself from mental slavery,
cause no one but us
will free us.

Lefifi Tladi

Each and every generation has to define itself in the context of its role in the development of its own society..and I could just take a, for example in the context of South Africa at the time of black Consciousness, that was a generation who had to define its role within the development of the society and our point of departure was based on consciousness. The uplifting of a consciousness that is anchored in Africa and on that basis we began to find out what is this “Africa”?…what is its history?, what is its contribution to world development? and as Ngugi wa Thiongo would say we were shifting the centre from a euro-centric perspective to an afro-centric perspective.

Lefifi Tladi

The way I hate out onto the past, soul delves into the past and future manifesting himself as the us or…the us or…us us us, the us or…
A colour dances around, beauty beyond angelic, so nice so rare…until the gust of ghost…
These legs can not cope with the temper and broken light…passing through a prism, hanging from the eye of a revolving moon…
…ancient cave paintings walk from the walls out of our magical past towards the hedonist…
…Saoli a medium mystic.

Geoff Mphakati

What inspired us? We are artists we are forever creating, we are innovative people…we are dynamic we are volatile; we are a combination of a volcanic eruption…an earthquake, a hurricane, a typhoon, put them all together – That’s who we are.

Motlhabane Mashiangwako

So you don’t become an artist out of choice you become an artist out of, if I was say maybe a Christian I would say out of a call, you get a calling.

Afurukan

I stood in a cipher with God.
I stood in a cipher with God and all He seemed to speak about was rotating planets and stars…
I stood in a cipher with God and all He seemed to speak about was separating light from the dark,
barbeques on the sun and leaving a burning candle on the moon.
Four was his beat box and Moses was keeping score when two four corner stones
and his accomplice was a four headed shadow which seemed to bump its head in every direction…
While I spied and listened from a distance in anticipation he started talking about me
and I thought he was dissing but actually he was explaining the philosophy behind me…
because you see God is a wizard and I’m his magical bag of tricks
and all He needs to do is think and I spit and I all He needs to do is think and I spit…
and we don’t need blunts to reach the highest ultimate level of thought
cause we smoke life rolled up in papyrus leaves and blow our smoke rings and let them hang around certain planets.
Then Thor changed a beat and twenty-one angels joined in, we opened up the cipher so that the rest of hell could move in…
flames sparked a cipher from this fiery creature claiming he was a battle cat
he started dissing but God ignored him, I asked why, He said no holy Gabriel handle that.
He called me the first son of man and kept on repeating that the Armageddon is only a punch line away;
the Armageddon is only a punch line away.
But how could it be?
He had promised me that we would cipher into eternity,
and then decided He was out of my league.
He brought Moses in to battle me, and I was like
damn!.

Okay let’s break it down.

Moses is from the old school and is known to battle only with ten lions…
but to maintain and project his voice to transmit to ten mics
….ten times, ten MCs, embarrassed being taken out at the same time.
The cipher was getting hot and I had to battle back, I had to battle
back, so looking to Moses I was like, looking to Moses I was like hold up!
You not an MC even if I was the red sea and you were his staff you still couldn’t split me…
don’t even look at me you need to live another century to be raw enough to battle me.
I’m the prodigal son from the crowd you mislead
and I’m back to make you swallow every word you ever said
even on Noah’s ark you wouldn’t survive regardless.
I make you write Afurakan the eleventh commandment!

The beat,
the beast started as four had swallowed his electrical tongue
and all corners of the universe seemed to fold in.
Too dumbstruck to react I watched Moses collapse face flat…
as the twenty one angels hung their heads in shame,
and I fell on my knees at gods feet and I was like
Our Father please forgive me for I have killed one of your sons,
please forgive me for I have killed one of me.
My tongue was then imprisoned for twenty-one reincarnations
and only then can I cipher with God again
and only then can I truly be me again.

Lefifi Tladi

Yes spirituality actually, that’s why they say Africans are soulful; it means they have their senses very much in contact. That’s what I understand of soul. To have your senses in harmony, and once you have your senses you become, obviously, soulful – Eye ear nose tongue and texture control.

Lefifi Tladi

We are the elephant we move in the way of no return,
our spears are immersed in blood,
we are the elephant, we move the way of no return…
we are the warrior transformed into a guerilla
for the spirit of Sharpville moves from the past into the present wearing the new mask.
Soweto, Soweto, Soweto we are the elephant we move the way of no return,
we are the warriors transformed into a guerilla.

Don Laka

And Geoff Mpakhati introduced me to the real new world of Jazz, you know hard bop and all the new modern jazz musicians you know…the African jazz, avant garde jazz, he really, I mean he used to take us into his house, you know buy us snacks and stuff. We sit there and play, he said now the concert begins and he would play a record from the first track up to the last track. That’s how you, I remember in 1976 when he just came with a CD and, it was on a Friday he called me I went to him with a friend of mine. We sat there listening to a CD from Friday until Saturday the next day. That’s how important that music became to me and I was introduced to it by Geoff.

Geoff Mphakati

And the poetry came into place because of the Last Poets merging or fusing African musical forms with poetry.

Lefifi Tladi

Actually funnily enough the first time we heard the Last Poets was in Alexandra at Wally Serote’s place, and then actually the name the Last Poets was given to the Last Poets by Willy Kgositsile who gave them the name the Last Poets, and the Last Poets also were a group that were there because their purpose was to uplift the consciousness of the ordinary working class into a kind of an aesthetic level of appreciating what black people can do.

Debs Matshoba

But at least, you know for instance, the kind of songs that we used to sing commonly, you know are revolutionary songs.
like there was this one…
“Oh when I was a non-white,
a non-white,
a non-white,
Oh when I was a non-white,
a non-white a non-white was I.
I was yes Master, yes Miss, yes Master, yes Miss,

you know and that how we were conscientising people

“now that I’m a black man,
a black man,
a black man,
and now that I’m a black a man, a black man am I…

…it is No Master, No Miss., no Master”

You know, because we were called non-whites. We were refusing to be called non-whites. No, white people are actually non-blacks!

Geoff Mphakati

And the indigenous perspective really took off from the very onset with Dashiki beccause they had poetry in Tswana, Pedi.

Lesego Rampolokeng

We are going to Church.

Kgafela oa Magogodi

They disgrace us. They fight over meat at funerals, they have no respect
They like to squabble, fighting for meat at funerals, insulting each other’s mother.
They pelt one another with bricks and use cattle to hurt one another, breaking windows.
Shouting “Voetsek’ but the meat they’re fighting for isn’t in the pot its under the blanket.
They shame us by fighting for meat at funerals, giving each other the smell of their armpits.
They stab him with a knife in the eye and when he runs he falls into a pot of samp.
He hits the black pot and falls onto the fire with his belly. Everybody screams.
The congregation Gossips…
…the priest gives them a sermon…
He says “Hey you people, which one messed with the other one’s wife?”

Lefifi Tladi

The thing that made Dashiki quite different was that it was a combination of music and poetry… and that was inspired mainly by how traditional music and poetry had been working together…and from a political perspective when we started working with the Black Consciousness movement. People like Steve Biko, Mandla Langa and Aubrey Mokwae had come to our place in GaRankuwa and see how we could function together as a mobilizing force to uplift the consciousness of the people.

Don Laka

The Black Consciousness was the movement that really drove us to understand ourselves and know who we are… …that had obviously the influence of people like Dashiki who carried the flag at that time. You know with us who come from the sixties and the seventies, you know most specially the seventies, the height of Apartheid at the time and the oppression, the serious oppression of the eighties. If you listen to the music that we did because the lyrics were banned and people thought we couldn’t write lyrics. We subjected ourselves to writing lyrics that would mean nothing but deep down the music that we produced, you know was protest music. You know it was music that would keep us hoping.

Lefifi Tladi

To them the earth’s deepest depths are taboo.
Before we sit at a table and speak in a foreign language with the Albino
Foreigners.
We need to go into a huddle and speak to ourselves in our own languages.
We need to make our own decisions about governance and what is important to us on our own terms.
This discussion needs to happen amongst ourselves in our own languages before we can negotiate with the albino foreigners.

TITLE OVER SCREEN : Giant Steps is dedicated to Bra Geoff Mphakati who passed away during the shooting of this, his first documentary as director.

Lefifi Tladi

So now we don’t make poems we create, for brother Geoff.

Lefifi Tladi

A spontaneous reflection of our soul steps…you have trembled beyond the illusion of political manifestations.

Lefifi Tladi

Oh silent god…
Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days
We are not better than our fellows, Lord, we are but weak and humble men.
When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed:
curse them as we curse them

Geoff Mphakati

You need to revisit your past, to be able to be able to move ahead, until you revisit your past, you are moving ahead into a void.