SHEBA LO

The arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 and the Dutch East India Company’s establishment of a permanent site in South Africa set off centuries of enslavement and colonial subjugation by the Afrikaners and the British, fighting amongst themselves through two Anglo-Boer wars for the control of the minerally-rich soil and the African labour to mine it, African resistance notwithstanding. The Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, merging the Boer republics and the British colonies. Building on the previous colonial arrangements, the National Party came to power in 1948, legislating every aspect of Black South Africans’ lives through the brutal system of apartheid, or separate development, with even more vigour. Draconian legislation was introduced in the 1950s such as The Group Areas Act, confining Africans to live in residential zones determined by their ethnicities, the Bantu Education Act, legislating Black people to be labourers for whites, and the Pass Laws Act, which essentially made sons and daughters of the soil into foreigners. Black South Africans were required to carry passbooks to show on demand and required a signature from their employer to enter white areas for work. Husbands and wives could get permission to work in distant areas of the country and may see each other once a year if at all.      

While forced removals occurred throughout the 20^th century, large-scale removals of tens of thousands of families took place during the late 1950s and 1960s, particularly in urban areas that were vibrant cultural centers like Sophiatown and Lady Selborne. Homes were bulldozed and cities became mounds of ash and debris. Regardless of land ownership, Africans were moved to infertile lands like Meadowlands and Ga-Rankuwa. The removal of people from their homes, their connectedness to the land, and the people in their communities served to disrupt the social, cultural, and psychological fabric of these so-called black spots marked for destruction.

With the intensification of legislated subjugation of African people in the 1950s, African people’s resistance amplified with mass demonstrations, marches, and organizing of both the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, founding executive and president of the PAC, organized passbook demonstrations, where thousands of Africans burned their passbooks in an act of defiance in the Sharpeville township in what was then the Transvaal Province. The police responded by shooting hundreds of peaceful protesters in an event now known as the Sharpeville Massacre on March 21, 1960. Passbook demonstrations erupted in other areas of the country, most notably a protest led by Philip Kgosana, the then secretary of the PAC’s Western Cape region, where 30,000 people marched in Langa (De Bruyn, 2022). The following month both the ANC and the PAC were declared illegal by the apartheid regime and went underground. Later the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO) and the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) would also be banned.

It is in the environment of the forced removals that Lefifi Tladi, an iconic poet, painter, musician, and sculptor, begins to understand the political realities of life in South Africa. Tladi’s father, Sekolo Sekwena Hosea Tladi, a man of Pedi origin, was born in 1924 in Lebuwa in the Northern Transvaal. He worked as a traffic policeman in the 1950s and later became a businessman, opening a large store called Drum Beat after Lefifi, his eldest son, who was a drummer. Tladi remembers his father as a man who never smoke or drank during his life. One of the smartest things that his father ever did, according to Tladi, was to marry his mother, Nomazizi Zelpha Mnyatheli, a woman of Xhosa origin, born in 1926 in Tsomo in the Eastern Cape. 

Nomazizi worked as a nurse, ran a business, and bought several plots of land. Lefifi Tladi describes her as an educated woman who at times knew more than the doctors she worked with. Sekolo Tladi wanted to free Nomazizi from the racism she endured at the hospital where she worked, so he started a business for her to run. They met in 1947, married in 1948, and Lefifi Tladi was born on January 4, 1949, in Lady Selborne, where the Tladis rented a house. He completed his standard six education at Kuzwayo Nkomo Higher Primary. Tladi’s teachers thought he was intellectually challenged, so his father sent him to a Roman Catholic School for boys, but he was expelled after two months for “a mixture of revolutionary activities and thuggery” (L. Tladi, personal communication September 10, 2022).

The Student Becomes the Teacher: The Development of Consciousness

The Tladis were the last family to be forced to leave Lady Selborne in 1966 when Lefifi was only 17 years old. Tladi’s father Sekolo Tladi bought a truck, and the family cleaned the building materials that were bulldozed and resold them to people who were extending their homes or building garages in their new locations, finding an opportunity for entrepreneurship even in the most demoralizing of circumstances. The same year that the Tladis were removed from Lady Selborne to Ga-Rankuwa, Lefifi Tladi created the DeOlympia Youth Club, where he organized gigs, music events, dancing, games, and even sports to occupy the youth of the community. One year later Tladi’s uncle introduced him to his friend Bra Geoff Mphakati. Mphakati introduced Tladi to literature. Then Mphakati asked Lefifi Tladi’s father if he could take Lefifi and tutor him. Mphakati assured the senior Tladi that Lefifi is not a “dunderhead;” he just was not interested in what he was learning at school. His father agreed and sent him off with Mphakati. The first book Mphakati gave Tladi was Notes of a Native Son (1955) by James Baldwin.

Mphakati then gave him Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright. Tladi began devouring the works of African writers like Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Tladi was ready to discuss the books each evening when Mphakati returned home from work. In one year, Tladi says that he had read more than 60 books “that nobody knew anything about.” (L. Tladi, personal communication, October 10, 2006).

In 1969, Mphakati took Tladi to Van Schaik’s Bookstore in Pretoria and asked to speak to the manager. He informed the manager that he had heard there were many banned books that Black South Africans were not supposed to read. Mphakati inquired about a list of these books so that they could be good citizens and “avoid them.” They left Van Schaik’s with a list of banned books. Mphakati gave the stack of papers to Tladi, telling him that these are the books that he needed to find and read. They would locate many of these books at the University of South Africa (UNISA) reference library in Pretoria, but since reference books must remain at the library, they had to find another plan. A cleaner who worked in the University of South Africa (UNISA) reference library helped Mphakati and Tladi to obtain more than 300 books in two weeks. They would also take books in brown paper bags. Tladi asserts that he and Mphakati were “conscious biblioklepts” (L. Tladi, personal communication, September 27, 2022).  Eventually, Tladi created a library of more than 800 books written by Africans. Tladi “lapped [these books] up like nobody’s business….right now the mentor is like the student and the student is the mentor” (Mphakati & Kaganof, 2005). Tladi developed a strong theoretical understanding of the arts and politics from a Pan-African perspective, and he began to provide books for Mphakati to read (L. Tladi, personal communication, November 14, 2022).

Oscar Motsepe’s wife, a social worker, provided a four-room house to Tladi and his fellow artists in Zone 5, Ga-Rankuwa in 1969. It was there that Tladi says he opened the first art museum in Ga-Rankuwa and the first museum that had works of modern South African artists. It became known as The Art Museum. Tladi ran The Art Museum until 1974 when the apartheid security branch forced its closure. It was also a place where Dashiki, Tladi’s music and poetry group, would rehearse. At the same time, Bra Geoff Mphakati’s house in Mamelodi became an art studio, and Tladi and his fellow artists moved in between these two locations. In these spaces, Tladi met Matsemela Isaac Nkoana, known as “Sir Ike,” who taught Tladi and others a great deal about art and technique. Tladi worked with Motlhabane Mashiangwako, whom he considered the most intellectual of all the group, Fikile Magadlela, and Winston Saoli among others.

From 1972 to 1973, James E. Baker, the first Black diplomat during apartheid, invited African American painters to South Africa. Tladi related how impressed Baker was with his knowledge of African and African American art, so he shared with him his collection of speeches of Malcolm X, H. Rap Brown, and Martin Luther King. Baker would even provide Tladi with a key to his house in Waterkloof when he returned to the U.S. on holiday (L. Tladi, personal communication, September 10, 2022).

The Context for the Examination of Lefifi Tladi’s Poetry

The Theoretical Framework

Lefifi Tladi’s poetry and ideology were informed by the hundreds of books that he read early on in his life. Thus, the framework for the analysis of his poetry, the role of the poet, and the analysis of Tladi’s contributions are found in the theories of writers from around the African world from which he was informed. In Frantz Fanon’s third or final stage of the indigenous writer, the artist “turns himself into an awakener of the people,” developing a “fighting literature, a revolutionary literature, and a national literature (1963, p. 223). During this stage, the poetry is a “poetry of revolt,” describing and analyzing the situation (1963, p. 226).

Moreover, the poet must realize, according to Fanon, that nothing “can replace the reasoned, irrevocable taking up of arms on the people’s side” (1963, p. 226).

Mazisi Kunene observes that the liberation struggle in South Africa is “based on the “recovery of our social values defined…in concerted political, economic, and social attempts” (1973, p. 56). The awakening of people’s minds, Alex La Guma argues, “is one of the most profound and most important manifestations of the cultural revolution (1973, p. 58). Amilcar Cabral linked the people’s culture to their liberation from colonialism. Its importance, he believes, “lies in the fact that culture is the vigorous manifestation on the ideological or idealist plane of the physical and historical reality of the society that is dominated” (AIS, 1973, p. 41).

Culture, Cabral explains, creates possibilities in the minds of the people and is “an inexhaustible source of courage, of material and moral support, of physical and psychic energy, which enables them to accept sacrifices – even to accomplish ‘miracles’” (AIS, 1973, p. 53). This is the reason, Cabral notes, that there is generally “an upsurge of cultural activity” during independence movements;” culture becomes a weapon of struggle (AIS, 1973, p. 59). Cheikh Anta Diop points out that the colonizing forces “understood that national culture is the most solid fortress of security that a people can build for itself in the course of history,” which is why the colonizers forced assimilation policies throughout the continent (1996, p. 50). Diop’s works served to remind Africans that they “are humanity’s most ancient guides on the paths of civilisation,” and the key to Africa’s renaissance is the absolute rejection of the unhealthy ideologies imposed on Africa about herself. These “unhealthy beliefs” have “atrophied her soul” and create an inferiority complex in Africans (1996, p. 44). It is through the rediscovery of African history and culture that will allow Africans “to regain self-confidence” (1996, p. 50). African art forms play a particular role in this rediscovery of African values, Diop points out. African music “should express the song of the forest, the power of darkness and nature, the mobility of suffering, with all human dignity” (1996, p. 43). For Aimé Césaire the concept of liberation is to “summon up these unconscious forces.” This for him, “was a call to Africa” (1972, p. 84).

Anti-colonial literature, according to Chinweizu, must “examine how [they] got into the historical mess, what keeps [them] bogged down in it, and how [they] came to accept it as [their] natural condition,” and celebrate important historical events (Chinweizu, 1987, p. 220). Poetry is “a very important ingredient in our revolution, Bra Don Mattera explains. “Poetry gave birth to June 1976” (1987, p. 97). Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o asserts that the very nature of art is revolutionary, so it “will inevitably come into contact” with the colonial or neocolonial state’s desire for absolute power. The artist’s true power is manifested “solely in the performance” (wa Thiong’o, 1998, p. 14). It is for this reason that the South African state attempted and was successful in some ways in co-opting the performers. One example is that of the imbongi, who like the griot, operated as both the public social critic and praise poet. The griot is born into this role, but the imbongi is sanctioned by the people. Therefore, their communal political clout – even existence as a poet – is governed by the degree to which they represent the needs and desires of the people. This shifted under apartheid where the apartheid regime appropriated traditional modalities through Bantustan leaders like Kaiser Mantazima of the Transkei and Mangosuthu Buthelezi of Kwazulu Natal. The Bantustan leaders limited the performances of poets to their personal izimbongi^{[1]Plural of imbongi} so that they would simply praise the apartheid-serving stooges (Opland, 1983, p. 269). The apartheid regime’s practice of co-opting the cultural space expanded the suspicions to traditional forms like that of culturally connected poets or poets who used African languages.

This is the reason that Tladi and other Black Consciousness poets utilized English for unity and nationhood, avoiding apartheid’s politicization of ethnic identity, or divide and rule policy.

Africa was the cultural nourishment for the Black Arts Movement (BAM), which “[advocated] a cultural revolution in art and ideas” (Neal, 1989, p. 63). The Black Aesthetic was established as a set of ethics for Black artists who, like the traditional African artist, must serve the needs of their people. In fact, BAM made no distinction between aesthetics and ethics (Neal, 1989, p. 65). Thus, poetry “is a concerted function, an action. No more abstractions. Poems are physical entities: fists, daggers, airplane poems, and poems that shoot guns. Poems are transformed from physical object into personal forces” (Neal, 1989, p. 66). Poetry must be a force for self-determination and freedom for Black people, a “radical reordering of the nature and function of both art and the artist,” ridding themselves of the European worldview (Neal, 1989, p. 66). The African American struggle “is inextricably linked to the worldwide struggles of oppressed people” (Neal, 1989, p. 133).

Sekou Toure, then known as Stokely Carmichael, the Black Power Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other African American intellectuals, activists, and artists like James Baldwin, and Amiri Baraka impacted the ideology of the South African Students Organization (SASO) as well as other cultural workers and activists during the liberation struggle (Mgbako, 2009). In particular, Pan-Africanists like W.E.B DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and later Malcolm X helped to connect Black South Africans and African Americans in terms of both a global Black identity and a collective experience of oppression (Mgbako, 2009, p. 310). In Durban, Wellington Mackey’s play, Requiem for Brother X, produced by the Theatre Council of Natal (TECON) was performed. The play connected the African American concept of Black identity with Black Consciousness in South Africa (Mgbako, 2009, p. 322). Similarly, the African American “Black is Beautiful” philosophy served as a global reclamation of Blackness and African beauty standards. African American poetry appeared in Staffrider and GAR along with poetry from around the African world. Keorapetse Kgositsile’s poem For Afro-America connects Malcolm X and Patrice Lumumba in Pan-African solidarity.

“Now I see Patrice and Malcolm in your step as you dance near the sun
your hand outstretched
to embrace that long deferred day so close now”

(cited in Mzamane, 1979, p. 139). 

Garveyism was entrenched in South Africa and jazz was likely more popular in South Africa than any other place outside of the U.S. – a nod to its African American creators. Apartheid was unable to stop the flow of information from the rest of the African world, yet the political and ideological autonomy of Black South Africans and their resistance to their oppressive conditions cannot be minimized. The conditions themselves, as Malcolm X noted, create the revolution (cited in Haley & Shabazz, 1965, p. 366).

Performance Poetry and the Role of the Poet in South Africa

A.C. Jordan discusses poetry as “emotional experiences…expressed communally in song, speech, and action,” even containing dramatic elements (1973, p. 17). There can be no delineation between the dramatic and the lyrical. The praise poet or imbongi in Southern Africa “held a position of honor in his community” as a “public reciter” (1973, p. 21). The imbongi uses colourful language, and rhetorical elements such as parallelism, repetition, metaphors, personification, and hyperbolic language. The imbongi’s role is to act as a chronicler, “praising what is worthy and decrying what is unworthy, and even forecasting what is going to happen” (Jordan, 1973, pp. 59-60). The expectation is that poets will “tell us the truth – the greatest achievement of any poet” (Vilakazi, 1993, p. 83). The imbongi “will often try to influence the attitude of his audience to an event, inspire in them action or emotion” (Opland, 1984, p. 186). The poet must also respond “to the social and political circumstances confronting him at the time of his performance” (Opland, 1984, p. 178). Izibongo, often translated with the misnomer praise poetry, has “greatly influenced Black writers in Southern Africa to a much greater degree than is generally realized” (Mzamane, 1984, p. 147). Izibongo acts as a primary inspiration for oral poets, and a source for adaptation to written poems (Mzamane, 1984, p. 147). Due to the extreme censorship of the apartheid regime, Mzamane maintains that many Black Consciousness poets weren’t aware of African writers like A.C. Jordan, but they did have access to the oral performance of izimbongi as the Black Consciousness Movement “ushered in a new phase of pride,” accessing this cultural tradition (1984, p. 152).

The Black Consciousness Movement, like much of its theoretical influences, was a cultural reconnection, a re-membering – an African cultural renaissance.

Duncan Brown points out that “the mobilization of oral forms” was a “conscious strategy” used in the Black Consciousness Movement, “deploying performance genres for specific political and social purposes (1998, pp. 166-167). Oral poetry, he believes, can act as a form of “cultural resistance against the colonizing power” (1998, p. 168). The performance poetry of the 70s, Kelwyn Sole explains, “attempts to direct an oral immediacy…in an effort to reach a wider [B]lack…audience (Sole, 1987, p. 266) as well as to “evade the stringent limitations placed on political utterance” during apartheid (1987, p. 256). Michael Chapman affirms that oral poetry “was immediate” and the “nature of the struggle politics was oral” (M. Chapman, personal communication, November 9, 2006).

In times of crisis, it is the artist who “must constitute those great reserves of faith, those great silos of strength where, in critical moments, the people can draw the courage to assume their own identity and to shape the future” (Césaire, 1970, p. 157). The arts served to “encourage and awaken, unify, and mobilize [Black South Africans] under the rubric of their Black identity (Sole, 1987, p. 256). It is important to note that the performance space, as a concept and practice, is communal. Thus, performance poetry took on increasing significance with the youth at political rallies, mass meetings, and cultural festivals. Poetry became a reflection of the aspirations of the people as political activities were increasingly suppressed. Poets were seemingly the only remaining public voice of resistance as political organizations were forced underground in 1960 (D. Brutus, personal communication, October 7, 2006). Poetry was the ultimate “weapon of mobilization because the word could kill” (D. Mattera, personal communication, September 20, 2006).

Dashiki: Conscientization and Commitment

Beyond the power of the word, the performance itself became part of the conscientization and communication process. Black Consciousness drew from the values and principles of African culture, and this was evident in the aesthetic of the performances of Dashiki and Ingoapele Madingoane among others. Lefifi describes the “Afrocentric” look of Dashiki; they wore dashikis and grew locs^{[2]Also known as dreadlocks} like the Mau Mau during the struggle for independence in Kenya (L. Tladi, personal communication, December 27, 2022). Representing a form of “traditional” aesthetic aligned with the values of Black pride and self-determination of Black Consciousness (Sole, 1987, p. 256), Dashiki and many groups who came later used drum-heavy rhythms.

However, Lefifi Tladi and Dashiki began their poetry and conscientization program prior to the official advent of the concept of Black Consciousness. While Lefifi began playing drums at his DeOlympia youth club, he officially began his career memorizing and reciting the poetry of Aimé Césaire, Bra Don Mattera, Amiri Baraka, James Mathews, Léopold Senghor, W.E.B. Dubois, David Diop, and The Last Poets among others.

The Malombo Jazz Messengers were formed in 1969, consisting of Lefifi Tladi (then 20 years old), Fanyane Malesela, and Teboho Gilbert Mabale. Tladi intentionally selected poetry of conscientization, poetry with a message that would spark a revolution against the apartheid regime. Later when the group began to play “seriously,” fellow musician Julian Bahula thought that there were too many groups with the name Malombo. Therefore, they started performing jazz and poetry under the name Dashiki in 1970 with members Lefifi Tladi, Teboho Gilbert Mabale on flute soprano and piccolo, Lawrence Moloisi on guitar, and Rantobeng Oupa Mokou on vibraphones. The group was advised by Bra Cups Lebogo to quit their jobs so that they could focus on the development of their music (L Tladi, personal communication, December 19, 2022).

Tladi began organizing gigs for 10 cents for school children. He would simply approach the principal and propose the gig as entertainment for the children, evading the political dictates of the day. Dashiki played around the country mainly at schools and music festivals. They also played background music for other poets like Bra Don Mattera, James Mathews, and Mandla Langa (L. Tladi, personal communication, September 19, 2022). Reciting the poetry of great African and African world writers gave Tladi a greater understanding of poetry. He began to write his own poetry in 1971. Tladi was also known for performing poetry at funerals (Manenzhe, 2008). Dashiki, with Tladi’s lively performances, was incredibly popular and scholars like Sole (1987), Hill (2015) and (2018), Seddon (2008), and others have written about the centrality of Dashiki during the Black Consciousness Movement. Dashiki performed at many schools, including Orlando West, and were “very influential” on the developing ideas of school children, the children who would rise up on June 16, 1976. Tladi says (L. Tladi, personal communication, December 11, 2022).

It was from these performances that Steve Biko and some of the SASO members heard about Dashiki and approached them about a program of conscientization. Lefifi recollects that ironically Dashiki was more conscious than SASO. Hill notes that SASO members were also there to “listen and learn and share and promote” (2015, Chapter 1, para. 5.). The visit took place in 1971 at the Art Museum at Zone 5 in Ga-Rankuwa. Tladi remembers Steve Biko, Bokwe Mafuna, Mandla Langa, Ben Langa, Tomeka (surname unknown), Welile Nhlapo, Aubrey Mokoape, and the other members of Dashiki, Rantobeng Oupa Mokou, Lawrence Moloisi, and Teboho Gilbert Mabale being present. They arrived on Friday evening and Tladi says it turned it into a study group of sorts, discussing various authors with the group. They stayed up all night and Tladi says by Monday, only one remained awake with him – Bokwe Mafuna. In the end, Tladi sent them away with 16 books, one of which he still regrets giving away (L. Tladi, personal communication, October 10, 2006).

Dashiki began working with SASO as part of the cultural wing of the Black Consciousness Movement. They were never part of SASO because they were not students. Steve Biko and SASO booked the gigs, now mainly at universities around the country, for which they were mainly notified by telegram. The move from primary schools to universities was Biko’s vision (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 27, 2022). Tladi says they were not paid for any of the gigs, but they continued anyway because of the importance of their mission. The cultural wing of BCM needed a structure to “use the arts to uplift the people” (L.Tladi, personal communication, November 14, 2022). This organization emerged as the Cultural Committee (CULCOM) officially in 1972 at the SASO Conference at Hammanskraal (Khoapa, 1973, p. 210). Tladi describes his work with CULCOM as working with Black think tanks with Ben Langa, Straths Cooper, Steve Biko, and Strini Moodley in addition to his poetry and music (L. Tladi, personal communication, September 19, 2022). Even though theoretically, CULCOM could “direct the theme of poetry and literature” so that it worked towards “changing the system and liberating the people” (Ndaba, 1986, p.15), Tladi emphasizes that neither SASO nor CULCOM ever directed or influenced any of Dashiki’s content whatsoever. Tladi says that both Biko and SASO respected Dashiki for the Africanness of their performance – their revolutionary hairstyles and the dashikis they wore during performances (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 19, 2022). The Boers, however, thought they were terrorists when they saw their hair (L. Tladi, personal communication, September 13, 2022).

Tladi organized artists in Durban and Pretoria to facilitate exhibitions in Pietersburg at the first Africa Arts Week at the University of Turfloop in 1973, where he also displayed a large collection of African arts from his museum in Ga-Rankuwa. He laments that the woodcuts made by “Sir Ike” Nkoana, someone he considers an art master, were priced at only R2.50 and no one purchased them. University students drank more than that; a bottle of whiskey was R3.50, Tladi points out, so they could afford it.

Tladi believes that art was and is undervalued in society (L. Tladi, September 17, 2022). Dashiki worked with groups like BAS (Black Arts Studios) in Durban, Medupe, the Serpent Players in Port Elizabeth, MDALI (Music Drama, Art, Literature Institute), and TECON (Theatre Council of Natal) as Tladi continued organizing art exhibitions (L. Tladi, personal communication, September 19, 2022). Sole remembers seeing Dashiki’s 1973 performance at a show called Black Images when Tladi read Aimé Césaire’s Return to My Native Land “dramatized with musical accompaniment” (1987, p. 257).

Bra Geoff Mphakati managed Dashiki as he did many other artists. He also organized exhibitions of art, particularly at embassies or at houses of diplomats instead of art galleries so that no additional fees would be taken from the sales. Mphakati would require the diplomats to sign contracts to repatriate the works once South Africa became free. Later Tladi began organizing exhibitions on his own, linking Johannesburg and Durban artists with artists from Pretoria. Mphakati and Tladi organized touring art exhibitions as far away as Sweden (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 19, 2022). Interestingly, in 1972, Lefifi Tladi had yet to draw, paint or sculpt anything at that time. He complained to Mphakati that some of the artists were afraid to be bold and experiment with abstract expressions of art. Mphakati told him to stop complaining and pick up some paper, pens, and charcoal and do what he thought artists should be doing. This was the birth of Tladi’s visual abstract art in 1972 (L.Tladi, personal communication, December 11, 2022).

Through these networks, Tladi and other cultural workers developed a knowledge of the arts but also used their art to analyze the colonial invasion in South Africa and connect to the African world’s struggle for liberation. Cultural workers of BCM aligned with a return to an African value system, though it was not entirely unproblematic. BCM was at times essentialist in its desire for Black solidarity, and few women were empowered in BCM (Gqola, 2001). There were criticisms of Tladi’s “idealistic notions of ‘traditional culture’” and his “‘curio’” type African sculptures (Sole, 1984, p. 64). However, Tladi maintains that the 70s were “the most incredible period of a cultural renaissance in South Africa” (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 13, 2022)

By 1973, the apartheid regime began to understand the impact of the arts. They arrested and harassed many artists, including Tladi. He says that he told the other members of Dashiki to blame him for the cultural work with BCM; they should say the others were simply musicians. In reality, Tladi says, this was only true for Lawrence Moloisi. Ninety percent of the music Dashiki performed was composed by Moloisi for Dashiki. Tladi was the organizer and poet. “Sometimes you become a revolutionary beyond your common sense,” Tladi recalls (L.Tladi, personal communication, December 12, 2022). The Art Museum in Ga-Rankuwa was forced to close, and Dashiki finally caved to pressure from the secret police. It seemed like the security police were always looking for Tladi. Some of the group’s members were afraid for their lives. 

Therefore, Tladi formed The Poets (1974-76) in direct confrontation with the state. From his perspective, if they were going to be harassed, they might as well just perform hardcore music and poetry. Along with Kankana Matsena, Bushy Sepeng, Teboho Gilbert Mabale, and Ndabeki, Tladi continued to recite the poetry of David Diop, Aimé Césaire, and his own poetry. Their music was now limited to drums, flutes, harmonicas, and bugles. Oupa Mokou was already in exile, and Lawrence Moloisi had left the group (L. Tladi, personal communication, December 11, 2022).

On June 16, 1976, as the resistance of students in Soweto moved across the country, Lefifi Tladi joined in the action. In July, he was arrested for public violence and taken to Hartebeespoort Dam, a prison in the mountains, and held in solitary confinement for a month. Then he was moved to a prison in Brits, just outside Pretoria. Tladi was held in a small cell there with young boys that he had encouraged to burn buses and bars. The prison guards threatened to kill Tladi if he refused to tell them what they wanted to know. They also wanted to shave Tladi’s hair to humiliate him. Tladi refused, so the prison guards said they would not provide food until he would allow his head to be shaved. Tladi went on a hunger strike, and on the fourth day, he fainted. When he regained consciousness, his hair was gone. He laughs about the story now, but he also described the psychological torture program that he endured. For Tladi, it was important to let them know that it would be impossible to conquer his mind (L.Tladi, personal communication, December 11, 2022).

Fortunately, he was not physically harmed like his friend and fellow artist Molefe Pheto. In August, he met with his attorney, Shun Chetty, who informed Tladi that the charges had been upgraded to sabotage; they were aware that Tladi was a mobilizing force. The minimum sentence he faced was 18 years. That month, Tladi, along with a young man named Israel Sesoko, left South Africa from Dinokana in the North West province, formerly Bophuthatswana. They had to be precise about the time they crossed the fence due to South African security forces patrolling the border of Botswana, an independent nation and frontline state where many Black South Africans went into exile. After crossing the fence into Botswana, they proceeded to Lobatse and found a ride to Gaborone to present themselves as refugees in need of asylum.

Exile

The Dashiki Cultural Unit was formed in Botswana in 1976 with cultural workers like Mandla Langa, Israel Sesoko, Thulani, and Lefifi Tladi for music and poetry performances and workshops. Eventually, the Dashiki Cultural Unit and the Pelindaba Cultural Effort worked under the umbrella of Tuka Cultural Unit. Tladi worked with Tuka Cultural Unit and Medu Art Ensemble in Gaborone until they became too closely associated with the ANC. Tladi was critical of the ANC, suggesting that the revolutionary art of some artists deteriorated as they became cultural workers of the ANC (L.Tladi, personal communication, December 11, 2022). In 1977, Lefifi Tladi was chosen among other prolific artists to travel to the month-long Second World African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in Lagos, Nigeria. Tladi’s trip to FESTAC was sponsored by the ANC, but he and other BCM attendees had open tickets in addition to those provided by the ANC just in case they were left behind (L.Tladi, personal communication, December 12, 2022). In Lagos, Tladi met Maulana Karenga, Haki Madhubuti, Sun Ra, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Okot p’Bitek (L.Tladi, personal communication, December 11, 2022).

A woman who worked with Konstfak University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm visited Tladi’s first solo exhibition entitled Mosima Motlhaela Thupa^{[3]Things of spiritual value cannot be measured by material standards (Setswana)} at the National Museum and Art Gallery in Gaborone, Botswana in early 1980 and bought two of his drawings. After a discussion about honing his craft, she sent his applications to art schools in the United States, Paris, London, Moscow, Japan, and Stockholm. Gerlesborgsskolan School of Fine Art in Stockholm was the first to respond. Tladi said he immediately chose Stockholm because Onette Coleman’s album At the Golden Circle Stockholm (1966) was recorded in the same city.

Wolfgang Lauer from the Lutheran World Federation arranged for Tladi’s scholarship and later the extension of his scholarship for him to study from 1980-1987. He continues to live in Stockholm but has left a lasting impact on his community in South Africa. Matsemela Manaka calls him “the lighthouse of poetry music” whom he “[hopes] to see…back in [his] fatherland” (1986, p. 72).

Harvey Tristan Cropper

Surprisingly, Lefifi Tladi did not meet Harvey Tristan Cropper, an African American painter, at FESTAC in 1977, even though he spent his time with artists. About a year after Tladi arrived in Sweden to study, Jackie Mazibuko brought him to Cropper’s studio in Stockholm. He was ready to impress Cropper with all that he knew about him since he had been collecting information about him since the 1970s in South Africa. But Cropper told him that he already knew about himself, and he wanted to know who Lefifi Tladi was. After Tladi introduced himself as an artist and a refugee, Harvey asked the other students at the studio if Tladi could join the study circle. He was accepted and Tladi cleaned the studio in lieu of payment. Tladi says he learned more about art from Cropper than he did from his art education. He was Tladi’s “real guru in the truest sense of the word.” 

Tladi remained “a permanent student” of Cropper’s until his death in 2012. In 1990 Cropper informed Tladi that he was ready to have a studio of his own, which he did eventually acquire. Now his storage is filled with paintings that measure up to 50 meters in length. He has enough paintings to have his own museum (L.Tladi, personal communication, October 10, 2022).

The Poetry of Conscientization

Through the Chameleon’s Eye, written in 1971, was conceived during the first few years Lefifi Tladi began writing poetry. It is more than 26 minutes long when recited. Like all his early poems, it was an oral poem recited among the community at performance sites. Even if these spaces were filled with people who were already committed, these poems served to rejuvenate the life force energy for the struggle. All conscious artists and freedom fighters were risking their lives; thus, graphic depictions were necessary to affirm the dedication to struggle. Performed to music with heavy drumbeats, the poetry spoke to the cultural sensibilities of the people. It is for this reason that Lefifi Tladi and Dashiki are mentioned in almost every discussion of the cultural wing of BCM. Through the Chameleon’s Eye is a nonlinear poem from which several themes emerge. One of those themes is colonization.

The portrayal of the invasion of South Africa is classic 1970s Tladi. He describes the invaders as “cosmonaut exiles from hell” and “insane giants colonizing earth” who “[build] monumental tombs.” Tladi conjures bleak imagery to describe the invaders as

“those anti-national unnatural beings
composers of human compost
agnostic worshippers of human deterioration”

and “shame incubators, breeders of shit/scatter logic technicians” who have “[poisoned] our heritage.” It is because of this invasion, that South Africa has become a place

“where human life degrades to human dung
all facets of life decompositions on high heaps of sanitation
Flies budding in a minor B flat, C sharp, G major….
a requiem for Mother Africa at her deathbed.”

African people are now the “heirs of death, heirs of poverty” (Tladi, 2000b).

Through the Chameleon’s Eye aims to motivate people to join the fight against colonial invasion. The roots of the tree become the “grassroots level anchorage,” the stability of the tree and the people. Connecting the battle with the spiritual world, Tladi says “rather be a ghost that bothered the host that came to the coasts.” His poetry becomes much more direct in his charge to

“Hoist the flag
declare war….join, join up
flush the toilet.”

He evokes the Black Mamba, a symbol of revolution, and connects it to the awakening of the extended senses of Black people “Praise the Black Mamba/To find its way to the third nose/The third mouth/The third eye/The third ear/The third epidermis/In this labyrinth, the perfect instinct lies far beyond our nerve.” The people are reminded that they “were all wronged” and the cultural soil of Africa has been poisoned (Tladi, 2000b). Sangomas, or traditional healers, also have a place in the struggle. Tladi calls for them to do the spiritual work of “[remedying] the world” of the “international dirt [cockroaches].”

“Bone practitioner, rattle the bones
turn them into the living skeleton of a rattlesnake
Let them sound in our sky
Sound your song in all, all our mental chambers
Juju man, Black brainwasher
Psycho-scientist cosmo psycho-physician
Expelling the white washer brainwashing ghost
Burn this bad ghost with fire words of a firefly.” (Tladi, 2000b)

The most prominent theme in Through the Chameleon’s Eye is the power of the poem and the poets themselves, signifying Tladi’s ideas, even early in his career, about the important role of the artist in society. The poem begins with the vision of the poet who sees “truth running through [his] eye to the eye of [his] mind/like mad horses run through mist into the inner eye of mist.” It is this inner vision of the poet who experiences the “mystery of poems [protruding]/a forest grows on my retina/the image stampedes my conscience/a horse rapes a harlot.” This vision of the rape of the nation, represented by the rape of a woman hurts the poet, the visionary, so much that he feels “hot iron go through [his] ass/through [his] guts/through [his] mouth, right on [his] face.” The sight is painful, and the poet’s “ears [burst]” from the cries of the people. He announces his position as a truthsayer,

“Receive me as a reality
I reverse, I rejuvenate, I transubstantiate
This is rebirth
the climax of soul soil
the usual lies are betrayed for the strength of soil never fools” (2000b).

Tladi acknowledges the challenges of being a voice of truth in the environment that created an inferiority complex and fear as well as the barren environment from which artists have to create. Poets are

Philosophers engaged in monologue soliloquy tricked by their own sounding thoughts
Ventriloquists fooled by their mental voices
The echo re-vibrates and resounds in the chambers that contain insanity
Far away from here beyond thought
Where ideas grow from starvation because here malnutrition is nutrition
And meditation breeds understanding truth
How I wish humanity could understand, understand, understand
Understand that there is nothing to be understood for truth is at fault. (Tladi, 2000b)

In the milieu of the banning of political organizations and the cultural and economic war against Black South Africans, the poets had the power to transform.

“We are all dead, dead to ourselves
Poems resurrect reincarnate the truth about us
The raped people that have transformed into this lie lines.”

Tladi wants poetic wishes to take over the world and unify Black people.

“When we wish a poetic wish
oceanic words flowing poetically onto paper
oceanic power
poetry overriding the world
poetic colonization
connective correlation of pulses until man is connected in pulse” (2000b).

In Tladi’s ideology, poetry contains the life force energy to transform reality, to highlight the lies of apartheid. This poem seems to speak to the imperial invaders, those with an “iron pulse,” but they are not his audience. Tladi utilizes the power of the imagery connected to these words, events, and organization names significant to Black South Africans.

Today you have been falsified by the power of poetry
Poetry power placed a lie detector on your omnipotent pulse
On your iron pulse
Sensitive poetry detected you
Your reactions were highly abnormal to such words as oppression, suppression, communism
Imperialism, fascism, communalism
Power, police brutality
detention, tribe
South Africa, SASO, BPC, ANC…
Winterveld, Dimbaza Revolution.” (Tladi, 2000b)

Poems have the power to “resurrect, reincarnate the truth about [African people], who are disconnected from their history, an “amputation of the self.”

The poet seems to reach the divine, “I am the word, I am the word, I am the word” reconnecting “the latent giant” or African people with their senses

“To hear colors, to see sound, to touch taste, to smell texture, to have a life cycle of purity” (Tladi, 2000b). 

A recurring theme in Tladi’s poetry is African people’s resurrection through the re-connection to their culture represented as an awakening of the senses. The poet announces that

“This is our goal, to live and die for a cause
For death is nothing but the perfect extent of life
The poem voice said, life does not live….and death is but the stopping of a time segment
and the death of a poem
is the end of this poem” (Tladi, 2000b).

Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Stations of a Nation in Bondage

Written in 1972, Three hundred and Sixty-Five Stations of a Nation in Bondage chronicles the arrival of whites to South Africa, the weight of the destruction they caused, and ultimately describes the inevitable victory of African people. King Shaka’s prophecy of European colonization has come to pass as the “albino ants” land on African soil, creating their European “new” world in Africa, an “old egg.”

The winds of prophecy
Turn sea birds into crystal dust
The waters vomit profane elements
The ships are anchored
Albino ants hoist their tattered flag
Whose color is lost in this journey
Across the wild wilderness of despair
A new world breaks out of an old egg (Tladi, 2000a)

The “soil creeps out of fear” as these “flesh invaders” create their world “conceived under the heel of an iron dragon from the ocean.” This memory, Tladi posits, is one that “wants to be remembered at all costs/the flesh brakes at all coasts” (Tladi, 2000a). The use of memory through the repetition of the history of the brutal invasion is an important tool that was utilized in liberation struggles throughout the continent. It was prominently featured in the poems and songs of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Once colonization lasted longer than a generation, the chronicling of these unnatural events was a motivator that fortified the struggle against such a well-armed, Western-funded regime.

The ancestors commune while the destruction becomes generational as “many a child is born/the grave gapes in solidarity with the open wound” (2000a). As the earth begins to shed tears of pain, “new spirits are born for confrontation/anger sharpens stone spears/the spirits of war wash their hands” and prepare for battle. Each warrior is mentally prepared for possible death when the king “laid a tombstone in each and everyone’s mind.” Tladi makes it clear that the struggle is for the land. “The land shall be protected is the epitaph on the tombstones.” As the war for liberation ensues,

“The pulse of the soil is in the movement of the warrior
And the river grows out of the volcano
And the womb of the nation is restored
On the night they sing Munti wa Marumo^{[4]Return to the source (Sepedi; a warrior’s song.)} ” (Tladi, 2000a).

The rhinos, in alignment with the earth’s wounds, evolve to grow a third horn “in defense of the invaded virgin land,” Africa, against the colonial “scavengers of the land.” For Tladi, the earth and nature are representative of African people and African culture. The power of nature becomes the metaphor for the strength of African people once they have reconnected with their culture. He envisions warriors with “the will of wind and the stamina of the ocean” to empty the earth of the “dirt and filth” that has invaded South Africa (Tladi, 2000a).

Tladi describes this battle as more than a physical war. This invasion is the dismantling of the natural order, where the hawk picks the “marble eye of the elephant” and “nature loses its sight” (2000a). Tladi often uses the elephant to represent African people’s interrelationship and connectedness with nature. The invaders are a dark force, shadows, who “[lay] eggs of rootlessness” on African soil, bringing forth more generations of destruction. This psychological war on African people over generations created “a nation of cripples, manufactured by the new devil’s brigade.” This nation of cripples signifies Black people who have lost their way due to colonization, who have a head but are “brainless,” have a body but are “soul-less,” and operate as “toilets for foreign insanity,” who “produce and reproduce their own death.” 

They are “unconscious” of the death all around them, including the death of culture and cultural practices. As the destruction causes the mind of the people to be “out of balance,” Tladi laments the earth is “now a sick man’s factory” intensified by “these duplicate copies of nature.” In fact, a “state of equilibrium” can only be reached when the brain has an “eyewitness operation.” When the earth’s eye’s blood vessel overpowered the “Hawk’s eye,” the last part of the prophecy begins to be fulfilled. The warriors have now regained their senses “because the oceans are storms of salt to the warriors’ heartbeat.” The warriors’ advance is “tied to the movement of the stars” and the senses of African people begin to move as one. The unified awakened senses of African people highlight the vivid colors of the earth and ultimately bring about “peace on earth” (Tladi, 2000a).

Black Science

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 legislated separate and unequal education for indigenous South Africans. Whites received free education, while Black people were trained to be labourers for whites. The poem Black Science, written in 1972, was an obvious response to apartheid’s psychological war on Black people, acting as a tool of “educational fertilization” that “wisdom [turns] into an excavation instrument.” It warns against the “Western brainwashing machinery” of the school system, creating “a slave that is professioned.” Tladi observes that foreign religions have turned [African people] inside out/and our badimo^{[5]Ancestors (Setswana)} are awaiting our prayers.” He calls for a return to African culture.

“Brothers and sisters do not fear
Let fright not usurp you
let foreign religions not castrate you
we had classics too
we have tribal orchestras
playing neo-opus orchestrations
that battle the Westerners
that they identify us as Gods
This is reality
We are Gods.” (Tladi & Poets, 1975)

Tladi asserts that Black people must change their ways because colonization has “infiltrated and diluted” [African people’s] ways.” African people should “take a look at the past/to be more precise in the future” because Africa is the root of all cultures. Black people have become soft like “white toilet papers” and lack depth because of the colonial influence. Tladi wants Black people to “take a trip to the grassroots” so they can relate to themselves. In particular, he points to the disconnection from the African diet; Black people should “elephantine [their] digestive system and align with nature, drinking fresh “from our cow taps.” Agriculture has replaced forestry and crop rotation with the extreme labour of Africans who “work day in and night out, crying in painful vain/to fertilize a jungle of cement” (Tladi & Poets, 1975).

The poem is a vivid reminder of the future capacity of Black people by detailing their historical manifestations, calling them the “creators of the earth from time before/before numerical registration” until a “snake sneaked into our slumber parlor and hypnotized our kings and queens.” In a rhythmic style resembling the jazz poetry of Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, Tladi recites,

“It is you who made Egypt
who made Meroe
It is you who made Timbuktu
It is you who made Zimbabwe
Your sweat flowed and made the Nile” (1975).

He points out that the Sphinx’s features are African with “thick lips, broad nostrils,” acknowledging the first civilizations on earth as African. In an essentialist statement that conveyed the destructive forces of invasion, Tladi asserts that African people lived in harmony, “before the fire burned our tongues when our Gods directed all the waters of the universe onto Africa” (1975). Poets are “natural expressionists riding on the tempo of time” and poetry is “Black art speech,” which gives voice to the pain of the people. The poet’s responsibility is to “inspire our latent aurora oracles” so that resurrection may “befall our fallen nation” (Tladi & Poets, 1975).

Black Purity Is Lost and It’s a Shame

When Lefifi Tladi gave 16 books to the members of SASO, he regretted giving away The African: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Destiny by G.K. Osei (1971). This text discusses ancient Africa as matrilineal prior to the introduction of Islam in West Africa in the 10^th century. The text also includes ‘The Black Woman’ written by Marcus Garvey (1971, p. 23). It exalts African women and declares that they “have been dethroned, through the weakness of [their] men” (1971, p. 23). The poem equates African society with the position of the Black woman. The influence of this text was evident in Tladi’s poem, Black Purity is Lost and It’s a Shame, written in 1972 and performed with Dashiki. Its intonations, music, and messages are reminiscent of The Last Poets, whom he was influenced by, but Tladi was already reciting poetry over music with drums when he would have heard their album, The Last Poets (1970).

Black Purity is Lost and It’s a Shame expresses with repetition that Black women have become influenced by European culture. Tladi recounts that the Black women’s “tender back was my rocker,” but now her “delicate flesh” has been transformed into a “solid and iron perambulator.” He details that Black women are now drinking and smoking and have lost their “state of equilibrium” (Tladi & Poets, 1974). Black women are reminded that they are artists who used to create abstract designs on their homes, presumably to inspire a return to the cultural ways.

Black woman, my mama is an artist
My woman doesn’t know she’s an artist
And my woman doesn’t know she’s got artistry in her bones
Do you still remember the abstract designs
you used to form on the floors of your malapa^{[6]Veranda (Sepedi)} with cow dung?
The way out mathematic instincts you used to express on your walls
Its remnants are at Bronkhorstspruit
My woman be geometrically Ndebele. (Tladi & Poets, 1974)

Black women’s beautiful vocal cords are now “rusted;” therefore they need to “reilluminate [their] song” and “take a sip from the waters of custom” so that Black men and women can once again respect each other and be unified. He seeks to remind Black women of their previous glory and elevated status.

Black woman your big black hair was a protective measure
against the raw, scouring sunbeams
But the white man provided you with tonsorial centers
and your heads remain mirrors of humiliation
But my woman, my mothers made their hairs
They were Afro art hair
Batik style centers
Twisted their hair into universal shapes
My woman, shape yourself/shave your now present
Be the present past
Return to your mother, mother empress.  (Tladi & Poets, 1974)

The poem by today’s standards would be challenged for positioning the status of Black society on the backs of Black women, while seemingly offering an absolution of accountability for African men. African writers like Mariama Bâ and Miriam Tlali reject Negritude’s idealization of African womanhood and its conflation with Mother Africa. (Ajayi, 1997).

African women writers’ refusal to accept these simplistic notions of African womanhood provides an important discussion that has implications for both past and present artistic production since such archetypes of African womanhood are ever-present. Other discussions identify the significance of cultural nuances in the discussion of African womanhood and motherhood (Akujobi, 2011; Nnaemeka, 1997).

One must also consider Tladi’s influences to locate his poetry ideologically. Traditional African narratives often taught lessons through the stories of women and wives (Diop, 1966), and Africa was personified in the poetry of David Diop, poetry that Tladi recited himself, and he was influenced by other Negritude poetry. In addition, Tladi’s message of a return to the culture aligned with BCM and freedom movements around the African world. The exaltation of Blackness, particularly through the Black woman, was a response to and a rejection of the impositions of white standards of beauty and white culture, which impacted both Black men and women. The analysis of the poem and its ideology is nuanced both in terms of the Black literary movements surrounding literature of resistance and the location of the poem in time and place. From Tladi’s perspective, this poem carried a message of love and respect for Black women.

Lefifi Tladi says that women “have a far greater sense of purpose in life than men” because they make the species survive. He sees African women as the architects of language as well as the original architects as traditional sculptors. He describes the extensive knowledge of chemistry African women utilized to preserve the ancient cave paintings in South Africa as evidence of their collective intellect. According to Tladi, “There’s only one living God on this earth, and that is the one who can make humans” (L. Tladi, personal communication, October 20, 2022). If one mistreats the mother of his children or his child, they “are putting a natural curse on [themselves] because nobody abuses their God because that is [their] creator (L. Tladi, personal communication, October 31, 2022). 

Everyone must “pay allegiance and respect” to women, who held power in pre-colonial matriarchal Africa. Tladi explains that “we must restore the position of the woman as the mother-creator” (L. Tladi, personal communication, October 31, 2022). It is men who have “amputated their power” through religious and cultural colonization that were “tailor-made to protect the inferiority of men.” Male chauvinist religious texts, Tladi posits, created a burden for women, particularly with the idea of virginity as something that a man can take or break. Concepts like “whore do not exist in our languages,” he says.

But Tladi is not an advocate of feminism. He believes that African women have put too much value on European feminism, which is neocolonial and based on the suffering of white women. It is not anchored in Africa, and it detracts from what should be a matriarchal foundation (L. Tladi, personal communication, October 17, 2022). Certainly, these ideas were influenced by his mother, who Tladi says understood her value. She purchased land and was educated during a period when the apartheid regime sought to reduce African people to labourers. She “never wanted to be equal to no man” (L. Tladi, personal communication, February 13, 2022).

The Role of the Contemporary Artist in South Africa

Lefifi Tladi began to write in Sepedi and Setswana after discussions with Bra Geoff Mphakati when he came to Sweden in 1982. In contrast to his Black Consciousness poetry of the 1970s, Tladi now says that Poetry in African languages “is the weaving of proverbs and sayings.” If these deep cultural references are not woven with proverbs, it just isn’t poetry, he claims (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 24, 2022). If someone wants to know if they are a poet, Tladi concludes, they must write in their own languages. Only then will they know if they possess the deep cultural knowledge required to be a poet. His poems, in fact, “are for listening,” so he gets irritated when people ululate in response to his poetry (L.Tladi, personal communication, October 10, 2006). He would rather they take the time to think deeply about what he has said. The arts, he says, “are exclusively for super intellectuals and thinkers because the arts are the essence of any society” (lefifi_tladi, 2022). Artists are a national heritage and “any nation that does not care for its artists is worth bokkerol^{[7]Nothing (Afrikaans)} ” (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 13, 2022).

Tladi believes that artists are to blame for the current state of South African society. The role of the artist is to “reorient and elevate the perception of the people” (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 24, 2022).  Artists must “make sure that the people can hear, taste, smell, and think.” Anything an artist creates, according to Tladi, “reflects the capacity and dimension of our perception.” The job of contemporary artists in South Africa is to “heal [the] wounded perceptions” and “restore the position of the woman as mother-creator” (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 24, 2022). The stereotype of those with lesser intelligence going into the field of the arts has shifted, Tladi says. The “pride of the nation”, Tladi maintains, “lies with each artist” (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 10, 2022). Thus, each artist should study the responsibilities of the artist for one year so they can decide if they have the capacity to “inflate the dignity of the nation.” If they do not have the capacity, Tladi says they must find another line of work (L.Tladi, personal communication, November 19, 2022).

Lefifi Tladi envisions a center that houses and cares for elder artists in South Africa, where up-and-coming artists would visit with and learn from elder artists. He strongly believes that artists should associate with other artists. Musicians should spend time with painters, poets with sculptors, and sculptors with painters. A center for ageing artists would allow young artists to honor the sacrifices of those that came before them. The elder artists would also gain so much from the communion with young artists who appreciate their work. Tladi believes that pensioners could fund a small contribution to young artists. Tladi also sees an elder art center as an opportunity for scholars to come to the center and interview elder artists and contribute to historical archives. These honorific processes could rejuvenate the elder artists, increasing their positive sense of life and living. And for those artists who have transitioned to the realm of the ancestors, Tladi wants a cowrie shell to mark the gravesites of artists, whether they be sculptors, painters, musicians, or poets. Tladi identifies the shell as an appropriate symbol for artists who have utilized Malopo Aesthetics, the aesthetics of the spirit. Tladi would like to see a national holiday where artists clean the gravesites of the previous generation of artists. After cleaning the gravesites, at noon there would be huge festivals in celebration of the artists who have guided and uplifted the nation (L.Tladi, personal communication, December 7, 2022).

Limitations

Lefifi Tladi’s older written poetry was largely inaccessible. A great deal of poetry, written in notebooks, has been lost over the years. Most of what remains is located at the Africa Open Institute at Stellenbosch University or housed in Tladi’s memory. Graciously, Dave Marks provided access to some of Tladi’s poetry and music that he recorded in the 1970s and is housed in the Hidden Years Music Archive at Stellenbosch University. Tladi shared his two CDs of poetry Poetry for Artvanced Listeners (2000) and Tribute to Nomazizi (1983), none of which was transcribed. Only Tladi’s English poetry was accessible to the writer. Lefifi Tladi’s memory is incredible, but some dates and names might not be exact due to the decades that have passed. It is challenging to describe the rhythms, tones, emotions, and ethos of the poems and music of Dashiki in this limited space and time. These elements are worthy of exploration on their own, particularly in the context of the Tladi’s work in Sepedi and Setswana.

Implications for Future Research

Kelwyn Sole (1987), Shannen Hill (2015), and wa Bofelo (2008) have written about the importance of Lefifi Tladi’s role as an artist in the South African liberation struggle. While his work is venerated in the South African historical memory, it is imperative to contribute to that historiography and analysis for future generations, particularly because the majority of Tladi’s poetry is yet to be published. Lefifi Tladi’s poetry, what can be gathered and recorded, needs to be published for artistic and historical records, but also because it has been Lefifi Tladi’s wish for decades. Michael Titlestad (2004) and Claude Philogène (2019) published works that contain Tladi’s contemporary drawings and paintings. Additional work could discuss the ways in which Tladi traces his painting techniques to his grandmother, his philosophies about the function of his art, and of course, his life as a love song to artists.

There is a plethora of letters written to artists that could be collected and archived.

Tladi says he has written more letters to artists than anyone else, and he is very proud of that contribution (L.Tladi, personal communication, October 17, 2022). He has an entire body of work dedicated to artists that act as a form of redress; he celebrates artists because society fails to do so. At this stage in his life, Tladi is working at an intense pace and is elated to discuss his paintings and drawings. Tladi’s deep commitment to the traditional role of the artist as one who awakens the senses, particularly those senses that were “amputated” by apartheid, provides an important source for scholars to make connections to contemporary artists, and social and political movements in the African world.

Conclusion

Lefifi Tladi operates within the African cultural framework of the artist. He holds high standards for contemporary artists to elevate the perceptions of the communities they serve. Tladi believes that being an artist extends far beyond talent; one must have the intellectual and cultural will to be an artist; he is apprehensive of artists who are attracted to the field for fame or monetary gain. He is critical of his early poetry, and he cannot resist the urge to edit when discussing his poems. Poetry in English, Tladi argues, is “the depth of thought” rather than rhymes or structures of stanzas (L.Tladi, personal communication, September 24, 2022). There is not enough space here to unpack what some would argue was an elitist and culturally deficient use of English in BCM. Chinweizu and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o would have challenged the use of European languages in Tladi’s and others’ poetry. It is challenging to fully access the depth of one’s culture in a foreign language. The Black Consciousness Movement reacted to the notions of culture and cultural expression at a time of colonial co-opting of Africanness in South Africa. Tladi did eventually write in African languages and expects a profound level of cultural knowledge for anyone who examines this work. One of the poems he is most proud of is Gare Itshebeng.

In Fanon’s analysis, Tladi operated as an “awakener of the people,” and most importantly, joined the people in the struggle, contributing to a “national culture.” Like many others, he was forced to flee South Africa (1963, p. 223). Fanon would not have agreed with Tladi’s appeal to return to African culture, which Fanon refers to as returning “an unknown root” (1963, p. 218).  On the other hand, Tladi’s work aligned ideologically with the Pan-African cultural ideologies of Cheikh Anta Diop and Chinweizu. Tladi’s poems connected to aspects of African culture such as the harmonious interrelationships with nature. Tladi and the performances of Dashiki operated on a cultural continuum of performance poetry in South Africa, and the performances appealed to the youth in schools, universities, and rallies. Lefifi Tladi’s poetry over Dashiki’s drumbeats and music in the communal space served to mobilize people to action by contributing to political and cultural awareness. Like other committed Black Consciousness Movement artists, Dashiki created the energies to accomplish the “miracles” (Cabral, 1973, p. 53) needed to fight against the apartheid regime, armed with the political and economic weaponry of the West.

As Bra Don Mattera says, the power of poetry gave birth to the uprisings of the youth in 1976, the beginning of the end of the official system of apartheid (1987)^{[8]The apartheid regime responded with an escalation of violence as the protests spread around the country. The regime declared a State of Emergency in 1985, and Black South Africans resisted by organizing and making the country ungovernable.}. Tladi and his comrades did not operate in a vacuum; they were part of the cultural wing of BCM, but also part of a larger cultural galvanization alongside artists from other political organizations. The banning of political parties magnified the position of poets, particularly in the performance space, and poets were under attack for their work to conscientize the people. The sacrifices were massive. 

Tladi is currently working on proverbs and poetry in Sepedi and Setswana for future generations to analyze. There is hardly a discussion of cultural workers of the Black Consciousness Movement that fails to include Lefifi Tladi. In addition to his music, poetry, and paintings, he is widely remembered for his jovial nature and warm smile.

Even today, he is called “a national treasure,” a “legend” (Ramasehla, 2022), and “a Black [C]onsciousness battalion” (Rapoo, 2022). His commitment to a conscious art, a liberating art, is formidable. And he escaped with his life just in time – more than once. He lost many friends and colleagues, yet he never wavered. Tladi chose not to seek a position in the “new” dispensation in South Africa as some of his colleagues did. He returned to South Africa in 1997, often staying half the year while maintaining his residence in Stockholm. He facilitates workshops and works with young artists to help shape them as he envisions them to be – the creative intellectuals of the nation. Since 2018 Tladi has been unable to travel to South Africa due to some health issues, but he continues his work virtually. 

Regardless of location, Lefifi Tladi elevates the discussion of art and the responsibilities of the artist in contemporary South Africa. At the young age of 74, Lefifi Tladi has a sharp intellect and an English vocabulary that challenges a native speaker. He is a full participant in the “healing of the scars” for Black South Africans to see themselves in the full capacity of their being-ness (L.Tladi, personal communication, October 20, 2022). Artists like Lefifi Tladi who have and continue to battle for the full liberation of Black South Africans in the “baby nation” (oa Magogodi, 2004, p.1) must be included in the discussion of political stalwarts like Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe and Steve Biko around the African world. Artists are society’s historical, political, social, and cultural consciousness, asserting themselves as actors of social and political change. In return, society owes artists a place in the memories of the people and the communities from which they emerged. In the often politicized and oversimplified discussions of the history of the South African liberation struggle, it is our charge to speak and write their names. May they never be forgotten.