Hai: Ukuhlala kwawo wodwa Umzi
Nokungenwa kwamasango alomzi
Obantu babenikwe Intsikelelo
Namhla simanga ngumzi wembandezelo.
An early draft of my translation read
Oh the pity of an empty home
whose people once were blessed,
its easy entry wondrously
become today a place of want.
But it is clearly related to an earlier stanza in poem 19, which refers specifically to enemies who seem to be the agents of the home’s misfortune:
Hai! Ukuhlala kwawo wodwa Umzi
Obantu babenikwe Intsikelelo
Amasango etu onke akanamntu
Nabandezeli basuke bayintloko.
This was originally translated as
How sad a deserted home is!
Its people once were blessed,
its gates now stand unattended,
and its enemies reign supreme.
The repetitions common to the two stanzas, and the suggestion of the last line in the earlier stanza, led to a translation that turned the “wonder” into an “omen” (both sanctioned by Kropf), and made the oppression more specifically the forced removals suffered by black people under white control in South Africa. The repeated stanza has now become
Oh the homestead standing alone
with easy access through its gates,
whose people once had plenty,
now a sign of oppression.
It is because of this inherent suggestion of territorial dispossession causing the dereliction of black homesteads (with the implied threat of a continuation of the policy in the future) that Nontsizi tends to opens her poems with this lament, setting a tone for her political poetry, contrasting the settled, precolonial hospitality of the Xhosa home with the present disruption. The suggestion is there, even when there is no reference to enemies of the abandoned homestead.
The poems in sequence thus invite the reader of this book to forego western predispositions and to receive them as an audience would receive the poetic performances of a royal imbongi, to derive reassuring recognition in the repetitions and their kaleidoscopic rearrangements, to cultivate sensitivity to emotional suggestions that hover about the words, the economy that invests partial repetitions and ellipses. To read these poems in sequence in a book is to accept an invitation to adopt some of the analytical assumptions of the village audience of a rural imbongi in the land of Phalo, to enter the world of this tradition of African poetry free of western assumptions. The translations strive for rhythm and accuracy, and usually follow the structure of the original Xhosa texts. Only one major problem remains unresolved, and that concerns the form of some of the items, which are printed as prose. This may be because the poet submitted them as prose, or because the editor printed them in this form in order to conserve space. (Of the two options, the former seems to recommend itself since the prosody of item 6 is insecure, suggesting that it might have been the editor who set it in poetic form.) What is pronounced in these “prose” pieces is that they include passages found elsewhere in the poetry, and they are unusually punctuated, with capitals, colons and semicolons that might serve as markers, or guides to line division (see the note to item 36). No attempt has been made in the translation to set these passages in poetic form, just as no attempt has been made to reflect the rhyme that is adopted as from August 1924. However, every effort has been made to preserve the poet’s metaphoric references, and not to flatten them through glossing. This may leave the reader a bit puzzled, but reflects more closely the poet’s metaphoric world of rural female nurture and cultivation.
A conservative approach has been brought to reproducing the Xhosa texts, with editorial emendation kept to a minimum. As far as possible, the original readings are preserved. Alterations are introduced only in cases of clear typographical error; in that case, the original reading is given at the end of the text. No alterations are made on the grounds of orthography or word division, or dialect. This calls for some comment. John Bennie’s transcription of Xhosa, first printed in December 1823, remained influential for over a century. It was accepted by all missionary societies, who were responsible for editing or printing the earliest books and journals. A new orthography was introduced (ironically, by Bennie’s grandson) and adopted in 1936. It proved something of a disaster (see Opland 1998 chapter 13), considerably complicating and inhibiting literary production; its major innovations were reversed in 1955. The 1936 orthography was immediately unpopular and widely resented. A letter from Bennie attempting to justify his proposals drew an angry response from H.S. Ndlela:
It is now clear enough even for a weakling to see that the white man’s object is to make a Native so weak that he cannot stand by himself. The rock-bottom of the conspiracy has been brought to the fore-ground by the changes made in the existing orthography. We have been deprived of land, rights and even the dignity of our colour, and, to my discomfiture, we are now under the last cloud—the tragedy which finishes the whole game—the taking out of the core of our language. . . . The whole secret is that the Europeans want to make our languages simple for them to master, and thus deprive us of the privilege of being masters of our own language. (Umteteli 18 August 1934: 7)
Both revisions in the spelling system were accepted by education departments, who insisted that Xhosa books prescribed in schools (virtually the only market for Xhosa books) should be in the new orthographies. Books in outdated orthographies were removed from circulation, and publishers printed only books in the new orthographies; books submitted to publishers for consideration were often rejected for because they contained too many spelling mistakes. One consequence is that Xhosa books reflect a strictly regimented, heavily edited spelling system that has been accepted as standard, and the tendency even in scholarly articles is to quote Xhosa texts with their spelling homogenised for school consumption to meet the needs of Education Departments. Outside the skewed world of Xhosa books, no newspaper adopted the new orthography in 1936, and Nontsizi’s language from the 1920s is readily seen to be far freer of imposed rules and regulations. It is vital that this language be respected and preserved. Future readers and scholars might well find significance in her non-standard and sometimes inconsistent spelling where none might appear at the present time. In the light of this history, alterations to the Xhosa text are introduced sparingly, according text and author a respect they have not often enjoyed in the history of Xhosa literature. Missing or indistinct letters have been placed in square brackets, facilitating alternative reconstructions. Readers interested in seeing the texts as they originally appeared can find most of them online at http://pzadmin.pitzer.edu/masilela/newafrre/mgqwetto/poems/poems.htm.
In one important respect Nontsizi’s spelling has been overruled and altered. Most frequently, she spells her surname (and her mother’s surname) Mgqwetto. This anomalous spelling (double t is not standard in Xhosa) has been replaced by Mgqwetho throughout. The 1936 orthography played havoc with surnames, introducing an h to indicate aspiration. So, for example, the great Xhosa poet Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi signed himself as such for the first time in December 1934: before that time he used the spelling Samuel Edward Rune Mqayi. The last of Nontsizi’s poems was published in Umteteli in 1939, before the changes were proposed, but after the changes were introduced she would perhaps have adopted the form Mgqweto or Mgqwetho for her surname. Selope Thema spells her surname Mgqwetho in 1949, and this is likely to be the spelling of the surname of any relatives of Nontsizi living today, although the two reports in The Bantu World in