Miss Mary Mgqweto a well-known lady in the dancing circles will promote a flannel dance in the Inchcape Hall to the music of the Merry Black Birds on June 8. Admission 2/6. Invitation extended to all.
Nontsizi depicts herself dancing (13: 21-24, for example), and dancing is a very common image in her poetry. Mary Mgqweto also helped to organise a party in 1941 for someone traveling to Queenstown (we know that Nontsizi’s mother lived near Queenstown):
A successful farewell party was given at Khanyile Street, W.N. Townshipin honour of Mr J.D. Ngojo who is shortly leaving for Queenstown.The organisers were Mrs. Gladys Mbahlana and Miss MaryMgqweto. (The Bantu World, 13 December 1941, page 15).
These two items associating Mary Mgqwetho with dancing recall a stanza Nontsizi wrote in praise of herself:
Awu! Taru! Nontsizi bulembu e Afrika
Ntokazi etsho ngentlombe ezimnandi
Zitsho zidume nendonga ze Afrika
Arha-hai abhitye onke amadodana.
Oh mercy, Nontsizi, African moss,
woman, Africa’s walls are throbbing
with the sound of your lively parties:
Ach shame! All the young men wither. (13: 65-68)
We may conclude that Nontsizi’s English name was Elizabeth Mgqwetho; Nontsizi (“Mother of Sorrows”) may have been her given Xhosa name, a nickname, or a name she adopted when she started writing poetry. Mary Mgqwetho might well have been her sister. Mary lived on the Rand into the 1940s, where she was associated with social dances; both Mary and Elizabeth were politically active from at least 1919, and both remained unmarried. Nontsizi may have been in domestic service on the mines; certainly she was neither prostitute nor shebeen queen.
In Johannesburg, as her poetry makes abundantly clear, Nontsizi was a committed member of a women’s prayer union, a manyano. “By and large,” Deborah Gaitskell writes of the manyanos, “the African Christian women joined groups explicitly as mothers, and, particularly under the influence of mission supervisors, assumed a vital role in safeguarding female chastity, marital fidelity, and maternal and domestic responsibilities” (Gaitskell 1997: 255). The concerns of the manyano are very much the concerns especially of Nontsizi’s later poetry:
The style of the manyanos, common to all denominations, had roots also in late nineteenth-century revivalist preaching that sought to induce a kind of anguish over personal sin, with bewailing and confession, and a public commitment to a fresh start. . . . Wailing became particularly entrenched in women’s groups, perhaps because weeping was seen as more culturally appropriate for women, especially at Nguni funerals. Isililo (“wailing”, the term the American Board women chose for their movement) . . . refers to the protracted ritual keening of women after a burial. (Gaitskell 1997: 262)
Nontsizi may well have been associated with the American Board manyanos: Izililo becomes a recurrent cry in her later poetry (see the note to poem 37). In her manyano, she would almost surely have practised preaching: the headnotes to her later poems, and especially her prose contribution on preaching (item 95) are strongly reminiscent of a preaching style, peppered with liberal references to scripture. “In the weekly manyano meetings,” writes Gaitskell,
women would give short expositions of the meaning and personal application of particular biblical texts; at annual conferences and evangelistic services, they would preach to and exhort much larger groups of both Christians and ‘heathens’. There is plenty of evidence that women were keen to preach (Gaitskell 1995: 223).
Despite this hunger for preaching, only rarely did African women’s zeal for oral expression of their faith lead to leadership positions in mixed public gatherings. Perhaps they were resigned to the limitations missionaries placed on their leadership and preaching role, and the opposition they might face from jealous black male clergy. Manyanos provided a segregated, “safer” sphere of female religious oratory. (Gaitskell 1997: 263)
So, “zeal for preaching might be kindled within the manyano, and any further oratorical abilities developed as a result were compulsorily redirected back into female channels” (Gaitskell 1995: 227). However, Nontsizi was able to break free of these restrictions, and found public expression of her passion for preaching through Umteteli’s pages: she often starts her poems with an expression of gratitude to the Editor for providing space to poets.
Nontsizi makes liberal use of the bible in her poetry, taking her titles from Scripture and referring her readers to passages in the bible. She quotes the Old Testament more than the New; clearly, she is attracted to the prophets, Daniel, Amos, Samuel, Isaiah and Nehemiah. Despite her dependence on and familiarity with the bible, however, she often denounces it. The bible was an agent of dispossession
Zay’ konxa! Afrika ngamakamandela
Nange Bhaibhile, mipu, zayikahlela
They clapped shackles on you, Africa,
hurled you down with bible and musket (37: 14-15)
and disruption
Wavela umlungu kungeko zimanga
Weza nge Bhaibhile ngoko sati manga
When the white appeared, all was normal:
abnormality came with his bible (60: 39-40);
the bible’s message is deceptive:
Apo zikon’ inkosi zase mlungwini
Ezi ne bhaibhile ezingo mb’axa-mbini
in that world of white lords and masters
the bible speaks with forked tongue (43: 23-24);
and vicious:
Lovangeli yabo yokusikohlisa
Mina ingangam ndigaqe ngedolo.
Lingasiposa ne Zulu siyimamela
Kub’ inomkonto obuye usihlabe
Iyahanahanisa kumntu Ontsundu
Iwugqwetile ke lomhlaba ka Palo.
This gospel of theirs, designed to deceive us,
stands as tall as I do down on my knees.
Heed its word and heaven’s lost:
it’s a spear that wheels to stab us.
The hypocritical cant of the white man’s gospel
turns Phalo’s land on its head. (30: 43-48)
But there is no contradiction here. She tacks onto the end of her eighth poem the qualification
Anditsho ukuti Izwi lika Tixo
Ukuteta kwalo akunanyiso.
But I’m not saying the word of God
is entirely barren of truth. (8: 39-40)
The bible remains the word of God, despite the misuse the whites put it to:
Kanti nene nene beza kutshutshisa
Nge bhaibhile zabo beza kunyelisa
The simple truth is they came to oppress,
they came to blaspheme with their bibles. (48: 33-34)
It is the white man’s bible she rejects, not the word of God in the bible. Both black and white must recognise and not abuse the truth that resides in the bible. Blacks must accept the bible’s truth, not as the