THE USNESS OF US: A TRIBUTE TO SOUTH AFRICA’S FOREMOST STRUGGLE POETS

There are verses that do more than speak. They breathe. They march. They bleed. They return across generations like incantations passed from mouth to ear, from prison cell to refugee camp, from jazz club to the guerrilla front. For those of us who came of age in exile, navigating the uncertainties of borders, belonging, and becoming, the poets of South Africa’s struggle era did more than write. They constructed memory. They sustained hope. They summoned a sense of self when apartheid’s design was to erase it.

This is a personal tribute. To the voices that raised me when I was far from home. To the ones whose lines became lifelines.

And at the centre of that constellation stands Keorapetse Kgositsile, Bra Willie.

The Word as Weapon, the Verse as Home. Bra Willie was not merely a poet; he was a prophet in motion. Exiled to the United States in the 1960s, he became a bridge between the Black Arts Movement and the ANC’s cultural struggle. He read poetry alongside Amiri Baraka and Nikki Giovanni. He understood, as few did, that Black liberation was a global chorus, not a solo act. His early collections, Spirits Unchained and My Name Is Afrika, spoke with the cadence of both bebop and resistance. His work was jazz and machete.

He told us: “I have crossed oceans of words to say that I am.” And in saying it, he allowed thousands of us in exile to echo back: “We are.”

Bra Willie gave many of us our first sense of intellectual permission to be fully African and fully radical. His presence in lecture halls, smoky basements, and international conferences was as lyrical as his verse. He mentored, provoked, and challenged. Always returning us to the sanctity of our own tongues, the dignity of our own drum.

If Kgositsile gave us the syntax of resistance, Mbulelo Mzamane gave us its grammar, and its spirit. His poem The Usness of Us is not just a title; it is an entire ontology of belonging. In the diasporic scatter of exile from Gaborone to Lusaka, from Lagos to London, it was Mzamane who insisted we were still one body. One
people. One “US.”

A novelist, academic, and poet, Mbulelo was not always the loudest voice, but his was the voice that lingered long after the room had emptied. His commitment to cultural education, to grounding liberation in African thought was foundational for many of us young South Africans scattered across the globe.

The Usness of Us became more than a poem. It became a prayer.

Where Mzamane offered spirit and grounding, Mandla Langa brought the emotional turbulence of exile to the page with painful clarity. His landmark poem I Beg Your Pardon, South Africa is an anthem, an apology, a confrontation.

The line “I beg your pardon, South Africa, for keeping quiet too long” pierced the hearts of many who wondered whether we were doing enough, saying enough, risking enough.

Langa’s poetry, like his novels and diplomatic work, is unafraid of contradiction. He writes with the elegance of a psalmist and the fury of a freedom fighter. In many late-night sessions of reflection, whether in Dar es Salaam or Dakar, his words helped us parse the pain of exile without ever relinquishing the dream of return.

The City as Battlefield, the Soul as Archive. Mongane Wally Serote was the street poet of the soul. While others dealt in grand metaphor, Serote went down into the townships, the queues, the smoke, the blood.

His Yakhal’inkomo remains one of the most evocative poems of Black pain and Black persistence. There is a deep blues quality to Serote’s writing. A moan, a mourning, and a militancy. In him, we found the documentation of daily survival. The nervous glance at dusk, the muffled rage of funerals. His poetry was not abstract. It was visceral. It was life.

To include Lefifi Tladi is not simply to mention another poet. It is to invoke the total experience of liberation art. A founding member of the Dashiki poets and artists collective, Tladi’s creative life was a fusion of poetry, painting, jazz, and activism.

Exiled after the Soweto Uprising, Tladi embodied a pan-African aesthetic of resistance. His performances, often accompanied by drums and visuals were rituals of remembrance and revolution. His refusal to compartmentalize art made him a beacon for many of us who believed that struggle had to be beautiful, too.

He once said: “I do not separate poetry from my paintings or my music. They are all one scream, one prayer.” And in that scream, we heard both the mourning and the joy of the Black soul refusing to die.

The Drumbeat of Dissent. Molefe Pheto, turning 90 this year, deserves his flowers while he lives. Known both for his literary voice and his radical commitment to freedom, Pheto’s work, and presence were part of the heartbeat of the cultural resistance. His autobiography And Night Fell and his poetry capture the brutality of apartheid and the urgency of defiance. Pheto’s poetry was not just resistance; it was musical. Rhythmic. Rooted in the cadences of jazz and protest, of longing and clarity.

For us in exile, he brought into sharp focus the sound of struggle and the sound of survival.

As he approaches this milestone, we do not merely celebrate his age, but the decades of fire he gave us. His work continues to speak across time. Uncompromising,

In the Company of Giants I had the honour of sharing physical space and emotional sanctuary with these voices. And I was not the only one. In the dusty crossroads of Gaborone, in London, in Swedish classrooms, in New York jazz dens, and on West African beaches, their words followed us, fed us, fashioned us.

We were exiles, but we were not alone. Their poetry reminded us that memory was a weapon, and language a shield. These poets showed us that the battlefield was not only in the bush or the barricade, it was in the line of a verse, the choice of a word, the quiet act of remembering.

This is more than literary appreciation. It is a thank you.

To Keorapetse Kgositsile, who taught us that our names are already poems. To Mbulelo Mzamane, who taught us that “USNESS” is more powerful than exile. To Mandla Langa, who made contrition a kind of resistance. To Wally Serote, who gave the township a tongue. To Lefifi Tladi, who danced and drummed the revolution into being. To Molefe Pheto, who gave us the drumbeat of defiance.

You were the first ones who told me, us, we could still be whole. That though I was scattered, I was not lost. That though I had fled, I had not failed.

Because of you, we walked taller. Because of you, we never stopped listening for the rhythm of home.

As I write this now, years after our paths crossed under fugitive skies and hopeful dawns, I carry your words in me. They are my compass. My inheritance. My invocation.

And so, I say, with all the reverence of a son to his elders:

Thank you.

You shaped me.

You saved me.

You sang me into becoming.