Zama Madinana is a South African poet based in Johannesburg. He’s the author of the full-length collection ’94 (2023) which was longlisted for the 2024 South African Literary Award. His work has appeared in The Shallow Tales Review, Kalahari Review, Efiko, Libretto, Brittle Paper, Olney, and other literary publications. His work focuses mainly on love, politics and social issues. Zama won third prize in the 2022 Sol Plaatje EU Poetry Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the same year. In addition to regular performances and readings in Johannesburg and across South Africa, he has performed his poetry in various countries including Botswana, Mozambique, and Lesotho.

Onyedikachi Chinedu: Hello, Zamokuhle. It’s a pleasure to have you as our featured poet for January. I’m thinking about your poem “Maboneng” which introduces the reader to the scintillating quality of the city. You appraise Maboneng with mothering qualities and put it as a haven for anyone in need of such. What’s your relationship to this city which you have painted as a figure capable of agency?

Zama Madinana: Hi, Onyedikachi. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity to extend my voice beyond South African borders. Maboneng is a unique neighbourhood with integrated cafés, restaurants and coffee shops in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is a tourist attraction and home to lots of visual artists, writers, poets, photographers and musicians. They gather to drink, eat, and discuss serious issues affecting the country and the rest of the continent. At night, it becomes a place which buzzes with music, from Amapiano to Afrobeat. Everyone tries to keep the art scene vibrant here in their own way.  My contribution is through poetry and literature. I host literary events and promote a reading culture. I sell books from my backpack and meet and interact with people from different parts of the world, which is great.

Onyedikachi Chinedu: Can you talk about the structural arrangement of the poems in the collection? I observe that in “’94,” the poems that precede the political ones in section II are love poems, whereas the fragments in section V briefly detail the speaker’s illness and resilience. What was the thought process behind the ordering of these poems?

Zama Madinana: I didn’t want to make people depressed when they first opened my book. The idea was to start with poems that carry light themes. The first section of the book is about love and romance. In the last section, the speaker depicts a resilient man dealing with a chronic illness.

Onyedikachi: The use of Zulu phrases in “’94” adds a layered complexity to the meaning of the poems. Can you talk about this choice, and were you ever concerned about foreign readers’ comprehension of the poems?

Zama: This was done intentionally, to give it a South African flavour. And not including a glossary at the end of my book was done intentionally. It is about the context under which these themes where written and to give my readers a responsibility to do their research. Also, I wanted to take the reader on a journey, beginning with poems that carried a light message like love and romance and then delving into politics, which took on serious issues faced by the country. The third section of the book deals with city stories, and my hometown, Ladysmith inspired the last section. There’s so much violence and abuse of alcohol where I come from.

Onyedikachi: Do these poems serve as a social commentary on the economic and political state of Azania? With reference to “The Maboneng Photographers” and “In Our Lands,” can you talk about what led to their inception and the major impulse to collect them into a manuscript?

Zama: I write mostly about socio-political issues, love, and city life. In the poem, “In Our Land,” my attempt was to highlight the painful events that happened after we attained our freedom. It’s sad and disappointing that the institutions of higher learning are still refusing to unlearn racism in the rainbow nation. It was painful to witness students being brutalized and arrested for fighting for free education during the Fees Must Fall movement. It was devastating to see miners being killed by black government in Marikana. It’s been over thirty years since we attained our freedom but the conditions that black people live under haven’t improved much.

Onyedikachi: Lastly, with the backdrop of the apartheid system bearing down on the reader, what other forms of violence/atrocity are highlighted within your collection?

Zama: One of the biggest challenges faced in post-apartheid is drug and alcohol abuse in the black townships. Violence happens daily at taverns. Young people are stabbed and gunned down almost every day in South African townships, and I believe that these poems could incentivize the government to stop this and make these places of entertainment safer.

elegy for hadis

not even death can silence
the sound of your laughter
it breaks all chains
of pain

cures babalazi’s headaches
on sunday mornings

your immortal jokes
resurrecting stories of our childhood

of after-school fistfights
for a hot cherry

your memories feed
starving smiles
& erase niles
of tears

hadis, my blood
is it possible to dance with you
again
swim in endless
lakes of beer quarts
and spirits?

the resilient ones

our voices refused to die
under the gallows of censorship
wielding our paintbrushes with pride
we painted murals of revolution
over the mind of our oppressors

with pen and lenses of ‘76
we captured the boers
in the destruction of district six
& sophiatown

the bulldozers failed
to split our spirits
we were artists
we feared no de klerks
we carried thami mnyele’s spear
and tore the apartheid flag apart

see, the dust on our broken ankles
speaks of our ugly past
the sweats on our bruised temples
a song of victory
the cracks on our tired knuckles
a constant reminder of how                      
resilient we are