First Meeting with Manisi

In 2002, Research in African Literatures carried an article on the early career of the Thembu imbongi (praise poet) D. L. P. Yali-Manisi (1926-99). The article was drawn from the introduction and chapter one of an account of my 29-year association with the poet, to be published by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press under the title The Dassie and the Hunter: A South African Meeting. In the second chapter of the book, I depart from an academic mode of discourse and deploy the strategies of a short story, a stylistic shift towards a more creative response to Manisi's poetry. I identify myself here through Western European poetry that enters into dialogue with his vibrant Xhosa oral poetry just as, in the succeeding course of our relationship, I enter into dialogue with Manisi. The implication of the chapter is that as a young white doctoral candidate from the city, I am initially poles apart from Manisi's rural world; at the end of the chapter, I return to apartheid South Africa, very pleased with myself, but irretrievably involved for the rest of my life in his urgent poetry.

I explain the title of the book in my introduction:

In 1979 Manisi mailed a poem to me with an accompanying letter. He was entrusting the poem to me, he wrote, knowing that I would make the appropriate decision about it. I would see to its publication if it had merit, or contact him if it gave offence: he expressed this relationship of trust in a Xhosa metaphor, umwewe weembila waziwa ngumzingeli, "the hunter knows the dassie's crannies." The hunter of the little rock rabbit knows its lair as well as the dassie does itself. There is a simple acknowledgement of congruent interest here: in order to catch his quarry the hunter must know the dassie intimately, and so both the hunter and the dassie come to share knowledge of the dassie's habits and domestic terrain. There is also an imbalance of power implied in the fact that the hunter perforce achieves this knowledge in order to catch his prey, but through his metaphor Manisi subverts and inverts this power differential. I had hunted Manisi for his poetry, collecting and preserving it; now he was using that established channel to send me his poetry, so that I would see to its publication if I could. He was reversing the direction of flow, stepping out of his role as an object of study and turning me into his conduit, claiming me for his purposes, drawing on my sense of obligation and exploiting my greater familiarity and involvement with the medium of print. In the course of time our relationship switched about: I may have started off studying his art and craft, but he ended up teaching me, claiming me. I could at times ensure he received recompense for his poetic talent; I could occasionally offer him opportunities to enhance his self-respect as a performing artist. But, despite the possibilities I seemed to bring him, I came to see myself increasingly as sitting at his feet. And he, fifteen years my senior, possessing a wisdom and dignity and composure I could only ever aspire to, came to call me his father.

The account of our first meeting is intended to locate us at our furthest extremes from each other. The rest of the book charts my growing involvement with Manisi, and the understanding that developed between us.

What follows is the full text of chapter two. In order to preserve the flow of the narrative, I have not introduced annotations. I append a bibliographical note.

Six straight roads meet at the center of Queenstown at a pond with spouting ornamental fish that today stands barren of water, litter furtively bowling across it. In 1850, the frontier town was strategically laid out along the spokes radiating from this hexagon so that the new white inhabitants drawn into a laager could have...