Kotaz
LIBERATING THE ARTS
News From Nowhere
Mxolisi Nyezwa, The Editor
Volume 6 Number 3, 2024
Twenty seven years to save South African poetry! And what was done? The work of five years! The slog of despised slaves! I feel like a traitor sometimes for missing the time, for appreciating the roses of letters and the slaves’ rhythms! What was I to know? Where was I? Was my depreciated pancreatic lung of my liver swollen with unresolved expectations? Was I even justified to be alive and to look at the world and its landscape? I know I have been riding the storms the days and nights the arts funders promised the world to the artist! In my city many poets have died from sore nails and broken hearts! Their ambitions to write four lines of poetry every treacherous year of the calendar broken or slandered by those in power!
What did I do during those five years of publishing labour? I have asked myself so many times and so many nights men and women with jaundiced livers attempted to corner me
with the nebula and the salvo of their tongues! I was perplexed by sound and rhythm. I followed limping men to the naked house of dreams.
I asked the poets to write their poems in all the languages of this city so that the children could learn to sing with the wind. They all laughed, as they thought the spectre of the dismal and sad prophet, Noah, was a funny piece of drama! They laughed as the seasons changed and the reddoek and springbok acclaimed the highrise of the building with a handkerchief and a burial spade! Chance then took its toll! All pretence and manner of life turned upside down in the ghettoe streets in Bhlawa sounding a strange madness. everything stood up and listened. Things refused to be ignored! Every bedevilled vein of the swelling rain raised a bloody flag and tempered with the clock of indomitable roses!
Twenty seven years it has been! But then again, once more, we are delighted as we’ve found the line that was drawn on the sand. We are at the starting blocks and we are marching. Welcome to Kotaz online!
Jackals
Mussolini Soga Mlandu, short story
I wanted to learn about wild animals’ behaviour, yet I was well aware of the havoc that jackals caused. Still deep in thought on my way back to my village, Mhlotsheni, I remembered the cruel torture that our sheep and their young went through. Some of the dead sheep that the owners found in the grazing fields were brought back to the kraals as carcasses. Jackals also preyed at night while the sheep were resting in their camps. They would attack them, leaving their bellies ripped open, soaking the ground with fresh blood.
1. Love Letter To My Slay Queen
Dlayani Enock Shishenge, 4 poems
Chiskop woman of my heart, Chocolate girl of my soul, The bright torch of my poems, Your lips are like a cup of coffee, I can enjoy another one, From a well so deep, The depth of your heart. Chocolate girl Let me sanitize you With my poems.
I.
Kyle Allen, 1 poem
I am a silence of two mountains facing a valley of pain. I am a balancing act of beliefs, bread, and running water. I am a nervous skin of peace between the desert and your body made of wind and heat a reveller face to face with death in a reckless alley.
1. The Money Knot
Lelethu Sobekwa, 2 Short stories
UMakhulu had a money cloth knot that she kept under her mattress or in the pocket of her petticoat depending on when last she had used it. uMzala and I knew where she kept it but she insisted we did not tell anyone – as though anyone didn’t know where old ladies kept their money. When she threw her body onto the bed complaining of having been on her feet the whole day, the whole day could be anything from an hour to eight, I often wondered how the money knot under the mattress was doing. Were the notes inside it compromised? Did they bend and fold due to the weight on top of the bed?
1. Sifun’ utywala!
Mpumelelo Matwa, 3 poems
Lumkani!! lumkani!! Sifun’ utywala!! Sifun’ utywala!! Ikhovithi!! Ikhovithi!! Sifun’ utywala!! Sifun’ utywala!! Waphel’ umntu!! Baf’ abantu!! Sifun’ utywala!! Sifun’ utywala!! Gquman’ iimpumlo kwanemilomo!! Sifun’ utywala!! Sifun’ utywala!! Hlamban’ izandla niqelelane!! Sifun’ utywala!! Sifun’ utywala!!
Izicatshulwa kwincwadi ethi
“Masidle ilifa lethu”
Nomonde Mdlokolo, essay
1. Ukuvela komntwana Ngethuba lokuba inkosikazi ilindele umntwana ngakumbi ngelaa xesha lokuba kusithiwa iyanqumka okanye iyakhawula umzimba wayo uneenguqu nezinto ezininzi ezingaqhelekanga, ude lo mzimba ulangazelele ukutya nezinto ubungaqhelanga kuzitya. Uluntu luyayiqonda luyilandela kakuhle le nguqu. Akhathazile ke amakhosikazi ukusoloko elangazelela inyama xa ekule meko, nangona engenjalo onke.
1. Pin Prick
Allan Kolski Horwitz, 2 poems
Thirty second HIV test: positive or negative status indicated by the number of vertical stripes formed after a drop of blood has been introduced into a special solution contained in a small receptacle. One line or two lines never three lines that’s the way it works in this truth story
1. 300
Jana Van Niekerk, 5 poems
One more dance, one more dance on the Bridal Beach of broken glass. Once more into my small breached heart the carnage of Dunkirk. Once more the kiss of never-enough my love. If you are the sailor then I am the soldier my legs unsteady from the voyage, consulting the Oracle who spoke against me and failing to meditate.
1. Shrinking next to the blossoming flowers
Mangaliso Buzani, 2 poems
The books always take my chair and send me onto the floor. I lie on my side, sometimes on my back, with an open book completely a sky over my eyes. I’m all ears to the returning birds of my neighbour's neigbhour’s tree… the raindrops cry out like donkeys donkies, they keep me awake the whole night eating carrots. Tomorrow I will leave this room, jump into the grass, exercise with grasshoppers a how-high exercise? Who knows, maybe I can touch the moon and bring you back a sack of oranges from my mother who lives behind the moon.
Ukuzincama
Vusumzi Nyezwa, essay
Ekuphileni komntu, kukho amaxesha apho ubani athatha isigqibo sokukhe athi xhaa ekwenzeni oko aqhele ukukwenza imihla ngemihla. La maxesha afika maxa wambi ngesaquphe, kungalindelekanga njengamhlana kubhujiwe okanye afika elungiselelwe apho ubani enenjongo yokuphumelelisa okuthile, umzekelo xa ubani lowo
A Red-Brown Dog Stands His Ground
Frank Meintjies, short story
Even if you don’t like dogs, you would soon or eventually warm to Jack. With his distinctive colour, Jack stood out among neighbourhood dogs; his coat was reddish brown and the pupils of his eyes had the same tint. Jack never came into the house; his kennel was located close to the large rubber bin on one side and to the outside drain on the other. This was convenient – when scraping waste into the bin, one could pick out leftovers and immediately toss them into the bowl.
There is something I know [excerpt]
Vonani Bila, 1 poem
In this funky sex-smelling town, runner-away girls trade their bodies with overweight men: truck drivers, bus drivers and scarred men with prison tattoos they trade their bodies with an army of Pakistani, Nigerian, Congolese and Ethiopian men whose peckers can’t wait for the wives left behind or hidden from the public
For the writers who came together in 1997 in Bhlawa to conceive of Kotaz, the word "kotaz" offered the possibility of a new start, giving vision to an innovative journal that would carry their writings and address their confusion of not knowing where to publish their poems. The townships’ literary landscapes had no thunderstorms and no clouds.