“Did we not have nations long ago? Where is their history? Did we not have iinkosi in the past? Were there no famous ones?... whose praises did they sing? Where are the brave: Where are the historical narratives about the brave to be garlanded? Let us wake Ngconde, and Togu and Tshiwo, and Palo and Rarabe and Mlawu, and Ngqika and Ndlambe” (Nonjiba Waseluhlangeni*)

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In a rural Eastern Cape landscape, the rope of a silent bell “calls for the writing of history” by the “literary elders [who] live both in the world of those who have gone before and those who are not living”. Utilising sound and performance, the artist enacts the “voyaging in” of an amathwasa elder by moving through and occupying the liminal spaces and thresholds of knowledges. 

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“The elders became agents who adopted various ways of coping and countering the impending danger of dispossession, dislocation and death… The flexibility to expand and experiment with innovation without abandoning African cosmology became Tiyo Soga’s guiding light. He remained strongly embedded in his Xhosa world while he explored, adapted and adopted the Euro-Christian life”.

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All excerpts on this page are cited from the text by Nomathamsanqa Tisani with which the artist engaged when making the artwork. The full reference of this text is: Tisani, N. C. 2017. Re-visiting and celebrating the literary elder to build a multiversal tomorrow. Paper presented at Colloquium on Rethinking South African Canonical Writing: Centring the isiXhosa Writings of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, Grahamstown, Rhodes University, 21-22 June.

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* Nonjiba Waseluhlangeni  was the Rev Tiyo Soga’s pen name. Passage translated by Tisani, N, C. 2000. ‘Continuity and Change in Xhosa Historiography during the Nineteenth Century: An Exploration Through Textyal Analysis”. Doctoral Thesis, Rhodes University.