Barbara Masekela and Muxe Nkondo to pay tribute to late SA Poet Laureate Bra Willie Kgositsile at Poetry Africa at UJ Arts Centre in Johannesburg
By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor
It probably makes a lot of sense, especially in literary circles and those within the former liberation formations that fought for freedom why a man like Professor Bra “Willie” Keorapetse Kgositsile should continue to be honoured in the manner that will happen on Thursday, October 6, 2022 at the UJ Arts Centre by the Centre for the Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in association with the UJ Arts & Culture of University of Johannesburg.
The occasion is the launch of the touring Centre of Creative Arts Poetry Africa touring Programme. It also makes sense that the people who will deliver the tribute to this small physically statured, but big in ideas man, are people who have known the late poet Laureate of South Africa during their time in exile, former South African Ambassador to France Barbara Masekela and well known academic and intellectual Professor Muxe NKondo.
Bra Willie, as he was fondly referred to as in both in literary and political circles, who in his life time was known as a poet, was in fact more than that. Firstly, he was a human being who embodied Ubuntu in abundance, and whose demeanour was that of modesty.
It is probably this reason many a young poet in post-apartheid South Africa was attracted related to him simply as a poet, and not this giant of a short man whose life and works cut across the often uncomfortable fields of literature, politics and society.
In his life time you should have seen how young poets in Johannesburg and countrywide congregated around him, and how they related to him as If he was one of them, their generation, especially the spoken word performers. This is even though on several occasions, and always privately, he always emphasised the written word over the performance part of poetry, which sometimes is carried by the charisma of the performer, and not necessarily by the strength of the text.
Many will tell you how Bra warned them about this. Always in privacy. He seemed to have been worried that a young generation of poets in post-apartheid South Africa seemed to be increasingly more seized by performance poetry than paying equal attention to poems that stood out on their own on paper, the written text.
The tribute to the late poet will happen on Thursday on October 6, 2022, at 7pm Uj Arts Centre, University of Johannesburg Kingsway Campus at the opening of the Touring Poetry Africa Festiva Programmel. Among those who will perform are poets Lebo Mashile, Vangile Gantsho. Phillapa de Villiers, Roche Ko
ster, Nomashenge and Belita Andre in the Keorapetse Kgositsile Theatre. Bra Willie in in exile’ besides being an activist as part of the ANC also played an important role in academia, teaching at universities in several countries, including in Tanzania. In post-Apartheid South Africa, he took a back seat in politics, but played important behind the scenes roles, including the role of advisor to then Minister of Arts and Culture Pallo Jordan.
He remained active in poetry circles, mainly as an occasional performer and increasingly as a mentor to many a poet till his death in 2019. He was born and grew up in the then culturally vibrant township of Sophiatown of the 50s in then apartheid South Africa. He went to exile in the 60s as an activist and went to University in the US where he was an active part of poet activist movements. He was inaugurated as South Africa’s National Poet Laureate in 2006.