Call and Response - A Special English in Africa edition dedicated to South Africa's revolutionary poet and activist-scholar, Keorapetse Kgositsile

deadline for submissions: 
November 4, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
English in Africa journal
contact email: 

Call and Response – A Special English in Africa edition dedicated to South Africa’s revolutionary poet and activist-scholar, Keorapetse Willie Kgositsile.

On 3 January 2018, democratic South Africa’s second poet laureate, Keorapetse Willie Kgositsile died aged seventy-nine. Born in Mafikeng on 19 September 1938, Kgositsile spent a better part of his youth in Johannesburg and later worked as a journalist at New Age,edited by Ruth First. Going into exile in the early 1960s, he spent over thirty years away from home advancing the cause of liberation as an ANC activist, poet, academic and at some stage served as a speech writer to ANC president, Oliver Tambo in Lusaka, Zambia.  In 1962, thanks to a US government scholarship, he arrived in the US via Tanzania to study at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In this period of heightened black civil rights activism and cultural resistance, he immersed himself in the Black Arts Movement, published his poetry collections and was mentored by prize-winning American Black Power Movement poet, Gwendolyn Brooks.

Throughout a distinguished career in which he asserted himself as a decidedly African poet, Kgositsile passionately believed that his talents came from the collective genius of the people from whom he learnt to speak, walk, talk, sing, dance and write. In her recent work, Uhuru Phalafala reiterates his immense gratitude for the invaluable teachings of his grandmother, Madikeledi, and his mother, Galekgobe, who also impressed upon him the importance of expressing himself eloquently, not just in English, but also in Tswana, his native language. In 2006, the Ministry of Arts and Culture named him South Africa’s poet laureate. In later years, Kgositsile would be deeply concerned by corruption and unexemplary leadership in the ANC government.

Towards the end of 2025, English in Africa will publish a special edition on Keorapetse Kgotsisile. To prepare for this edition, the editors plan to hold a two-day colloquium to generate a conversation among potential contributors, elucidating Kgositsile's work and his rich connections throughout the wider African diaspora. It is likely that a colloquium will attract 20-30 participants, with substantial international interest, particularly from the US where Kgotsisile spent much of his career in exile. 

We are inviting abstracts and artistic renderings of between 150 and 250 words on any aspect relating to Kgositsile’s work and transnational worlds. Areas of interest might include, but are not limited to:

 

  • South Africans in Exile
  • Anti-apartheid activism
  • Environmental Poetics
  • Apartheid-era cultural production
  • Indigenous Languages Literatures
  • South Africa and the Cold War
  • Black internationalism
  • Literary jazz
  • Pan-Africanism
  • Black Poetics
  • Black solidarities

 

The colloquium would be held at the Greatmore campus in Woodstock, Cape Town on 29th and 30th January 2025.

Kindly send your abstracts to Uhuru Phalafala and Sandile Ngidi by no later than 4 November 2024 at uhurumahlodi@gmail.com and sandilebngidi@gmail.com with ‘KWK Special Issue’ in the subject line.