It was 1989 and I, too, became a poet. Poetry in South African townships at the time was recited in football stadiums in front of thousands of anti-apartheid supporters. The most famous bard was Mzwakhe Mbuli, a lanky young man with a beautiful deep voice. The People’s Poet, as he was called, did not deal in ambiguity, rhyme or metre. In his work, memorised and recited by thousands of young South Africans, the apartheid government was the villain and the African National Congress’s cadres the heroes. It was not, shall we say, the stuff of Wordsworth:
The people are like crocodiles in the river;
