in loneliness at that moment of parting” (26), the address gives pertinence to the assertion
that “regardless of how one dies or how one views being dead, death means separation
not only from the flesh but also from the human community”. Nevertheless, their
contribution in paying with their lives for the liberation of their land produces a sense of
community in which their memory goes with the present.
The third segment of the collection is a logical ascension of the second as there is an
extension of the elegy on Tebello on the one hand, and an illumination on the similar fate
suffered by others like Mohani, Lenkoe among others. But there is also a lament over the
fate of other nationalists whose achievements have since been counted among the notable
contributions in the official history of the struggle. In the long list also comes Hector
(46), the school boy who was shot dead by the apartheid police during the June 16, 1976
students protest in Soweto, and whose death, historians contend, marked the beginning of
the climax of the liberation struggle.^74 What is significant, however, about this segment
of the poem is the predominance of a reconfiguration of pan-African consciousness in a
manner that gives centrality to the discourse. In other words, the narration of the South
African nation cannot be said to be complete if divested of the narration of the rest of
Africa. This is why the travail of the nation is not considered to be entirely exclusive as it
also doubles as the travail of Africa. The violent racial and imperial conspiracy suffered
by Cabral, Neto and Lumumba thus becomes a repetition instantiated in the fate of Hani,
Moyo, Make (33), among others.
More significantly, Jacques Depelchin’s argument about the artificiality of
compartmentalization in the reckoning of African history comes in handy. The
consciousness that is espoused in this part of the poem makes insignificant whatever
reservations and allegations that had previously trailed the perceived marginalization of
South African nationalism within the larger scheme of pan-African history.^75 By blurring
74
The ANC-led government has since immortalized Hector Peterson through the establishment of a
museum in his memory in Soweto. 75
There is a whole essay by Laura Chrisman (“Du Bois in Transnational Perspective: The Loud Silencing
of Black South Africa,” Current Writing. 16, 2004: 18-30) committed to engaging with what she considers
Du Bois’ refusal to “textually acknowledge black South African nationalist agency” within the broad-