mandla poetry performance for We Belong's 2021 Youth Summit: 'Inherent Traveller'

Transcript:
Some of us are smaller than others.
Split in two.
Made of many.
I come from a breakaway line, a splintered cell
And the journeys that came before me are
Entanglements beyond my comprehension,
Moreso, the ones I have taken.
All of us have always been wandering around.
Pillaging a place to call home,
A piece of land becomes a list of deeds
And her story is written into the battles fought in the name of her ownership
I have always been foreign.
I have always been foreign
Dissidence runs through my blood
I was born in Bulawayo...
Ukubulala is to kill
Why death is a city’s namesake?
I want to know
The entire history of the world
Fill me in on every nook and cranny -
The reasons behind each tradition
And everything we’ve come to unlearn
As we travel through ourselves.
Names are power in every language,
Knowing who I am is tied up in those before during and after
I am an imprint
A remnant
Tracing the steps on my own is like rowing nowhere near the water.
My tribe is Ndebele
I left Zimbabwe before I could even speak,
I keep saying I’m from there mostly for myself
I am Zimbabwean because I can go there to find those who came before me
But I am not just from Zimbabwe,
I’ve left pieces of myself everywhere I have wandered in and out of
I’m from every moment I have ever encountered.
I don’t remember my first journey.
We are one of the smallest groups, perhaps because we are split in two.
1823: Mzilikazi revolts against Shaka, flees the Zulu Kingdom and led his followers North
Through Mozambique,
Botswana to Zambia,
Mzilikazi conquered his way to Zimbabwe, stealing women and children from tribes too weak to his power to build his Ndebele empire
I am not really from anywhere.
I can only be where I am,
I don’t feel good about knowing this but this is how I have come to exist.
I am a remnant of those who walked before me
We are one of the smallest groups,
Maybe it’s because we’re split in two
Perhaps because we lost roughly 20,000 in two years
Matebeleland,
Named after a colonial mispronunciation
In Matebeland, there was
A moment of madness
I want to understand, ngiyafunda
We don’t have a word for it in my language
The rain that washes away the chaff,
An estimated number of deaths
Gukurahundi, watered down to a moment of madness -
We get caught up in the red tape
The implicate intricacies of being someone
Who’s here but doesn’t yet belong
I was born to be a dissident,
Ngiyazifundisa ukuthi
Kuyenzeni?