The Denuding Forest: A Tribute to Abdullah Ibrahim

Dr. Barry Gilder

There is a metaphor – a very visceral image – that has haunted me as the years of our liberation struggle recede. It is of a large dense forest, populated by towering yellowwoods, their tops disappearing into the heavens. Each tree represents one of the giants of our struggle against apartheid.

And each time one of those giants passes on – Mandela, Sisulu, Slovo, Hani and so many others – in my mind I see and hear a giant yellowwood crashing to the ground and dissolving into the soil, leaving another treeless spot on the forest carpet.

And in that forest, there is one special glade, where the trees have been falling too fast in recent years – Keorapetse Kgositsile, Nadine Gordimer, James Matthews, Dennis Brutus, Mazisi Kunene, Don Mattera, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Ray Phiri, Johnny Clegg.

And now, the crack and crash of the Abdullah Ibrahim yellowwood resound in my mind’s ear.

My path crossed with many of these fallen yellowwoods – in the NUSAS arts festival at Wits in 1973, in the concert halls and meeting halls and conference centres in London, Amsterdam, Gaborone, and even in Kinaxixi Square in Luanda, where I did one performance with Bra Jonas and the newly formed Amandla Cultural Ensemble, before proceeding to Moscow and a long non-musical trajectory.

I know my path crossed many times with this last yellowwood to fall, as ‘Bra Dollar’ and as ‘Abdullah’, but only one adheres to memory – the Culture and Resistance Conference and Festival in Gaborone in July 1982.

This conference was unprecedented. Close to a thousand artists and activists from inside South Africa and from all the corners of exile gathered in Gaborone for five days of a rich programme of talks, workshops, performances, exhibitions, and, of course, informal discussions and arguments at the University of Botswana campus and other venues. This was the first significant opportunity in decades for South Africa-based and exiled South African artists to engage with each other.

The better-known attendees included Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Wilson ‘Kingforce’ Silgee, Nadine Gordimer, Mongane Serote, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Thami Mnyele, James Matthews, Richard Rive, Malcolm Purkey, Alf Kumalo, David Goldblatt, Gavin Jantjes and many others.

My enduring memory of Abdullah is of the concert on one evening of the festival. I recall him at a grand piano to the left of the stage (although the ‘grandness’ of the piano might be more imagination than memory). In particular, I can still hear his live performance of ‘Thula Dubula’ in that rasping voice of his, the dialectic between the harshness of the lyrics and the gentleness of the music creating an inner tension and beauty.

The thing is, I don’t know how I can recall watching his performance from the audience, as, in their wisdom, the organisers had billed me to go on stage to sing after Abdullah – perhaps the most stressful example of ‘a hard act to follow’ – so I should have been in the wings. I think he wished me luck as he came off and I went on, and halfway into my first song, one of my guitar strings snapped, and I had to chat up the audience while I changed and tuned it.

When I was doing research for my book Songs and Secrets, our National Archives kindly gave me copies of DVDs donated by the Dutch anti-apartheid movement, featuring various cultural events that had taken place during the exile years. Among them was a documentary of the Gaborone conference that included an interview with Abdullah in which he said: ‘We don’t think of ourselves as being in exile. This is a strategic retreat.

I know Abdullah also attended the Culture in Another South Africa (CASA) conference in Amsterdam in December 1987. I was there, but have no clear recall of his presence and performance. It was another historic event, attended inter alia by him, Basil ‘Mannenberg’ Coetzee, Jonas Gwangwa and Dudu Pukwana; the ANC’s cultural ensemble, ‘Amandla!’; writers Nadine Gordimer, Lewis Nkosi, Cosmo Pieterse, Breyten Breytenbach, Baleka Kgositsile (née Mbete), Keorapetse Kgositsile, John Matshikiza, Mandla Langa and Njabulo Ndebele.

Back to the present. Last night, my subconscious made an intervention. I dreamt I was in a house I didn’t know. I was told that in a closed room in the basement was a dying Abdullah Ibrahim. I went down, knocked gently on the door and pushed it open. A young woman was sitting on a bed to the left, watching over a very weakened Abdullah lying on a bed to the right. I sat next to him and greeted him. He smiled wanly. I asked: ‘Do you remember me, Abdullah?’ He said: ‘Of course I do, Barry.’ I wished him hamba kahle. I woke up.

A few years ago, I was in the Orbit jazz club in Braamfontein. I was sitting and chatting with the late Myesha Jenkins and Khosi Xaba. Myesha told me she was putting together a book of jazz poetry and asked me to contribute. I said I didn’t have anything I’d written that would suit. She and Khosi said, ‘Well, then write something, Barry. And I did. It was published in To Breathe into Another Voice in 2018 by Real African Publishers.

Here’s the poem:

The Sounds of Exile

When the frontier

Slashes like a blade

Across the wrist

Of the soul

(As some

Would call it

Others

A Stygian hole

Out of which

No light escapes)

When, indeed,

The sight of light

Escaping through the crevices

Of mountain peaks

In the early morning

And the smell of wild

Lavender bushes

And the sound

Of goats bleating

Around the village

Or the roar

Of traffic

The weeping of saxophones

In the city

Behind

Have gone from the senses

And remain only

As the clattering

Of an old newsreel

In your distant mind

In a distant city

Then stop

Pause

Listen

Hold your palms up

To the only wind

That blows home

For now

From the dark clubs

And lamplit stages

Of London

Amsterdam

Stockholm

New York

Brussels

Moscow

Berlin

Harare

Gaborone

For peace sake

Hear the breeze

Blowing from the rumbling drums

Of Julian Bahula

The trembling strings

Of Lucky Ranku

Gusting us home

From Amsterdam

In the May of 1976

Come

Let us go to Gaborone

In that July

Of 1982

Surround ourselves

With the fecund minds

The limber fingers

And lithe lips

Of Wilson 'Kingforce' Siljee

Denis Mpale

Jonas Gwangwa

Hugh Masekela

And with Abdullah Ibrahim

who said

We don't think

Of ourselves as being

In exile

This is a strategic

Retreat

And sang

Thula

Dubula

No need to say much more

It's all been said

And tried before

It's all over now

But the dying

And come

Once more

Down the Gaborone road

To the Woodpecker

On the banks of

The Molopo River

As we look across the frontier

To home

With the sounds of

Bra Hugh and

Bra Jonas

And Steve Dyer

Blowing behind us

While the stones-throw enemy

Listens

Now

On the wind of jazz

See the light

Defying gravity

Escape

From the dark hole

* Dr Barry Gilder is an Editor at Amazwi Creatives, the author of three published books and an executive member of the National Writers’ Association of South Africa (NWASA)

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.