Mabule Zachariah Rapola is a Johannesburg-based author, television writer and filmmaker. Creative mentors include the late Ntate Eskia Mphahlele, Nadine Gordimer and Lionel Abrahams. He studied filmmaking in South Africa, France and Denmark, and has produced and directed documetaries and shorts in above counties. He participated in the National Film and Video Foundation’s Sediba Masters Programme in Screenwriting. Television series include Mponeng, (SABC2 Comedy Series). Matatiele (ETV), Ihawu (SABC1), Hola! Mpinji, (a drama series based on characters from the Stanza novels currently airing on SABC-TV2).
He has done stints as a freelance journalist for national publications like Sowetan, City Press, Mail & Guardian and Tribute Magazine. time Tribute Magazine poetry competition finalist, A two-time finalist in a national poetry competition, his poetry and fiction has appeared South African, American and Danish literary journals and anthologies. A fellow of the Iowa International Writing Program, and most recently, Noma Award winner for the short story collection, Beginnings of a Dream, (Jacana, 2007)
Other publications include the novel series for young adults: Stanza on the edge, Stanza and the jive mission, Stanza’s Soccer World Cup, (Maskew Miller Longman, 2001, 2005, and 2009). Is co-editor, with Professor Isabel Balseiro of the upcoming African Travel Anthology, “The Passport That Does Not Pass Ports: African Literature of Travel in the Twenty-First Century.” from Michigan State University Press, (2020).
DIALOGUE WITH THE SUN
tears that I shed come
less saturated in chlorine traces
in between my pores fleeing sweat
pays homage to old age
we are born when we like
and shuffle shades around
for better dialogue with the sun
the season of living is tedious
where sun rises and sun sets are
monotonous syllables
DREAMERS
dreamers have come & gone
long before the dawn of capital
long before the tide of servitude
dreamers have come & gone
peasant dreamers of long & fugitive
dreams
i have shared in their longings
when nightmares rattled their wondering thoughts
peasant dreamers of long & fugitive dreams
dreamers have come & gone
a comrade
nourished on patriotism
i have witnessed their
century old journey
dreamers have come & gone
I have cried & longed too
when they dream of oceans & winds
for i too am a dreamer
a dreamer
of long & fugitive dreams
Inspired by Langston Hughes’s ‘‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’
DELILAH’S MASCARA
Your face is a canvass
I defined my existence on,
you gathered two sun rays
to revive my nauseated emotions
led me to a fish-tank
bowl of servitude
set my weary fingers to
modeling murals and graffiti,
indebted to you
I spent my youth days
scrabbling murals and lime
to make pathways for ants.
You filtered my stained blood
to purity my dreams,
set Azaria from her shackles
fragile and unsteady
she emerges a thousand
years later as Azania
Oh! Azaria Azania
can your tears moisten
this barren land,
or clouds borrow our smoke
to shade their sun-burns?
Years after you’re gone
stalactites of your laughter
still hang in my ears.
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