Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali

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Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali (b. 1940) is a South African poet. He has written in both Zulu and English. He studied at Columbia University.

Mtshali worked as a messenger in Soweto before he became a poet, and his first book, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (1971), explores both the banality and extremity of apartheid through the eyes of working men of South Africa, even while it recalls the energy of those Mtshali frequently calls simply "ancestors." It was published with a preface by Nadine Gordimer. Sounds of a Cowhide Drum was one of the first books of poems by a black South African poet to be widely distributed, and provoked considerable debate among the white South African population, but it was extremely successful, making a considerable profit for its white publisher, Lionel Abrahams.McClintock, Ann. "'Azikwelwa' (We Will Not Ride): Politics and Value in Black South African Poetry" (Critical Inquiry, Vol. 13, No. 3 [1987], 597-623), 612.

The title of the book is explained by an image in a poem with the same title:

I am the drum on your dormant soul,
cut from the black hide of a sacrificial cow.

I am the spirit of your ancestors. . .Quoted in McClintock 614.

Mtshali's work was popular among white liberals in South Africa, which may have made him less of an icon for other black poets. In a 1978 interview, the poet Keorapetse Kgositsile compares Mtshali's case to the Harlem Renaissance in the United States, a period when the importance of white patronage for black work made the emerging black literature more politically complex.Rowell, Charles H. "'With Bloodstains to Testify': An Interview With Keorapetse Kgositsile" (Callaloo, No. 2. [1978], 23-42), 36. Perhaps in part as a response to these criticisms, Mtshali's second book, Fireflames (1980), is far more militant, often expressly promising revolution.

After his success as a poet, Mtshali became an educator. He was vice-principal of Pace College, a commercial school in Soweto.Chisholm, Linda. "Redefining Skills: Black Education in South Africa in the 1980s" (Comparative Education, Vol. 19, No. 3. [1983], 357-371), 364. He taught at the New York City College of Technology.

Mtshali lives currently in The Bronx, New York City, United States, where he continues to teach and write poetry. He makes a living selling bottled water in Harlem near the Apollo Theater.

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