All Voices Become Hoarse.
By Sipho Sepamla
step by step
we rise
as the goldminers
dig
deeper and deeper
moment to moment
we live
as the death-row
inmates wait
for the noose
day by day
politicians
pontificate
as freedom chants
swell
shrill voices
abroad
louder and louder
come the demands
as lower and lower
descends
the commandant’s strident orders
all voices become hoarse
*Sydney Sipho Sepamla (born 1932 - January 9, 2007 ) was a South African poet and novelist.
Born in a township near Krugersdorp, Sipho Sepamla lived most of his life in Soweto. He studied teaching at Pretoria Normal College and published his first volume of poetry, Hurry Up to It!, in 1975.
During this period he was active in the Black Consciousness movement and his 1977 book The Soweto I Love, partly a response the the Soweto Riots, was banned by the Apartheid reigime. He was a founder of the Federated Union of Black Artists (now the Fuba Academy of Arts)and editor of the literary magazine New Classic, and the theatre magazine S’ketsh.
He published several volumes of poetry and novels. He received the Thomas Pringle Award (1977) and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his writing. More recently in democratic South Africa he was a member of the government’s Arts and Culture Task Group.
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