When I first saw poet Philani Nyoni performing, I was torn between my patriotic duty to feed him to police dogs and my immediate admiration for his densely allusive craft. A season of protest had just passed – smoke clearing away from the streets, and hashtag activists retiring into the fashion police – but Nyoni paced about the LitFest stage that night clearly determined to have the last word.
I had gone to the 2016 edition of the festival to write a harmless entertainment article, exchange numbers, and extort few review copies; but here I was, shaking my head as the angry young poet blasphemed President Robert Mugabe with a genre-straddling, high-octane, one-man soundtrack for the resistance.
The performance, titled A Diary of Madness, switched between four-letter words that would have turned even Acie Lumumba’s blood to water, and much longer words that can only be found in the dictionary of our learned friend, Thabani Mpofu. Regrettably for my church-type scruples, there was also blasphemous shock value that would have belatedly qualified Lord Byron’s Satanic School for several beads on the rosary.
Featured image: Philani Nyoni (left) receives a Bulawayo Arts Awards gong from Amabooks’ Jane Morris and Brian Jones (Photo – Mgcini Nyoni)
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