Disillusionment in Vonani Bila’s political poetry
Abstract
With the transition to multiracial democracy in 1994, South Africans, especially non-whites, had looked forward to a new era of social equality, economic justice, and political liberation. This sensibility gave birth to what a critic once described as a “honeymoon literature” in the country. Not long after the emergence of this literary trend, another form developed, which resonates with the political consciousness of social injustice and oppression of the apartheid era and the disenchantment noticeable in the literature of post-independence sub-Saharan African countries up north. This article examines the representation of disillusionment in the poetry of Vonani Bila, a notable political poet of the postapartheid era. Using Frantz Fanon’s theoretical insights about post-Independence elites, aptly described as the national bourgeoisie, the article examines selected five political poems in Handsome Jita, a collection of the poets’ select works, to show that social injustice is at the root of disillusionment with multiracial democracy in South Africa. Furthermore, the article shows that the social injustice in the new South Africa is an issue of class, rather than race. The article concludes by calling attention to the similarity between this development and what obtains in sub-Saharan African countries up north shortly after their independence.