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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is my pleasant duty to acknowledge the financial support for work on the poetry of Nontsizi Mgqwetho from a number of organisations: a grant from the De Beers Chairman’s Fund enabled me to discover Mgqwetho’s poems in the Chamber of Mines Library in Johannesburg in 1984; a grant-in-aid from the Committee on Research at Vassar College in 1987 secured the involvement of Phyllis Ntantala in helping me to understand the poems; and the final translation was completed in Leipzig in 2003-4 on a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

I am grateful to colleagues who have included Nontsizi’s poetry in their own publications, assisting in rebuilding her reputation: Duncan Brown, Margaret Daymond, Deborah Gaitskell and Isabel Hofmeyr. Ntongela Masilela has proved a strong advocate of her cause, and located a number of relevant items by and on her that I had originally missed. Graham Furniss invited me to present a paper at a conference in London that became the first public statement on Mgqwetho (Opland 1995), and Nelly Sonderling solicited an article on Nontsizi for the second volume of The new dictionary of South African biography (Opland 1999); an invitation from Anja Oed and Uta Reuster Jahn to present a paper at a conference in Mainz in 2003 will result in a further statement on Nontsizi’s poetry (Opland forthcoming).

I am especially indebted to Phyllis Ntantala, who produced the first draft of the translation of most of the poems and discussed them with me in Poughkeepsie; to Abner Nyamende, who offered invaluable comments on my first translation of many of the poems; and to Peter Mtuze, who was ever ready with responses to my questions, and who was quick to help with a little flock of laat lammetjies. Susan Ogterop of the African Studies Library, University of Cape Town, kindly checked some references for me, and Isabel Hofmeyr readily contributed the elegant foreword. The ongoing encouragement and support of Veronica Klipp and Estelle Jobson of Wits University Press are especially appreciated.

It is my pleasure to acknowledge yet again the enduring friendship of Neil and Penny Berens and Norman and Jean Mearns, which has sustained me whether I was with them or not. I am deeply grateful for the support of my wife Melanie, who assumed extra burdens of responsibility in order to free me to work.

Godalming

20 December 2006