Eve’Olution

By MaMsimanga

Eveolution is a revolution for love, integrity, development and advancement. Eveolution is also a revelation of femininity through Afrocentric contemporary poetry.
Eveolution reveals the moral bankruptcy of the human race devoid of Ubuntu and God. This book paints Eve the feminine race, in reversed evolution as she starts as a fully developed species, glorious and having Ubuntu as her first point of call but then degrades to a moral dwarf through the corridors of time. This book laments moral degeneration but rekindles hope in moral regeneration, celebrates reward at the end, and revives faith.
The pages in this book are inked in Ubuntu, painted in prayer and framed in poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Aug 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781493193288

MaMsimanga

Vuyiswa Norman (nee` Nodada) aka MaMsimanga is an Andrews University (USA, Michigan) BBA (Accounting) graduate class of 1996, who took extra interest in literary analysis and writing. Since then, she fell in love with writing. When the writing bug got the best of her in 2006, she further honed her writing talent by taking a series of writing courses with the acclaimed Amanda Patterson’s school. In 2009, MaMsimanga wrote a short story published in Germany, which earned her an invitation to The Cup of Cultures in 2010 in Berlin, Germany. She is currently working in the Social Development sector in South Africa as a Finance Manager as she boasts both left brain and right brain brilliance. She is a rare legend in the making. Her voice is fresh, daring and innovative. She is the only author who dares to say God is Ubuntu.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by MaMsimanga. 663797

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4931-9327-1

             EBook       978-1-4931-9328-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

AMP

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from The Amplified Bible, Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified Bible, New Testament copyright © 1954, 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

Rev. date: 09/02/2016

Xlibris

0800-056-3182

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

Email: [e-mail]

Cell: 072 343 6200

Twitter:MaMsimanga@MaEveolution

Facebook: Vuyiswa Nodada

Cover designed by Resistance Makala (REEMMS INC.)

Contents

FOREWORD

PREFACE

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PART I – Essence

Eve’olution

Her Majesty

The Phoenix

House of Beauty

Ubuntu Art

Yonder Wonder

Called To Excellence

PART II – History

Her Story

But My Grandmother

Sharpeville Day

Reflections

The Nightmare

Valour

The Harvest

9 June 2010

27 October 2013

Evolution of my Wars I

Evolution of my Wars II

Evolution of my Wars III

Remember Freedom Day

Remember Mandela Day

Re-Right Tomorrow’s History I

Re-Right Tomorrow’s History II

My New Africa

PART III – Lament

Ghosts

Boomerang

The Eternal Lament

When Silence Is NOT Golden

Wage War

How Long?

PART IV – Passions, Virtues and Vices

Miss Qonxa

The Dragonfly

Dear Diary

Go Green

Mama

The Love Bug

Interrogation Room

A No Wife

Prayer For Our Zaharas

PART V – Tributes

The Supernova

Had I Numbered My Days

One Too Many

The Enemy

Rude Awakening

This African at the Altar I

The Candle that Illumined the Universe

PART VI – Prayer and Praise

Morning Prayer

Full Moon

The Midnight Prayer

Beyond Limits

This African at the Altar II

This African at the Altar III

This African at the Altar IV

This African at the Altar V

This African at the Altar VI

This African at the Altar VII

This African at the Altar VIII

This African at the Altar IX

This African at the Altar X

Front Page Sermons I

Front Page Sermons II

Ubuntu in Action

Front Page Sermons III

Do Not Cry the Beloved Church

Happy Day

This Princess Before the Throne

A Shower for a Tear

REFERENCES

FOREWORD

Romantic offerings in literature are arguably guilty of a pervasive notion of women as subjects to be loved rather than understood. Such misconceptions have contributed significantly to the poetic canon and its misconceptions of the female subject. While such a canon has to inevitably denude the female body in order to suggest notions of romance for the gendered glance—a rather urgent demand in the heterosexist market and discourse—it ultimately strips the female subject of her complexity.

This collection establishes complexity as a critical notion in the poetic aesthetics. It does so within a limited scope defined as it is by geographical politics, race and class. It also rediscovers notions of faith and spirituality as redeeming factors to the stalemate of race and gender theories. The dominant narrative of reverence, worship and praise are strongly invoked, as though to echo that timeless letter written by the apostle Paul to the Corinthians: ‘and now abides faith, hope, and love…but the greatest of these is love’ 1 Corinthians 13:13. Living at a time when time itself has become a phantom, a time defined by excess on all fronts and very little of it left to investigate our lives, MaMsimanga braves the tide of our times, defined as it is by plenty on the outside and empty on the inside. She takes us to the crossroads of life’s meaning where we perhaps unwittingly missed the turn in our rush.

This collection comes from a series of reflections, intrapersonal dialogues, triumphs and defeats with questions of womanhood and the black experience. These are intimidating questions of living in a human body stripped of its spiritual essence. The corporate condition of such bodies has become fodder for race discourses that exploit the essentially existential emptiness now masquerading as racial predisposition. Underneath such seeming lucidities lie the half-truths based on the indifferent whims of biology.

Such theories at best serve to delay the real questions: Why are we here? And after we die, is that it? Do we really matter in the great scheme of things? Is there, after all, a great scheme of things? Such questions drive to the heart of the matter and MaMsimanga problematises the dialectic that informs such question through the apprehensions of her spiritual journey.

The work of this kind is never intended to bludgeon the conscience or contest the multifarious and complex processes of life. At best, it is an offering to be shared with the living and above all, it is a letter to posterity about our sojourn on the planet and the joys it afforded us while we were here. Perhaps in the baffling streets of the future, they also find a sorority with us.

By

Mxolisi Vincent Norman

PREFACE

Literary reflections by women are often a response to patriarchy. This tendency, however, limits the female artist from mining the many facets of femininity. My experiences have allowed me to transcend this ceiling. I have been fortunate enough to grow up in an era where the heroes and breadwinners in my life were women (heroines). My mother was forced to become the sole breadwinner when she became a widow at the prime age of thirty-five. My father, the late Pastor Vuyisile Nodada, died when she was pregnant, expecting the fourth child. She headed our family with great leadership. It is women like my mother that have hoisted my literary reflections beyond simply responding to patriarchal oppression.

I also write from a vantage point spanning both epochs of the present day South Africa and its sociopolitical past. I was born in Mdantsane, a black township in the Eastern Cape hailed to be the home of legends. My life has been enriched by experiences gathered from township life in Butterworth, Tembisa and Soweto, a university life in Somerset West/Cape Town (an extension campus of Andrews University, Michigan, USA), urban life in Johannesburg northern suburbs, urban life in Pietermaritzburg, special experiences from a small rural town named Umtshezi (Estcourt) in KwaZulu-Natal and exposure to rural life in the old Transkei. As I stand in this space, a vista of experiences and memories converge in my mind breeding a fresh voice that transcends beyond simply responding to oppression caused by colonisation and apartheid. My voice speaks beyond the victim’s perspective and beyond the gaze of a downtrodden African woman.

The ‘Eve’ in my title suggests that my genesis is literally rooted in the Garden of Eden with Eve as my alpha mother as I believe her to be the first mother of the human race. In Eve, I was glorious, immortal and a moral giant. I was the personification of Ubuntu. I was in a perfect world I coin Princessdom. Then the development that I coin Eve’olution started. Sin became the big bang that set Eve’s degenerative evolution in motion. In the sin-plagued Eve, I lost my glory, my crown of dominion and lost equality with man. I lost Ubuntu as my first point of call. Because of sin, Adam was mandated to head over me, breeding patriarchy and misogyny. Sexism, racism, tribalism and classism, the progeny of sin, dealt me a raw deal and hurled me lower than a doormat in a place I coin Shackledom. Needless to say, the beginning of Eve’olution was not anything near progressive development. This perspective has elevated my writing to capture that which is spiritual, philosophical and abstract about our lives. As I had chosen Christianity to be my spiritual path, most of my thoughts are inspired and underpinned by texts from the Bible. I guess that shelves my book under Christian Poetry. If you don’t have that shelf, kindly create one please.

My husband, who is a charmer of note, has a dozen endearment names for me. But when he needs a favour or my full attention, he calls me ‘Nkosikazi’. Nkosikazi is a Nguni title for a wife. For me, Nkosikazi means more than just a title like ‘Mrs’, more than just a status like ‘wife’ and it bears more respect than ‘madam.’ Maybe the writer in me reads too much into it. Nkosi means king, so if you dissect the title Nkosi-kazi, in loosely translated English you get what I coin kingess, as in