Nation's Bounty

For nearly a decade Nontsizi Mgqwetho contributed poetry to a Johannesburg newspaper, Umteteli wa Bantu, the first and only female poet to produce a substantial body of work in isiXhosa. Apart from what is revealed in these writings, very little is known about her life. She explodes on the scene with her swaggering, urgent, confrontational woman’s poetry on 23 October 1920, sends poems to the news...