Identity and culture in Mi S’dumo Hlatshwayo’s worker poetry

Abstract

Through an examination of selected poems from Mi S’dumo Hlatshwayo’s oeuvre, this article examines the role of worker poetry in the construction and articulation of a “worker identity”. The article furthermore examines the worker movement’s attempt, through this poetry, to present alternative symbols through an oppositional culture and confrontational performance. Drawing from a wealth of rural and urban poetic traditions, worker poets also redefine the power dynamics characterised by the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed, the powerful and the powerless, typified in the employer-employee relationship to articulate their identity in their own terms.