Ukugula ayinayo ovame kakhulu - ngonyaka ngamunye million labantu ukubhalisa akukho kuka izikhathi ezinhlanu. Ngokuvamile lesi sifo eba polycythemia asebeqinile abantu abadala. Ngokwezibalo, kukhona abesilisa ahlupheke lesi sifo kuthiwa kahlanu kakhulu ukudlula abantu besifazane. Namuhla, sihlolisise ngalesi simo njengoba polycythemia, izimpawu kanye nokwelashwa kwezifo kuchazwe lapha ngezansi. Maybe we can borrow coordinates from Mantombi Matotiyana’s debut solo offering to the black musical archive titled Songs of Greeting, Healing and Heritage. The album (a production of the Africa Open Institute) runs for just under an hour and gives more than it takes. The little that it takes it finds a way to compensate for. The project is aware of its strengths and itself as a condition of possibility but is also not asleep to its limitations. It is aware of what it can give and what it stands to lose. The preservation of heritage, the passing down of affected ways of life and traditions, alternative ways of communicating, of crying and of resisting. To do this though, it has to go through the unrelenting hand that commodifies, appropriates and continuously distorts. The hand has, from the initial contact done that. More frankly, there is no aspect of black culture in South Africa that was not radically affected by colonialism and much more recently apartheid. Mantombi invites us to think with her about the implications of this period of history that was without doubt mostly characterized by tragedy. A tragedy continuing, or, at the very least, permeating every moment of our present.