by Njabulo Ngobese
Dialogue Amongst Civilisations participant Shailja Patel paid a visit to DUT City Campus last week Wednesday as part of the 15th Annual Poetry Africa Workshops. Accompanied by Sandile Dikeni (South Africa) & Dikson (Zimbabwe), the workshop quickly showed signs of good things to come.
In her current visit to South Africa, Patel highlighted her brief tour around Cator Manor a township located on the outskirts of Durban and how much it intrigued her with its rich history and potential to produce good significant stories for international audiences. She also spoke of the Cop 17 conference taking place in Durban later this year as she encouraged local journalists to start producing their own stories on their background environment before someone from outside snatches the opportunity.
In true Patel style, she went out of the norm and initiated a poem amongst the audience that beared relevance to the upcoming Cop 17 summit. A piece that had the audience actively involved chanting "what are we brewing?", "who's gonna drink it?", who's gonna love it?" the purpose of the poem was to give students an idea of dazzling the rest of the world with the rich stories Durban and South Africa had to offer.
She closed off the workshop with a poem that was inspired by her colleague promoting a message of unity amongst society.
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