Durban - Their performance at the London Olympics cemented the names of South African athletes as serious contenders in the medal stakes.
But Durban resident and poet Mbali Vilakazi was not satisfied with just their wins – so she won “gold” of her own.
With the Paralympic Games around the corner, Vilakazi looked for inspiration to swimming superstar Natalie Du Toit, who had her leg amputated as a teenager following a road accident and in 2008 made history as the first woman amputee to qualify for the Olympics. Her poem was titled Swim Your Own Race.
Vilakazi was one of five finalists in international competition The Poetry Games hosted by NPR, formerly National Public Radio, which is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organisation in the US.
“I received an e-mail from them, inviting me to participate. Coming from a broadcasting background (she was the co-producer and presenter of the weekly youth show – the Radio Workshop on SAFM), it kind of took me by surprise,” she said.
She said that all the participants had been asked to send in recordings of themselves reading their poems – the recordings were aired on NPR and listeners were asked to vote.
“What took me by surprise was the feedback I received from people who had heard my poem – people were tweeting me, sending me messages on Facebook… They wanted to share how it made them feel and what they were doing when they heard it. It resonated with them.”
She said that she had chosen Du Toit because she had been so humbled by her story.
“It gave me the urge to celebrate. I felt inspired and it made me ask myself: ‘What excuse do I have?’ It made me want to be better,” she said.
Du Toit was delighted:
“I have had an extremely rough time for the last 18 months and this poem has in turn inspired me. To Mbali Vilakazi, I am honoured. Thank you and many congratulations!” - Daily News
“Swim Your Own Race” - by Mbali Vilakazi
For South African Swimmer Natalie du Toit – the only female amputee to qualify for the Olympic games in over a century.
“It’s quite a tough thing, because if you swim able bodied, nobody says, ‘ah, she has half a leg we’re going to go slower against her,’ – nobody.”
There is life here
Beneath the surface tension
of shattered
bones, dreams and splintered muscles
things broken
and those that may never be replaced.
Pulling the weight of it,
you do not tread the water wounded
and in retreat
By the determined strokes of fate
you swim your own race
The shoulder of your strength leaning
against the turn –
the eye that didn’t see that day,
stopping the clock on the vision of your time.
You continue to beat
into the heart of the spectacle
Manchester, Beijing, Athens and
London.
In no ordinary silence
do we watch
our own feared hopes waking
enthralled
and now, breathless
in awe –
you are unforgettable.
Woman of scars, and triumph
the dance is fluid
unexpected
tears of loss flowing
towards your many firsts
You are the order of Ikhamanga
in Gold.
A flower,
beautiful and unique
among the Baobabs of the land
Your shape shifting,
The Disabled-abled body
A quest
untempered by its tests –
“if you want to get there, you go on”
You have already won
You always do
And we do too
We are the believers.
The message in its possibility:
A new freestyle,
Long distance
And in your own lane.
Copyright Mbali Vilakazi 2012
Podium position for poem on paralympian.