Poem for our new Cape Town Labour Corps Memorial unveiled

Poets Koleka Putuma and Daljit Nagra have collaborated to honour South African Military Labourers from the First World War. Their poem and epitaph were specially commissioned by the CWGC and Royal Society of Literature for our new Cape Town Labour Corps Memorial and expresses the sentiment of loss and retrospective recognition in the context of modern-day South Africa.

Koleka Putuma (left) and Daljit Nagra (right) visiting the site of the new Cape Town Labour Corps Memorial.

Our new Cape Town Labour Corps Memorial honours the contribution of predominantly Black South African military labourers of the First World War who were previously uncommemorated.

The servicemen served in non-combatant roles such as porters, stevedores, wagon drivers and railway workers who made essential contributions to the war effort, but were overlooked for decades. They worked sustaining the British and colonial forces during the East Africa campaign.

The Memorial is situated within the historic Delville Wood Memorial Garden in the heart of Cape Town’s Company’s Garden and will be opening in January 2025.

Claire Horton CBE, Director General of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, said: “Since our founding in 1917, the CWGC has drawn from architectural, literary and horticultural expertise and influences to design our global commemorative estate. With the South African designed Cape Town Labour Corps Memorial, we wanted to create a fitting literary tribute which speaks to the present and resonates with the communities commemorated. For the future it is vital this memorial connects with today – allowing us to understand and honour the contributions of those not previously commemorated. I am delighted with the new poem and all the opportunities it brings.”

Daljit Nagra, Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, echoed this sentiment, highlighting the project’s broader impact: “Writing this poem has been an incredible learning experience for me and a truly great honour that I shall always treasure. We have offered some words that might function as a starting point, we have lit a path and direction for some types of conversations that might follow our poem. The poet gives the words that speak like a dream and the reader must make reality of them; for this alone, I hope we have offered a helping hand.”

South African poet, Koleka Putuma was selected by a panel convened through the Royal Society of Literature to co-write with the Royal Society of Literature chair and poet Daljit Nagra for this memorial.

Koleka said: “The lives of the men commemorated by this memorial are part of our collective history. Their contributions, though forgotten by many, helped shape the world we live in today. By visiting the memorial, by sitting with the poem, by contemplating their stories, we will honour them. We give them the tribute they were denied over one hundred years ago, and in doing so, we write ourselves into the future they helped to create.” 

The Commemorative verse written by Daljit Nagra and Koleka Putuma

your legacies are preserved here

We are intertwined with your story
Ever implicated,
we write to fill the void of history books
contemplating newer hopes.

1914-18
a fragment of your life,

not all of who you were or what you left behind;
villages steeped in faith and traditions.

Grandfathers, sons, uncles, brothers and descendants of Chiefs,
Your loved ones are still waiting for news of your return;

did we not also stand for the cause.

Dear far-flung warrior your descendants
cannot bury your spirit which was torn
from the flesh and lost amid raucous time.

Not all of your graves are beneath the sea,
neither are your memories preserved in stone,

as anonymous men on horses,
as marbles set aside for a select few,

as processional marches to honour partial truths.

Ever implicated,
we write to fill the void of history books

There were no beginnings or endings
marked by announcements or symbols,

no monuments or rituals to record losses and absences,
no letters received,
no news of your death or the site of your burials.

You are names and ledgers swollen into one another
Remembering hurts and heals

So what is a fitting tribute or who benefits
With that in mind, observe the garden shadows

Kneel before each memorial head on which your name rises
for the sky, a name among names who gave his blood for our blood.

Inscribed in Khoi and San Land,

your legacies are preserved here.

Would you rest here
now we’d salute you.

Koleka Putuma

Koleka is a multi-award-winning theatre practitioner, writer and poet. Her work tackles themes such as homophobia, womanhood, race and the dynamics of relationships, religion and politics. Her bestselling debut collection of poems Collective Amnesia is now in its twelfth print run and is prescribed for study at tertiary level in South African Universities and across the world. Collective Amnesia received the 2018 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, was named 2017 book of the year by the City Press and one of the best books of 2017 by The Sunday Times and Quartz Africa. In April 2021, Manyano Media published her sophomore collection of poems, Hullo, Bu-Bye, Koko, Come In, with forthcoming translations in Dutch, Danish and French. Her theatre works include the stage adaption of Hullo, Bu-bye, Koko, Come In, UHM, Woza Sarafina, Mbuzeni and No Easter Sunday For Queers. Her theatre for young audiences include Ekhaya and SCOOP: Kitchen play for carers and babes, the first South African theatre work for audiences aged 0 – 12 months old. In 2022, Putuma was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award - a first time award for Poetry. She is a Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative finalist for theatre, a Forbes Africa Under 30 Honoree, recipient of the Imbewu Trust Scribe Playwriting Award, Mbokodo Rising Light award, CASA playwriting award and the 2019 Distell Playwriting Award for her play No Easter Sunday for Queers. She is the Founder and Director of Manyano Media, a multidisciplinary creative company that empowers and produces stories by black queer women.

Daljit Nagra

Daljit has published four books of poetry. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, Council of the Society of Authors and a PBS New Generation Poet. Daljit’s collections have won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and the Cholmondeley Award and been shortlisted for the Costa Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize. His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, LRB and the TLS, and his journalism in the FT and Guardian. The inaugural Poet-in-Residence for Radio 4 and 4 Extra, Daljit presents the weekly broadcast programme Poetry Extra. His poem ‘We’re Lighting Up the Nation’ was performed at the Coronation concert by actor James Nesbitt to an audience of millions worldwide.