Jeff Opland writes in his Preface: "This is an account of my association with a Xhosa praise poet: it is my poem in praise of the poet" (xi). The imbongi is David Yali-Manisi; the fellowship between the two men spanned almost thirty years, from December 1970 to Manisi's death, at the age of 73, in September 1999.

Manisi died at his home, a lonely, rapidly dilapidating mud house in a dusty valley raked by scarifying winds. And I am left with his legacy, haunted by recollections of my improbable relationship with a man whom I consider one of Africa's greatest poets, a man who died unknown and unrecognised, in crippled and crippling obscurity. And I can no longer put off recording my recollections. He left me the priceless bequest of his poems: in presenting them here, I am restoring his urgent voice, now silent forever. (2)

The narrative begins with Opland's account of the tradition of izibongo. Opland situates Manisi's poetry in a well-established tradition, its leading exponent being S.E.K. Mqhayi. Xhosa "praise poetry" deals in praise and blame; the poems are not epics. They are non-narrative, although, "The stuff of history forms an integral part...since the imbongi tends to establish a person's identity in relation to his ancestors, to confirm the continuing relevance of the past to the present" (114). The poems serve as both sacred and profane communications and the diviner's skins signify his essentially liminal position as he bridges the world of the homestead and the wild world without.

Opland situates the story in his own experiences, some preceding his meeting with Manisi, and some occuring independently of his alliance with Manisi. Thus this is less a formal biography of Manisi than the story of the partnership of the two men. Opland devotes chapters to Manisi's early career (1947-1955), their first meeting (1970) and subsequent collaboration, first under the auspices of Rhodes University (in the late 1970s and early 1980s) and then in the US, in 1988, when Manisi was a Fulbright Scholar. In this account of their fruitful affiliation, Opland goes some way to ensuring that Manisi's poetry (all of his books are now out of print) not only sings out again - for he records the English translations of many poems, with his explanations of their significance - but also, by extension, makes indigenous South African oral poetry reach out to readers unfamiliar with the genre.

I found the poems and the expositions rich and rewarding, but did wish that Opland had given more information about Manisi's performances and had been able to convey more about the poetic effects of the Xhosa originals- the sound patterns and their effects, the gestures, the rhythmic flows, the Xhosa imagery. What, I found myself wondering, has been lost in print and in translation? Opland himself admits to this - perhaps inevitable - weakness. His translations miss the full richness of the wordplay and the sound play. "Ingenuity was no match for creativity.... What was I to do with a diction rooted in rural life? How was I to render one verb that described the action of wriggling closer to a fire on your bum?" (166):

I was nowhere near understanding these poems... from inside the tradition, making connection between disparate elements, seeing implied comparisons and contrasts. I could not approach the poem as a poem. All I did was record it and, much later, find time and occasion to sit down with the poet (preferably), who transcribed it as I laboriously played my recording over and over, translated it and answered all my questions of interpretation. I was involved in the text superficially, concerned to establish its meaning to the point that I could produce an accurate translation.... The poems came into sharper focus, but I was peering down a microscope. (163-4)

Nevertheless, whatever the losses in translation, the book offers non-Xhosa readers a treasure. Opland's use of life writing to draw into the awareness of oral poetry a whole new group of uninitiated people is particularly effective: it is the story of the partnership that draws one in and along; one learns a considerable amount about the poetry as an offshoot. Perhaps this need to learn about izibongo is not confined to English-speakers; Manisi himself "lamented the Xhosa disregard for their own traditions, and viewed [Opland's] efforts as building bridges between black and white in South Africa" (169).

Opland shows how oral poetry, and especially Manisi's, is politically charged: throughout his career, Manisi vilified racial domination and colonial territorial dispossession and disenfranchisement. Recurrent in his poems are references to greedy whites "who watch the calf's birth to get the milk first" (177), who brought the Bible but who turned into soldiers and who really served Satan. "[The] English came and ground their heels on us,/ in came the Boers to treat us boorishly,/ the French arrived and froze up on us,/ then the Germans looked at us sternly" (179). Always insisting on the unity of Africans, "for we are the African family" (190), Manisi exhorted the young to become educated:

So set your sights and take root in learning,

for no country's ever been won by fools.

Oh the dunces and the dumb-bells,

blind to the road they follow;

oh the dummies and dodos,

strangers to perception.

Now you've been set in motion,

to be tomorrow's leaders,

come together as one,

saying, "Back then our fathers held this Africa,

and today we're simply reclaiming it."

Don't reclaim with spear and assegai,

reclaim it with keenness of mind,

make your minds a home for stars,

where the blazing sun illumines the moon,

so we hold this land once again. (191)

According to Opland, in 1954 Manisi wrote the earliest recorded poem about Mandela. The poem, given in full in translation, is "astonishingly prophetic about his character and that of Africa's emergent nations" (69), proclaiming as it does the casting off by small nations of the colonial yoke (this was three years before Ghana was to become the first African state to gain independence in 1957) and Mandela's trail-blazing challenge to white authority:

the poet names you Gleaming Road:

you set Africa blazing;

the rising sun scorched arrant rogues,

flushed the thugs with roasted pates;

hasslers rattled in fear of the rabble;

bereft of plans the ruffians dithered;

the gents fled the flaring land. (72)

The relationship between the white academic and the Xhosa imbongi was to prove beneficial - although unequally - to both men. It formed the cornerstone of Opland's studies of indigenous South African oral poetry, specifically Xhosa praise poetry, and was to influence positively Manisi's output and to secure "the preservation of much of Manisi's work" (21). Opland recorded and, with Manisi's help, translated and interpreted Manisi's izibongo. He also ensured, at times, that Manisi received recompense for his poetry and was afforded opportunities "to enhance his self-respect as a performing artist" (3). Given their differences in race, educational status and class, the acknowledgement that their relationship was an inequitable one is unsurprising; during the apartheid years and beyond (even, Opland writes, for a brief period at Vassar College in the US), "our work together and our dealings with each other were bedevilled by racial stereotypes" (21). Nevertheless, the cooperation which began with Opland in the position of empowered subject desiring knowledge of its object - Manisi's art and craft - did not retain this simple form. Increasingly, Opland saw himself "sitting at [Manisi's] feet" (3), while Manisi, "fifteen years my senior, possessing a wisdom and dignity and composure I could only ever aspire to, came to call me his father" (3). The connection was not simply professional. "Quite apart from his towering poetic talent... Manisi himself engaged me.... Manisi had an immediately impressive integrity, a wholeness that never wavered, even when he was broken, drunk or under the greatest stress" (106).

Opland explains the book's title, derived from a letter written by Manisi in which the poet likened their relationship to that of the dassie (Manisi) and the hunter (Opland). He expressed this in the Xhosa metaphor, uwewe weembila waziwa ngumzingeli; this translates as the hunter knows the rock rabbit's lair as well as the dassie does itself. Demonstrating something of the hunter's knowledge, Opland opens (in English) and closes (in Xhosa) the book with his own praise poem to Manisi: "he's Phakamile who elevated me"; "he's an accomplished scholar, an expert,/ he's one whose honed learning's like stars", reminding Manisi that, with the advent of an ANC government, "this Africa's come home" (vii).

While this may seem overly utopian to many, especially to those whose land claims remain unresolved, Opland's celebration of the advent of majority government and the outlawing of racism is not misplaced, coterminous as it is with the book's celebration of a man who was, in Opland's view, one of Africa's most gifted sons. In this book Opland shares with us the triumphs and also the trials and tribulations of their decades-long collaboration. In the light of the latter, their prolific output is extraordinary and Opland's effort to pay homage to the man and his work deserves the recognition of a wide readership.