Palestine in My Heart: Poetry and Sculpture

In the shadow of Israel’s genocide of the people of Gaza (almost all refugees from the ethnic 
cleansing perpetrated by Jewish settlers in 1948), this collection, drawn from poems written over 
several years and culminating in the fire of the current onslaught, captures the agony and suffering of 
a defenceless people attacked with high precision weapons and a propaganda machine dedicated 
to advancing US/NATO control over the ‘non-white’ world. By turns lyrical (in evoking the hopes and 
pain experienced by a civilian population) and satirical (in describing the monstrous criminality of 
Israeli leaders like Benjamin ‘Netanyaope’), Ntuli gives free rein to his intense empathy for victims of 
unending injustice and the horror of life in their concentration camp. This blend of tones is 
complemented by different structural devices involving dialogues, elegies and laments, and draws on 
a range of South African references which bring the subject matter close to home. It is a testimony to 
Ntuli’s creative powers that this single subject (solidarity with Palestine) does not lead to repetition or 
sentimentality.