TAWANDA CHARI & TAKUDZWA HILLARY CHIWANZA
When Stogie T released 'The Empire of Sheep' in 2019, he further cemented his reputation as one of the most thoughtful MCs on the continent – a lyricist who wields words like a historian, a griot, and a critic all at once. The project was born out of countless hours of dialogue between Stogie, his mother (an ex-guerrilla with uMkhonto weSizwe), and many others who had lived through South Africa’s armed struggle. It’s a body of work that dares to carry the weight of history, threading together stories that are heroic, treacherous, ugly, beautiful, and deeply human.
One of the standout cuts from the album, Love and War featuring the soulful Lucille Slade, is a haunting meditation on the contradictions of heroism. On the surface, the track honours the bravery of the South African liberation struggle’s foot soldiers. These were ordinary men and women who risked everything for freedom, their sacrifices permanently etched into the history books as valiant acts of radical resistance.
They are venerated as heroes and rightly so. But Stogie T refuses to romanticize without complication. He reminds us that war is not only the stuff of monuments and national anthems; war is also death, secrecy, and collateral damage in the most personal sense. He paints a true picture of the good and ugly of the struggle; bereft of any prevarication.
Like a double edged sword, the same men who are hailed for their courage also left behind scars and skeletons their families may never recover from. Such is the struggle. Almost as if he agrees with Frantz Fanon that our hands do really get dirty during the struggle for self-determination. Many, thinking they would never return home, sought solace in mistresses, fathered children away from their marriages, and carried secrets back with them from the battlefield. The fight for freedom created heroes in the nation’s eyes, but sometimes villains in their households. Deeply loathed villains.
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| The album cover. |
Lucille Slade’s voice adds a haunting tenderness to this sombre meditation, underlining the humanity of soldiers who were more than just fighters. They were flawed men navigating impossible choices. And Stogie T, in a striking moment, even draws parallels to Martin Luther King Jr., whose leadership in the struggle for civil rights did not excuse his personal failings.
One of the most cutting lines in the song captures this paradox with chilling clarity:
From afar there’s some charm in a mushroom cloud. But when the dust settles that’s still an atom bomb.
It’s a line that compels us to candidly acknowledge that even the most celebrated victories carry devastation at their core.
For listeners from countries like Zimbabwe, the resonance is sharp. Beyond politics, many of us know the paradox firsthand within our families. The fathers, mothers, and guardians who clothed us, fed us, and schooled us are in equal measure saints and villains. Our heroes in the domestic sense are sometimes the same people who could be abusive, manipulative, or absent. It’s a painful contradiction, but one that reflects the truth of human complexity. It is a concrete fact of life.
And maybe that is Stogie T’s greatest lesson on Love and War: learning to hold these contradictions together without pretending they don’t exist. Because sometimes life is just sour like that. Our heroes can also be villains. That doesn’t mean we are inherently better than them—given the same circumstances, many of us might fall into the same traps, or worse. But maturity lies in the separation of things: honouring the light without ignoring the shadows.
Five years on, Love and War still feels the same. It isn’t a liberation war story alone, but a mirror held up to our own households, our own contradictions, our own flawed heroism. And perhaps that’s why the song, and The Empire of Sheep as a whole, feels timeless.
Stream the album here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mnb2sPZtj8x0_OZL-dGESeXpABy1M4cVA&si=wVS9BEmFOAQiMGML
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