A history of South African literature

Abstract

A History of South African Literature; Christopher Heywood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 310pp. ISBN: 0521554853. £45. There are, of course, numerous ways of approaching and writing history. Christopher Heywood's A History of South African Literature is an optimistic, inclusive and recuperative one. His vision is perhaps best expressed in the words of Nat Nakasa, which he quotes (and which, incidentally, were echoed in Thabo Mbeki's speech at the adoption of the South African Constitution in 1996): 'My people' are South Africans. Mine is the history of the Great Trek. Ghandi' s passive resistance in Johannesburg, the wars of Ceteswayo and the dawn raids which gave us the treason trials in 1956. AU these are South African things. They are part of me.(p.l40) As such, Heywood's is a history of progress; from the darkness and oppression of colonialism and apartheid, through protest and creolisation, to the light and liberation of democracy. It is a history of self-recognition (and, although he doesn't say it, self-acceptance) and resolution. It is a celebration of the creole (rather than the hybrid, which is infertile) and, although it hinges on the tragedy of Sharpeville, the event is portrayed as the turning point upon which transformation hinged. The book ends with a description of Popi, a character in Mda's novel The Madonna of Excelsior and the progeny of a Sotho mother and an Afrikaner father, admiring herself in the mirror. is no longer ashamed of her appearance, she no longer hides her hair under a turban, She loved her yellow-coloured face. (Mda 2002:266). As Heywood explains in his introduction Her rite of passage is complete when she accepts her identity as a powerful and beautiful South African. (p.17). Heywood's vision of a cohesive creole society (p.4), where South Africans, [are] member[s] of a single species (p. 131) and where there is lively interaction and dialogue across the various literary traditions, is certainly appealing - but is it true? The impression he gives, furthermore, of a (a nation?) having arrived, leaves me with a feeling of unease. The flood of euphoria and optimism surrounding the first democratic elections has faded and the Simunye - We are one! ads that flashed across South African television screens in 1996 to announce the glossy, new-look SABCl, have stopped (replaced, incidentally, by a new slogan Ya Mampela - The Real Thing). Perhaps 1 am cynical, but my overall impression is not one of commonality, but of everyone fighting for the sanctity of his own corner.1 Lewis Nkosi has recently written of the shattered psyches of post-apartheid South Africans whose personalities have been warped to an unacceptable degree by a racially toxic environment and obscured by the fairy tale of the Rainbow Nation. Malvern van Wyk Smith has queried the much-vaunted claim of mutual influence across literary traditions prior to J. M. Coetzee, and joins with others in expressing scepticism over the notion of a national literature - and the very idea of writing the history of one.2 Heywood cannot have been unaware of these opinions. A symposium was held in 1995 at which leading scholars interrogated the issues surrounding the construction of such a history. Their papers were later published in the collection: Rethinking South African Literary History.3 An examination of some of the debates in the field and the potential difficulties of the venture, the acknowledgment of previous attempts and a positioning of himself in relation to the material, might have helped. Having said this, if this were my only concern, all would not be lost. As it is, it is only the beginning. The book is divided into two: Part I Towards Sharpeville and Part II Transformation. In each there are further divisions in the form of chapters devoted to different genres: poetry, theatre and prose. In Part I there is an additional chapter: Prose classics, which does not have its equivalent in the post-1960 section, presumably because Heywood thinks it is too soon to attribute classic status. …