Plagiaat? Appropriasie? Kulturele oorplanting? Huldiging?: Brandende kwessies rondom mondelinge tradisies – Eugène Marais en die San opnuut bekyk

Abstract

Summary South African literature has a long history of cultural translation or transplantation from the San or Bushman2 oral tradition. This phenomenon of the appropriation of the voice of the extinct San can be traced though all genres, but is especially prevalent in children's books, poetry, and fiction. Through a historical overview of degrees of cultural translation (in all its literary variations) clarification is sought for issues involved in Stephen Watson's plagiarism charge in 2005 against Antjie Krog for her The Stars Say “tsau” (2002). The central question is whether this practice of importing elements of San orality and culture into South African literature constitutes an illegal appropriation of the First People's heritage, or whether it is an ongoing form of homage, as George Steiner suggested of all forms of translation in 1999. Read as a tribute, keeping San cultural memory alive, this literature of cultural transplantation is an archive consisting of the stronger culture's interpretations of an extinct tradition, with the latter-day “bacteria of values invisible but invidious” (Leggo 1995: 40). Eugène Marais's Dwaalstories (1927) serves as a final focal point.