South African Literature: A Global Lesson in One Country

Abstract

The literature of South Africa provides a unique microcosm for examining issues of race, class, and gender. The lessons about how and why literature is created in South Africa have implications for the entire world as polarization on racial, economic, class, and political grounds intensifies. In South Africa, the so-called first and third worlds exist side by side in stark contrast. Since 1948, when the Nationalist Party, composed primarily of the Afrikaans-speaking people, gained political ascendancy, the system of apartheid has influenced every aspect of life. The repressive and total control of the government over the other races has had a profound influence upon the people. Literary life has not escaped this all-pervasive influence. While the independence of many African nations during the 1950s and 60s ushered in an African literary boom of increasing sophistication, maturity, and breadth of subject matter, the obverse has occurred in South Africa. Literature by both Blacks and Whites has become internally focused upon the peculiar nature of South Africa's problems. It has become parochial, and a most repellent kind of parochialism it is, the literature of imprisonment, repression, guilt, and exile. South African writers have become trans-