The Many ?Spaces? of the African Writer: The Meeting of African Writers in Durban, South Africa, 2?7 March 1998

Abstract

In March 1997, a group of South African writers was invited to a writers' festival in Djibouti, where they were able to exchange ideas with some of their counterparts from francophone Africa. success ofthe Djibouti experience led to the conception of a more elaborate follow-up that took place 2-7 March 1998 in the South African port city of Durban. Tagged The Time of the Writer and placed within the contentious thematic ambit of commitment, the festival was organized jointly by the Centre for Creative Arts of the University of Natal in Durban, the local Alliance Francaise, and the Johannesburg-based Institut Francais d'Afrique du Sud (IFAS). Apart from literary manifestations, the organizers included a num? ber of art exhibitions in the program in order to highlight the interface text and image. caliber of the invited writers and the discursive poignancy of the debate topics clearly underscore the significance of the meeting at this particular point in the evolution of African literature. From the francoph? one side of the linguistic divide came Tierno Monenembo (Guinea), Abdelkader Djemai (Algeria), Abdourahman Ali Waberi (Djibouti), Idris Youssouf Elmi (Djibouti), and Edouard Glissant (Martinique). anglophones included Breyten Breytenbach (South Africa), Farida Rarodia (South Africa), Zakes Mda (South Africa), Marguerite Poland (South Africa), Barbara Trapido (South Africa), Yvonne Vera (Zimbabwe), Lettie Viljoen (South Africa), Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), and this writer, also from Nigeria. well-choreographed dance to which the invited writers were treated on the opening night at the Elizabetii Sneddon Theatre, University of Natal, drew powerful attention to the idea of space in a postmodern, global capitalist context. Performed by the Siwela Sonke Dance Company before a capacity crowd, the dance, appropriately titled Shifting Spaces, Tilting Times, took the audience through the mutations that our physical, urbanized space has undergone in the twentieth century. These mutations have resulted in a certain geography of chaos, forcing the subject to deploy such weapons as hybridity and multiculturalism in the bid to negotiate his survival within a certain existential impasse. Using appropriate visual effects and background architectural devices ranging from huts to modern skyscrapers, Shifting Spaces subtiy brought out the familiar theme of the manichean binarism between tradition and modernity that has been responsible for many of the tensions in our existential space. A note of warning undergirded the performance: our inability to resolve these con-