South African Literature In English Research Articles

Stylising agency, identity and solidarities in South African English language classrooms

In a call for papers, the English Academy of Southern Africa (EASA) problematises what we perceive as the challenges of stylising agency, identity and solidarities in South African literature in English and English Language classroom encounters. The academy argues that speaking of literature and literacy in a single breath is to take for granted a linear relationship between literature and literacy. In interrogating ways of reading, this article contends that such proficiency is itself unstable and shifting, subject to different contexts and approaches inasmuch as these diverse ways are contingent upon material and technological changes. Literacy is a contested term: while it denotes the ability to read and write, a more nuanced understanding recognizes its capacity to confer value and influence aesthetic judgment. Already implicit in such an understanding is the mutually reinforcing relation between literature and literacy: the cognitive skillset which enables us to read is constantly being modified by what we read, and by the material forms which our reading takes. The entanglement of literature and literacy is embedded in cultures, compelling us to ask how particular teachers, writers and critical literary approaches shape our reading practices, our ways of seeing. The same entanglement generates questions about social justice, access to education, and material affordances.

Cavafy, Vos, Dangor: A belated reply to Phil van Schalkwyk

The influence of the Alexandrian Greek poet Constantin Cavafy on South African literature in English has received some attention, but his impact on Afrikaans letters merits further investigation. The present article partly fills that gap by examining a small body of poetry and fiction by Cas Vos and Achmat Dangor. It draws on an article by Phil van Schalkwyk to show what it might mean to write in the manner of Cavafy. Thereafter, it discusses Vos’s translations into Standard Afrikaans within his context. Achmat Dangor wrote his Cavafian poetry in a Vernacular Afrikaans. The article considers how writers and poets such as Mark Twain, David Dabydeen, Richard Rive and Adam Small have responded to the challenges and implications of writing in non-standard varieties of English and Afrikaans. Because irony and parody characterise Dangor’s initial debt to Cavafy, this piece also considers these devices. It then moves to a detailed analysis of the relevant poems by Dangor, including comparisons with the poems by Cavafy they evoke, and then to work by Dangor on Cavafy in Standard English in which he reflects on why Cavafy has influenced him. It argues that Dangor discarded a literary vernacular medium for Standard English because of the former’s implicit distinction between ‘ordinary’ (inarticulate, authentic) and ‘extra-ordinary’ (articulate, unauthentic) patois speakers. It concludes that Dangor’s switch to Standard English may have resolved a personal dilemma, but leaves unanswered many questions about the literary use of a patois.

Indigeneity in modernity. The cases of Kgebetli Moele and Niq Mhlongo

The study of South African English literature written by black people in the postapartheid period has focused, among others, on the so-called Hillbrow novels of Phaswane Mpe and Niq Mhlongo, and narratives such as Kgebetli Moele's Book of the Dead (2009) set in Pretoria. A number of studies show how the fiction of these writers handles black concerns that some critics believe to have replaced a thematic preoccupation with apartheid, as soon as political freedom was attained in 1994. However, adequate analyses are yet to be made of works produced by some of these black writers in their more rounded scrutiny of the first decade of democracy, apart from what one may describe as an indigenous/traditional weaning from preoccupation with the theme of apartheid. This study intends to fill this gap, as well as examine how such a richer social commentary is refracted in its imaginative critique of South African democratic life beyond its first decade of existence. I consider Mhlongo's novels Dog Eat Dog (2004) and After Tears (2007); together with Moele's narratives reflecting on the same epoch Room 207 (2006) and The Book of the Dead (2009). For the portrayal of black lives after ten years of democracy, I unpack the discursive content of Mhlongo's and Moele's novels Way Back Home (2013) and Untitled (2013) respectively. I probe new ways in which these postapartheid writers critique the new living conditions of blacks in their novelistic discourses. I argue that their evolving approaches interrogate literary imaginaries, presumed modernities and visions on socio-political freedom of a postapartheid South Africa, in ways deserving critical attention.  I demonstrate how Moele and Mhlongo in their novels progressively assert a self-determining indigeneity in a postapartheid modernity unfolding in the context of some pertinent discursive views around ideas such as colourblindness and transnationalism. I show how the discourses of the author's novels enable a comparison both their individual handling of the concepts of persisting institutional racism and the hegemonic silencing of white privilege; and distinguishable ways in which each of the two authors grapples with such issues in their fiction depicting black conditions in the first decade of South African democratic rule, differently from the way they do with portrayals of the socio-economic challenges faced by black people beyond the first ten years of South African democracy.

Post-apartheid transnationalism in black South African literature: a reality or a fallacy?

The quest of this paper is to probe whether globalising post-nationalism impacts on post- apartheid black South African English literature in a manner that suggests a blurring of distinctive African identities. This is done against the background that black South African literature right from its written beginnings in the early 19th century has coalesced into a taxonomically distinct entity forming a non-negligible component of South African literature written in English. I first analyse two post-apartheid novels written by the black writers Niq Mhlongo (Dog Eat Dog, 2004) and Sindiwe Magona (Beauty’s Gift, 2008). Secondly, I consider three post-apartheid novels by the black writers Phaswane Mpe (Welcome to Our Hillbrow, 2001), Kgebetli Moele (Room 207, 2009) and Kopano Matlwa (Coconut, 2007). I approach an examination of the five post-apartheid novels by separating them into two categories, as a way of indicating that black South African literature of this era remains as stylistically varied as that of earlier periods, albeit broadly within a mould continuing to characterise it as black. In order to justify an underlying common allegiance to localised identity cutting across the two categories in which I place these five post-apartheid novels, evidence of such a pervasively black feature is explained inter-categorically, even as intra-categorical affinities are demonstrated. I trace these two levels of typology within the conceptual framework of two main groups of theorists. The first group consists of commentators such as Carrol Clarkson in her assertion that the identity of black Africans in the post-apartheid era as portrayed in the fiction of writers such as Phaswane Mpe is such that “educated and urbanised individuals should no longer identify” with and share beliefs having to do with African identity and “a common and accountable response to that which the community represents.” The attitude of these critics has led to Leon de Kock seeing both black and white post-apartheid literature warranting interpretation with a “sense of a post-national configuration—indeed, now a transnational constellation.” I demonstrate in this paper that post-apartheid fiction written by blacks not only defies theorists’ subordination of imaginative writers’ centrality in social discourse, but goes further specifically to chafe against normative characterisation as transnational. The second main category constituting the theoretical matrix within which I examine the discourses of the five selected novels includes theorists such as Rob Gaylard, in his observation that Es’kia Mphahlele “can be seen as the founder of a tradition of black writing that runs through writers like Miriam Tlali, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Njabulo Ndebele and Zakes Mda to Phaswane Mpe,” with the thread splicing them together being a grounding of these authors’ writings in the philosophy or worldview of Afrikan Humanism.

Oral literature and the evolving Jim-goes-to-town motif: Some early Northern Sotho compared to selected post-apartheid novels written in English

The continuation of the discourses of apartheid era African language literature characterised by the makgoweng motif in post-apartheid English literature written by black people has not been studied adequately. In this study I explored ways in which characters of Northern Sotho linguistic and cultural groups represented the same consciousness in both categories of novels across time. I used the qualitative method and analysed some Northern Sotho primary texts, written before democracy in South Africa, as well as selected post-apartheid English novels written by black people. I focused on the mokgoweng motif to examine the nature of continuity in theme and outlook. I found that the novels considered pointed to a sustainable consciousness, transcending linguistic boundaries and time. The social function of such characterisation representing the formerly oppressed black people, is a revelation of their quest towards selfdefinition in a modern world. The portrayed characters significantly point to resilience among black people to appropriate modernity by making sense of the world in a manner sustaining their distinctive outlook. In this way, the Northern Sotho-speaking cultural groups display a consistent consciousness enabling them to manage properly their adaptation to an evolving modern or globalising environment across time. The implication was that a comparison of South African English literature written by black people with indigenous language literature enriched the study of black South African English literature.

Achieved Professionalism: <i>The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English and The Cambridge History of South African Literature*</i>

On May 31 1910, Professor John Purves of the Transvaal University College in Pretoria would use the coming into being of the Union of South Africa as an occasion to address South African literature, treating his subject with a mixture of regard and regret. literature of South Africa, he observed, not yet attained, like that of Canada and Australia to the dignity of a formal history. The number of books published yearly in the four Provinces of the Union form a paltry and inconsiderable total compared with the records of the other Dominions, and South Africa cannot yet be said to have developed a literary consciousness. Yet the books that have come out of South Africa and the books South Africa has inspired are neither few nor wholly insignificant, while the literary associations of the great sub-continent are probably richer than those of any other of the great Colonial territories (South African Cape Times, Commemorative Number, 31 May 1910, qtd. in Gray English South African Literature, 6).

By Way of an Introduction: A Memoir of Douglas Livingstone

My own campaign to advertise the interest of Douglas Livingstone's poetry, and by extension the value of contemporaneous South African English literature, involved me in a long, rewarding haul and the resultant fervent friendship. My Douglas Livingstone collection I have deposited with the Humanities Research Center at the Austin campus of the University of Texas, where it has joined their holdings like those of British periodicals such as the archives of London Magazine. It includes the typescript of an unpublished play called The Crusaders, as well as two revised texts of his radio drama, Sea My Winding Sheet (which became one of the five playscripts in Theatre One, the anthology of New South African Drama, which I edited for Ad. Donker in 1978, though the collection was carried by Herman Charles Bosman's long-lost Street-woman, and then current stage-plays by Fatima Dike, Athol Fugard and Pieter-Dirk Uys). There is the typescript of the much corrected foreword he had written for my debut slim volume, It's About Time of 1974, justifying his selection for the Mantis Poets series. One of the poems I submitted to him and rather liked had to go extinct like its subject, the Blue Whale, because he would let through no superficial double entendres which he reckoned I might later regret. Also included were various talks he had passed on. correspondence part of the collection, comprised mainly of letters in his characteristic inky scrawl, with a few postcards and notes covering the period of over two decades, runs to more than ninety items.

“[T]he origin of Charles:” Robert Semple’s Walks and Sketches at the Cape of Good Hope (1803)

This article examines Robert Semple’s Walks and Sketches at the Cape of Good Hope (1803), a largely forgotten early colonial text which intriguingly blends the genres of travel writing and the sentimental novel. My analysis seeks to place the text within the longer genealogies of South African literature in English by arguing that it anticipates a number of the central concerns this literature, among them sympathy for the suffering of others, the representation of racial and social difference, and the fracturing of metropolitan literary protocols in the colonial context.

Guides to . . . Histories of . . . Who Delineates the Field? On Reading <i>The Columbia Guide to South African Literature...</i>

The question in the title above is prompted by my being invited to review the recently published 251-page Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English since 1945 (2010), by Gareth Cornwell, Dirk Klopper and Craig MacKenzie. It is a guide that follows closely on another guide, the A–Z of African Writers: A Guide to Modern African Writing in English (2009), compiled by Robin Malan, and draws upon several earlier sources including the Companion to South African English Literature (Adey et al. 1986) and the extensive files of the National English Literary Museum (NELM).

BULLET THROUGH THE CHURCH: SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH AND THE FUTURE-ANTERIOR

(2010). BULLET THROUGH THE CHURCH: SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH AND THE FUTURE-ANTERIOR. English Studies in Africa: Vol. 53, 'Post-Transitional' South African Literature in English, pp. 11-20.

THE USES OF NOSTALGIA

(2010). THE USES OF NOSTALGIA. English Studies in Africa: Vol. 53, 'Post-Transitional' South African Literature in English, pp. 35-44.

Truth and/or Reconciliation: South African English Literature after Apartheid1

Truth and/or Reconciliation: South African English Literature after Apartheid¹

Southern African Literatures (review)

Reviewed by: Southern African Literatures Daniel P. Kunene Southern African Literatures By Michael ChapmanPietermaritzburg: U of Natal P, 2003. ISBN 1-86914-028-1 paper. 533 pp. This book contains s a 15-page preface (x–xxiv), a map of southern Africa (xxv), countries comprising the southern African region, namely, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (xxvi–xxvii), accompanied by the languages spoken there, as well as population figures, "A note on translated works" (xxx–xxxi), and Abbreviations and Acronyms (xxxii). These are followed by a "General Introduction" (1–13). Pages 14–480 comprise the main body of the work, which is divided into parts one to six, which are titled as follows: Part One: Oral Tradition: A Usable Past (ch. 1 and 2, pp. 14–67); Part Two: Writing of European Settlement: South Africa 1652–1910 (ch. 1–4, pp. 69–144); Part Three: African or Colonial Literature: 1880 to 1960s (ch.1–4, pp. 145–259); Part Four: Commissioned by the Nation, Commissioned by the Society. Independence, Post-Independence (ch. 1–4, pp. 261–323); Part Five: Writing in the Interregnum: South Africa, 1970–1995 (ch. 1–5, pp. 325–435; Part Six: Further References (Chronology, pp. 437–80, and Individual Authors—notes on biography, works and criticism, pp. 481–515). There is also an index covering pages 516–33. Each of the first five sections, namely, parts one to five, has an introduction of its own, intended to ease the reader into the argument that follows. Except for part five, which consists of a little over four pages, the introductions average about one-and-half to one-and-three-quarter pages. A general introduction (1–13) gives what amounts to brief listings of experiences of colonization and consequent liberation movements based on "a social theory in which forms of literature are tied firmly to the event." (4). In other words, literatures are informed by the sociopolitical environments in which they are conceived and executed. This is an ambitious work that will reward many readers interested in the topic of the development of literature in southern Africa. While many researchers who undertake this enormous task find it practical and convenient to look at African literatures by blacks separately from those composed in English and Afrikaans by whites, Chapman has decided to take the plunge and see whether the impossible could be made possible and credible. This is not an easy task, if it is indeed possible. The net is cast so wide, and the catch so varied, that it is difficult to haul it on deck. First of all, Chapman views "the possibility of writing literary history in the heterogeneous societies of the southern African region"(x) as problematic. This is reinforced by the assertion that [End Page 135] [t]he study begins [. . .] from the proposition that literatures in the individual countries have tended to be defined and described according to separate linguistic-ethnic units rather than to the entity of the nation-state. In South Africa, for example, we have South African literature in English, Afrikaans literature, Zulu literature, Xhosa literature, Sotho literature, and so on, each having its hermetic sets of assumptions, myths and conventions while there is little consensus on how we might constitute a single South African literature. (xvii) The ensuing tome makes the reader realize that there are implied rhetorical "questions" embedded in the above statements, which Professor Chapman proceeds to answer in his own way by his bold attempt to "constitute a single South African literature." In coming to grips with this question, however, we have to take some historical realities into account. Among the black peoples of southern Africa, the art of writing in its current form, namely, via the roman alphabet, did not evolve naturally, but was introduced by the missionaries as an instrument for capturing the minds and souls of the people whom they were trying to convert. It came as part of a package. You could only receive it in a missionary school that used it to directly and indirectly undermine your culture, especially your religious beliefs. You came out alienated from your own people, your parents included. In your writing, you...

A study of identity in post-apartheid South African English literature: <i>The Pickup</i> by Nadine Gordimer

In examining aspects of identity in “The Pickup” (2001), Nadine Gordimer’s latest novel, this article indicates new trends in postapartheid South African English literature as well. In the article it is indicated that identity has always been an important theme in Gordimer’s novels. Her earlier novels tend to focus on her characters’ struggle to attain political or racial rather than personal freedom, while her later novels increasingly tend to examine the construction of individual identities. “The Pickup” has continued this search for identity, but against a new and interesting perspective, a perspective that is in line with the political transformation of post-apartheid South Africa after 1994. Moreover, this theme is extremely relevant in the twenty-first century with its increased emphasis on place and globalisation. This article thus examines the theme of identity in “The Pickup”, first against a South African background and then against the backdrop of an unknown town somewhere in the desert – most probably in Northern Africa.

“A Primary Need as Strong as Hunger”: The Rhetoric of Urgency in South African Literary Culture under Apartheid

Under apartheid, discussions of literary function and value in South African literature in English are refracted through an elaborate rhetoric that posits “urgency” as the necessary correlative and consequence of political commitment. My essay examines this “rhetoric of urgency”in the context of the overwhelmingly realist dominant of South African literary culture in English. I suggest that South African literary critics of both liberal and radical orientations have been unwitting partners in a commonly held instrumentalist concept of language. A clear regime of meaning may be discerned in literary studies in English which seeks to effect closure between the word and the world in order to safeguard the ethical claims of South African literary culture.

The Lion on the Freeway: A Thematic Introduction to Contemporary South African Literature in English, and: The Novels of Alex La Guma (review)

The Novels of Alex La Guma, by Katherine Balutansky. Boulder: Three Continents/Lynne Rienner, 1990. 142 pp. ISBN 0-89410-558-2 paper.

BOOK REVIEW: Coord. and ed. Debbie Landman.A SELECT INDEX TO SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH. Grahamstown: National English Literary Museum, 1996.

BOOK REVIEW: Coord. and ed. Debbie Landman.<b>A SELECT INDEX TO SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH</b>. Grahamstown: National English Literary Museum, 1996.

A Select Index to South African Literature in English (review)

A Select Index to South African Literature in English (review)

The Problem of Identity: South Africa, Storytelling, and Literary History

Commission with families and friends recollecting those who were bludgeoned to death by the forces of the racist state? A single-authored literary history, Southern African Literatures covers work from the expression of stone-age Bushmen to that of writers such as Gordimer, Brink, Breytenbach, and Coetzee. In considering the questions of what constitutes a usable past, what value may be assigned to traditional, elite, and popular forms, generally how after apartheid one might understand the linguistic and cultural complexity of the southern African region, the study inherited a literary culture that had been constructed upon of linguistic-racial exclusivities. I use the term assumptions rather than principles: although a few critics have consistently called for integrative study, the practice?a practice very short on theory?has favored surveys, anthologies, and histories delineated according to the several languages and races of the region. There are in consequence separate studies of Afrikaans litera ture, South African English literature, Zulu literature, Xhosa literature, Sotho literature, a few on white writing, and a few on black writing.2 Southern African Literatures, in contrast, presents a single though multi vocal narrative based on principles of comparison and translation. In crossing language and race barriers it asks questions such as: would Xhosa expression have developed the way it did had it not encountered a British settler presence on its ancient land? Conversely, would South

Modern South African Literature in English: A Reader's Guide to Some Recent Critical and Bibliographic Resources

Modern South African Literature in English: A Reader's Guide to Some Recent Critical and Bibliographic Resources