A Literary Rebirth In South Africa An Overview

Manfred Loimeier

p. 55-81

Résumé

The official end of the institutionalized apartheid has made possible a literary new-start in the Republic of South-Africa.

In the Afrikaans literature one can find a lot of historical novels, family sagas–like Etienne van Heerden’s Die Swaye van Mario Salviati or Elsa Joubert’s Die reise van Isobelle – dealing with the past in a way which wasn’t estimated until now: collaboration and cohabitation over racial boundaries. Such historical novels can be found too among anglophone authors like Zakes Mda (The Madonna of Excelsior).

But mainly among anglophone and young (female) authors one can detect an impressive amount of short-story-publications which fulfil at least two aspects: short-stories allow a soon reaction on changes in society, and they allow the play with style. It is no longer necessary to focus only on how to write under censure, it is possible to play with stylistic possibilities.

Furthermore a main point in South-African literature is the autobiographical aspect. Like Chris van Wyk (Shirley, Goodness & Mercy. A Childhood Memoir) or Diane Awerbuck (Gardening at Night), authors try to re-assure themselves about their personal past. What might be regarded as personal can be defined as political writing because under apartheid it wasn’t wished to write, for example, about love and sex, dying or human misery. It is no wonder now that authors in South-Africa integrate methods of journalistic research to paint the present picture of the country (Antjie Krog, Country of my skull, A Change of Tongue).

By welcoming new forms and new themes one might neglect that the burden of history still has its weight. It can be found in the crime fiction of Gillian Slovo (Red Dust) or Deon Meyer (Heart of the Hunter).


Texte intégral

1The official end of institutionalized apartheid in the Republic of South Africa in 1994 made possible a literary rebirth on the Cape, one which was already clearly overdue. It introduced a broader diversity of themes and issues, as well as a wider range of styles, into the present South African literature and included–not only, but especially–younger authors. Whereas literature had been subjected solely to a political reading up to then, the end of apartheid also removed the dictum of a literature which was to be judged only in regard to the degree to which it criticized apartheid. In other words, the end of the policy of apartheid has not only brought freedom to the imprisoned anti-apartheid fighters from Robben Island, but has liberated the minds of the people in South Africa who had, one could say, been imprisoned intellectually as well. The South African Nobel Prize Winner of 2003, J. M. Coetzee, described this situation in his 1987 Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech as follows:

The deformed and stunted relations between human beings that were created under colonialism and exacerbated under what is loosely called apartheid have their psychic representation in a deformed and stunted inner life. All expressions of that inner life, no matter how intense, no matter how pierced with exultation or despair, suffer from the same stuntedness and deformity.... South African literature is a literature in bondage, as it reveals in even its highest moments, shot through as they are with feelings of homelessness and yearnings for a nameless liberation. It is a less than fully human literature, unnaturally preoccupied with power and the torsions of power, unable to move from elementary relations of contestation, domination, and subjugation to the vast and complex human world that lies beyond them. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from a prison. And I am talking here not only about the South African gulag. As you would expect in so physically vast a country, there is a South African literature of vastness. Yet even that literature of vastness, examined closely, reflects feelings of entrapment, entrapment in infinitudes.1

2Present-day South African authors who attract attention in the literary centres of the country–primarily Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg–with readings, in newspapers, or through Internet publications are judged not only by the degree to which they criticize apartheid in their œuvre. Questions of style and literary expression, of the position of the narrator, of literary experimentation as elements in a literary work all occupy an increasingly important place. Especially, but not only, younger authors like Lauren Beukes or Zukiswa Wanner, for example, are increasingly making use of their heritage of literary metaphors. They are replacing serious gravity by ironical light-heartedness, and they are trying to move easily within the range between realism, abstraction and magic. They do not have to fear official censorship, and they don’t have to primarily look for loopholes. They can test, try out and experiment, thus discovering irony and nimble humour. In her short stories2 Beukes satirically comments on electricity thieves and AIDS activists. Wanner, in turn, plays with the old role patterns, by moving a black household to centre stage in her novel The Madams,3 by having a middle-class black family employ a white maid.

3During the years of apartheid, it was the need for a realistic description of the horrors of the apartheid society that reproduced or strengthened the established genre of realistic novels in South African literature. One of the most important questions facing South African authors like André Brink and Nadine Gordimer was how to navigate a path between criticism and censorship, and how to carry the burden of responsibility and correct political information. Above all, there was a certain expectation, a dominant one, mainly from the readership abroad, which basically wanted to have the apartheid regime damned and liked to read clear political accusations by South African authors instead of complicated constructions as in the French Nouveau Roman. The plot itself and the author’s intention were more important than the stylistic development and literary sensitivity of an author. It only was J. M. Coetzee who brought abstraction into South African prose, therefore becoming a model for the younger, present-day writers.

4The predominant political aspect in the production and reception of South African novels unfortunately caused some misunderstandings. The first consequence was that it created the cliché of realistic novels–especially by Afrikaans authors–that were perforce simply written. Second, the authors were regarded more as ambassadors of their country than as creative artists. The critical voices that claimed that Nadine Gordimer had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 only for political reasons have to be seen in this context. It was said that Gordimer was awarded this prize only as a sign of international intellectual solidarity, to support her political commitment, out of respect for her subtle criticism of liberalism–and because she was the only female writer among a few white Anglophone authors (among them J.M. Coetzee), none of whom seemed to be acceptable as a prize-winner because of the issue of political correctness towards the black majority in South Africa. And there were, of course, Afrikaans authors like André Brink and Breyten Breytenbach, who unfortunately published in the language of the hated regime. The image of authors like Brink or Breytenbach are still determined by the degree to which they take a stand against political oppression. Breytenbach, especially, remains in the public memory as a white albino terrorist, although he has been concentrating on poetry and painting for decades. And even Nadine Gordimer was named an Officier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur as recently as March 2007 because France explicitly wanted to honor a figure that symbolized the struggle against apartheid.

5Reflecting on this background of the reception of South African literature, it becomes clear that a major turning point is currently being experienced. This can also be observed in the South African book market. More and more international publishing houses are becoming active in the South African literary market and establishing branches in South Africa. This includes Penguin and Picador (Picador Africa), as well as Random House, which opened a new publishing house there named Umuzi, or Juta’s Double Storey, or Struik’s Oshun. Of course, this has to be seen in relation to the general situation in the book market in South Africa, which is already relatively well-developed in comparison with other countries in southern Africa. This permits the present boom of literature in South Africa and makes it attractive to invest additional capital. On the one hand, South African authors and publishing houses like Kwela Books in Cape Town are reaping profits from this development, because their books are gaining greater attention. On the other hand, however, local publishing houses risk losing their authors and book-buying readers to publishing houses from overseas, because the international publishing houses have not only greater financial power, but also a functioning, experienced global network, and because they can offer South African authors a certain international reputation which guarantees invitations to conferences and readings abroad.

6These perspectives, as well as all aspects of social and economic change, and especially the broader view enabled by the removal of political and racial boundaries, calls for a literary expression of this phenomenon. This is all the more so because, for the first time in South African history, young, non-white authors also have an opportunity to begin to speak without having to fear any sanctions by the state. As a result of this development, South African students are coming in droves to the courses offered by creative writing institutes that exist, for example, in Cape Town, where J.M. Coetzee and André Brink, Etienne van Heerden and Breyten Breytenbach have taught young authors like Henrietta Rose-Innes or Mary Watson.

7Student interest in these academic courses–whether in Cape Town, Johannesburg or Grahamstown–is overwhelming. The lecturers guarantee not only the highest literary standards, but a professional network for publication. In such creative writing courses, young authors who may still have doubts about their own literary talent, are given support and gain in self-confidence. Here it is especially the known anti-apartheid authors like Breytenbach or Brink that encourage their young colleagues to deal with new themes and to give them literary expression which would not be suggested by the omniscient narrator style used by Brink, for one. Writing about personal themes, such as the sensitive treatment of sensual experiences, as demonstrated by Rose-Innes or Watson in their first books and contrasted with the political protest of the anti-apartheid literature, was very highly praised, particularly by authors like Brink or Coetzee. In view of the necessity of taking political positions, sufficient attention had not been given to such subjects during apartheid.

8Admittedly, students in South Africa at the present time have other interests, other objectives, and other expectations than, for instance, participants in creative writing courses in the USA. During a discussion that took place during the Poetry Festival 2007 in Berlin, Breytenbach explained very trenchantly4 that students in the USA attempted to shape their stories so professionally that they would meet the quality standards of the New Yorker and the like and thus would be easily sold.

[In South Africa, however] the people are much more confused and they don’t have the materialist incentive. It’s a much more awkward process. It’s also unfortunately much more fraught with deep, deep pain. If you have a class of people in South Africa where you have somebody coming from a black township and somebody coming from a white suburb–and they are the same age and within the same class–you have the rubbing together of very distinct attitudes and anger and pain and sorrow. So it’s a different thing, it’s much less formalized, it’s much less structured, it is not an industry.

9Author Henrietta Rose-Innes from Cape Town, for example, who studied under J. M. Coetzee, published her first novel, Shark’s Egg, an autobiographical work, soon after receiving her M.A. in Creative Writing. Her second novel, The Rock Alphabet, is a historical one5. Rose-Innes wrote it as a writer-in-residence at Château de Lavigny, Switzerland, with the support of Pro Helvetia and the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation. She also received financial assistance from the National Arts Council of South Africa to write her second book, and in 2007 she received the South African PEN Literary Award for her short story entitled Poison. At the moment, she is working on her third novel as a fellow of the German foundation Academy Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, having previously been a fellow of the Kultur: Raum Sylt-Quelle in Rantum, also in Germany. Examples like this constitute a promising model for possible careers for young intellectuals in South Africa. Frankly expressing one’s opinion through various forms of expression is not only no longer forbidden but, on the contrary, encouraged.

10Students emerging from such creative writing courses are working for the radio, writing for newspapers (like Diane Awerbuck6), becoming authors of screenplays or film scripts (like K. Sello Duiker, who had shows on television7 but died too early), and writing novels which are often constructed according to the Short Cuts principle. The technique of using short scenes with several short sentences, not too long, often combined with a strong visual aspect, are most effective in reacting to the fast pace of political and social change in present-day South Africa. This corresponds to the experience of a fragmented day-to-day life involving those who were the oppressors and those who were the oppressed up to now, and people who belonged to various ethnic groups that were segregated until 1994. These people now contribute differing experiences of the most recent history, which cannot easily or immediately find common ground. Briefly recording this phenomenon of differing lives and differing conceptions of history–for some a ‘defeat, ’ for others a ‘victory’–and then revealing one’s own perceptions, then to document and recognize them, is an initial step in the cultural encounters of the diverse South African people. This is all the more so because the ignorance reflected by apartheid policies had denied that the indigenous peoples of South Africa were capable of culture. As a result, the literary depictions now being created, as limited as they must be as a result of the scanty experience as equals, demonstrate the growing sensitivity to each other–if only as the result of affirmative action.

11Literary magazines and literature prizes also help to support the development of the literary scene in South Africa. Literary magazines in South Africa are highly regarded, first of all due to historical reasons. Universities had their own magazines, like New Coin in Grahamstown, and during apartheid magazines could be printed and distributed more easily than books could be produced and sold. In addition to the renowned literary magazines, new magazines have appeared nationwide: Bosotso in Johannesburg, Chimurenga in Cape Town, and Kotaz in Port Elizabeth. These magazines always present literature in African languages, too–and not only prose, but poetry, cabaret sketches and plays as well. Young authors can also publish in newspapers, yearbooks and anthologies. Whereas in some European countries anthologies are regarded only as a first step to an author’s real first own book, anthologies are absolutely accepted in the literary market in South Africa. More than that, short stories fulfil at least two eminent aspects: they allow a swifter reaction to changes in society than is possible with novels, and they are better suited for stylistic experimentation. By writing short stories, authors can more easily try out different kinds of literary expression than they can by writing a complete novel. Since the authors of South Africa, those not part of the white elite, were more or less cut off from international intellectual life during apartheid, they are now naturally highly interested in making a variety of literary expression theirs, as well as in finding and developing their own literary voices. This phenomenon is similar to that seen in post-war Germany, when the authors of Group 47 discovered the short story as an appropriate literary form. Furthermore, as short stories are better suited for reacting to social changes within the South African society, which occur in short intervals, short stories can reflect the reality of South Africa more quickly. They thus offer authors a way of commenting more rapidly on the present situation in South Africa.

12Furthermore, young authors can use the Internet as a literary platform. An example of this trend is provided by the LitNet in Cape Town (www.litnet.co.za), and even online publications or blogs in the young literary scene of South Africa have a much more serious character than in other countries. Publishing on the Internet in South Africa does not indicate that an author has not been able to find a publisher. This might only be a method of reaching a wider readership sooner than with a printed text. In South Africa, the Internet is an ideal platform for an exchange of opinion on short notice with a large number of discussion partners. This corresponds to the fast changes in South Africa, and, with this in mind, such topics can be discussed more practically on the Internet than in a novel of several hundred pages which takes years to write.

13There are also the literary prizes. There is the M-Net Award, the Sunday Times Literary Award, the Booksellers’ Choice Award, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and renowned literary prizes like the Thomas Pringle Award, the Olive Schreiner Award, the Herman Charles Bosman Award, and the Alan Paton Award. The history of the rather young Caine Prize especially exemplifies the growing significance of the literary market in South Africa. Created in the year 2000, the Caine Prize is by now regarded as the African Booker Award, under the patronage of Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee. Coetzee is also among the jury members of the South African PEN Literary Award, created in 2005, which explicitly aims at new creative writing. And it is not astonishing that the prize-winners of the Commonwealth African Writers Prize include some South African authors, such as Zakes Mda.

14Finally, of course, there is the new Cape Town Book Fair, the new international book fair in Cape Town. It will very soon become–or has already become–more important than the International Book Fair in Harare, Zimbabwe, which was number one on the international book market in southern Africa for years, until Zimbabwe became a hostile place under the dictatorial regime of President Robert Mugabe. For years, publishers had tried to move the fair from Zimbabwe to South Africa. Now, as Zimbabwe is becoming eliminated from the market, Cape Town is lucky to be a welcomed alternative. This naturally has a stimulating effect on local, regional and even national book production in South Africa. Literature centres like the Centre for the Book in Cape Town, which organized book presentations and literature workshops during the last few years and then became a centre for the literature of the population of Indian descent on the Cape, are benefiting from this development.

15In view of all of this, it is not surprising that people in South Africa are speaking of a literature of awakening–in regard to themes, styles, and the number of young authors. This may be the first time in South African history that there have been so many authors who want to express their feelings and their views. Certainly the question remains unanswered as to whether this explosion of creativity will continue and whether it will trigger not only a remarkable but also a sustainable development of a reading culture in South Africa. Uncertain also is whether the international interest in South Africa will be no more than a short-time boom or if it will last longer.

16As odd as it may sound, these questions will not be answered before the International Soccer Championship in 2010, when South Africa will once more be the focus of international attention. First, this is because the African Nationalist Congress has always tried to implement its policy by means of culture, and because the ruling ANC is still following this policy by inviting poets like Don Mattera or Maakomele Manaka to international conferences of politicians. Second, this is because the Championship will increase the production of publishing houses abroad that will publish more titles about and from South Africa, but it is doubtful that this overwhelming interest in South Africa will continue in this intensity for more than only a few years. On the other hand, this boom might create a threatening imbalance in the reception of African literatures. It seems clear that this euphoria surrounding South Africa will cause other centres of literary production in Africa to become less attractive for internationally operating agents and publishing houses. The Exclusive Books 101 Books To Read Before You Die list, for example, which was presented at the 2007 Cape Town Book Fair, lists five authors from South Africa (among them Alan Paton, J.M. Coetzee, and Nadine Gordimer) but only one from all the rest of Africa, Chinua Achebe from Nigeria.

17As part of the creative awakening, there is, for example, the young writer Mary Watson, a former student of André Brink. Her first book, Moss8, can’t even be defined clearly. Is it a collection of short stories? Is it a novel? It is not called a novel, but the eleven short stories are related to one another in such a subtle way that it is not possible to read the stories as individual works without missing a great part of the full meaning of the book. This experimentation with literary forms is absolutely new in South African literature, and it shows how much creativity had been hidden in the minds of writers now liberated from the burden of anti-apartheid writing. Furthermore, there is no strict difference between the genres of creative writing any more. Watson, for example, writes fiction and for film and acts in children’s musicals. She teaches at the Centre for Film and Media at the University of Cape Town, and in July 2006 she was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her style mixes myths and fairy tales, allegories and fantasies–and differs totally from the realistic kind of writing practiced, for example, by André Brink.

18Watson writes about purity and contamination, about desire, religion and sexuality. Sexuality, love and longing, as themes of modern novels in South Africa, are not private issues. In a country where the policy was hostile towards all parts of life which could have endangered the rigid system of control, accepted forms of love and sexuality have always been ways of affirming social norms, and the desire for uncontrolled relationships had always been understood as an attack on the apartheid system. Therefore, writing about sexuality and hidden desires is not only a private matter, but a social, a political one. As the feminists once said, there is no difference between private and public.

19Curiously enough, mostly young white Anglophone writers are enjoying success at the moment on the literary scene in South Africa. This is not surprising in view of the fact that about two years ago the first women’s publishing house in South Africa, Oshun, was founded. Young white Anglophone female authors like to write about their child- and girlhood in the suburbs, not always sheltered and privileged. In line with the tradition of the farm novel in South African literature, they also write about their upbringing on a lonesome farm. There are a number of curious explanations as to why so many young white female Anglophone authors are so successful at the moment. Some claim that the reading culture is more developed among them, while others say that even white women had been hidden behind the doors of white family houses during apartheid– and now these women are simply taking advantage of the opportunity to articulate their opinions. Another reason is indeed the fact that it is mainly women that are participating in the creative writing courses at the universities, and these women are mostly white. And as the English language is becoming the dominant literary language in South Africa, authors try to publish their books in English even if their first language is Afrikaans.

20A very good example of the success of a young white female author, writing in English, is provided by Diane Awerbuck with her first novel Gardening at night.9 The story line follows a young girl’s life through childhood, adolescence, and young womanhood. Awerbuck depicts the drama of longing, which sometimes develops like a comedy. Set in Kimberley, a sleepy mining town, the main figure of the novel is in the process of leaving it, and the book is shaped by a melancholy and at the same time a fresh atmosphere. Short chapters, sometimes only two pages long, illustrate the girl’s path between depression and hope, between an oppressive present and a promising future. Chapter headings like ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand, ’, ‘Houston, We Have a Problem, ’ ‘Material Girl, ’ ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, ’ ‘Radio Ga-Ga, ’ ‘Nena, not Nina Hagen, and Pliny the Younger’, ‘Hotel California, ’ and ‘Waking for the Barbarians’ demonstrate both the musicality of the language and the periods these chapters are describing. Awerbuck, who is a pupil of André Brink, even integrates expressions in Afrikaans which are explained in a three-page-glossary at the end of the book. For example, Awerbuck does not speak of a pick-up, but of a bakkie, and uses some vulgar words like ‘binnepoespienk’ (meaning a deep pink colour, literally as in the inside of the vagina), ‘dooswyn’ (meaning box, but also cunt), or ‘oudoos’ (meaning old cunt). These expressions are more acceptable because, as foreign words, the offending effect of their vulgarity is not as strong.

21Again, the private nature of these issues, adolescence and first experiences in sexuality, don’t have to be misunderstood. Especially Zakes Mda’s novel The Whale Caller10 shows that it is not rare in South African literature for private scenes to stand for general social experiences. At first, the reader might think that the plot of The Whale Caller is only about a rather curious love triangle between an unemployed man, a female whale, and a woman who is generally drunk. She desperately admires this whale-calling man, who becomes deeply depressed after the death of his beloved whale on the coast of Hermanus. What may seem totally apolitical takes on an absolutely political dimension if one becomes aware of the fact that, following the principles of South African censorship during apartheid, scenes portraying dying, alcoholism, passionate love, night life, nakedness, and human and social abnormality were absolutely to be avoided. The Whale Caller can thus be easily read as a late but clear protest against the morality of apartheid.

22Furthermore, a main facet of current South African literature is the autobiographical aspect. In Diane Awerbuck’s Gardening at night, Henrietta Rose-Innes’ Shark’s Egg, and Chris van Wyk’s Shirley, Goodness & Mercy. A Childhood Memoir11, the authors try to re-assure themselves about their personal past through autobiographical writing. Chris van Wyk’s book tells the story of his life as a young boy growing up in the townships for coloured people, in Newclare, Coronationville and Riverlea, during the apartheid era. The very special atmosphere of his book derives from the fact that van Wyk describes the history of Johannesburg in a very serious and insightful manner–the author was involved in the struggle against racial politics–and that he is at the same time describing the everyday life of his family in a very entertaining and delightful way. Van Wyk, too, gives explanations of expressions in Afrikaans in a three-page-glossary at the end of the book.

23One has to be conscious of the fact that autobiographical writing always has been a major genre in South African literature. To describe one’s own personal life has always been a method of giving testimony and of documenting political developments–especially under the conditions of the apartheid policy. In line with the thesis that private life always reflects public life, that society is an organism in which the development of individuals corresponds to or is even a symptom of the state of the social body, autobiographies in South African literature are never only personal confessions, but always document the general conditions of life. This fusion of individual or family life with public life is a characteristic of African literatures, not only in South African autobiographies, but in novels. This is most notably evident in the work of the Somali Nuruddin Farah, who lives in Cape Town. The principle expressed in Farah’s novels is that governmental democracy is only possible if democracy also exists within the family. The thesis that private life always reflects public life should not be understood, in the discussion of African literatures, as a feminist thesis, but as a protest against domination by a patriarchal or repressive social system in which the right to speak is reserved to the authorities. Raising one’s voice to express one’s own fate is then a step toward demonstratively demanding democratic rights and freedoms. Publishing an autobiography can–in addition to its representative intention–be seen as a contribution to the process of claiming the right to speak, one in which not only individuals, but classes, societies or even people, are emancipated.

24The special political and social situation in the Republic of South Africa has resulted in the emergence of the autobiography as a very strong genre in South African literature, one used especially by banned, exiled or detained persons to tell of their fate. It was an opportunity to document the resistance against colonialism and the apartheid regime. One of the first examples for this important genre on the Cape was written as early as 1916 by Sol Plaatje, with his Native Life in South Africa, in which he describes the expulsion of the black people from their land by the means of the Native Lands Act of 1911. Influenced by The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. DuBois, Plaatje shows the poverty and misery of the blacks resulting from this expulsion. Mainly after the National Party won the elections of 1948 and with the increasing categorization of each South African according to the system of racism, autobiographies as documents of individual and personal self-affirmation gained in importance und popularity. With these autobiographies, it was possible to keep alive the belief in a better future, because they showed that resistance had never been useless. Peter Abrahams, for example, showed in 1954 in Tell Freedom that the pursuit for cultural education could help to overcome racial and social boundaries. This struggle for cultural education is a further essential element in South African autobiographies, as in Es’kia Mphalele’s Down Second Avenue (1959), in Bloke Modisane’s Blame Me On History (1963), in Ellen Kuzwayo’s Call Me Woman (1985), or in Don Mattera’s Memory is the Weapon/Gone with the Twilight (1987), describing the deportation of black and coloured people out of the towns as a result of the Bantu Education Act. The life in a township, to which the non-white South Africans had been deported, is still the issue of Mark Mathabane’s Kaffr Boy (1986). Deportation and the search for cultural education is depicted by Elsa Joubert in her Afrikaans book Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena (1978). Indres Naidoo concentrates on his years of detention in Island in Chains/Ten Years on Robben Island (1982), as did Nelson Mandela with Long Walk to Freedom (1994), an autobiography which concentrates on his political engagement and his detention. In the same way, Mamphela Ramphele describes her political activity in A Life (1995). How complex autobiographical writing is linked with the purpose of a political statement is shown by Breyten Breytenbach’s The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1984). When Chris van Wyk tells the story of his childhood in a township near Johannesburg, therefore, there is absolutely no doubt that this story is more than only a personal tale. Simultaneously, it strives to provide an example of what was going on in reality on the other side of the country, denied by the supporters of the apartheid policy.

25In order to underline the non-fictional, but even more documentary aspect of their autobiographical works and to outline the social dimension of a single biography in terms of the exemplary nature of a personal, private experience, authors in South Africa even integrate methods of journalistic research into their autobiographical texts to describe the present state of the country. One of the best examples of this method of writing is seen in the books of poet and journalist Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull12 and A Change of Tongue.13 In both books, the description of and the reflection on political developments are depicted parallel to reflections and observations of personal feelings. In the first of these two books, Country of My Skull, Krog observes as a reporter the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

26The shock of all the abuse and violence exercised in the name of the state provoked a number of public individual confessions. It is not astonishing that even J. M. Coetzee published his autobiographies, Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002), shortly after the first TRC hearings began in April 1996.

27Returning to Krog’s books: Whereas her Country of My Skull was still an objective report interrupted by Krog’s personal wish to publicly account for her own standpoint, her next book, A Change of Tongue, was primarily thought of as an autobiography, in which she interlinked her personal life with the political atmosphere of these times.

28The TRC thus gave rise to a great deal of confessional literature as personal contributions to a major development. This combination of autobiographical and journalistic elements of writing is not unusual in South African literature. This mixture of genres is a heritage of the so-called Black Literature, in which authors tried to inform about political realities in whatever way possible. For this, they combined reports of personal experiences with documents of all kinds, and they used any literary form as long as it could serve the purpose of political enlightenment–plays, poetry, songs. Again, the question of genre and style was never a question of aesthetics, but only of functionality.

29Like autobiographies, combined with political reports, personal comments, and sociological analyses, novels also exist in which the plot of the book is combined with reflections on one’s own past and one’s own family history in the context of the development of the country. Zoe Wicomb’s David’s Story14 is an example for this kind of mixture of novel, report and autobiography. The web of these various kinds of narration in David’s Story is so dense that Wicomb’s novel can be read as a historiographical documentation, as fiction full of suspense, and as a report on the brutalities committed by fighters and members of the ANC.

30This aspect, a look back with the intention of explaining and understanding the present and the conditions for the future through the knowledge of the past, can be found not only in autobiographies, but also in most of the novels which are currently being published in South Africa. One can find numerous family sagas in which the authors try to speak of the history dating before the installation of the apartheid regime, and they try to speak about aspects of South African history whose expression was formerly forbidden or not welcome.

31Henrietta Rose-Innes, for example, tries to find out in her novel The Rock Alphabet the origins of two small boys who had been found alone, without their parents, in the Cederberg mountains north of Cape Town. The story is told in flashback scenes, and it becomes clearer and clearer that the main theme is the search for identity. Typically, and as a realistic approach to this situation, the true history of the boys never can be detected and remains in the dark. What Rose-Innes wants to say is that there are chapters in South African history that may never be cleared up in a desirable fashion.

32Rayda Jacobs, for her part, tries to tell the story of the coloured people on the Cape region. Her books are constructed as a family saga, and the main figure, who appears in Eyes of the Sky15 for the first time, is found again in the sequel, The Slave Book.16

33With the same intention, talking about a group of people which was dramatically neglected and persecuted under apartheid, the way Jacobs speaks of the coloured people, Zoe Wicomb tells in her novel Playing in the Light17 the story of some people, a minority of some size in South Africa, who tried to change their racial status and had success in becoming white instead of coloured or becoming coloured instead of black. But Wicomb’s question is, in fact, how these people defined themselves, what image they had to create of themselves, and how they could live knowing that they had ignored a part of their true origins. The identity crisis these people had to weather reminds one of the search for identity in Rose-Innes’ novel The Rock Alphabet, with the personal ego as a construction and not as a truly secure fact.

34These historical novels represent a search for a still “unknown” history, and they are written to unveil some parts of the South African history nobody wanted to talk about or phenomena whose existence nobody liked to admit. This is still related to the official description of the history of the apartheid regime. One of its dogmas was the perception that, until the arrival of the first Boers in the middle of the 17th century, South Africa was unsettled, and that the Afrikaners were thus the first immigrants in South Africa. Any view of history that differed from this was considered a subversion of the public order. This explains the explosive effect, for example, of Etienne van Heerden’s novel Die Swye van Mario Salviati18. In it, in opposition to the official writing of history, he introduces the figure of Khoisan Tietie X!am, whose ancestry documents the denied early settling of South Africa by indigenous peoples. The same holds true for example of the coexistence of black, coloured and white people, who were by no means always as separated as the official apartheid policy would lead one to believe. Zakes Mda, for example, in his novel The Madonna of Excelsior19, speaks of an episode in the history of the South African apartheid regime which was denied for decades. In 1971, nineteen citizens of the small town of Excelsior in the former Free State were accused of having broken the Immorality Act, which forbade sex between blacks and whites. A large number of coloured babies were born in Excelsior, however, and it was clear that some white men must have been breaking the law. The sensation was that it was the major and the pastor themselves who had ignored the apartheid dogma. For that reason, it was impossible for the apartheid legal system to charge the men, and the court proceedings were abandoned. It would have been too disgraceful if it had become public, or if it had been revealed to a wider circle or even to the international press, that even the representatives of the apartheid bureaucracy broke the law of the apartheid regime through their behaviour, which, by the way, was not based on love, but on rape, revenge and exploitation.

35Elsa Joubert’s novel Die Reise van Isobelle20 is another one of these novels, these family sagas, which show elements of the South African past which hadn’t been revealed until the end of apartheid: collaboration and cohabitation crossing racial boundaries, solidarity among the various races in their resistance against the hated regime. As Joubert worked as a journalist, her novel is full of facts and information which, in this case, limit the literary quality of the book, but show once more the small ridge between fact and fiction, the combination of fiction and reporting.

36Especially in Afrikaans literature, one can now find a number of historical novels, family sagas like Etienne van Heerden’s Die Swye van Mario Salviati. That again shows that the literary rebirth in South Africa permits literary description of parts of South African history whose description had been forbidden by the former censorship. This means not only describing how the people in South Africa lived and worked together over racial boundaries, but also speaking and writing about the early history of South Africa during which the first peoples–the Khoikhoi and the San–settled and lived there long before the Afrikaners arrived. Their existence disproved the collective myth of the Afrikaners that they were the first people on the Cape and that it was the Afrikaners, and only they, who started to cultivate the earth. The plot of Etienne van Heerden’s novel begins long before the first white man arrives, and the author shows that the history of the whites had always been interlinked with the fate of the Khoi-San and that sexual relationships had always existed between whites and Griquas, for example, and between whites and blacks and coloureds.

37The novels of Andrew Henry Martin Scholtz must be viewed in the same way. In his first one, the successful Vatmaar21, Scholtz tells the story of the Cape Coloureds, the coloured people living in the Cape provinces, and their fate between the Afrikaners and the British. It had already been problematic to discuss the tense relationship between the Afrikaners and the British, especially at the time of the Second African War in South Africa at the beginning of the last century, when the Afrikaners were defeated by the British and when the wives and children of Afrikaaner families were imprisoned in concentration camps by British troops. It was even more delicate to talk now about the coloured people who were living in the Cape region and who had to choose between solidarity with the Afrikaners or with the British. Their position was even worse if they sympathized with one of the groups but had to fight, for economic reasons, as soldiers for the other one. How the coloured people manoeuvred between and among blacks and whites, is shown by Scholtz in his second novel, Afdraai22, that deals with everyday life in a small village on the Cape.

38Scholtz, Joubert and van Heerden are Afrikaans authors in South Africa, and they have to face the fact that English is becoming the dominant literary language in South Africa at the moment. This means that they have to translate their novels into English as soon as possible after publication, as André Brink and Breyten Breytenbach did much earlier in order to publish their books abroad to avoid censorship. But as the international publishing houses are becoming more interested in the South African literary scene, it is only reasonable to publish in a language which guarantees greater international reception. Furthermore, English has become the most important common language in the Cape region, understood and spoken by most South Africans. This also makes it easy to understand why Antjie Krog, the Afrikaans poet, entitled her book A Change of Tongue. Successful today with a novel in South Africa, written in English, one will surely be published soon in Great Britain or in the United States, too, especially in these times of globalization in which publishing houses are at work worldwide.

39Although English is becoming established, on the one hand, as the dominant literary language, on the other hand it has become easier to publish in African languages as well. The predominant position of the English language has, of course, provoked a counter-reaction among Afrikaans writers who fear for their cultural identity. That means that–although English is the predominant language of literature in South Africa–fiction in African languages and in Afrikaans nevertheless has better chances of notice. This certainly also has to do with the end of the apartheid regime and with the fact that the African languages are official languages now. This means that authors writing in African languages like Xhosa, Sepedi or Zulu can work under improved conditions and are profiting from the same advantages other authors have: access to the Internet, series in radio and television, literary magazines, yearbooks, and a broader variety of publishing houses that are bringing out books in African languages. Of course, only the long term will show whether such literature in African languages can reach more than only the native speakers, and if publishing houses specializing in African literature can afford to publish books which may address only a minority.

40Writing in African languages and in Afrikaans–which could, of course, be regarded as an African language, too, because it developed in South Africa as a hybrid language from Dutch, Khoikhoi expressions, and Malayian verbs–has not only a literary but also a political dimension. (Breyten Breytenbach once called it, with the intention of provoking the apartheid supporters among the Afrikaners, a bastard language.) It is a kind of linguistic self-assurance, a way of maintaining a regional identity despite the increasing globalization. Especially if one is speaking of the Afrikaans language, it is also a protest against the so-called cleansing of Afrikaans. As Afrikaans long stood for the language of the apartheid oppressors, it is still seen with mixed sentiments. The trend to use politically correct vocabulary is difficult to carry out, difficult because words like black, coloured and white not only describe someone’s skin colour, but stand for the racist categorization of people. As a result, editors replace racist words even when these words are used–in an Afrikaans novel, for example–in order to characterize a racist person as a racist person. A dangerous consequence might be that some Afrikaners may regard this practice as proof of years of oppression of the Afrikaans people by the dominant British. In this sense, Antije Krog warns that Afrikaners could cultivate a consciousness of being victims of history, which in turn could result in an ongoing antipathy towards English-speaking South Africans. This has to be seen in the context of the fact that the end of the Second African War about a hundred years ago resulted in numerous books which, benefiting from the boom in historical novels and the freedom to talk about dark chapters in South African history, reproduced only the dubious myth of the brave Voortrekkers.

41In any case, current South African literature and the variety seen in the young literary scene reflect South Africa as a society going through radical change. South African literature is thus the best source of information regarding the state of the South African society. Authors now can speak not only about the political heritage, but also about changes in their own personal life. They also write about the problems of people coming home from exile, of course, of other Africans coming to South Africa for jobs, of criminality and of violence. These issues are no longer aspects of relations between whites and blacks and coloureds, however, but are seen more in terms of the rich and the poor people.

42Young South African literature, especially, stands not only for a broader variety of styles, metaphors, parables, flashbacks, irony and melancholy, but also for a playful use of everyday language. One can find slang expressions in stories and poems, and novels are set in former townships, in suburbs, or in the countryside, and the main figures are even sometimes what is called poor white trash–as shown in Marlene van Niekerk’s novel Triomf23, in which the author speaks of racism, incest and violence.

43All of this is a result of the liberation of South African literature from the dogmas of apartheid. It is a sign of normalization in terms of the representation of the South African reality. It also stands for a normalization in how South Africa is seen, because South Africa is a country with one of the richest literary traditions in Sub-Saharan Africa, and not only the centre of anti-apartheid literature. This tradition dates back, for example, to the oral poetry of the Zulu people, whose rhythm and musicality still influence present-day poets who act as poetry performers or as spoken word artists on the streets and public squares, mainly in Johannesburg and Durban, and who perform in clubs and bars.

44The high literary standard in South Africa is also a consequence of the–in comparison to other African countries–high rate of literacy in South Africa, which is, by the way, a further consequence of the anti-apartheid struggle, in which formal education and the development of political consciousness were aims in the concept of mass mobilization. The high literary standard is a consequence of the great economic power in South Africa, too. For one thing, South Africa is the only country south of the Sahara that has a functioning book chain and a media system involving writers, publishers, readers and critics. This is true even though the centres of the reading culture are in the towns, and even though reading is not as popular a leisure activity in South Africa as sports. This book chain, involving a large number of publication forums, on the one hand, and well-founded literary criticism, on the other, assures authors, to begin with, that their works will be publicly discussed. Furthermore, this encourages the development of generally binding value judgments and valid literary standards–also for other authors–that are vital to the development of literary quality. On the other hand, the fact should not be disregarded that, in other African countries, considerably lower economic standards than in South Africa make simple survival much more of a priority. For authors, this means that they simply have less time to write, since earning money is of such immediate importance, and that writing is therefore generally only a secondary matter and not as professional. This economic pressure certainly also exists for certain classes in South Africa. In view of this fact, it is certainly not very surprising that, on the one hand, white South Africans are more active as authors and that, on the other, young black authors who are publishing increasingly–such as K. Sello Duiker–come from a relatively small black middle class or from the academic milieu or are themselves in the publishing field–such as Niq Mhlongo.

45Of course, the special interest in South Africa shown by people in Europe, Australia, and the United States has to do with history, as many people emigrated from Europe to South Africa. But it has also to do with the fact that many of the main figures in South African novels simply are whites. This explains why Europeans are more interested in literature from southern Africa than in that from eastern or western Africa, and this shows that skin colour still plays an important role. The best known authors from South Africa are Nadine Gordimer, André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach and J.M. Coetzee. It is only now that readers in Europe are becoming familiar with the novels of Zakes Mda, who has long been accepted in the United States as an author.

46In other words, reading literature from South Africa means confronting the European reader with the colonial past of his own country and with the stereotypes which had been produced and reproduced in Europe for decades. The normalization which can be observed on the literary market in South Africa corresponds with that taking place in Europe, where readers have to learn to fully grasp the broad variety of South African literature. On the other hand, there is a black diaspora in the United States, where people had tragic experiences for a long time as a result of the equivalent of apartheid there. One has to keep in mind that the institutionalized apartheid policy in South Africa started just at the time when the segregation laws were abolished in the United States. People remember Nelson Mandela better than Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, but it is a sign of normalization if people realize that apartheid in general was not a specific South African phenomenon, but an element of western civilization.

47In this context, it is important to be aware that satisfaction regarding the literary rebirth in South Africa with its variety of themes and styles is not shared by everyone. Welcoming new forms and new themes might result in neglecting the fact that the burden of history is still weighty. It seems to be a privilege of the elite to be able to afford to think about questions of form and style. For a large part of the South African people, the major question may still be if, when and how their memories of the terrorism of apartheid will be fully represented. Of course, not writing about the horrors of apartheid corresponds with the change in the South African reality and is a sign of normalization. But it is a fact that racist relicts are still virulent in South African society, and there are people who fear that these relicts of the apartheid past may be underestimated by modern authors writing about new issues in new styles.

48Fortunately, the apartheid past has not been forgotten at all and can be found as a theme even in crime fiction. Gillian Slovo, for example, wrote in her detective novel Red Dust24 about a torturer who is confronted with his past, and Deon Meyer makes the hero of his detective novel Heart of the Hunter25 a former freedom fighter.

49As this essay began with a quotation from J.M. Coetzee, it shall end with another one, one which expresses the hope and the expectations with which today’s South African authors are confronted:

How we long to quit a world of pathological attachments and abstract forces, of anger and violence, and take up residence in a world where a living play of feelings and ideas is possible, a world where we truly have an occupation.26

Notes de bas de page

1 Coetzee, J. M., Doubling the Point. Essays and Interviews (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992): 98.

2 Beukes, Lauren, Maverick (Cape Town: Struik, 2005).

3 Wanner, Zukiswa, The Madams (Cape Town: Oshun, 2006).

4 Talks on Poetry: South Africa. A discussion between Breyten Breytenbach and Manfred Loimeier. Poetry Festival Berlin, June 25, 2007.

5 Rose-Innes, Henrietta, Shark’s Egg (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2000), The Rock Alphabet (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2004).

6 Awerbuck, Diane, Gardening at night (London: Secker & Warburg, 2003).

7 Duiker, K. Sello, Thirteen Cents (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 2000), The Quiet Violence of Dreams (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2001), worked as editor of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and was a storyliner for the TV-show Backstage.

8 Watson, Mary, Moss (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2004).

9 Awerbuck, Diane, Gardening at Night (London: Secker & Warburg, 2003).

10 Mda, Zakes, The Whale Caller (Johannesburg: Penguin Africa, 2005).

11 Wyk, Chris van, Shirley, Goodness & Mercy. A Childhood Memoir (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2004).

12 Krog, Antjie, Country of My Skull (Johannesburg: Random, 2002).

13 Krog, Antjie, A Change of Tongue (Johannesburg: Random, 2003).

14 Wicomb, Zoe, David’s Story (New York: The Feminist Press/Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2000).

15 Jacobs, Rayda, Eyes of the Sky (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 1996).

16 Jacobs, Rayda, The Slave Book (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 1998).

17 Wicomb, Zoe, Playing in the Light (New York/London: The New Press, 2006).

18 Heerden, Etienne van, Die Swye van Mario Salviati (Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers, 2000).

19 Mda, Zakes, The Madonna of Excelsior (Cape Town: Oxford University Press Southern Africa, 2002).

20 Joubert, Elsa, Die Reise van Isobelle (Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers, 1995).

21 Scholtz, Andrew Henry Martin, Vatmaar (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 1995).

22 Scholtz, Andrew Henry Martin, Afdraai (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 1998).

23 Niekerk, Marlene van, Triomf (Queillerie: Cape Town, 1994).

24 Slovo, Gillian, Red Dust (Virago Press: London, 2000).

25 Meyer, Deon, Heart of the Hunter (Little, Brown and Company: New York, 2003).

26 Coetzee, J. M., Doubling the Point. Essays and Interviews (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992): 98.


Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.