The New Black Literature in South Africa

Leong Yew, Research Fellow, University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore

It was easier to write about the past… because the past created ready-made stories. There was a very clear line of demarcation between good and evil, you see? Black was good; white was bad. Your conflict was there. There were no gray areas…. We no longer have that. In this new situation, black is not necessarily good. There are many black culprits; there are many good white people. We have become normal. It’s very painful to become normal.

Zakes Mda (quoted in Swarns)

For a long time now South Africa demonstrated some of the most horrifying consequences of colonialism. Racial inequity through Apartheid has been the dominant discourse through which many of the social problems there have been framed. Unsurprisingly the postcolonial literature that was written during Apartheid reacted to the injustices of the policy and brought figures like Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, Athol Fugard, and Alan Paton to literary prominence. But what is happening now in South Africa’s literary scene after Apartheid?

In a recent article in the New York Times, Rachel Swarns examines the increasingly visible world of the black South African writer. While Apartheid-era literature was largely preoccupied by the theme of violence against the blacks by the ruling white population, black writers in the post-Apartheid South Africa have seized the initiative in writing stories about more complex issues beyond racial politics. For instance, these black authors have variously worked on the following themes:

• AIDS
• Crime
• Inter-racial tension beyond the simplistic black is good, white is evil formula
• Exile and the tension between local anti-Apartheid activists and those returning from exile
• The struggle to maintain African tradition against urbanization/modernization
• The treatment of job-seeking black Africans from neighbouring countries by black South Africans
• Issues of identity, for example the increasing class mobility of the black population and the resulting sense of identity displacement
• Homosexuality
• Poverty

There were a number of black South African authors in history, for example, Sol Plaatje is thought to be the first in his cohort to have published an English novel entitled Mhudi. In the 1950s Can Themba and Nat Nakasa wrote about life in the townships and Apartheid before being exiled, culminating with the protest literature of the 1970s and early 1980s. However, what set the new black South African authors apart from their predecessors are very different experiences. A number of them had to readjust to life after returning from exile, to cope with being placed within a new black elite, and to be witness to problems like political corruption and ineptitude.

To discuss these authors further, I provide an overview of the authors and the information in the New York Times article about their works.

• Phaswane Mpe. A 31 year old writer who published Welcome to Our Hillbrow in 2001. Mpe is uninterested in racial problems but prefers to talk about AIDS and xenophobia, two of the major themes of his book.
  
• K. Sello Duiker. 27 year old author of The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001) and Thirteen Cents (2000). In Thirteen Cents Duiker tells a story about black street children, drawing attention to the fact that while racial inequities are rapidly vanishing, new inequalities are being formed according to class divisions. Duiker, together with Mpe and Mda (see below) have had privileged connections with white universities, and as such discusses issues of privilege and identity in The Quiet Violence of Dreams. One of his characters, Tshepo, comes from a black middle class family. Having been sent to a private school, Tshepo appears more comfortable in the white world.
  
• Zakes Mda. 57. Described in the article as most “critically acclaimed” author of the post-Apartheid black South African literary scene, publishing Ways of Dying in 1995 and The Heart of Redness in 2000. Having spent 32 years in exile, his novels interestingly depict characters coming to terms with post-Apartheid life, of which the struggle to hold on to traditional African values in the face of the new South African politics and western materialism is an important theme. In The Heart of Redness, Camagu is a former exile who has to contend with changes: friends who were freedom fighters are now corporate figures, and friends from rural villages have gone on to lead successful lives in the big city.
  

Source:

Swarns, Rachel L. "South Africa's Black Writers Explore a Free Society's Tensions." The New York Times, June 24, 2002.

Related Websites

• Language policy and African language publishing in South Africa -- online article by Phaswane Mpe
• "I'm a Travelling Salesman" -- An interview with K. Sello Duiker by Victor Lakay
• Seeking other selves -- Feature article on K. Sello Duiker in the Sunday Times (South Africa).
• Unspoken Side of City Life Captured -- Article on Azure, the short film adaptation of K. Sello Duiker's Thirteen Cents.
• Culture after Apartheid
• Ways of Writing -- Feature article on Zakes Mda in the Sunday Times (South Africa).
• After Apartheid -- An interview with Nadine Gordimer.
• Post-Apartheid Violence and the Institution of Literature -- online article by Brendon Nicholls in the Australian Humanities Review.
• Organised Crime in Post-Apartheid South Africa -- online article by Mark Shaw, Institute for Security Studies.
• What is Post-Apartheid South Africa and its place in the world? -- Rasheed Araeen
• Review of Grant Farred's The Midfielder's Moment: Coloured Literature and Culture in Contemporary South Africa -- Ann Langwadt
• Conditions of Cultural Production in Post-Apartheid South Africa -- Jyotri Mistry [in Adobe PDF format].
  

Last modified: 11 July, 2002