The privileging of the poet's critical awareness of the common as a trope in the poetry of South African exiles in the poetry discussed in this thesis embeds (either as a positive or negative force) the highly contested, grand projects of humanism/s. This thesis contributes to the critical rewriting of South African literary history, as well as to the body of scholarly work dealing with exile. I then loosely define apartheid as the long history of racial discrimination in twentieth-century South Africa.
In chapter four, I delve into the space between the real and the imagined, looking at a selection of critical discourses that discuss South Africa's poetic history and write South African literary identities. I look at how the development of South African literary scholarship was influenced by poets in exile and the political agendas that influenced creative and theoretical practice in South Africa.
Belonging to Exile
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) also refers to the original use of the word "exile" to apply to captive Jews in the fifth century. 10 Keorapetse Kgositsile, "My people sing no more," in The Return of the Amasi Bird, eds. It is helpful to our discussion to conceptualize the history of South Africa in relation to the evolution of the historical concept of exile.
103 Graham Pechey, ―Introduction,‖ in South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 4. Mqhayi, ―The Black Army and the Sinking of the Mendi,‖ i The Penguin Book of South African Verse, eds.
The Heart of Exile
The Afrikaners even adopted the name of the native inhabitants of the land Afrikaners (Africans). I have argued that South African exile culture cannot be read as a marginalized art form, as it has played a role in the ongoing cultural transformation of the country. This is despite a comment by Brutus during the height of the state of emergency in the 1980s that South Africa was ―a country that is culturally desperately poor.
For some activists who were in exile and no longer part of this culture, South Africa seemed barren of the vibrancy and energy they found abroad. Writers of South Africa's literary histories of the apartheid years enter complex and diverse communities of cultural production. William Kgositsile, ―My people no longer sing,‖ in The Return of the Amasi Bird, eds.
Yet some of the language used in South African exile poetry is sparse and shallow, almost emotionless. By resisting writing the new environment while resisting the oppression of the old, Mphahlele was trapped in the nowhere land of being in exile. Recognition of the plight of comrades, fellow exiles, mentors and those left behind is a recurring theme in the poetry of the South African exiles.
The condition of being exiled from South Africa during the apartheid years is another aspect of the South African literary field. In the patriarchal, masculine society that was and remains fundamental to the South African ethos, the image of the mother is that of the bearer of children and the creator of sustenance. In many parts of the world, the 1970s saw an increase in political expression via song, poetry, theater or performance, and in South Africa the songs and poems multiplied especially in the seventies leading up to the Soweto riots.
Trusted Encounters
Obama now becomes symbolic of the long history of the Black Atlantic in the United States. The harm of the past can only be resolved through reparation, not through mandates of truth and reconciliation. The membership of the British and South African Communist parties was always much lower than in Europe and was of a fairly transient nature.
For Cixous, Shelley, Derrida and Brutus, writing becomes the transformation of the political into a political poetry. We see this dilemma again and again in the exiles' poetry, despite a desire for and belief in common duty, natural solidarity and unity. Of the poets represented in the anthology Poets to the People21, the personal and the political cannot be separated because they are re/produced as one.
Williams has an extensive discussion of the Prometheus figure in Shelley's poem compared to the Soweto poets.34. In South Africa, women were an integral part of the liberation movement, but often remained as minority voices in pressure. For some South Africans who worked during the 1990s to transform South Africa, only an opposition or erasure of the past was suitable.
In a convincing argument, Wilson questions the legitimacy of the moral narratives created by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The latter can be seen as symbolic gestures created to help in the healing process after decolonization and the rewriting of the colonial past. For Goldstuck, the act of the writers, their writing of poetry, achieved some justification in the form of democracy.
Language in Exile: Between the Real and the Imagined
Within this oppositional relationship, marginalized groups lived a life that was often portrayed as absurd in the literary sense of the word. 5 John Matshikiza, ―At the Dawn I Saw Africa,‖ in The Return of the Amasi Bird, ed. It is an altruistic hope that reappears in South Africa's contribution to human rights discourse, in exile poetry, in the South African Bill of Rights and in the testimonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In this way, racism defined a generation of writers/artists in South Africa, regardless of the content or form of the writing. He uses South Africa as an example of the downfall of racism (but possibly not its legacy), an example of how a defined ideology can be overthrown. 53 According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in January 2010 there were 47,974 refugees and 309,794 asylum seekers in South Africa.
In South Africa there was a constant self-analysis and a self-referential environment which created a discourse giving writing the status of the critic within. Ramphele became the first black woman vice-chancellor of a South African university (University of Cape Town) and a member of the board of the World Bank. A reading of poems and singing of South African freedom songs ended with the audience and performers singing "Nkosi Sikelel".
Nevertheless, both groups owe much to the encouragement of the ANC, which encouraged and mediated all kinds of cultural expression in large sectors of South African society. Crais, White Supremacy and Black Resistance in Pre-Industrial South Africa: The Emergence of Colonial Order in the Eastern Cape, 1770-1865. In discussing the role of violence in the ANC's strategy for political change, Edwin Mabitze drew attention to the UN Charter (promoting violence against oppression).
A Constellation of Histories
This role was played by the Scottish missionaries who ran most of the mission schools in South Africa. The South African constitution includes a Bill of Rights66, which is considered one of the most advanced such documents in the world. 74 Robert Grendon, ―To You Abantu What Man's Accomplished Ye Can Do,‖ in The Return of the Amasi Bird, ed.
79 Earl Buxton quoted by Rev Z R Mahabane, President of the ANC in African National Congress,. As a result of the failures of governments to uphold these notions of rights in South Africa in the twentieth century, the rights discourse became the dissident discourse written in opposition to the prevailing legal framework of the country. Dube therefore chose the path of negotiation to the distress of some later leaders of the ANC.
Du Bois would later become an adviser to the American delegation involved in the founding of the United Nations organization. The UN would increasingly see its members debating the "problem" of South Africa's outright rejection of the idea of universal and pluralistic applications of rights philosophies. And while the world was moving towards the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, partly authored by General Jan Smuts, South Africa was to move in the opposite direction.
The UN's relationship with South Africa is significant in the history of both the organization and the country. South Africa's rejection of the Universal Declaration was a challenge to UN authority. The Indian delegation continued to draw attention to South Africa's violation of the UN statement.
Poets to the People
South African censors were used as political instruments to become both public, moral guardians and protectors of the state's definition of literature. I recommend Peter McDonald's impressive publication on South African censorship, The Literature Police, which provides a detailed history of the role and nature of censorship in South Africa and shows how, until the 1980s, a few progressive censors saw some modicum of literary value in the protest poetry of "Poets to the People". His poem foreshadows the more brutal and self-critical language of poets of black consciousness.
Writing the New South Africa.‖ Indeed the new South Africa was created and recreated in the imagination long before years of planning led to its political realization. 48 South African Students' Organization (SASO), ―Commissions presented at the 3rd General Student Council of the South African Students' Organization, St. A controversial figure in South Africa today for her outspoken pro-black stance, Christine Douts Qunta was a feminist, one of the militant student and Black activists at the Black Chapter Convention for SA.
Qunta belongs to a later generation where militant rebellion is typical of the 'poets for the people' movement. What follows is a discussion of the censor's reactions to banished or banished poets to the people. Malan notes that in the foreword, Hugh MacDiarmid expresses solidarity with the contributors to the anthology and uses the phrase "we shall conquer", an iconic slogan of the American civil rights movement then popularized in South Africa.
Here she met his colleagues in the soon-to-be banned South African Communist Party. The poems from Poets to the People exiles read as both lively and depressing accounts of the apartheid years and the impact of oppression on the poets. The last poet in the first edition of Poets to the People is Scarlet Whitman, a pseudonym for Barry Feinberg,92 the editor of the collection and then a committed member of the South African Communist Party.
