South African literature

South African literature refers to written works composed by authors native to South Africa. The country's literature reflects its complicated history, incorporating South Africa's rich ethnic diversity with its colonial past and the hardships imposed by years of racial injustice. A distinct South African literary tradition developed in the nineteenth century with tales of pioneering life on the farming frontier. In the early twentieth century, Black South Africans began adding their voices to the nation's literature. By mid-century, both Black and White authors were united in their criticism of the country's policies of racial segregation. Even after the end of apartheid in the 1990s, issues of race continued to permeate South African literature, though the focus of writing began to shift toward social issues such as violence, poverty, and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

While South Africa has eleven official languages, much of its literature has historically been written in Afrikaans and English—two languages that are understood by the majority of the population. Among the country's most famous writers are Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee, authors who have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Other well-known authors include Olive Schreiner, Sol Plaatje, Alan Paton, Zakes Mda, Es'kia Mphahlele, and André Brink.

Background

South Africa is a 470,693 square-mile (1,219,090 square-kilometer) nation located on the southern tip of the African continent. The first modern humans in the region were the ancestors of the Khoekhoe and San peoples, who migrated to the area more than one hundred thousand years ago. Portuguese navigators were the first Europeans to encounter South Africa in the late fifteenth century, but the Dutch established the first settlements there a century and a half later.

In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck and a party of ninety men set up a commercial supply colony at Table Bay in modern-day Cape Town. Attempts to initiate trade with the Khoekhoe devolved into violence as the Dutch raided the natives for supplies and forced them back into the interior. In 1657, Dutch, German, and French farmers, known locally as Boers, began arriving in South Africa. By the eighteenth century, these colonists had spread farther inland, claiming more farmland and bringing with them slaves imported from East Africa, Madagascar, and Southeast Asia.

In 1795, British forces took control of Cape Town in an effort to keep the strategic colony from falling into the hands of the French. In 1806, the Dutch officially ceded control of the colony to the British. As British settlers began arriving in South Africa, they clashed with the Boer farmers. The Boers were deeply religious and adhered to a philosophy of strict separation of the races and church control of political matters. At the time, England was an industrialized society that believed in the superiority of British imperialism. British Protestant missionaries thought they could "civilize" the ingenious inhabitants of South Africa by introducing them to Western Christianity.

In the 1830s, scores of Boer farmers and their families began a journey inland to escape British influence and establish their own territories in the South African interior. This migration became known as the Great Trek and those who participated in it were called Voortrekkers. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Voortrekkers had established two independent republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. In the late nineteenth century, diamonds and gold deposits were discovered in the region, unleashing a flood of new immigration to South Africa and further inflaming tensions among the English, the Boers, and the indigenous inhabitants. A series of wars culminating in the South African War (1899–1902) resulted in a victory for the British and the realization that peace among the White population would be necessary to govern the region effectively.

In 1910, the British-ruled colonies of Cape Town and Natal joined with the Orange Free State and Transvaal to form the Union of South Africa. The uniting of the country did not, however, unite South Africa under a common ideology. Nationalist groups predominantly made up of Dutch-speaking Boers, developed a distinct Afrikaner identity separate from the English and the indigenous people of South Africa. The Afrikaners felt marginalized in their own nation yet they believed they were preordained by God to rule South Africa. At the same time, Black South Africans, also feeling they were being treated unjustly, formed their own political organization, the African National Congress (ANC).

After the Afrikaner-based National Party swept into power in the 1948 elections, it implemented a series of laws legalizing segregation and dividing the population along racial lines. These policies, known as apartheid, set aside most of the nation's land for White use only and confined Black and mixed-race South Africans to their own districts. Interracial marriages were banned and non-White citizens were limited in their choice of jobs and denied participation in government. Dissent against apartheid was not tolerated, with many protesters severely punished or jailed for their activism.

After decades of riots, protests, and international pressure, apartheid began to crumble in the late 1980s. Nelson Mandela, an ANC leader who spent twenty-seven years in prison before his release in 1990, worked with Afrikaner president F.W. de Klerk to dismantle the system by 1994. In the first elections open to all races, Mandela was elected president, and he oversaw the creation of a new constitution. The Mandela government also implemented the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate crimes committed under apartheid and seek justice.

Overview

South Africa first came to the attention of the literary community in the late nineteenth century with its depiction as an exotic land ready to be tamed by the brave British adventurer. London-born author H. Rider Haggard introduced the character of gentleman hunter Allan Quatermain in the 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and its two sequels. Haggard's Quatermain promoted the British ideal of the heroic Englishman facing off against the dangerous and "savage" peoples of the region. His novels became best sellers at the time and eventually spawned several twentieth-century film adaptations.

Olive Schreiner, the daughter of a Protestant missionary born in the Eastern Cape region, is often considered the first uniquely South African writer. Schreiner's 1883 novel The Story of an African Farm is the semiautobiographical story of three children growing into adults in the rural interior of South Africa. Schreiner was a reformer and staunch feminist who in later works criticised the colonial government of South Africa for its imperialistic attitudes. Her 1909 book, Closer Union, argued in favor of equal treatment for the nation's Black citizens and made a case for gender equality.

Sol Plaatje—a native Tswana speaker who also spoke English, Afrikaans, and several other languages—published the first novel by a Black South African in 1930. Mhudi, which was completed a decade earlier, is an epic tale of the rise of the Zulu king Shaka and the White colonization of the South African interior told from the point of view of the Tswana people. Plaatje's other works included collections of African folktales and proverbs and Tswana translations of William Shakespeare's plays.

In the 1920s, author Sarah Gertrude Millin used the prevailing prejudices of the era as a central theme of her novel God's Step-Children (1924), the story of several generations of a mixed-race family. Other works of the time, such as Stuart Cloete's 1937 novel Turning Wheels, focused on the nation's pioneering history. Turning Wheels was an adventure story released to coincide with the centennial of the Great Trek, and it offers a harsh view of the Boer way of life.

Just months before apartheid was enacted as the law of the nation, author Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) brought the racial inequality occurring in South Africa to the attention of the world. The novel became an international best seller, and it is perhaps the most famous work of South African literature ever published. It tells the story of a Black priest named Stephen Kumalo whose son is scheduled to be executed for the murder of a White peace activist. In Kumalo's journey to see his son, he is exposed to the racial and economic injustice tearing his country apart.

In 1953, author Nadine Gordimer published her first novel, The Lying Days, based on her experiences growing up in a prejudiced-riddled mining town. Gordimer's body of work portrayed the brutal discrimination of apartheid from the perspective of a sympathetic White South African. Many of her books were banned by the government but widely read outside of South Africa. Her 1974 novel, The Conservationist, about a White farm owner who discovers the body of an unknown Black man on his farm, was cowinner of the Booker Prize for Fiction, an annual award given to the best original novel in the English language. In 1991, Gordimer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first South African to receive that honor.

The autobiographical novel Down Second Avenue, written in exile by Es'kia Mphahlele in 1959, told the personal story of apartheid through the eyes of a young Black boy growing up in a poor township near Pretoria. Additional essays and autobiographical works by Mphahlele address issues of African nationalism and the development of a political consciousness among Black South Africans. Other prominent writers from the 1950s and 1960s included Bessie Head and Wilbur Smith, whose styles were as different as their lives. The mixed-race Head was born in South Africa but was forced to flee to Botswana to escape apartheid. Issues of poverty, mental illness, and racial identity are central in many of Head's works. Smith focused on works of historical fiction, incorporating South Africa's colonial roots into numerous best-selling novels. In terms of sales, Smith is the most successful South African author to date.

J.M. Coetzee began his writing career in the 1970s and achieved fame in the 1980s. Like many of his contemporaries from the apartheid era, Coetzee's early work targeted South Africa's social environment and racial intolerance. In 1980's Waiting for the Barbarians, a magistrate on the fringes of a distant empire awaits the impending attack of an unseen horde of barbarians. Life and Times of Michael K, the story of a man journeying to see his sick mother against the backdrop of a racial civil war, won the 1983 Booker Prize. Coetzee became the first author to win the Booker Prize twice when his post-apartheid novel, Disgrace, won the award in 1999. In Disgrace, a college professor accused of sexual impropriety with a student deals with the violent changes occurring in a new South Africa. In 2003, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his body of work.

Author André Brink also began writing in the 1970s and continued into the post-apartheid era. His 1982 novel, A Dry White Season, is the story of a White South African who investigates the death of a Black friend, which occurred while the friend was in police custody. Brink's work after the fall of apartheid was highly critical of the nation's leaders and their handling of the rise in crime and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Nelson Mandela, whose imprisonment and decades-long fight against injustice made him the face of the anti-apartheid movement, told his story in the 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. Mandela shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F.W. de Klerk for their efforts in ending the apartheid system.

South Africa after apartheid is often called the Rainbow Nation for its diversity of cultures, but the country still struggles with its identity and issues involving violence, rape, and racism continue. In his 1994 novel Ways of Dying, author and playwright Zakes Mda creates a fictional story inspired by the very real violence among Black political factions that occurred during the 1994 elections. In 2000, Mda published The Heart of Redness, a critical look at his nation's transition, in which he compares his characters' obsession with their "new" culture to the misguided words of a nineteenth-century prophetess who almost led her people to ruin. Similarly, comedian Trevor Noah published his 2016 memoir Born a Crime, which examines the effects of apartheid in the country and the after effects for society by examining his own childhood and life as a biracial man in the country.

In the twenty-first century, author Lauren Beukes has combined social commentary with magical realism and elements of science fiction in works such as 2008's Moxyland, 2010's Zoo City and 2020's Afterland. Moxyland recasts apartheid as a corporate creation in a future South Africa where cell phones are used as a means to control the population. Zoo City is set in an alternative Johannesburg in which convicted criminals are magically attached to a guardian animal spirit. Afterland takes place after a pandemic has wiped out almost all the men in the world and follows a woman and her son as they try to flee the United States to return to their home in South Africa.

Bibliography

Attwell, David, and Derek Attridge, editors. The Cambridge History of South African Literature. Cambridge UP, 2012.

Beck, Roger B. The History of South Africa. 2nd ed., Greenwood, 2014.

Cornwell, Gareth, et al. The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English Since 1945. Columbia UP, 2010.

"History." Government of South Africa, www.gov.za/node/68. Accessed 19 June 2017.

"A History of South African Literature, Timeline 1824–2005." South African History Online, 18 Jan. 2016, www.sahistory.org.za/topic/history-south-african-literature-timeline1824-2005. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

Ibinga, Stephane Serge. "Post-Apartheid Literature beyond Race." This Century's Review, 2010, history.thiscenturysreview.com/post‗apartheid.html. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

Kelsall, Kate. "An Introduction to South African Literature in 10 Writers." The Culture Trip, 2016, theculturetrip.com/africa/south-africa/articles/top-ten-south-african-writers/. Accessed 19 June 2017.

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Swarns, Rachel L. "Beyond Black and White; South Africa's Black Writers Explore a Free Society's Tensions." The New York Times, 24 June 2002, www.nytimes.com/2002/06/24/books/beyond-black-white-south-africa-s-black-writers-explore-free-society-s-tensions.html. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

"31 Books Every South African Should Read." Brand South Africa, 3 Feb. 2016, www.brandsouthafrica.com/people-culture/arts-culture/31-books-every-south-african-should-read. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.