Items

• Voice of the poets

  "In Africa, the indigenous population have been most widely subject to these two langauges, Negritude for French-speaking Africans is a literary attitude which English-speaking Africans are apt to denigrate. But the problem of writing poetry is different for a Nigerian as opposed to a Canadian. He is aware of other languages and English may not be the language he was brought up to think in. The African Waring may still be writing in translation... [poetry excerpt] In this satirical piece young Frank Aid-Imoukhuede is so free in English he can write pigeon, know it, and have a go at western morality in a way wholly different from young David Elworthy having a go at upper-class afternoon tea in New Zealand. African poetry it seems to me must be (and is) fascinated by language... African poets like Wole Soyinka or Christopher Okigbo are entrancing and entranced by language. Either they write of people or ideas. There is no yearn for the exposition of landscape to bolster nationality. Their aim is to write like...how would this sentence go on?...Like T. S. Eliot? He may well stand for this sort of expatriate poetry."
• The language for poets

  Louis Heren interviews Adam Small on life in South Africa under apartheid. Adam Small, a black South African, discusses the way in which people who speak Afrikaans are "the true South Africans," and that "the whites...were obsessed with colour." He describes the limitations his children will face: "You cannot send your children to the best schools you can afford; only the second-or third-rate. They were bogged down in life despite their talents, from the word go."
• The African Renaissance

  The article frames the question of whether or not Africans can be held to the same esteem as Europeans; it suggests that Europeans have tried to assimilate African nations by having African nations adopt British public school systems, by requiring the learning of Latin, by teaching Hume and Ayer, Descartes ad Gilson. "It wears academic dress, or drinks vermouth in cafes...when this elite wants to write poetry, or do scientific research, or run a business, or make political speeches, or philosophise, it is obliged as a rule to use a European language." The article then asks: "How can we make use of European ideas, institutions, and techniques, without becoming their prisoner--without ceasing to be African?"
• Power of the Pen in Exile: The Times Profile, Breyten Breytenbach

  This profile of Breyten Breytenbach describes his arrest in South Africa, his subsequent release, and his feelings about the South African regime and Afrikaans as a language more generally. "It was at the age of 36, the height of his literary acclaim, that South Africa's leading Afrikaans poet Breyten Breytenbach was imprisoned for seven years for clandestine activities against the apartheid system."
• One World in Four Volumes

  [Excerpt]: "Nine years were spent in preparing The Penguin Companion to Literature and a large number of contributors, most of them academics, have been enlisted. The enterprise is undoubtedly worth while: our world is certainly not politically a single world, but culturally it is becoming at least potentially so. In literature, as in music and the visual arts, we feel a need to have some knowledge by report of what we may never know by acquaintance... In the African section of the fourth volume, the late Christopher Okigbo is credited with being 'one of the most exciting poets now writing in Africa,' and some critics might feel that the formative Western influence was Pound rather than Eliot. The poet from Gambia described as 'Leurie Peters' should surely be Lenrie Peters. It is pleasant to find that very fine bilingual writer in Afrikaans and English, Uys Krige, dealt with briefly, but with proper respect, as is the highly civilized and persecuted South African poet, Dennis Brutus. The note on the Nigerian dramatist Wole Soyinka mentions that his most famous play, The Lion and the Jewel, 'presents the impositions of modern civilization as a threat to the African villagers' individuality.' ..."
• Nine years jail for Afrikaans poet

  Mr Breyten Breytenbach, the Afrikaans writer and poet, was today jailed for nine years by the Pretoria Supreme Court for taking part in "terroristic activities." ...Referring to the public apology which Mr Breytenbach made in court yesterday, the judge said he believed his testimony of regret was genuine. He also took into account that Mr Breytenbach's crime--the formation of an organization known as "Atlas" or "Okhela," whose aim was to overthrow the South African Government--never got beyond the discussion stage. However, violence could have resulted from the poet's actions, he said.
• Jailed poet wins South African literary award

  Breyten Breytenbach, the jailed South African writer, has won a literary prize awarded by the pro-government press, for a book of poems written in prison. Mr Breytenbach was sentenced in 1975 to nine years' imprisonment for alleged subversion on behalf of the banned African National Congress. The prize was awarded by the Perskor group which owns Die Transvaler and other Afrikaans newspapers. It is for a collection of poems entitled Voetskrif (Footnote). The prize money of 2,000 rand has been handed over to the poet's brother.
• In search of a subject

  Sousa Jamba writes critical reviews of both Africa Talks Back, which contains interviews with Anglophone African authors, and The Ordeal of the African Writer, by Charles R. Larson. Of the first, Jamba writes, "Africa Talks Back... reflects the ambitions of a wide range of writers. Some of them, like the Ugandan poet Okot p'Bitek, are long dead; others have gone into obscure retirement. Some, such as Chinua Achebe, Dennis Brutus, Kole Omotoso, Taban Lo Liyong and Njabulo Ndebele, are still active, thugh mainly in the academic world in the West or in South Africa... Today, the all-powerful Big Men who have dominated postcolonial Africa are slowly being forced out and institutions such as Makerere University are, very slowly, recovering their former glory..." Of the second, Jamba writes, "Charles R. Larson, a professor of literature at American University in Washington D.C. outlines some of the major obstacles facing the African writer. These are the parlous state of publishing on the continent, persecution from political authorities, and consequent exile."
• In 'The Times' tomorrow

  A new novel by Graham Greene, his first since The Honorary Consul, is to be published in Britain shortly. An extract from The Human Factor, another exploration of the Greene country, will appear in the Saturday review tomorrow. Other articles include Louis Heren on Adam Small, the Afrikaans poet; an interview with Nadine Gorimer; Olga Franklin on cleaning the British Museum, and the monthly review of paperbacks.
• African Culture Asserted After Struggle

  "The pre-colonial artistic heritage of Nigeria suffered decay while the country was under British rule. Both Christianity, the religion of the colonial masters, and Islam, which made impressive gains under Pax Britannica, were opposed to manifestations of their converts' ancestral religions, although the latter was more tolerant of them... But the most exciting developments have been in literature, where the late Christopher Okigbo, the poet, Chinua Achebe, a novelist and poet, and Wole Soyinka, poet, playwright, novelist, have proved themselves superb craftsmen who leave the reader in no doubt of their identity, yet handle the English language with the same confidence as the best of their native English-speaking contemporaries."
• A Plea for Afrikaans

  T. J. Harhoff's book recounts the origins and development of the Afrikaans language in South Africa. Of African poetry, critic du Plessis writes, "Afrikaans has still a long way to go before it realizes all the hopes of its ardent supporters: but it has some poets and one or two prose-writers whose measure would not be diminished by European standards. The language is bold, simple, humorous, vital and vigorous, and is sufficiently flexible for any venturesome and inventive writer who wishes to express many shades of thought." du Plessis then quotes from Harhoff's book, in which Harhoff discusses Roy Campbell.
• On the edge of the Empire

  "Mr. Coetzee whose third novel this is, is an Afrikaner, though the book was obviously written in English."
• Paperbacks

  "A collection of essays on South African Literature."
• Lost for Words

  "He spent time studying under the revered Afrikaans poets N. P. van Wyk Louw and Ernst van Heerden. He had close links to Breyten Breytenbach, whom he considers one of the world's greatest poets."
• Multiracial pens
• Rewriting the myths
• Between the Acts

  Sympathetic commentators sometimes claim that the Afrikaner people of South Africa are motivated not by race but by culture. The Afrikaners' first concern, so the argument goes, is not to favour whites by oppressing blacks, but to preserve the Afrikaner language, religion, and fragile cultural identity in the face of both extreme hostility within and without South Africa.
• After apartheid

  Is there literature after apartheid? It would be surprising if, at least among white writers, the coming of a post-apartheid age did not pose certain problems, and for some these problems may prove terminal.
• On trek

  In the emigration stakes--in the league tables of wandering abroad and making one's mark on the world--South African writers are no match for certain highly mobile South African words.