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• Seventy-five years on

  "[This study] by Professor Cory, of the Rhodes University College, Grahamstown, approaches more nearly to a high standard of historical writing than any book we have yet seen on South African history...After a brief sketch of the origin of the Dutch settlement at the Cape this volume, the first of four contemplated, is almost entirely concerned with the fortunes of the eastern province... There is, however, one curious ommission. Thomas Pringle, the only South African poet known to the outside world, is but twice mentioned, and on both occasions in a manner depreciatory of his testimony with regard to controversial matters. Pringle undoubtedly after his return to Cape Town took a bitter view of all dealings of South Africans with the natives, and he may have been as wrong-headed as Professor Cory represents him; but at any rate his experiences as one of the earliest settlers on the Baviaans River and his enthusastic poems on the life he and his companions led should have awakened a sympathetic chord in so great a lover of the eastern province as Professor Cory..."
• S. A. Professor Resigns

  Mr. Adam Small, one of South Africa's leading Coloured intellectuals, has resigned his teaching post at the troubled University of the Western Cape, citing the enforced closure of the Coloured institution as one of his reasons. The University has been closed since June 11 following student demonstrations against alleged restrictive rules and White domination in running the institution.
• 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."
• Coloured academics refuse to take part in 'witch-hunt'

  Three coloured academics have resigned from an otherwise all-white committee investigating readmissions to the Universty of the Western Cape, which was closed last week after student disturbances. The three, Mr. Adam Small, head of the university's philosophy department, Mr. G. J. Gerwel, lecturer in Afrikaans, and Mr. C. T. Johnson, lecturer in botany, had been named by Dr. Shalk van der Merwe, the Minister of Coloured Affairs, to serve on the committee with 10 white academics. A spokesman for their staff association said last night that they had resigned because the minister had already said that some students would not be readmitted and they did not want to take part in a witch-hunt.
• Charges of Forming Illegal W. Nigeria Government: Police Seek Poet

  Following a clash between police and undergraduates at Ibadan University, all students there have been restricted to the campus. They were demonstrating against the outcome of the regional elections. In Lagos market women were dispersed by police with tear gas while on a protest march to the Prime Minister's residence from Mushin, which is the Western Nigerian suburb of the Federal capital. Police in Ibadan toda declared Mr. Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian playwright and poet who featured in the recent Commonwealth arts festival in Britain, to be a wanted person. They have asked for public cooperation in finding Mr. Soyinka, in connexion with an incident which prevented a message from Mr. Akintola, the regional Premier, being broadcast. It was stated that the recorded message was seized in the studio by an armed man, who took it away. The regional Governor has reappointed Chief Babatunji Oloweku Justice Minister and Attorney General. This is the first portfolio to be allocated so far. Chief Remifani Kayode, Chief Claude Akran, and Chief Adebiyi Adeyi have been reappointed ministers.
• Black Orpheus

  Thorpe reviews Ulli Beier's anthology of African Poetry, which includes fifty-four poems translated from twenty-six languages. The collection purports to be for students in Africa to study English poetry, but Thorpe is critical of the anthology's lack of inclusion of poems in the African version, as well. He writes, "Offering them only an English text half concedes - with unintentional irony - the defeat of the languages many are being educated away from."