GEOFFREY V . DAVIS

From to Goree: A South African Writer in Search of the African Heritage

I've never regarded South Afiica as something different and isolated. I have always seen it as part of the whole continent, and with so much in common with the continent. NADINE GoRDIMER I

Two of the more interesting publications of recent years on South African litera• ture have been Crossing Borders. Writers meet the ANC,2 a verbatim account of a meeting held at the Victoria Falls in 1989 at which writers from inside the country and from exile came together to discuss the place of literature in a future, liberated , and Spring is Rebellious,3 which documents the debate provoked by Albie Sachs' - by now notorious - paper on "Preparing ourselves for freedom," in which he suggested that it was time to foresake the notion that culture could be a "weapon of struggle." From the former here is an exile, Baleka Kgotsitsile, speaking on the need to create a new literature for children: We as South Afiican writers must address the issue of creating a literature that is South Afiican, and that is based on an acceptance that South Africa is an African country ... a literature that identifies with the rest of Afiica, and that sees it as a positive thing to be in Afiica. (p.121) From the latter here is a response to Sachs' proposal from an academic, Betty O'Grady, who suggests that it is time for South Africans to foresake what she terms "the weight of West em aesthetic criteria." She writes: It is difficult to see the way ahead, for the effects of decades of isolation and cul• tural deprivation have taken their toll. Yet perhaps we do not need to look too far

"Writing in Afiica: Nadine Gordimer Interviewed. Stephen Gray and Phil du Plessis (1972)." Conversations with Nadine Gordimer, eds. Nancy Topping BazinlMarilyn Dallman Seymour. (Jackson, London, 1990), p.59. First published in New Nation, September 1972. 2 Crossing Borders. Writers talk to the ANC, eds. Ampie Coetzee/James Polley. (Bramley, 1990). 3 Spring is Rebellious. Arguments about Cultural Freedom by Albie Sachs and respondents, eds. Ingrid de Kok/Karen Press. (Cape Town, 1990). 26 GEOFFREY V: DAVIS afield. Now is the time to take advantage of the relaxing political restrictions and to open up channels of communication with our fellow Africans to the north of us ... South African writers need to see themselves as an integral part of the whole African continent. By tapping in to the vast experience and resources of those countries who have trod the path before us, new forms of expression may be forged, capable of conveying the uniqueness of the South African experience" (pp.128 and 130). "Isolation and cultural deprivation" certainly - the effects of censorship, of the exile of writers, and of the cultural boycott. The draconian provisions of laws such as the Suppression of Communism Act and the Publications and Entertainment Act passed in the 1950s and 60s, by which government sought to impose apartheid legislation on cultural activity, endangered writers' physical existence through harassment, curtailed their freedom of expression, or rendered the pursuit of a literary career - financially as well as artistically - almost impos• sible through the wholesale banning of their works. Many left the country, among them Lewis Nkosi, Bloke Modisane, Alex La Guma, Bessie Head, Es'kia Mphahlele and Nat Nakasa. Their fates were often tragic; some committed sui• cide, others died in obscurity. After the Soweto uprising of 1976 more writers left the country - Mongane Wally Serote's departure for is one example. Over the years a literature of exile came into existence consisting of works written by exiles before leaving, published abroad and banned in their own COun• try, as well as - increasingly - works written from exile. For many years the entry of these texts into South Africa on any large scale was effectively prevented. A particularly disastrous effect of government-imposed bans and of exile was the temporary dismemberment of the black literary tradition: younger writers were cut off from their cultural history. What Steve Biko called an "arrested image" of black culture was created. Young writers found themselves beginning their literary careers with little knowledge of the work of previ.Jus generations. Thus Matsemela Manaka had no knowledge of the works of LaGuma, Mphahlele and Serote; Serote, for his part, had no access to the writings of Masizi Kunene or of ; Sipho Sepamla railed at being denied the opportunity to read the work of Lewis Nkosi or of . Over the long years of the apartheid regime South Africans were deprived not only of their own literary tradition but also of that of the wider African continent. The combined effects of the cultural boycott, which prevented African artists vis• iting South Africa, and of censorship within the country itself, rendered most of the writing of independent Africa inaccessible to black South Africans. When, after 1976, opposition to apartheid began to mobilise, the liberation movements intensified their armed struggle, infiltrating the country from the out• side, while internally a new black trade union movement organised and civics of all kinds formed the United Democratic Front, all this affected the sphere of cul-