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The Crisis of African Languages in the context of the Formation of Modernity in

With the hegemony of the Renaissance intellectual constellation whose mode of creative practice was only in the English language, and whose cultural gaze and historical outlook was focused on Harlem and Hollywood rather than on their own literary landscape and cultural history, much was irretrievably lost.

By Ntongela Masilela

ne incontestable tragic fact of writers and artists. Many of the critical endorse and practically celebrate the African cultural history across texts and philosophical discourses hegemony of the European languages Othe twentieth century has on the nature of the African literary over the African languages. For all been the progressive diminishment project, including those written intents and purposes this cultural in the utilisation of African languages and articulated by Africans (the tragedy is practically confined to the as linguistic instruments of literary ideological position of the majority African continent. A comparison and expression by African intellectuals, of Europeans is obvious) confirm, delimitation in relation to the situation

32 THE THINKER CULTURE in India indicates the enormity and historically understood by tracing, African literature in the European glaring nature of the African tragedy. however schematically given its languages over African literature in The choice of India is appropriate complexity, the historical form that the African languages. The question because of the indisputable consensus enabled Europe to dominate Africa, of modernity imposes a fundamental that India is a postcolonial society like or for that matter, the Universal question to us Africans today: could many African countries which were the ‘Other’, from the first moment our predecessors in the eighteenth, former colonies of England and France, of the encounter: modernity. It nineteenth and twentieth centuries whatever specificities, particularities is with this historical and cultural have entered European modernity and possible deviations one could formation invented by Europe itself through the African languages or was possibly adduce. that has made the this ‘continent this only feasible through the European The prevailing Orientalist view that of Christianity’ impose itself on languages? My fundamental thesis is Indian literature written in the Indian ‘universal history’ through force and this: Africans could only have entered Diaspora in the English language is ideological persuasion from the time European modernity through the superior to that written in the nine of the European Renaissance (fifteenth European languages not through the major indigenous Indian languages and sixteenth centuries) through the African languages. The crisis of the in India is strongly contested by two Enlightenment (eighteenth century) and African languages today is largely an formidable Indian scholars: Aijaz Romanticism (nineteenth century) and expression of this historical conundrum. Ahmad and Amit Chaudhiri. Though modernism (twentieth century) to our The seemingly irrational attacks on there are pertinent other reasons African languages by the New Negro for choosing India for comparative intellectual Alexander Crummell contrast with Africa, one of the most The late Mazisi in the nineteenth century and the critical is the one that makes it possible Kunene (1930-2006), New African intellectual R. V. Selope to pose a fundamental issue regarding Thema (1886-1955) in the twentieth our continent: why was India, as well the great Zulu poet century as ‘heathenistic’, ‘barbaric’ as a few other countries, able to retain who passed away in and ‘backward’ were an expression its religious beliefs and metaphysical of this traumatic awareness of the systems despite the massive assault of 2006, one of the most impossibility of African languages being English imperial domination, whereas eminent poetic voices the cultural facilitators of entrance into Africa has not been able to do so after to come from Africa in modernity. suffering under the English and French At this juncture we would like to imperial systems? A related issue poses the twentieth century, shift from a ‘continental’ perspective itself here: is the crisis of the African was unyielding in his of Africa to the ‘bilateral’ perspective languages among the African literary between United States and South elite connected to the destruction belief that all linguistic Africa and subsequently to the of indigenous religious beliefs and implements and all ‘national’ perspective of my country metaphysical systems among the South Africa itself. The point here is to masses of the African people? Even in cultural expressive ascend to ‘historical specificities’ from those countries which have embraced forms which were not ‘general abstractions’. Islam, the crisis of indigenous languages The historical representatives of is profound and persists to the present. ‘indigenous’ to Africa European modernity who were its A matter that need not concern us were ‘Carapaces of agency at the moment of its turbulent here but its seriousness compels encounter with the ‘Other’ in South one to mention it in passing: Is Islam Occupation’. Africa as well as in much of Africa an ‘African’ religion any more than were the colonial administrators and Christianity is supposed to be? moment of postmodernism (twenty-first the missionaries. Although mutually The late Mazisi Kunene (1930- century). As this calendrical structure in agreement on the historical project 2006), the great Zulu poet who passed should make obvious, the temporality of the ‘civilising mission’ through away in 2006, one of the most eminent of the whole world is determined by capitalism, imperialism and colonialism poetic voices to come from Africa in the European history. The real question which was taken as a given in the twentieth century, was unyielding in for world history is: can the emergent interests of European domination and his belief that all linguistic implements China disrupt this temporality and in superiority, they were not always in and all cultural expressive forms which the process construct a new one? agreement about the process of its were not ‘indigenous’ to Africa were Undoubtedly, the imposition of realisation. This was precisely because ‘Carapaces of Occupation’. European modernity on African history the colonial administrators were Given the continuing matter of the by means of capitalism, colonialism principally engaged with the material intractability of the crisis of African and imperialism is at the centre of interests to be had from exploiting, languages in the twenty-first century, the African historical imagination: dominating and repressing the Other, the search for origins of this unending the crisis of the African languages, while the missionaries were concerned cultural trauma can perhaps best be and the seeming hegemony of with transforming the spiritual world

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of the Native as a consequence of in order to facilitate the change the as being incapable of proselytising the imposition of and proselytising on historical consciousness of Old Africans properly for Christianity because of the behalf of Christianity; the realm of the into that of New Africans. It was truly racism that was naturally engrained in former was in the mines (the material extraordinary the way the missionaries their consciousness. With this charge world) and that of the latter in schools learned the linguistic structure of many against the missionaries, Crummell was (the spiritual world). The history of African languages so that they could beginning to appeal to the principles the colonial project in Africa was translate the Bible into a multiplicity of emergent proto-Pan Africanism that characterised by a constant dialectical of African languages. In so doing, not it was in the best interests of black tension between these two agents only did they enhance literacy and people in the world for Africans to of European modernity, now and the reading of literary texts, they also enter modernity. then ruptured by intense hostility began constructing the understanding The literary culture that the between them. of linguistic structure of African missionaries preferred was that Despite this contradictory unity languages. Although they sought largely of antiquity, the Classics that they of interests, they were unified by to confine the historical and intellectual diligently taught the emergent New their mutual interests in their belief imagination of the emergent New Africans. Despite the dispute among of European superiority as well as Africans solely around the horizon of themselves, the religious education that determination to break the resistance the Bible, the controversial intervention the Xhosa Intellectuals of the 1880s, they initially encountered from of the New Negro intellectual the first collective group of black South Africans. Equally, among Africans Africans to enter modernity, received there was no singular unity of response from the missionaries, and the ideology to the violent entrance of European Undoubtedly, of literary culture they emulated from modernity into African history; those the imposition of Alexander Crummell, albeit tinged aligned with traditional interests European modernity with ‘blackness’, made this intellectual never compromised their perpetual constellation really unusual in its hostility to European intrusion, on African history by constant search or quest for originality. while those who began attending means of capitalism, Even at this incipient stage of the missionary schools saw the ‘wisdom’ of New African Movement, the crisis compromising and accepting European colonialism and of the African languages was already modernity as the ruling order in imperialism is at the apparent, in that the two poets within world history. Two quick observations the Xhosa Intellectuals of the 1880s, here: African religious beliefs and centre of the African William Wellington Gqoba (1840- metaphysical systems remained historical imagination: 1888) and Isaac W. Wauchope (1845- situated in traditional societies; 1917), seemed to have been in a state while the New African intellectuals the crisis of the of hesitancy or ‘confusion’ in writing who were the product of missionary African languages, in isiXhosa or in English. The surviving schools moved on to struggle with the poems of Gqoba are in English while transformation of European modernity and the seeming his important document on Christianity into New African modernity. This hegemony of African was written in isiXhosa. While his breach has never been healed across literature in the poetic production oscillated between two hundred years despite the fact the two languages, the major essay of that some formidable African minds in European languages Wauchope, also on Christianity, was our time such as Mazisi Kunene and over African literature written in English. That the crisis of the Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa (born in African languages ensued at the very 1921) have struggled with this issue. in the African moment of entrance into modernity The crisis of the African languages languages. by Africans, is perhaps an index of emanates directly from the rupture the gravity of the situation which was in tradition effected by the violent to worsen throughout the splay of the entrance of European modernity into Alexander Crummell argued that twentieth century. Paradoxically, it was African history. the New African intellectuals had to from among the missionaries (or their While the colonial administrators appropriate the modern English literary scholarly friends) that an insistent and were preoccupied with infrastructural culture from Shakespeare and Milton to persistent call emerged that Africans matters in transforming ‘feudal’ Wordsworth in order to truly attain the should write in the African languages, traditional societies into entities in which consciousness of being truly modern. long before this proposition was the capitalist relations of production While on the one hand Crummell misappropriated by the predominated, the missionaries was even more adamant than the regime in the 1940s and 1950s in changed the superstructural sphere of missionaries that African languages order to entrench its racial domination ideology through the epistemological and African religious systems were and fascistic practices. instruments of Christianity, modern ‘barbaric’ and ‘backward’, on the other Paradox being the matrix of education and modern civilisation hand he castigated the missionaries modernity par excellence, while the

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New African intellectuals and writers history has been characterised by was invariably in English, would be in had entered a state of crisis in their some European scholars of African the African languages be it in Setswana creative process as to whether to literature in the 1960s as having been a or Sesotho or isiXhosa or isiZulu. Each utilise the African languages at all, ‘miraculous’ event. page had a distinct set of news items, the majority of whom preferred the The disappearance of this ‘miracle’ be they political or cultural. The English language, the newspapers as a collective process coincides with Bantu World itself followed this trend they edited from the last decade of two major events that occurred in the in the early years of its publication the nineteenth century to the first particular year of 1932: the launching before it dramatically shifted to quarter of the twentieth century were of the Bantu World newspaper and a the monolingualism of the English thriving in these indigenous languages, major intellectual quarrel about the language. , naturally although invariably their first page creative role of African languages in gifted in linguistic matters, would and second page were written in modernity between two members sometimes write excellent articles English. The thriving of intellectual of the Zulu Intellectuals of the or analyses for each of the segments culture these newspapers facilitated 1940s intellectual constellation. The of the newspaper, sometimes even through discourse on modernity in the fundamental importance of the Bantu in a particular copy. The shift of the vernacular languages deserve to be World, whose founding editor was Bantu World from multilingualism mentioned here: Umteteli wa Bantu R. V. Selope Thema, who stewarded to monolingualism was hardly an (The Mouthpiece of the People), the newspaper for two decades, was economic decision caused by the then Abantu-Batho (The People), Imvo World Depression of the 1930s, but Zabantsundu (African Opinion), Izwi Paradoxically, it it was rather a calculated ideological Labantu (The Voice of the People), decision stemming from his hatred of Inkundla ya Bantu (Bantu Forum), Ipepa was from among the African traditional societies and his lo Hlanga (The Paper of the Nation), missionaries (or their unabashed reverence for modernity. Ikwezi Le Afrika (Morning Star of Africa), This reverence was not particularly for The Bantu World, Indian Opinion, A. scholarly friends) European modernity since he was a P. O., Ilanga lase Natal (Natal Sun), that an insistent strong advocate for the transformation Tsalo ea Batho (The People’s Friend), of European modernity into New Morumioa (The Messenger), The and persistent call African modernity. To fully understand Native Eye, South African Spectator, emerged that Africans this profound change he effected in Fighting Talk, Guardian/New Age/Spark, the cultural history of South Africa one and Inkululeko/Umsebenzi (Freedom/ should write in the needs go back to the 1920s when he Work). This is only a partial listing. African languages, was one of the leading writers for the The creative writing that appeared long before this Umteteli wa Bantu newspaper together in these New African newspapers with his equally outstanding colleague at this particular moment of the proposition was Henry Selby Msimang (1886-1982). history of the New African Movement misappropriated by It is perhaps necessary to state was predominantly poetry in the unambiguously that Selope Thema African languages and its quality was the Apartheid regime was arguably one of the most brilliant astounding. The great Xhosa poet S. in the 1940s and minds in the trajectory of the New E. K. Mqhayi (1875-1945) published African Movement from about 1860 to his earliest poetry in the 1890s and 1950s in order to 1960 in order to understand his critical 1900s in Izwi Labantu and his middle entrench its racial positionality within South African period in Imvo Zabantsundu, closing political and cultural history in the his late period in the 1930s in the domination and twentieth century. He was a founding Bantu World. A great twentieth century fascistic practices. member of the African National African woman poet, comparable Congress (ANC), whose centenary we to any African poet in any language, are commemorating this year. Together Nontsizi Mgqwetho, published her in transforming the multilingualism with (1880-1951) poetry written in isiXhosa throughout which had been characteristic of the the real founder of the ANC in that he the decade of the 1920s in Umteteli old New African newspapers before was the one who brought everyone to wa Bantu. We must briefly mention its advent to the monolingualism of Bloemfontein on that historic day of here poets such as J. J. R. Jolobe (1902- the new New African newspapers that January 8, 1912), Solomon T. Plaatje 1978) and Stanley Nxu, both of whom imitated or followed the new trend (1879-1932) first General-Secretary wrote in isiXhosa; and Benedict Wallet it had established. Although most of the ANC, a major New African Vilakazi (1906-1947): all of his poems of these newspapers which began intellectual in his own right and founder appeared in isiZulu. This enormous appearing in the late nineteenth of several important New African poetic productivity and intellectual century and early twentieth century newspapers), depth in the African languages at were not more than four pages, each (1871-1946) first President-General this period of South African cultural page, other than the first page which of the ANC and founder of the Ilanga

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lase Natal newspaper in 1903, Selope was terminated by the Apartheid a hindrance to the transplantation Thema belonged to the segment of State during the of European modernity in Africa, the conservative modernisers within of 1960. This notion was arrived at especially Christianity, but also because the New African Movement whose when Henry Selby Msimang and they were blockages of transmutation predominant unifying ideology Selope Thema, especially from 1924 to of European modernity into ‘New was antipathetic to both Marxism 1928, extensively theorised the social African modernity’. Paradoxically, at and Garveyism. Lest we forget: we responsibility of ‘Bantu’ intellectuals nearly the same time as the formulation should mention that Selope Thema to the African masses. This conceptual of these controversial and contentious was the first Treasury-Secretary of invention was to lead to a sharp positions, three classic prose works in the ANC. Given all this, he was in critique of the failure of the political African languages appeared that argued effect a founding member of both of leadership of the ANC in the late 1920s for the validity of African traditional the African National Congress (the and throughout the 1930s. Looked at societies, however problematic they political practice of the New African more closely, what Selope Thema had may be: Ityala Lamawele (1914) by S. Movement) and the New African done was to appropriate the idea of E. K. Mqhayi written in isiXhosa; Chaka Movement (the intellectual and cultural the New Negro developed by the New (1931) by Thomas Mofolo (1876-1948) expression of the African National Negro Movement in the early years of written in Sesotho; and Ingqumbo Congress). As though this critical the twentieth century in United States yeminyanya (1940) by A. C. Jordan political belongingness were not in order to transform and develop it (1906-1968) written in isiXhosa. What enough, Selope Thema had an in accordance with the imperatives of perhaps blinded R. V. Selope Thema to astonishing influence on two South African history. Logically this led these outstanding local achievements outstanding New African newspaper was possibly his focused gaze on the editors of the following intellectual African religious happenings of the Harlem Renaissance generation within the New African of the 1920s. Movement who were also major beliefs and On becoming the founding editor writers in their own right: H. I. E. metaphysical systems of the Bantu World in the early 1930s, Dhlomo (co-editor with his elder Thema surrounded himself with brother of Ilanga lase Natal newspaper remained situated in young New African intellectuals like from 1943 until his death in 1956) traditional societies; H. I. E. Dhlomo, Peter Segale (1901- and Jordan K. Ngubane (1917-1985) 1937), Peter Abrahams (1918- ), R. editor of Inkundla ya Bantu from 1943 while the New African R. R. Dhlomo (1901-1971), Jordan to the demise of the newspaper in intellectuals who Ngubane, Henry Nxumalo (1918- 1950, and editor of Indian Opinion 1957), Todd Matshikiza (1922-1968), for one-year in the mid-1950s). Both were the product Guybon Bundlwana Sinxo (1902- Dhlomo and Ngubane were acolytes of of missionary 1962), and others, whom he exhorted Selope Thema on the Bantu World in schools moved on to appropriate the Harlem Renaissance the 1930s; Dhlomo was a very young cultural efflorescence in order to create colleague of Thema in the days of to struggle with the something similar in South Africa. With Umteteli wa Bantu in the 1920s. A circle transformation of this appropriation he hoped traditional of Selope Thema’s admirers extended societies would be put in their death to major white liberal scholars: the European modernity throes. At this moment there was a historian William Miller MacMillan into New African dramatic political and cultural shift (1885-1974), the philosopher R. D. within the New African Movement Alfred Hoernlé (1880-1943), and the modernity. from Politics, Philosophy and Religion great philologist Clement Martyn Doke towards Culture, Aesthetics and (1893-1980). Until he was displaced Selope Thema to develop his second Art. Selope Thema published in the from the ANC by the radicalism of major theme of the 1920s: that the newspaper the new poetry of the the ANC Youth Leaguers in the early emergent New African intellectuals eighteen year old Peter Abrahams 1950s, Selope Thema’s ideological had to learn from the New Negroes as directly inspired by the poetics of promulgations may not have had how to participate in the making of any Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, the effect of law edicts within certain kind of modernity. Claude McKay, central members of the circles of the New African Movement, It was in the context of developing Harlem Renaissance. but they did now and then effect these two formulations that he The spectacular occurrence of the profound cultural changes. postulated his infamous political Sophiatown Renaissance in South In the pages of Umteteli wa Bantu position that African traditional Africa twenty years later in the 1950s in the 1920s Selope Thema invented societies and all they represented had achieved by the Drum writers could the concept of the New African to be destroyed at all costs, not only partly be attributed to the exhortations which subsequent generations of because they epitomised ‘heathenism’, of Selope Thema. The achievement of New African intellectuals expanded ‘barbarism’ and ‘superstition’, but Peter Abrahams was such that twenty on until the New African Movement fundamentally because they were years later Ezekiel Mphahlele (1919-

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2008) in his classic autobiography ever would write in any of the African the Elizabethan period as to the tasks Down Second Avenue (1959) recalls languages in preference to English that had to be achieved in order for a how exciting it was when Abrahams (“Mr. Vilakazi and Writers”, Ilanga lase nation or a people to be modern. In in earlier years in St. Peter’s School Natal, 1 January 1932). The ostensible developing his literary theory, he seems introduced him and other students to reason that Dhlomo gave was that he to be arguing that the consciousness the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. wanted to be recognised and given of being modern is attainable through Abrahams himself in his autobiography acclamation within a universal context, language and its effects. Invariably Tell Freedom (1953) recalls how which presumably writing in the African for him it was through the English momentous it was discovering in his languages (in his particular instance, in language, rather than by particularly teenage years in the 1930s on the isiZulu) would not be able to provide; political transformation of society at shelves of the Bantu Men’s Social the other factor he mentioned was large. This may be the reason that he Center library copies of The New Negro that he wanted a larger market for his wrote such an abundance of poetry (1925) anthology edited by Alain literary commodities, thereby enabling in English rather than in isiZulu. He Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of him to become a professional writer, disastrously attempted to emulate Black Folk (1903) and other books by not being forced recurrently to depend his beloved Romantics in his poetic New Negro intellectuals. Lastly, Peter wholly on his journalistic writings. He practice. Abrahams in his reportage Return to seems not have held his journalism In contrast with some of his Egoli (1953) recalls how exciting and in high regard in the manner that contemporaries and many New instructive it had been working with posterity was to do. One can state African intellectuals of later generations H. I. E. Dhlomo and Henry Nxumalo unambiguously that the journalism who no longer had the facility of in the Bantu World under the tutelage African languages, Dhlomo’s choice of Selope Thema. These particular It is perhaps to write in the English language was reflections of Peter Abrahams and an ideologically arrived at decision, Ezekiel Mphahlele constitute post necessary to state rather than a historically imposed factum supportive evidence that by unambiguously that limitation as was the instance with the dramatically shifting the newspaper others; his high linguistic amplitude is towards monolingualism Selope Thema Selope Thema was evidenced by his superb translation sought to strangulate traditional culture arguably one of the of the elegy written in 1947 in isiZulu by limiting the cultural geography of the by Emmanuel Henry Anthony Made African languages in the urban cultural most brilliant minds (1904-1951) in memory of his great sphere of modernity. Drum magazine in the trajectory friend but intellectual adversary, epitomised the success of this cultural Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, which was policy. When the Drum writers (Ezekiel of the New African translated into English by Dhlomo in Mphahlele, Bloke Modisane (1924- Movement from about 1948. Besides his skill as a translator, he 1986), Lewis Nkosi (1936-2010) at the 1860 to 1960 in order wrote lucid literary appreciations and historic but infamous 1962 Kampala analyses of novels and of anthologies Conference of “African Writers of to understand his of essays written in isiZulu. One of English Expression” denounced the critical positionality the many paradoxes of Dhlomo is that Apartheid regime that it was strangling although he demurred in using the the African languages, they were only within South African as an instrument for his telling a portion of the truth of the sad political and cultural literary work, be it creative or critical, narrative; what they did not reveal he reflected on the Zulu language in to the delegates from other African history in the several of his columns in Ilanga lase countries (i.e., Wole Soyinka, Chinua twentieth century. Natal in the 1940s. Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, John The reason for dwelling so Pepper Clark, Bernard Fonlon, David insistently on H. I. E. Dhlomo, besides Rubadiri, Ngugi wa Thiong’o [then of Dhlomo is cultural criticism of the the fact that he was truly a major known as James Ngugi]) many of whom highest order. New African intellectual, perhaps partially agreed with the supposition Given that Dhlomo had a profounder the most extensively well read in the of the uselessness of African languages, understanding of modern European history of the New African Movement was their own complicity in this literary culture from the Renaissance to before the advent of the Sophiatown unending African tragedy. modernism than practically any black Renaissance intellectual constellation, Given the close proximity of Dhlomo South African of his time, reflecting in his intellectual practice and literary to Thema in the precints of Umteteli the late 1930s when his primary mode production, whether absolutely wa Bantu newspaper throughout the of literary production was on the stage, intentional or not, has had the decade of 1920s, it is not surprising he wrote a series of remarkable literary disastrous effect of capsizing African that he wrote an article which on its essays in which he compared his literature in the African languages appearance seemed inexplicable. He particular moment to that of the Greek in preference for the then emergent said that he never had written nor he tragedians, the Hebrew Bible and African literature in the European

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languages in South Africa. Before the as it did many others in other parts reporting in a major way; its intellectual advent of what could be characterised of the world in the immediate portraits of New African intellectuals, as the ‘Moment of H. I. E. Dhlomo’, period following the Second World political and religious leaders such the aforementioned outstanding New War carnage. What was particularly as A. P. Mda (1917-1993), Father African poets and writers who wrote in distinctive about South Africa and Trevor Huddlestone (1913-1998), the African languages held dominant made it a unique phenomenon in the (1898-1967), Jacob sway within the intellectual landscape world, was the way the Sophiatown Nhlapo (1904-1957), Peter Abrahams, of the New African Movement. After Renaissance massively and uncritically (1918- ), Benedict Dhlomo and the Second World War, appropriated the Harlem Renaissance Vilakazi (by H. I. E. Dhlomo no less), with the hegemony of the Sophiatown of the United States as its supreme D. D. T. Jabavu (1880-1959), among Renaissance intellectual constellation begetter. This appropriation was at many others, was very impressive; whose mode of creative practice was the cost of forgetting, even rejecting, the analysis of the genesis of South only in the English language, and large swaths of its own South African African jazz by Todd Matshikiza, the whose cultural gaze and historical cultural history. portrayal of the formation of popular outlook was focused on Harlem and The consequence of this confusion culture in the country by Bloke Hollywood rather than on their own of realms was profound: it was Modisane, both of which appeared literary landscape and cultural history, the Sophiatown Renaissance that in the columns of Golden City Post much was irretrievably lost. The strong decisively embraced African literature (the weekly sisterly newspaper of response of Benedict Vilakazi, Zulu in the European languages (in effect, in the monthly Drum magazine, both poet, novelist, scholar, lexicographer, English) at the cost of banishing African of which were owned Jim Bailey), who wrote his creative work in isiZulu literature in the African languages. The made possible the understanding of and critical work in the English language, evidence of this catastrophic decision the particularity of the modernity that to his close friend H. I. E Dhlomo’s is evident in the pages of Drum was emerging or had emerged in critique of his Master of Arts thesis magazine throughout the decade of South Africa. All of these things he had submitted to the University of the 1950s: the serialisation of the have been absolutely positive, as Witwatersrand (The Conception and autobiographies of Billie Holiday and well as others that have not been Development of Poetry in Zulu, 1938), Louis Armstrong; the popularisation mentioned here. presciently anticipated the deleterious of the lifestyles of Hollywood stars The central issue of contention effects and consequences his fellow such as Dorothy Dandridge, Lena here is that Sophiatown Renaissance member of the Zulu Intellectuals of the Horne and others; the tabloidisation decentralised African literature in the 1940s intellectual constellation was to of news à la American style; the African languages in order to valorise have on South African intellectual and glamorisation of Hollywood gangster itself into a hegemonic position in cultural history. films; the valorisation of crime fiction South African cultural history. Its While Dhlomo and Benedict at the expense of classic South African success in mystifying and distorting Vilakazi were disputing whether literature and world literature. These our cultural history is such that a full Africans should write literature in were among the reasons that made generation after the historic victory English or in the African languages, the Ezekiel Mphahlele resign as literary of 1994 one would think that it logic of South African cultural history editor of the magazine. His departure was the most important intellectual in the aftermath of the Second World to voluntary exile in Nigeria in 1957 constellation of the New African War was moving in the direction was as much because of his hostility to Movement whereas a mere glance in of creating the conditions that the introduction of Bantu education by comparison to the Zulu Intellectuals facilitated the emergence of the last the Apartheid regime, but also about of the 1940s, a constellation that intellectual constellation of the New the ‘wrong’ cultural turn the magazine preceded it, foretells a different African Movement: the Sophiatown had taken. narrative regarding intellectual acuity, Renaissance. Although it was the This point or intent here is not philosophical wisdom and aesthetic Russian Red Army that really defeated to overlook or minimise the major splendor. It is not necessary to bring Nazi Germany in the Second World positive things that the magazine other earlier intellectual constellations War, the appeal and enticement of contributed to South African cultural to contradict the hegemonic narrative American modernity gave the United history: Sophiatown Renaissance itself, about itself that the Sophiatown States the appearance of having the last constellation of the New African Renaissance has imposed on South defeated the Nazi monster, which is Movement, would probably not have African cultural history. historically incorrect as evidenced by come into being without the facilitating In conclusion: it is absolutely its economy not having been shattered. centre of Drum magazine; a new style imperative to dethrone the hegemonic American modernity, at whose center of writing English in South Africa would position of the Sophiatown Renaissance were Swing jazz music, Hollywood film not have been possible without the in our cultural imagination in order industry, popular musical culture, crime magazine; it was Drum that made the to revitalise African literature in the and detective novels, mesmerised short story form a major forte for the African languages. This was the thesis the writers, intellectuals and popular first time for many black South African of the finest poet South Africa has singers of the Sophiatown Renaissance, writers; it launched investigative produced so far: Mazisi Kunene. 

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