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South African Political Prison-Literature Between 1948 and 1990: the Prisoner As Writer and Political Commentator

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South African Political Prison-Literature Between 1948 and 1990: the Prisoner As Writer and Political Commentator SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICAL PRISON-LITERATURE BETWEEN 1948 AND 1990: THE PRISONER AS WRITER AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR by GILLIAN CAROL BOOTH-YUDELMAN submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY in the subject ENGLISH at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA PROMOTER: DR MC ANDERSEN 30 NOVEMBER 1997 SUMMARY This thesis examines works written about imprisonment by four South African political prison writers who were incarcerated for political reasons. My Introduction focuses on current research and literature available on the subject of political prison-writing and it justifies the study to be undertaken. Chapter One examines the National Party's policy pertaining to the holding of political prisoners and discusses the work of Michel Foucault on the subject of imprisonment as well as the connection he makes between knowledge and power. This chapter also considers the factors that motivate a prisoner to write. Bearing in mind Foucault's findings, Chapters Two to Five undertake detailed studies of La Guma's The Stone Country, Dennis Brutus's Letters to Martha, Hugh Lewin's Bandiet and Breyten Breytenbach's The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, respectively. Particular emphasis is placed on the reaction of these writers against a repressive government. In addition, Chapters Two to Five reflect on the way in which imprisonment affected them from a psychological point of view, and on the manner in which they were, paradoxically, empowered by their prison experience. Chapters Four and Five also consider capital punishment and Lewin and Breytenbach's response to living in a hanging jail. I contemplate briefly the works of Frantz Fanon in the conclusion in order to elaborate on the reasons for the failure of the system of apartheid and the policy of political imprisonment and to reinforce my argument. Key terms South African political prison-writing; apartheid; political imprisonment; knowledge and power; imprisonment and political commitment; Alex La Guma; Dennis Brutus; Hugh Lewin; Breyten Breytenbach; Michel Foucault. To those South Africans who refused to be silent - the struggle was not in vain. 820.935809045 BOOT ~ :_;L~.s J ~.:~ :~ .\cc.:;~ I • ~ -· ,· .·~::-,:,.;;:;+<.~ H/111/lllllf/ 0001707814 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments i Introduction ii 1. POLITICAL PRISON-WRITING 1 2. ALEX LA GUMA: WRITER AND FIGHTER 54 3. DENNIS BRUTUS: POET AND PATRIOT 109 4. HUGH LEWIN: A JOURNALIST'S STORY OF IMPRISONMENT . 165 5. BREYTEN BREYTENBACH: HIS WRITING AND HIS POLITICAL COMMITMENT . 224 CONCLUSION . 277 Bibliography . 295 *********************** Acknowledgments My gratitude goes first to Dr M C Andersen who encouraged and guided this study, providing invaluable insight and incisive criticism. I am also indebted to the late Professor Pereira who shared many useful ideas and perspectives and to Dawid Malan whose diligent research assistance is greatly appreciated. A special word of thanks is owed to my husband, Clifford, for his unflagging support, generosity and patience and to my family and friends for their interest and moral support. i Introduction Most countries, at some time in their history, have held political prisoners. From the Roman Empire in ancient times to, more recently, countries such as the United States and South Africa, there have been individuals incarcerated for political reasons. Significantly, political prisoners have, over the course of the years, documented their prison experiences, resulting in a broad range of political prison-writing. The jailed fifteenth-century French poet, Fran9ois Villon, for example, produced Ballad des Pendus, while awaiting execution, Lady Constance Lytton wrote Prisons and Prisoners, based on her experiences in an English prison at the turn of this century, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago (1974) described his internment in the Soviet prison camps established by Stalin. More recently and in the third world, Ngugi wa Thiong'o has written Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (1989), Nawal el Sa'adawi has penned Memoirs From the Women's Prison (1991) and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, has published a collection of essays, Freedom From Fear (1991), which includes an account of her term as a political prisoner under house arrest in Burma (Myanmar) . In this introduction my objective, inter alia, is to draw attention to the scope of material available on the topic. Anthologies and commentaries on general prison-writing are available. Collections such as Gertrude Katz's The Time Gatherers: Writings From Prison (1970), which deals with prison literacy in a Montreal prison, and Frank Earl Andrews and Albert Dickens's Voices From the Big House: A Collection of Fiction by ii Long Term Convicts (1974), which contains material by these two convicts, are non-specific in focus and are not concerned with the analysis of writing, political or otherwise. Victor Brombert's The Romantic Prison: The French Tradition (1978), Philip Priestley's Victorian Prison Lives: English Prison Biography (1985), Judith A. Scheffler's article 'Romantic Women Writing on Imprisonment and Prison Reform' (1988) and H. Bruce Franklin's Prison Literature in America: The Victim as Criminal and Artist (1989), as indicated by their titles, furnish different perspectives on prison literature. Mildred C. Andersen's doctoral thesis, Autobiographical Responses to Prison Experience: An Examination of Selected Writings of the Late­ Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1988), undertakes a substantial critical analysis of prison writing in general, using for major consideration works by Oscar Wilde, E.E. Cummings, Herman Charles Bosman and Brendan Behan. My studies have also acquainted me with Barbara Harlow's 'From the Women's Prison: Third World Women's Narratives of Prison' (1986), Miriam Cooke's 'Prisons: Egyptian Women Writers on Islam' (1988) and Suha Sabbagh's 'Palestinian Women Writers and the Intifada' (1989). The predominant focus of these articles, however, is on women interned in the third world. Articles on Yugoslav camp literature, including Tomas Venclova's 'Prison as Communicative Phenomenon: The Literature of Gulag' (1979) and Matt F. Oja's 'Toward a Definition of Camp Literature' (1989) provide insights into imprisonment under oppressive regimes but their emphasis is obviously not as geographically wide-ranging as, say, Andre Brink's essay on political prison- iii writing, which is included in Writing in a State of Siege (1983) . 1 Writing by South African political prisoners spans more than forty years, extending for most of the time the Nationalist government was in power. Numerous books, many written by South African political prisoners, were banned and were accessible to non-South African readers only. Such banned books include those by Albie Sachs, Ruth First and Moses Dlamini, to name a few. 2 The number of previously banned books available in South Africa has, nevertheless, substantially increased as a result of political changes beginning in 1990. Works devoted exclusively to the South African political prison-system are Govan Mbeki's Learning From Robben Island (1991), Jtirgen Schadeberg's Voices From Robben Island (1994), Neville Alexander's Robben Island Dossier 1964-1974 (1994) and Harriet Deacon's The Island: A History of Robben Island 1488-1990 (1996). The autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1994), chronicles Mandela's twenty-seven years in prison, and Goodbye Bafana (1995), by James Gregory, Mandela's jailer at one time, offers an insight into the relationship between these two men. Geoffrey Bould's anthology, Conscience be my Guide (1991), contains an assortment of writing by political prisoners from different countries, including South Africa. Barbara Schreiner's collection, A Snake With Ice Water (1992), includes interviews with and excerpts from the written work of political and non­ political women prisoners. Both compilations include brief introductions but no critical consideration of the narratives presented. Harlow in Resistance Literature (1987) devotes a chapter, 'Prison Memoirs of Political Detainees', to prison iv writing and incorporates a consideration of First's prison narrative in her book, Barred: Women, Writing and Political Detention, while Iaon Davies evaluates the prison writing of Breyten Breytenbach in some detail and mentions the work of Ruth First in Writers in Prison (1990). Both studies are broad in focus, however, and not specific to South Africa. Kate Millett in The Politics of Cruelty (1994) also includes a chapter on South African prison-writing but to draw her conclusions she uses novels, such as those by Sipho Sepamla and Miriam Tlali, rather than accounts by writers who were imprisoned for political reasons. J.U. Jacobs and Sheila Roberts deal specifically with political prison-writing from a South African perspective. Jacobs, in particular, has written articles including 'Narrating the Island: Robben Island in South African Literature' ( 1992) and 'Texts Under Arrest: The Autobiographical Writings of Helen Joseph' (1993), as well as a number of short pieces focusing on aspects of political imprisonment, including interrogation, confession and the writing of the prison memoir. Roberts's approach in 'South African Prison Literature' ( 1985) is more general. Both have written articles on Breytenbach's prison literature. Hermina van Vuuren's M.A. thesis, Poetry in Prison: A Study of Breyten Breytenbach's Five Volumes of Prison Poetry in Translation (1991) and Ileana Dimitriu's
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