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The Changing Topography of Short Story Writing in South Africa

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The Changing Topography of Short Story Writing in South Africa ESSAYS THE CHANGING TOPOGRAPHY OF SHORT STORY WRITING IN SOUTH AFRICA SIPHIWO MAHALA, PHD Research Associate: Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria Research Fellow: Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, University of Johannesburg 110 IMBIZA JOURNAL FOR AFRICAN WRITING INTRODUCTION he short story remains one of the word used and every action the characters are most resilient genres in the history involved in must move the plot forward. The plot of written literature in South Africa. is carried forward by a single dominant theme The growth of South African with limited characters who ought to be utilised literature, and the short story genre optimally. The short story becomes short because in particular, can be linked to periods of the impeccable application of some of these Tof heightened socio-political movements. The key elements. short story responds more swiftly to emerging paradigms in the broader society than longer prose like novels. THE EARLY PIONEERS The pioneers of the written short story in English in South Africa are renowned early twentieth The short story genre is conducive for both stylistic century writers like R.R.R. Dhlomo, Herman and thematic exploration. As a result, new trends Charles Bosman and Peter Abrahams, who often emerge through short story writing. This largely published their works in newspapers is not to suggest, however, that a short story is and magazines. According to Professor Mbulelo easier to write, or that there are fewer aesthetical Mzamane, Dhlomo’s stories, appearing in Sjambok requirements in writing short stories. Although as early as 1929, “inaugurated the modern short there is no single theory that wholly defines the story tradition among Blacks in South Africa” pathology of short stories, there are recognisable (Mzamane, 1986: x). However, in this generation discursive features that signify this complex of writers, Bosman is perhaps most revered for construct. A short story is generally understood consistently championing the short story genre. as prose fiction that is short enough to be read Bosman, previously convicted for murder and within one sitting. While the “short” in short story sentenced to death before mercifully having his presupposes length as a barometer, the genre sentence converted into four-and-a-half years’ does not have any clearly defined parameters in imprisonment, found salvation in his writing. terms of length. Literary prizes and anthologies He carved out a new writing career, first of a are the most common platforms for publishing journalistic kind before becoming a devoted short short stories. These usually limit the length of story writer. short stories to anything between 2 500 and 5 000 words, thus establishing a trend which is by no means a universal rule. Amongst this pantheon of South African short story writers in English language, it was Abrahams who The short story is hybrid in its nature, possessing outlived most of his contemporaries and proved to elements of drama, prose and poetry. It is a sum be one of the genre’s most resilient practitioners. total of all these genres, yet the tightness of the His tragic death in 2017, at the advanced age of plot and lucidity of the narrative are fundamental 97, places Abrahams as a golden thread that cut features to keep it succinct. This assertion is across several generations of South African writers. enunciated by Lloren Addison Foster in his doctoral Although for the largest part he was exiled in the dissertation titled, “The Politics of Creation: The Caribbean Island of Jamaica, where he had found Short Story in South Africa and the US”, submitted a home since the 1950s, Abrahams served as the at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in link between different generations of South African 2007. In defining the complexity of the short story, writers as well as connecting them to other global Foster opines: icons. He established the first contact between It is the form’s capacity to integrate the best Langston Hughes and Drum magazine writers, of other genres that provides its distinctive which resulted in Hughes becoming one of the “hybrid” nature (Foster, 108:2007). judges for the Drum Short Story prize in 1954. The short story, in its ideal format, encapsulates Abrahams was the first chairman of the inaugural elements of various genres while the narrative is Drum Short Story Prize adjudication panel, which Research Associate: Centre for the Advancement simultaneously focused on an immediate central consisted of prominent writers Alan Paton and of Scholarship, University of Pretoria theme. The immediacy of the short story obliges RRR Dhlomo. the writer to use fewer words in telling a complex narrative. To master the brevity of the short story, Research Fellow: Johannesburg Institute for Advanced the author has to account for each and every Study, University of Johannesburg 111 ESSAYS The results were published in the April 1953 Dhlomo and Abrahams established the short story edition of Drum, and the winner was one Can as a formidable genre in South Africa, the Drum Themba, then a 28-year-old teacher, with his story generation of Themba, Modisane and Mphahlele, “Mob Passion”. Remarking about the winning story to name but a few, solidified it and entrenched it of the prize as quoted in Mike Nichol’s book, A in the annals of South African literature. These Good Looking Corpse (1991:159), Abrahams notes: writers were largely resident in Sophiatown, “I should say that we have in this story notice and depicted urban life in the pages of Drum of unusual literary promise and I can think magazine. Elsewhere in the country, the group of nothing more encouraging than that such that Mzamane calls the “District Six” generation promise should be rewarded with the Drum in Cape Town, which included the likes of Alex prize.” la Guma, James Matthews and Richard Rive, contributed significantly to the growth of the short This was the inauguration of Themba as a story tradition in the 1950s and 1960s. Matthews formidable voice in the world of letters. As the has outlived all of these writers, still writing at his winner of an award that was judged by these advanced age. Conspicuous with their paucity luminaries, Themba symbolically takes the baton during this period are women writers, whose voices from this pioneering group of short story writers were largely muffled in the public discourse as to continue with the journey. In a sense, it can much as they were in their private lives. Dorothy be reasonably argued that the generation of Driver, in her seminal work, “Drum magazine (1951 Abrahams, Dhlomo and Paton discovered Themba – 59) and the “Spatial Configurations of Gender”, who, in turn, would become a very influential figure published in Text, Theory, Space: Land, Literature in the South African short story tradition well over and History in South Africa and Australia (1996) fifty years after his passing. Themba belonged edited by Kate Darian Smith, Liz Gunner and Sarah to the 1950s Drum generation of writers, an era Nuttall, argues that a woman writer like Bessie during which the short story flourished, especially Head thrived “in spite” of and not because of Drum: between 1951 to 1961, a period Lewis Nkosi refers to as the “Fabulous Decade”. Themba mentored Despite the name, ‘Dolly Drum’ was in fact a the likes of Casey Motsisi, who became an iconic contrapuntal ‘feminine’ voice, a voice produced journalist and short story writer in his own right. partially or even largely by male journalists in the name of the ideology of domesticity and Drum magazine, which ran the annual short story romantic love. Similarly, the South African competition and had the likes of Themba, Arthur short stories Drum published in the 1950s Maimane, Bloke Modisane, Motsisi, Nkosi and under women’s signatures, under the names Nat Nakasa as some of its most distinguished Rita Sefora, Joan Mokwena, and Doris Sello, contributors, became the major catalyst in the were in fact not written by women. (Driver, development of the genre. These writers were 1996:235-236) largely influenced by Black America, particularly the Harlem Renaissance which saw the likes of Notwithstanding its skewed gender representa- Hughes and James Baldwin becoming some of the tively, the decade of the 1950s, also known as most articulate voices of the living conditions of the Drum era, remains a significant milestone in black people in the Diaspora. Motsisi’s column, On the development of the English short story in the Beat, was modelled on Hughes’ world famous South Africa. The prominence of short stories Mr Simple articles, which in South Africa were during this period is usually attributed to two published as a column in Africa! magazine, which main factors, that is the politically turbulent period was founded as part of the Drum stable in 1954 in which there was virtually no time to focus on and edited by Themba. Hughes later created a longer prose, and the fact that there was a readily very strong bond with African writers, with the available publishing platform in the form ofDrum likes of Themba, Modisane and Mphahlele getting magazine. Mphahlele, one of the leading literary published in his ambitious project, An African critics and most prominent short story writers from Treasury (1960). Furthermore, Hughes became the period, opines: the judge of the Drum short story competition while Baldwin judged the short-lived The Classic short story competition. If the early pioneers of the written short story like 112 IMBIZA JOURNAL FOR AFRICAN WRITING It is impossible for a writer who lives in “Black Woman, You are on Your Own: Images of oppression to organise his whole personality Black Women in Staffrider Short Stories, 1978 – into creating a novel.
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