DRUM MAGAZINE (1951-1961): AND THE WORKS OF BLACK SOUTH AFRICAN WRITERS ASSOCIATED WITH IT. by DAVID RABKIN. YTIZ$3v»w YRAA3t1 2Q331 A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The School of English, The University of Leeds. July, 1975. ABSTRACT The upsurge of creative writing by black people in South Africa - as in other parts of Africa - in the period following the Second World War had its origin in two underlying social processes: the migration to the cities and the spreading of democratic and nationalist ideas as a result of the struggle against fascism. In South Africa, Drum magazine played a central part in recording the formation of the new urban culture as well as providing almost the sole platform for aspiring black authors. Urbanisation, racism and the political struggle of the African national movement against the systematic enforcement of apartheid shaped the thinking of black authors. There is a strong unity persisting through the reportage, documentary and protest writing and creative literature of the period. The literary critic must be aware of this, while discriminating between the limited achievements of writers such as Can Themba, Casey Motsisi, Bloke Modisane and Lewis Nkosi and the substantial work of Ezekiel Mphahlele and Alex La Guma. The work of the Coloured writers James Matthews, Peter Clarke and Richard Rive is best assessed within the context of the special place of the Coloured people in South Africa's racial hierarchy. The racial cleavage of South African society and the cultural under-development of the country as a whole have presented South African writers with some special problems and tasks. These derive from the absence of a cultural fabric embracing all sections -2- of the population in a common system of thought and feeling, and linking them organically to their own history. South African authors have been hampered by the lack of an overall perspective of the experience of their people which could, potentially at least, call upon values which transcend the historical limits of'the settler colony. If the South African epic remains to be written, its achievement may be dependant upon the success of the black people's struggle to return, in Cabral's words, 'to their own history'. David Rabkin London, 12th August, 1975. Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge my debt, above all, to my Supervisor, Mr. Arthur Ravenscroft, for his unfailingly constructive, balanced and helpful criticisms and suggestions; to the Librarian of the Royal Commonwealth Society, London, who made Drum available to me, the Brotherton Library, Leeds, and the South African Library, Cape Town; to Sue Rabkin who, in many late night discussions, contributed clarity to the thesis, and to my parents and sister who patiently shuttled the MSS back and forth and coped with emergencies. I would also like to thank Mrs. Doreen Pine, of Otley, who typed the final drafts and made sense of the chaotic references. C0NTENTS Chapter Title P I The Fifties 1 II Environment and Culture 23 III Growth of Drum 49 IV Fiction in Drum 84 V Reactions: Can Themba and Casey Motsisi 107 VI Situations: Bloke Modisane and Lewis Nkosi 126 . VII Naked Selves: Ezekiel Mphahlele 150 VIII Cape Voices: Peter Clarke, James Matthews and Richard Rive. 176 Ix Prom Insight to Action: Alex La Guma. 203 x Politics and Literature in South Africa 224 Chapter I- The Fifties (1) Introduction (2) Country and City (3) Politics of the Fifties. -1- Drum magazine was first published in 1951. It continued to appear uninterruptedly for twelve years. In that time it gathered about it a group of writers and journalists who were largely responsible for black literature in South Africa, as it is generally represented in anthologies and critical surveys. Drum was a product of the fifties. Its monthly issues over those years reflect the unique character of a decade which occupied a crucial place in South African history, and exercised a decisive influence on its contemporary literature. Its character as a popular magazine, which nevertheless served as almost the sle platform for talented and serious black writers, made it an important mediator between these writers, their subject-matter and their audience. The momentous events of the'decade and the density and novelty of the experience of those who lived through it, find expression in the news-pages of Drum. Rendered into fiction, and transformed by the creative process, they appear, too, in the monthly short stories, and in the works of Drum writers published elsewhere and later. Lewis Nkosi, Drum journalist and author of several short stories, a collection of essays and a play, describes the influence of these years: The decade of the fifties was the most shaping influence of our young adulthood and Johannesburg, at the time I went to work for Drum publications, seemed to be the buzzing centre of all national activity. It seemed to be the place to be in for any young man trying to write. I Looking back, it is possible to see clearly the crucial and yet transitory nature of the fifties. Antony Sampson, who edited Drum from late 1951 to 1955, put his finger upon one important characteristic of the situation: Of the nine million Africans living in South Africa (1956), two and a half million live in towns and the number is increasing rapidly. It is the urban Africans that will play the important role in the future. The old illiterate Africa of blankets and reserves, however picturesque, is insignificant in the face of this new industrial proletariat. The urban African is not merely an unhappy displaced person, torn up from his roots; amid the chaos and bewilderment of the shanty towns there is emerging a large settled community, sometimes with three generations of -2- town dwellers behind them. The ancient hierarchy of Chiefs and witchdoctors in the reserves has been replaced by a new aristocracy of doctors, lawyers, ministers and teachers. There are generations of African children to whom mud huts and tribal rites are as remote as trains are to their country cousins.. 2 Sampson overestimates the completeness of the process. However, the generation of writers who worked for Drum were substantially of an urbanized community. Their parents had lived through the expropriation of the African lands, and had come to the cities under the pressure of economic necessity and labour laws. But the children took the urban environment for granted, 'turned their backs on traditional law and belief, and sought a political solution to poverty and racial discrimination. They availed themselves of what opportunities were open in education and cultural life. They took over, with enthusiasm and style, those aspects of western society available to them in Hollywood movies, pulp fiction and overseas editions of the Daily Mirror. They showed an outstanding energy and determination in adapting to the lopsided structure South African and in bending racial of , society, it to their purpose. White South Africa was determined to stop them, but for a short while, in the fifties, a small area of freedom was born. As Nkosi says: The fifties were important to us because finally they spelled out the end of one kind of South Africa and forshadowed the beginning of another. Sharpeville (1960) was the culmination of a decade in which it was still possible in South Africa to pretend to the viability of an extra- laws parliamentary opposition. While there was a fantastic array of controlling our lives, it was still possible to organise marches to police stations, to parliament, to the very prisons holding our political leaders. It was possible to go to the same universities as white students; there were racially mixed parties enjoyed with the gusto of a drowning people; it seemed at least obligatory to assume an air of defiance against government and authority and though the penalty was high even then, there was nothing as vicious as the 90-day Detention Law; no torture on the scale it now assumes in the government's 3 deliberate programme for suppressing all effective opposition. The fifties were a period of advance and struggle. But as Nkosi's retrospective sketch suggests, they were also a time of retreat, of defeat. African writers were striving to comprehend their experience -3- as a common part of the twentieth century life of mankind. African politicians fought for social justice and political democracy. White leaders denieg these aspirations, and insisted that black people should accept retribalization, forcing them into a cultural backwater of stagnant tradition. The work of African writers was thus a part of the struggle. As in the case of the writers of Risorgimento Italy or the Irish poets of the Celtic Revival, their work was both about and for the life of their people. The interlocking-movement of opposed forces, those for progress-and those for reaction, is thus the characterising feature of the decade. African intellectuals articulated and chronicled the mass movements of workers for reform and progress. Everywhere members of my own generation were beginning to disaffiliate ,I,, from a society organised on a rigid apartheid design. We began to 'sense that we were being deprived of a profounder experience; a sense of shared nationhood. 4 The process was complicated, however, by the deep. seated racial attitudes of whites, and the suspicion felt by African intellectuals I towards white liberals. Moreover, it was one which the government was determined to frustrate. The resultant conjuncture of forces - the economic, racial and political - constitutes source and primary determinant of the literature with which we are concerned. It is a literature of assertion in the face of desperate odds.