Figures of the sixties
In the early 1960s, the State of Emergency used by the apartheid state to crack down on dissidents, the banning of political organisations such as the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress, and the jailing of leaders such as Nelson Mandela, sent many black writers into exile. Among them was Alex la Guma, a Marxist and ANC leader who saw the purpose of his work as the exposure of the dreadful conditions of South Africa's oppressed.His novella A Walk in the Night (1962) shows the life of crime to which slum inhabitants are driven, and And a Threefold Cord (1967) contrasts the existence of a black worker in a white home with her employers' affluent life. The later novel, In the Fog of the Season's End (1972), possibly his best, shows the developing consciousness of a man dedicated to the underground struggle for freedom. As a "listed person", little of La Guma's work was available in South Africa until 1990, when the liberation movements were unbanned.
At the same time, in the 1960s, the Afrikaans literary scene had a rush of new blood, as writers such as Jan Rabie, Etienne Leroux, Breyten Breytenbach and Andre Brink emerged. Publishing first in Afrikaans, these writers were increasingly politicised by the situation in South Africa and their contrasting experiences overseas.
Breytenbach, who began as one of the most linguistically radical new poets in Afrikaans, left South Africa in 1960, where he became a vocal critic of the apartheid state. Later, in the 1970s, he returned to South Africa and was arrested and jailed for work he was doing for the liberation movement. From this experience came his extraordinary prison memoir, True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1996). It is as much interior monologue as it is a record of his prison years, mixing surreal visions and Zen attitudes.
Breytenbach's return visits to South Africa are recorded, mixing reportage and imaginative commentary, in A Season in Paradise (1976) and Return to Paradise (1993). His prison poetry was published in English in Judas Eye (1988). Breytenbach remains as caustic about politics and power under an ANC government as he was under a Nationalist one. His essays have been published in The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution (1996).
Andre Brink stayed in South Africa to see his novels become the first Afrikaans works banned by the government. He began to write in English as well as Afrikaans, and his novels have become as important a part of South African English-language literature as they are in Afrikaans. Having published several novels in Afrikaans during the 1960s, it was his novel Looking on Darkness (1973) that was first banned.
His immensely powerful novel A Dry White Season (1982), focused on the death in detention of a black activist, and caused great irritation to the apartheid state, while conscientising many white South Africans. It was also banned, then unbanned. Later novels by this prolific novelist include An Act of Terror (1991), dealing with an Afrikaner dissident turned "terrorist", and On the Contrary (1993), a playful reworking of South Africa's colonial history.
For a review of The Rights of Desire go to Book reporter or Salon
For a short review of On the Contrary, go to TW Bookmark
During this period, Bessie Head emerged as a leading South African woman writer, with the role of women as a central concern. Of mixed blood, and with a traumatic family history, Head left South Africa to avoid its racial policies and lived in Botswana, where she felt more at ease. Her novels show a marked sympathy with ordinary peasant women; her heroines are poor but strong-willed, women who have to face up to various forms of prejudice.
Her first novel was When Rain Clouds Gather (1968), followed by Maru (1971), The Collector of Treasures (1977), and A Question of Power (1973). The Collector of Treasures is her most autobiographical work, dealing with the traumas of her own illegitimate mixed-race birth, her mother's suicide and her own nervous breakdown.
For a bibliography of Head's work, visit Emory University or African Literature by Women
For a brief biography of Head, go to George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida
Another writer to make his name in the 1960s was Wilbur Smith, South Africa's most popular literary export. He is a worldwide bestselling author who now stands in the ranks of the money-making elite as far as popular fiction is concerned. In many ways he is the heir to the tradition of Rider Haggard - some would say politically as well.
His long, fast-moving adventure stories deal in sex and violence, often set against a backdrop of political turmoil. It is here that Smith reveals attitudes that were not out of place in apartheid South Africa. As with Haggard, black characters are often either menacing or servile; there are few who are treated simply as human beings with full interior lives to match those of his sexy, strong white heroes.
His earliest novels are probably his best: Where the Lion Feeds (1964) and The Sound of Thunder (1966) are set in the era of the foundation of gold-mining in South Africa. Others go as far afield as the state of Israel, Ethiopia during the Italian invasion, piracy in the age of sail, or, more recently, investigate the pharaonic times of Ancient Egypt. There is no doubt that Smith has a propulsive narrative gift; some readers, though, may be irked by his often sexist and racist assumptions, as well as repelled by the frequent blood-letting.
For Smith's biography and work, go to Wilbur Smith Books
The 1960s also saw the emergence of a new generation of white South African poets, among them Douglas Livingstone, Sidney Clouts, Ruth Miller, Lionel Abrahams and Stephen Gray. Their work ranges from powerful apprehensions of natural life (Livingstone) to more interior, meditative considerations (Abrahams), and a sardonic socio-political sensibility (Gray).
Gray has also written novels, plays and much criticism. Abrahams has written two semi-autobiographical novels, The Celibacy of Felix Greenspan (1977) and The White Life of Felix Greenspan (2002).
