28 research outputs found
"This time set again": the temporal and political conceptions of Serote's To every birth its blood
Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Structure and Experience in the Making of Apartheid, 6-10 February, 199
Authorship, authenticity and the black community: The novels of Soweto 1976
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 8 September 1986Following the renewal of black cultural activity around drama and poetry
in South Africa since the early 1970s, a resurgence of the use of prose
fiction has recently begun to take place. In the past decade several
anthologies and collections of short stories have been published inside
the country, and Staffrider and other literary magazines have fulfilled
an important role in disseminating the stories of (amongst others)
Matshoba, Ndebele, Essop, Dangor and Maseko to a wider audience. A number
of novels have also appeared, the most noteworthy being Miriam Tlali's
Muriel at Metropolitan (1975) and Amandla (1980); Ahmed Essop's The
Visitation (1980) and The Emperor (1984); Sipho Sepamla's The Root is One
(1979) and A Ride on the Whirlwind (1981); Mbulelo Mzamane's The Children
of Soweto (1982); Mongane Serote's To Every Birth Its Blood (1981) and
Boyd Makhoba's On the Eve (1986). The 16 June 1976 marked the palpable onset of a period of massive and
ongoing political confrontation in South Africa, and it is no surprise
that several of these novels deal directly or indirectly with this event
and its aftermath. Mzamane's novel, and Sepamla's and Tlali's second
novels, investigate the human experiences, reactions and the political
activity in Soweto immediately before and after that fateful day in June.
Serote's work, while it refers to the 'days of Power' only fleetingly,
extrapolates the growth of armed resistance to the white government in the
period following the Soweto uprising. The events of 1976 have a powerful
implied presence as a fulcrum in this narrative, transforming the agonized
subjective narration of Tsi Molope in the first section of the novel into
a more objectified focus on the activities of a group of revolutionaries
afterwards
Walking, Falling
Walking, Falling is Kelwyn Soles seventh collection of poetry. It extends and deepens themes that emerged in his earlier books: love and human relationships; the exposing of false and clichéd perspectives in our socio-political life; our relationship as South Africans to land and landscape. Rustum Kozain has written about his work: Whether the theme is the end of a relationship or the murder of immigrants, there is the calm look of analysis, a voice, like a conscience, that threatens to disturb the readers complacency, but a voice simultaneously gentle with empathy and sincerity
Authority, authenticity and the black writer: depictions of politics and community in selected fictional black consciousness texts
Ph. D., Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 199