Amagazine that played a vital role in our literary history is back, writes Chris Dunton
STAFFRIDER, so vital in energising South Africa’s literary scene in the late Seventies and Eighties but silent for the last few years, has been relaunched with financial assistance – for the time being, at least – from organisations in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The numbering continues from where it left off.
There are other continuities too: the editor is Chris van Wyk, who was caretaker editor for a while in the Eighties, and contributed to earlier issues while he was still at school. At that time Staffrider was the in-house magazine of Ravan Press; later it came under the aegis of the Congress of South African Writers (Cosaw), who remain its publishers now.
Van Wyk’s editorial reasserts two of the mag’s defining qualities, innovation and contestation. He attacks the shabbier continuities of South African cultural production, with a justified swipe at the literary pages of The Star (pinpointing their “distinct contempt for anything produced in this country that does not fall within [the] comfort zone of white suburbia”); at the same time he identifies strong new initiatives in South African literature – the kind of work Staffrider exists to serve.
There is also now an international perspective. The relaunch issue has photos on its front and back covers, respectively, of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Edouard J Maunick. Inside, Maunick’s work is reflected in an interview, honing in on questions of place, time and race, and with two poems, where he speaks of “making poetry more watchful than ever”.
For Saro-Wiwa there is a substantial tribute section: poems, critiques of the present Nigerian regime, and a reprint of William Boyd’s perhaps now over-familiar account A Good Friend in Africa (a virulent attack on which has recently been published in the United States – the issues at stake here are crucial and painful).
There are half-a-dozen short stories: one by Nadine Gordimer, others by Mosibudi Mangena, Jiggs, Cyprian Luke, that offer bleak readings of life in the townships or the return of an exile – the sort of material central to the agenda of the earlier Staffrider.
A long story by Achmat Dangor, titled The Devil, begins steel-cool, tight-lipped, like the work of the American “dirty realists”, then shifts into allegory, growing more and more startling by the page. In the closing episode Dangor sets up a boy’s delighted experiments with (bisexual) sex as antithesis to death-in- life, to forces willing him to violence (and South Africa back into the pit). This is an impressively outrageous piece, and it’s good to see it placed as the mag’s opening item.
The issue also contains reviews, poems and artwork. Among the poems there are fine contributions from Lesego Rampolokeng, Karen Press, Phedi Tlhobolo, in which a sudden tug at the truth can be painfully sharp. Of three pieces by Stephen Gray, Ovid in His Exile is most characteristic of his recent poetry, questing and authoritative, mining history for all it has refused to acknowledge.
Two flaws in this relaunch issue. Much of the art-work falls flat, since the reproduction is so pallid and murky (though this isn’t a problem with the graphics that illustrate the poems). And then women’s voices are seriously under-represented, as they were in the early years of the mag (couldn’t the editorial staff be more pro- active here?). Otherwise, it’s great to see Staffrider back with us. Subscribe, so it stays that way.
If you can’t find Staffrider in a shop or wish to subscribe, write to Cosaw at POBox 421007, Fordsburg, 2033. It sells for R30 per issue