Anew generation of young black writers has failed to emerge in the post-apartheid era, writes Shaun de Waal
As literary editor of this paper, I have grown very tired of hearing the question inevitably posed by visiting foreign journalists trawling for information about South African literature: Where are the new young black writers?
There seemed to be an expectation that as apartheid collapsed and its legacy faded a new generation of young black writers (let’s call them YBWs) would emerge in their full glory, spurred on by the new freedoms of a new democracy. It was thought that the combination of apartheid censorship and lack of educational advantage had held them back, but now their time had come. Yet they are scarcer than viable South African feature film projects.
I’m tired of hearing the question, tired of trying to answer it, tired of feeling apologetic about the fact that, well, it’s not as though we have a glorious crop of YBWs to show the world. But it is, I suppose, a valid question. Where are the YBWs?
I’m not sure; I can only speculate, as did my colleague Robert Kirby in the final edition of 1999, tackling a closely related question. Where, he asked, is the Great South African Novel? Our writers, he said, were hobbled by the perceived need to produce political documents. Why, he asked, when South Africa is so rich in experience, have we yet to produce a William Faulkner, a Patrick White or a Gabriel Garca Mrquez? “Where indeed,” he asked, “is a single South African writer of true gift?”
In Kensington, actually. Ivan Vladislavic, however, has had a rather hard time getting his new novel published. We hope to see it in the new year, but one swallow does not a summer make. Afrikaans writers are doing better Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf was published in Britain this year, to acclaim, and Marita van der Vyver and Etienne van Heerden have been successfully translated. For those who write in English, however, it’s a matter of either trying to compete with the 100 000 new titles coming out each year in Britain or selling a few thousand copies in South Africa if your book gets accepted, that is.
So the field for South African fiction is not exactly fertile at the moment. Or are we just not writing the right kinds of books? Kirby’s conclusion on the issue of this paucity was that “South African literary enterprise could never quite divorce itself from a discerned political assignment”, which “kept the muse at bay”; that “until politics and literary adventure disentangle themselves there will be little to look forward to in South African writing”.
There are many ways to rebut Kirby’s analysis. JM Coetzee argued long ago that the Great South African Novel a species as evasive as the unicorn was unlikely to emerge from a society so fatally split. Until a writer could bridge the gaps between classes, and could move freely across their boundaries, with an understanding of each side of the border, it would be impossible. That presumes a particular view of the Great National Novel, but it is a fair one, and the divides in our society are still very deep. Few writers can move easily across our chasms of wealth and culture but it can be done, even if it requires more than one writer.
Witness Jonathan Morgan and the Great African Spider Writers’ collective text, Finding Mr Madini. Working with a group of homeless people, who told their stories in a writing workshop, Morgan collated a text that reflected a wider range of experience than we usually see in South African fiction. It was not a novel, to be sure, or not fully a novel, let alone a great novel, but it was storytelling of a high order, made from materials and with techniques few writers consider. It points a way to the future.
And, anyway, what’s to stop a writer doing some solid research? Tom Wolfe has been extraordinarily successful, all over the world, with novels that are over-researched and under-imagined. Maybe our reading public is more interested in journalistic fact, fact made more easily digestible by a coating of fictional sugar. Many readers want to feel they are getting information for their money, not just authorial fantasy. Besides, they would rather not struggle with truly challenging literature. Too much like hard work.
It is not as though South African publishers and the South African buying public are exactly crying out for the next deep, complex South African novel. Why bother, when there are torrents of Dick Francis and Tom Clancy and their ilk, not to mention a large quantity of serious foreign literature, coming into the country every day? Like poetry, serious fiction can be very hard to sell.
There are, of course, exceptions, but they are ever rarer. The number of serious novels published in English in South Africa over the last year can be counted on one hand. Our international stars shine on Coetzee’s Booker-winning Disgrace has done very well, for instance, even within the country but it is hard to get an international career started. British publishers, apparently, feel the niche for serious South African writers is pretty much full. In fact, it would seem that the global conglomerates now in control of worldwide publishing feel that the niche for serious fiction generally is pretty much full.
And they would probably agree with Kirby that politics has no place in literature. But is politics not a part of human experience, and, in South Africa, a vital and central one? How could a notional Great South African Novel fail to be political? At any rate, the partition between politics and the rest of life is a false one.
That doesn’t answer the question of where our YBWs are. Many potential writers are still struggling with the poisonous heritage of Bantu Education, but the Spider Writers project demonstrates that such obstacles can be overcome. It is significant, however, that those writers were homeless people if you have few options in life, you might as well write.
The serious novel is the product of an entrenched bourgeoisie with surplus skills on its hands. If you were a bright young thing with creative talent, in a marketplace uninterested in serious writers but desperate to find black people to fill highly paid government and corporate jobs, what would you do? You wouldn’t stay in your shack slaving away at a novel; you’d also be writing advertisements, press releases or motivational business tracts. That’s where our YBWs are.