The recent deaths of Phaswane Mpe and K Sello Duiker once again highlight the relative paucity of new, post-apartheid literature by black South Africans. Mpe and Duiker were among the few producing such work and getting it published. This gap has been recognised and written about by various book reviewers and scholars for some time now. Much has changed since 1994 and, sadly, a lot more has stayed the same.
I remember a couple of years ago immersing my mind in the heavy words of Duiker’s Quiet Violence of Dreams. My behaviour was no different when it came to Mpe’s Welcome to My Hillbrow. In retrospect, it is clear why I sped through Duiker’s Bible-sized book with such ease and why I believed that this literature should be included in the South African educational curriculum — the work reflected my world.
In its characters I recognised a new national hybrid — part of the complex fabric that constitutes the ”new South Africa”. I recognised the kwaito/hip-hop generation, the model-C youth. I saw characters grappling with identities that were not white, but not black enough to be black. Others were white but didn’t feel African because they had never eaten African food, engaged in African customs nor spoken an African language.
During apartheid, the arts were used as a tool to educate the international arena about how apartheid affected ordinary lives. With 10 years of democracy behind us the country has, as writer Gabeba Baderoon puts it, come of age with a new configuration of humaneness. But, despite having given birth to a new youth culture, these youngsters’ stories are only very seldom emerging and finding their way on to the bookshelves.
This is the generation that is battling to find employment, that is dying of Aids-related diseases and that still grapples with its identity. The end to the rigid categorisation of identity that was part of apartheid has rendered much of today’s youth unclassifiable.
These topics have been highlighted through art forms, such as kwaito and hip-hop, whose proponents have been loud in reflecting everyday life in the new South Africa.
The same can be said for TV, where soaps such as Generations and Isidingo tackle an array of issues pertinent to modern South Africa, from interracial marriage to unemployment.
Sadly, though, there is still little indication of the ”new South Africa” in the literary world — and though writing such as Duiker’s and Mpe’s does exist it seldom reaches the classroom — or readers in the townships. There is no doubt that young people are listening to music and keeping their eyes on the TV screens, but they are almost certainly not reading. This is mainly, in my view, because there are very few local books they can relate to.
Publishers gave Duiker and Mpe a break and there are a few other writers who have emerged since 2000 —one thinks of Kagiso Molope, Kgafela oa Magogodi, Niq Mhlongo, Gabeba Baderoon among them (some, like Magogodi, self-published). The 2004 South African Online Writers Conference was also invaluable for bringing new writers to the fore, yet only a microscopic few of those who make use of this format are published. And although the Internet is a fast and effective format for sharing information, a large percentage of the country’s youth have no access to it.
In an interview Duiker himself once said that The Quiet Violence of Dreams had been rejected by a multitude of publishers, who claimed they were no longer interested in ”apartheid stories”.
Of course, Mpe’s and Duiker’s books came in the wake of apartheid — how could they not? But, more importantly, they delve into current issues such as unemployment, Aids, sexuality, poverty, traditional customs versus Westernisation, and so on. New writers are not writing about apartheid the system, but about how it still affects a now-free South Africa.
I keenly anticipate the day the importance of reading is recognised by all in South Africa. When newspaper and magazine writers don’t have to fight for space for book reviews. When young black writers are published and marketed vigorously. I am impatient to see schools allowing learners the opportunity to read works by Africa’s new literary lions. The issues dissected in literature by the likes of Chinua Achebe and Bessie Head have changed. Young people are grappling with different issues and need to read books that are relevant to their generation.
We need to celebrate our black writers, but how can this happen if their scripts aren’t read or published by publishers and, if and when they are published, their books are exorbitantly priced?
Writers have the power to show us who we truly are; they are the prophets who reveal the real state of a society. If South Africa’s youth are not given the chance to explore who they are through ideas sparked by literature, how will we know where we are going?