I inhabit the cultural environment polluted by Stephen Watson’s attack on Antjie Krog, and by the commentary that it has received in the press, including in the Mail & Guardian. I have cordial collegial relations with Watson; Krog has, in recent years, become a friend. I am disturbed at the damage this unsavoury business has done to their reputations and to the fragile world of local letters.
I am unimpressed by Watson’s intemperate tone and by his accusations in the literary journal New Contrast. I am also disconcerted by the interlocking connections that appear to have influenced the reporting. Watson is a director of New Contrast. Tom Eaton is the editor of that journal. He is also one of the regular columnists in the M&G and appears to have used his connection to explain his decision to publish the ”peer reviewed” article without giving Krog prior notice of it, and to satirise those who have criticised the decision. His comment on a supposed Stellenbosch-University of Cape Town, Afrikaans-English conflict of values suggests where he imagines the centre of gravity to lie.
Colin Bower fires off two salvoes under the guise of reporting the case, followed by an op-ed piece pursuing what looks uncommonly like a publisher’s war. One might have expected the M&G at least to offer some discussion of Krog’s written response?
Krog is no stranger to controversy. She has been variously considered a verraaier [traitor], an African National Congress hack and a naive political commentator. She generated criticism when she was the first to write in book form about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Country of My Skull.
Last week, on the M&G letters page, poets Sarah Ruden and Chris Mann expressed negative views of that book and questioned her integrity. But her admirers speak of her literary inventiveness, her nuanced Afrikaans, her commitment to translation across all our languages and her robust engagement with major questions confronting our new democracy. She has admirers across the racial and language divides; she has detractors across the same divides.
She also carries the burden of an international reputation. Artists as varied as William Kentridge, JM Coetzee and Zakes Mda have all borne the brunt of local rancour. This is perhaps understandable when the battle for scarce resources is felt to be a zero-sum game. But the attitude is lamentable and it leads to the impoverishment of the culture.
Watson’s argument is a wobbly one. He wants to show that Krog has stolen his ideas (”conceptual theft” and ”spirit of plagiarism” are alarming formulations, deserving separate analysis), but he also wants to demonstrate that Krog is a poor thief who creates nothing of value. Yet, nothing in his article demonstrates that theft has taken place. A public archive is just that, public. Anyone may access it. Krog had every right to use the Bleek and Lloyd materials and she was free to ”translate” any of the writings, even including every poem that Watson chose (which she did not do).
Watson, of course, has every right to take a negative view of Krog’s poetic activity. In a genuine review (which is how the New Contrast article presents itself), he must say she is a lousy poet if he thinks so. But I, for one, find the judgement left badly skewed by the evident self-interest his article reveals. Moreover, as the article progresses, the charges of plagiarism become not issues of principle at all, but matters of aesthetic judgement. According to him, really good writers such as TS Eliot borrow, but bad writers such as Krog steal. This is a hopeless conclusion.
As to the further accusations, I find them unconvincing, too. Others before me have noted that the offending phrase, ”unit of the imagination”, used by Hughes and Krog, is commonplace, with its origins in Levi-Strauss.
New forms of writing are generating new forms of citation. Authors of hybrid fiction/non-fiction books often append a list of books or names of writers that have influenced them, rather than the footnotes of academic texts. It is alarming that the present gap between academic and creative practice should become the ground for technologically-based witch-hunts pursued under the guise of research. Indeed, which creative artist among us will escape a whipping if this continues?
I regret the influence the academy wishes to exercise over creative work. But mostly I regret the way writers are being drawn into conflicts with each other, or being pressed into silence. As in most literary and artistic communities around the world, rivalries are commonplace and generosity in short supply. When buttressed by robust discussion, even rivalry can serve a culture well. But the politics of envy is a poor substitutes for debate and does nothing to advance a vibrant writing and reviewing culture.
Ingrid de Kok works at the centre for extra-mural studies, University of Cape Town