South Africa’s youth culture is undergoing pervasive Americanisation, while the country’s long tradition of artistic activism is evaporating, complains the newly anointed poet laureate, Keorapetse Kgositsile.
His glum outlook on trends in local culture is largely shared by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Nadine Gordimer. But rising literary editor Ntone Edjabe disagrees, pointing to the popularity of new forms of expression among young South Africans, including the blogging movement.
”The gap between the youth and older people is such that there is no continuity in our history,” said Kgositsile in an interview this week. ”The youth are not informed; most are not interested in the values and the ideals that brought the country up to 1994. I think that is frightening.”
He is well placed to articulate the expectations of the older generation of ”engaged” South African writers. His elevation to national laureate by Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan took place on December 8 last year, 16 years after his return to the country after 29 years in exile.
Kgositsile sees little sign of a distinctive post-apartheid culture emerging. South Africans are patriotic, he concedes, ”but it’s a patriotism based on what? I don’t think I’m being old fashioned in saying it’s along the lines of the patriotism of the United States — more a nationalist chauvinism. Even worse, a lot of it is based on the outer trimmings or the dirty garments of what might appear as US culture.”
He criticises the older generation for doing ”nothing to establish continuity, to establish the necessary dynamic interaction” with young South Africans.
”Frighteningly, many see the youth as a problem and not young people with problems — there is a difference.”
Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer also has concerns about artistic expression in contemporary South Africa — and in particular, its lack of focus on the present.
Gordimer’s hope for the coming year is that ”we can really look at ourselves without too much emphasis on the past. I don’t think there has been too much glorification, but I think it’s the return of the repressed.
”Today people can say all the things they couldn’t say, that couldn’t come out. But there’s too much going on around us now; things to come to terms with, things to rejoice and in some cases things to deplore.
”What I would like to see is more concentration on what’s happening now. After all, it’s only 11 years since we’ve had our freedom.”
Gordimer sees the need to establish new literary avenues for frustrated writers. ”I’d like to see more money going into literature. I’m pleased to see that quite a lot goes into theatre.
”But it’s very difficult in terms of young people writing: there’s nowhere for them to get published. Universities say they have limited budgets; it’s something the arts and culture department should do.”
Gordimer leaves out of account the cult magazine Chimurenga and its 35-year-old editor, Edjabe. Chimurenga distributes 2 500 copies about three times a year, and its circulation is growing. Edjabe points out that the Americanisation of local culture is hardly an exclusively local issue.
”In France they publish essay after essay about how the country is going to the dungeon, how everyone is listening to rap music. I think it’s crap, it’s paranoia.
”All the forces against evil aren’t necesÂÂsarily grouped together because the single ideal, the single goal, the single fight is not identifiable, as it was in the past.”
He argues that the disappearance of apartheid-era literary journals such as Staffrider and Transition does not necessarily imply intellectual and moral impoverishment.
”In Chimurenga we pick up on those fighting words; they are manifested in other ways. You have to take into consideration things such as the spoken word and blogging movements.
”People have decided to articulate their views, and powerfully, in spaces that are completely ignored by big business. Until the established literary world begins to consider what is published in blogs as literature, as writing of value, how can we evaluate it?”
Edjabe insists that young South Africans are taking more initiative now than ever before, and that ”we do not need to be fighting apartheid to write”.
”Quite frankly, I am happy, because those who do write may turn out to be writers — not just politicians who need to articulate their idealism.”