South African Poetry - Post Colonial Writing

Post Colonial Writing

Alan Paton’s world renowned and highly poetic novel Cry, The Beloved Country, came into publication, just four months after the separatist National Party came to power in South Africa. Although Paton was most prolific in other literary genre, poetry was a form that interested him throughout his life, as documented in Peter Alexander's biography of him.

Some of the best known poets of this violently oppressive and politically turbulent period of South African history from 1948 to 1990 include Dennis Brutus, Ingrid Jonker, Mazisi Kunene, Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk (N.P.) Louw, William Ewart Gladstone (W.E.G.) Louw, James Matthews, Mzwakhe Mbuli, Oswald (Mbuyiseni) Mtshali, and Diederik Johannes (D.J) Opperman.

Antjie Krog’s first volume of poetry Dogter van Jefta, published in 1970 when she was just 17 years old, caused a stir in the Afrikaans community specifically for her then controversial poem My mooi land("My beautiful land"). To date she has published ten volumes of poetry as well as three volumes of children’s verse in Afrikaans, with her later works becoming increasingly politicised and gender–sensitising.

Among Black female authors of the time, the late Bessie Head and Sindiwe Magona (who went into exile in Botswana and USA respectively) are better known as novelists but did write poetry too. Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region by Margaret J. Daymond embodies the poetry and writing of several black South African women poets who were writing and performing poetry during this era of struggle but like many others were only published outside the country or in grassroots South African literary magazines, COSAW (Congress of South African Writers) publications and the journal Staffrider.

Many of these poets, particularly the anti-apartheid writers, suffered personally in forms ranging from exile, house arrest, detention and torture to the banning of their literature or their right to public speaking. This was because they questioned and opposed apartheid law, as well as raised national and international awareness of the injustices committed in the country during a long period of media censorship, state propaganda, cultural boycott, mass detentions, and the killing of freedom struggle activists as well as ordinary black citizens.

The "Drum writers" of the 1950s reflected a new generation of black writers talking about the conditions of their lives, using the popular Drum magazine as their forum to depict a vibrant urban black culture for the first time. Notable poets of the period associated Drum were Peter Clarke, Richard Rive and James Matthews, an incendiary poet who fittingly entitled his first collection of poetry Cry Rage, published in 1972, co-authored with Gladys Thomas which was banned by the Apartheid authorities.

The Afrikaans literary scene in the 1960s also flourished with the emergence of Jan Rabie, Etienne Leroux, Andre Brink and the highly acclaimed exiled author and poet Breyten Breytenbach. All publishing first in Afrikaans, these writers were increasingly politicised by the situation in South Africa and their contrasting experiences overseas, with Breytenbach beginning as one of the most linguistically radical new poets in Afrikaans. A new generation of white South African poets writing in English in the 1960s include greats such as Douglas Livingstone, Sidney Clouts, Ruth Miller, Lionel Abrahams and Stephen Gray.

With the rise of the Black Consciousness (BC) movement, led by martyred Bantu Steve Biko, and the 1976 Soweto uprising, political and protest poetry became a vehicles used for their immediacy of impact. South African protest poets and poets took the platform at underground rallies, political, religious and other cultural events across the country. The most notable writers from this period are Keorapetse William Kgositsile, Mongane Wally Serote, Sipho Sepamla, James Matthews, Oswald Joseph Mbuyiseni Mtshali, Christopher van Wyk, Mafika Gwala and Don Mattera. These rousing works, embedded with resistance slogans and ideals, were intended to mobilise the masses into action against the oppressive regime. Popular orators such as Mzwakhe Mbuli achieved celebrity status at this time even though some felt the need for "a move away from rhetoric and toward the depiction of ordinary" in order to reflect a more well-rounded reflection of humanity, as expressed by academic and poet Njabulo Ndebele, in his 1986 essay, "The Rediscovery of the Ordinary". Simon Lewis, in his review of Ten South African Poets highlights that some of the strongest voices of the 1980s were also "worker poets", the innovative trade union praise-songs of the poets of Black Mamba Rising.