South African Literature - African Languages

African Languages

Although there are nine official African languages in South Africa, most speakers are fluent in Afrikaans and English. Coupled with the small market for writing in African languages, this has led many African writers to write in English and Afrikaans. The first texts produced by black authors were often inspired by missionaries and frequently deal with African history, in particular the history of kings such as Chaka. Modern South African writing in the African languages tends to play at writing realistically, at providing a mirror to society, and depicts the conflicts between rural and urban settings, between traditional and modern norms, racial conflicts and most recently, the problem of AIDS.

In the first half of the 20th century, epics largely dominated black male writing: historical novels, such as Sol T. Plaatje’s Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago (1930), Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka (trans. 1925), and epic plays including those of H. I. E. Dhlomo, or heroic epic poetry such as the work of Mazizi Kunene. These texts “evince black African patriarchy in its traditional form, with men in authority, often as warriors or kings, and women as background figures of dependency, and/or mothers of the nation” (Cullhed, 2006: 21). Female literature in the African languages is severely limited because of the strong influence of patriarchy, but over the last decade or two society has changed much and it can be expected that more female voices will emerge.