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KZN Literary Tourism reviews contemporary South African fiction and poetry. Reviews are done by academics and members of our KZN literary community (contact us if you would like to review for us). View reviews as articles or list.

SA Lit Beyond 2000

Wednesday, 30 November 2011 00:00

Edited by Michael Chapman and Margaret Lenta (UKZN Press)

Reviewed by Margaret Daymond

This survey of recent South African literature has 17 chapters in which the contributors consider how the new dispensation in SA is being represented by the country’s writers and received by its critics. The inquiry into whether, since the momentous changes of the 1990s, South African writing has turned a corner, is inaugurated by Leon de Kock who asks whether fiction’s once urgent focus on questions of national identity is changing by, for example, expanding into the ‘transnational’. Chapman, in the Introduction, glosses this term as “the nation caught in movement – possibly transformational movement – ‘in-between’ local and global demands”.

Responses to this question are mostly given via writing in English, but there is also a chapter on recent writing in Zulu and Louise Viljoen writes on Afrikaans poetry. Other chapters focus on writing by Indian South Africans, by black and white women (Eva Hunter and Siphokazi Jonas), by debut novelists (Margaret Lenta) and the familiar genres of written literature are represented: Michael Chapman on poetry, Annie Gagiano on autobiography, and Marcia Blumberg and Miki Flockemann each have a chapter on drama.

Devarakshanam Govinden, in attending to recent writing about indenture, provides one of the collection’s most direct answers to de Kock’s question in her thesis that “the emphasis on indenture in recent literary and historical works … connects South Africa …. [to] investigations of an Indian Ocean map of South/South interaction as well as to other Indian diasporic sites.” Another but less direct response comes from Cheryl Stobie who places her account of “expressions of queer beyond separatist or essentialist notions of sexual orientation” both as a local response to the white nationalism of the past and as part of a “global picture”. Dan Wylie, discussing the development of ecological criticism in the region, provides another when he celebrates a steady move away from seeing ‘a bioregion’ as a “container-like entity” to treating it as a “more fluid concept which eschews national and similar political borders.” In what may stand as a summation of the generally felt need for literature and criticism to move beyond the mind-set inculcated by the white nationalism of apartheid and by black resistance to it, he suggests that the eco-critic’s endeavour must be to examine “how ecological dynamics affects all beings, above and beyond colour or ideology.”

It is interesting that in a volume such as this, two writers should be given a chapter to themselves: Nadine Gordimer and Antjie Krog. As Gordimer has devoted herself to the ‘necessary gesture’ of writing against apartheid, her choice of subject matter now that racial separation has officially ended is indeed symptomatic for ‘SA Lit’. Ileana Dimitriu demonstrates that Gordimer’s concerns have expanded, particularly in the most recent novel Get a Life, to include ecology, or “the hesitant spiritual pursuits of a suburban people”. In her chapter, Helize van Vuuren takes up another key question – that of language – in the light of the Afrikaans poet Antjie Krog’s realization that for her as a minority writer “translation [has become] … one of the key strategies for survival” (Change of Tongue). Translation, “also an act of restitution” or “homage”, extends in Krog’s poetry from language itself into finding new modes of writing and new ways of dreaming in order that a new “syncretic … identity” may be imagined.

When The Chalk Is Down – An Odyssey

Monday, 14 November 2011 15:01

Written by: BP Singh (KraftMedia Publishers)

Review by: Rasvanth Chunylall

Behind every great man is a woman. Similarly, behind every great lawyer, doctor or accountant is a teacher that has played an important role in shaping his or her life. But how many of us really know the life story behind said teacher when the chalk is down? Former educator, BP Singh’s debut novel is an autobiographical retelling of his life’s story filled with instances of sacrifice, struggle and defiance in the face of adversity.

Singh weaves two plotlines: his quest to attain property ownership for his parent’s home in Buffelsdale, Tongaat while simultaneously focusing on his journey, experiences and his maturation as a teacher.

Family is at the heart of the novel. On the matter of the lost land Singh writes: “Having a house in your name is a basic human right, yet in this instance it seemed that the process was going to be a painful one. To lose part of your property, especially when poor, is like losing a part of your body, a part of your soul. The toil of tending your land makes you a part of it, and the land becomes a fundamental part of you.” Singh’s mother features prominently on the gorgeously designed cover with faded white rose blossoms; a reference to the garden his father tragically lost when their property (also pictured) was rezoned. The title is written in a bold, white font that cleverly imitates chalk-written words on a blackboard.

The book also acts as an important edition to the field of Living Education Theory. Singh leaves the reader with insight into the struggles experienced by teachers, the conflicts that arise when a principal and his/her staff are unable to work in unity and the day-to-day experiences with his students. He makes some sharp observations in the way that schools are often hindered by nepotism in terms of employment of members of staff and the roles of unions during a period of transformation. The novel highlights the precarious position liberal teachers were put in. On one hand they were critical of the Apartheid government’s stance but were unable to voice their concern’s without jeopardizing their jobs. The challenges Singh faces as a teacher are not exclusive to the period in which the novel is written making it must-read for those in the field of education.

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