The Impact of 1950s Banning of Some South African Writers on Teaching African Literature Today

Abstract

This article argues that credit given to South African writers who were exiled during the fifties when banning by the apartheid government was rife, is sometimes premised on inadequate awareness of the contributions of writers like Es'kia Mphahlele. Mphahlele's uniqueness as one of the black South African authors sometimes called Drum or Sophiatown writers is emphasized as a way of demonstrating what little analytical rigour was applied to writers of this period as a result of the banning of their books in apartheid South Africa. A more serious critique of South African literature produced during this period is exemplified by the way I discuss Mphahlele's and some of his contemporaries' literature within the context of the 1950s. A discussion of Ngugi's literary contribution by two critics is used as a case in point to highlight the aftermath of academia's virtual acquiescence to such chaining of creative freedom. The discussion thus holds the academic fraternity partly responsible in further obliterating traces of black South African writing of the fifties, and suggests that this should be reversed as exemplified by my own discussion of the Drum writers. It is suggested that writings of the fifites should be excavated, studied and analysed afresh in academic circles utilising the approach I propose in this article, alongside other methods that may be deemed equally fruitful. This paper argues that the impact of the harm caused by political incidents of the 1950s and the lethargy that gripped literary and educational circles in subsequent decades is still felt today in the classroom, necessitating conscious efforts to redress this gap in the teaching of black South African literature.