In English

South African literature in English effectively began in the late 19th century in the states preceding the Republic of South Africa and became fairly copious in the 20th. During the early 1900s, Africans, largely cut off from tribal customs and values (including the oral literary tradition), began to write in English. In the middle decades many Africans served literary apprenticeships on popular English newspapers and periodicals, such as Drum, aimed at the native African reader in his poverty-stricken but lively “township.” At about that time, too, English-speaking writers, both black and white, began to mix on a limited scale, a cross-fertilization that may have had seminal value for literature. Regrettably, it was short-lived; from 1948, many African and white writers went into exile for political reasons.

Olive Schreiner, a liberal and a powerful writer on local and international affairs, composed the first great South African novel, The Story of an African Farm (1883). Other English writers include William Plomer, who pioneered “race relations” as material for fiction in the novel Turbott Wolfe (1925), and Pauline Smith, whose stories in The Little Karoo (1925) dealt sympathetically with rural Afrikaners. Laurens van der Post, in his novel In a Province (1934), dealt with the African-coming-to-town theme.

Alan Paton and Nadine Gordimer both achieved international reputations with their novels and short stories. Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) established Paton as the most eloquent voice of South African liberal humanism, and his later writing, such as the novel Too Late the Phalarope (1953) and the stories in Debbie Go Home (1961), further enhanced his reputation. Paton’s work is characterized by rhythmic prose, a compassionate view of South Africa, and irony. Gordimer made an impact abroad with her first novel, The Lying Days (1953). A meticulous observer of the physical world and of nuances in human relationships, she writes astringently and without sentimentality, her talent at its best perhaps in such short-story collections as Not for Publication (1965). In 1991 Gordimer became the first South African to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The early novels of Dan Jacobson were also deservedly praised, providing as they did a peculiarly incisive view of divided South African society. Restraint and wry humour are characteristic of his best works, which include the short-story collection Beggar My Neighbour (1964) and the novel The Beginners (1965). Perhaps the most important novelist to emerge after Gordimer was J.M. Coetzee, whose books mark a decisive break with South African traditions of realism and naturalistic description. In such novels as In the Heart of the Country (1977), Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), and Life and Times of Michael K (1983), Coetzee uses allegory, black humour, and stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques to depict the brutality and injustice of unnamed but clearly exploitative modern societies.

Some of the finest works of other writers in English are autobiographical depictions of the frustrations and deprivation experienced by young black intellectuals in South African society. Peter Abrahams was a prolific expatriate novelist who explored this vein in his novel Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa (1954). In his short stories and novellas (e.g., A Walk in the Night [1962]), Alex La Guma used a racy street English vernacular that owes much to Afrikaans. Among his writings are And a Threefold Cord (1964), The Stone-Country (1967), and In the Fog of a Season’s End (1972). Other writers of protest include Lewis Nkosi, whose collection of essays Home and Exile (1965) was a standard point of reference for students of African literature, and Es’kia Mphahlele, whose autobiographical Down Second Avenue (1959) has become a South African classic. Nkosi and Mphahlele both worked for Drum magazine, which provided an important forum for their ideas. The two went into exile.

Warm humour, rare in South African writing, is abundant in the work of H.C. Bosman, who deals affectionately with Afrikaners of the old school in Mafeking Road (1947) and A Cask of Jerepigo (1957). The only drama of note in English is that of Athol Fugard, particularly The Blood Knot (1963) and Hello and Goodbye (1966). Fugard’s penetrating and pessimistic analyses of the South African situation in such later plays as Boesman and Lena (1969) and Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972; revised as Sizwe Bansi Is Dead) secured his reputation as a dramatist of international importance.

Early South African poets writing in English tried to describe the African landscape within the romantic conventions of 19th-century English poetry. But in the 1920s came the work of major poets Roy Campbell and William Plomer. As satirists they debunked much of the shallowness and sentimentality that characterized South African verse of the period. Campbell wrote vigorously extroverted verse that often sounded a note of menace. His most famous work was his long symbolic poem The Flaming Terrapin (1924). The acutely observant Plomer wrote with more restraint and experimented with rhythm and diction in such works as Notes for Poems (1927) and Visiting the Caves (1936).

Campbell’s work stimulated the emergence of a new generation of English poets in the decades after World War II. Guy Butler, in his fine poem “Home Thoughts” (1956), expressed a sense of the English being aliens as people as well as poets. F.C. Slater often evoked by image and rhythm a uniquely South African experience, as in “Lament for a Dead Cow” (Collected Poems [1957]). Sydney Clouts was another important poet who came to prominence after World War II, but it was Douglas Livingstone who became the leading English-language poet of the latter 20th century. He emerged in the 1960s with his powerful descriptions of African landscapes and animals, but his poetry subsequently broadened in scope to touch upon various aspects of modern society. Also of considerable merit is poet O.M. Mtshali, whose Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (1971) received acclaim.