Abstract
Introduction
It is usual practice to end the Introduction with a listing of the authors who have died in the year under review. For 2020, it seems appropriate to begin with the obituaries. While not all the deaths are attributable to Covid-19, the list is substantially longer than is usual. And 2020 was a year of death. The official Covid-19 death toll in South Africa was 50,000, but this is widely seen as underreporting. Over 100,000 excess deaths for the year were reported and, considering the reduction in deaths due to the lockdown, especially the reduction in travel and the lengthy ban on alcohol, the impact of the pandemic can be clearly seen. In normal years, we record the deaths of a handful of authors, but in 2020 South African literature lost, among others, George Bizos, Irma Chait, Achmat Dangor, Angifi Dladla, Rex Gibson, Denis Goldberg, Jeanne Goosen, Stephen Gray, Ronald Harwood, Elsa Joubert, André Lemmer and Harold Strachan.
Covid-19 has changed the world, and this is already being seen in the literature. Within weeks of the start of South Africa’s hard lockdown, Melinda Ferguson had put out an e-book containing essays, thoughts and reflections. Lockdown was soon followed by Lockdown Extended (not listed as only available electronically). Written at speed, the contents are of mixed quality, although brimming with urgency and immediacy. The best of the pieces along with some new essays are compiled into a print version The Lockdown Collection. The collection includes authors such as Kharnita Mohamed, Fred Khumalo, Khaya Dlanga, Dudu Busani-Dube, Rahla Xenopoulos, Lebo Mashile and Pumla Dineo Gqola, among others, and gives a good sense of the fear and confusion in the early days of the Covid crisis.
Poet Tony Ullyatt began a project to write a senryu every day during lockdown, ending up with over 100. His collection River Willows brings together short poignant poems of death and mourning, reflecting on the Covid pandemic but also the death of his wife during this time. While Covid-19 and lockdown occupied our minds, poets continued to explore bereavement, loss and other difficult emotions. In Drop by Drop: Poems of Loss, Judy Croome also explores death and mourning, writing about the experience of caring for her dying husband while Abigail George’s collection Of Smoke Flesh and Bones is subtitled Poems against Depression.
Several strong debut collections appeared, most notably from Jeannie Wallace McKeown, Kopano Maroga, Thabile Makue, Musawenkosi Khanyile and Oliver Findlay Price. Jacques Coetzee has his first solo collection, having previously produced a collaborative collection with Barbara Fairhead. Abu Bakr Solomons, Phelalani Makhanya and Sihle Ntuli produced impressive second collections. Of the more established poets, noteworthy new collections appeared from Christine Coates, Gary Cummiskey, Gail Dendy, Kobus Moolman, Harry Owen, Stephen Symons and Fiona Zerbst, while Bernard Levinson and Douglas Reid Skinner produced volumes of selected poems. My Mother’s Laughter: Selected Poems edited by Ivan Vladislavic and Robert Berold is a posthumous collection of Chris van Wyk’s poems, drawing on his 1979 collection It Is Time to Go Home as well as poems written in the subsequent years. There have been several posthumous collections of iconic Afrikaans poet Ingrid Jonker with the latest, Waterfall of Moss and Sun, translated and edited by her daughter Simone Jonker.
Malibongwe: Poems from the Struggle by ANC Women edited by Sono Molefe (a pseudonym for Lindiwe Mabuza) was first published in Europe in 1981 but banned in South Africa and long out of print. It has now been reissued with a new preface by Uhuru Phalafala and an introduction by Makhosazana Xaba, giving a broader audience access to the poems and providing insight into writing by women activists. The Only Magic We Know: Selected Modjaji Poems 2004 to 2020 edited by Marike Beyers brings together selected poems from each of the poets published by Modjaji Press over the past 16 years. An impressive collection in its own right, it also serves as a testimony to Modjaji’s role in bringing women’s voices to the fore. The book contains close to 40 poets, with several poems by each author, from Ingrid Anderson and Margaret Clough to Makhosazana Xaba and Fiona Zerbst.
Junkets Publisher received the Special Award for Innovation in Theatre at the 55th Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards. A small independent publisher, they have published 62 individual playscripts and ten anthologies of plays. In the drama this year, they published all but two, bringing into print plays by Terence Makapan, Mtobisi Mpandle, Koleka Putuma, Cullum Tilbury, Mike van Graan and Tara Notcutt, Albert Pretorious and Gideon Lombard. In addition to the Junkets publication of his new play Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Metaphors, Mike van Graan has a collection of satirical sketches drawn from six different one-person revues published as Bafana Republic, and Other Satires. William Kentridge’s The Head & the Load is a record of the theatre production of the same name, containing the libretto, images of performances and reflections on the process of making the piece.
One of the victims of Covid in 2020 was the Sunday Times Literary Awards, which vanished without notice (somewhat ironic for an award sponsored by a newspaper). Fortunately, the award has reemerged as the Sunday Times CNA Award, with books published in 2019 and 2020 eligible. 2019 novels shortlisted are Breaking Milk by Dawn Garisch and A Sin of Omission by Marguerite Poland, with 2020 nominations for Due South of Copenhagen by Mark Winkler, The History of Man by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu and Scatterlings by Rešoketšwe Manenzhe, which was the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award winner. The Sunday Times longlist included novels by Barbara Adair, Terry-Ann Adams, Mia Arderne, Lauren Beukes, Vivian de Klerk, Michiel Heyns, Craig Higginson, Lynn Joffe, Niq Mhlongo, Sue Nyathi, Jen Thorpe and Zoe Wicomb. Karen Jennings did not make the Sunday Times list, but her novel An Island has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. No information could be found on the other South African literary awards, which are either delayed or have gone into abeyance.
If the literary world and authors have suffered from the lack of launches, book tours, public readings, awards, book fairs and literary festivals, there has been no shortage of good books being written and published. It is pleasing to see several strong debuts. Scatterlings by Rešoketšwe Manenzhe is set 100 years in the past and explores migrancy and the destruction wreaked on a mixed-race family by the so-called Immorality Act, drawing on myth and ritual. Helen Moffet moves to England for her debut solo novel (having published novels as part of the writing team using the pseudonym of Helena S. Paige in the past). Charlotte is a sequel to the Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice, continuing the story while focusing on the minor character of Charlotte Lucas. Lynn Joffe’s debut also avoids a South African setting. The Gospel According to Wanda B. Lazarus follows a Jewish woman who keeps being reborn and moves through the ages in a quest to become a muse. Mia Ardern and Lynton Francois Burger also incorporate fantastic elements in their debuts, but set them firmly in a South African context with Mermaid Fillet and She Down There. More conventional and contemporary novels come from Terry-Ann Adams whose Those Who Live in Cages explores the lives of five coloured women living in the township of Eldorado Park, and Vivian de Klerk’s Not to Mention focusses on a young woman with morbid obesity.
Shanice Ndlovu has a debut collection of speculative-fiction short stories. This was a particularly good year for short stories with noteworthy collections from Abigail George, Shafinaaz Hassim, Sifiso Mzobe, Nataniel, S. J. Naud
Speculative fiction features strongly this year. This can be seen in The Nommo Award for African speculative fiction which longlisted six South African novels: Afterland by Lauren Beukes, Soul Searching by Stephen Embleton, King of the Hollow Dark by Cat Hellisen, A Trail of Sparks by Yolandie Horak, Club Ded by Nikhil Singh and Water Must Fall by Nick Wood, with Singh and Embleton making the shortlist. Lauren Beukes was selected for the shortlist but recused herself to make way for newer voices. Beukes’ novel Afterland has received high praise internationally and is somewhat chilling to read as her account of a near-future pandemic which has led to the death of the vast majority of the world’s men came out in the early days of our current pandemic. Jen Thorpe’s The Fall deals with student protests, but in the near future, and features a character who can see into the future.
Zoe Wicomb combines elements of fantastic, contemporary and historical fiction in Still Life which shows a biographer writing about early 19th century poet Thomas Pringle, guided by ghosts from Pringle’s past. Patricia Schonstein, Simphiwe Gloria Ndlova and Karen Jennings all set their novels in imagined countries and explore the impact of past decisions on the present.
In Mark Winckler’s Due South of Copenhagen the death of a boyhood friend brings up the past of a childhood in a small town and experiences during the Border War. In Unmaking Grace by Barbara Boswell, the reappearance of an old friend sees memories of her childhood in the Cape Flats during the height of apartheid force a young woman to confront past trauma. Reggie and Me by James Hendry is a coming-of-age novel showing a young boy growing up in pre-apartheid South Africa while Loves and Miracles of Pistola by Hilary Prendini Toffoli focusses on a young Italian man who travels to South Africa in the 1950s.
Of the novels with a contemporary setting, particularly noteworthy are those by Barbara Adair, Alastair Bruce, Michiel Heyns, Craig Higginson, Angela Makholwa, Niq Mhlongo, Sue Nyathi and Gail Schimmel.
Authors Colleen Higgs and Brent Meersman both produced memoirs exploring complex relationships with mothers who suffered from mental illness. Robin Malan celebrated his 80th birthday with the previously mentioned acknowledgement of his publisher Junkets and Along the Way to Where, a collection of autobiographical sketches and poems, looking back at his life. J. M. Coetzee also turned 80, with several commemorative publications appearing, including A Book of Friends, a collection of essays, stories, poems and artworks by Coetzee’s friends and contemporaries complied by Dorothy Driver. J. M. Coetzee: Photographs from Boyhood edited by Herman Wittenberg brings together photographs taken by Coetzee in his youth and linked with extracts from his memoir Boyhood. Scenes from the South is the catalogue of the commemorative exhibition of archival material mounted by Amazwi South African Museum of Literature. As usual, there has been more criticism of Coetzee than of any other author, with noteworthy anthologies being The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Coetzee edited by Jarad Zimbler and Reading Coetzee’s Women edited by Sue Kossew and Melinda Harvey.
2020 saw the centenary of the birth of Peter Abrahams commemorated with a special issue of Critical Arts as well as the centenary of the death of Olive Schreiner commemorated by a special issue of English in Africa. While Sol Plaatje’s novel Mhudi was published in 1930, it was written in 1920, and is pivotal as the first novel in English by a black South African writer. Brian Willan and Sabata-Mpho Mokae produced two works to mark the occasion: Sol T. Plaatje: A Life in Letters, containing a collection of Plaatje’s letters and giving insight into his life and works, and Sol Plaatje’s ‘Mhudi’: History, Criticism, Celebration which brings together a range of critics to discuss the novel and its ongoing impact.
While several authors had more than one work published this year, Barbara Boswell had a novel, a collection of poems and a work of criticism, And Wrote My Story Anyway, looking at black South African women’s novels. Another important work of feminist scholarship is Sasinda and Siselapha (Still Here) edited by Derilene Marco and bringing together essays, artwork and creative writing exploring poetry, art, film and cultural studies. It is pleasing to see in the criticism the wide range of authors and texts being discussed, including newer authors such as Tammy Baikes, Tracey Farren, Karen Jayes and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu as well as the more established contemporary writers.
As the Covid crisis shows little sign of slowing down, we are sure to see its presence in future literature and criticism, with several calls for special issues of critical journals and creative writing anthologies already highlighting this trend. Yet, as Cheryl Stobie notes in her Introduction to Current Writing’s special issue of on precarity (see Who could have foretold, when the call for papers for this special issue of Current Writing was devised, what 2020 held in store, in terms of the Covid-19 pandemic, increased poverty, unemployment and hunger, widespread Black Lives Matter protests, and renewed attention to the scourge of gender-based violence. Yet the issues writ large during this annus horribilis are those explored within the texts analysed by the contributors to this issue, with its pertinent theme of Precarity in South/African Literary Texts. (p. 99)
South African literature has a strong focus on dealing with difficult situations and challenges, and South African authors and critics will continue to produce work that reflects on our past, present and future.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
With thanks to my colleagues at the Amazwi South African Museum of Literature, especially Debbie Landman.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.