South Africa

Introduction

2022 saw a gradual lifting of Covid restrictions in South Africa. There was an end to the mask mandate, lifting of restrictions on gatherings and a slow return to normality, with book launches and other literary events resuming. The impact of Covid and lockdown are starting to be written about, particularly in poetry, plays and memoirs. It is likely that this will only increase in the years to come. The Plague Years: Reflecting on Pandemics, edited by Michael Titlestad, Karl van Wyk and Grace A Musila brings together poetry, essays and literary criticism on pandemics. While not specifically about Covid, the anthology has its origins in a 2021 special issue of English Studies in Africa as one of many projects reacting to the pandemic. This year Journal of Literary Studies has a special issue on pandemics in literature, which coming a year later has a far greater emphasis on Covid-19.

One pleasing sign of a post-covid world is the dramatically reduced list of author deaths, and the lack of young authors on the list. Don Mattera, Donald Parenzee, Amelia Blossom Pegram and Gladys Thomas passed away in 2022. They were all primarily known as poets, although Pegram and Thomas also produced short stories. While the poetry world is diminished by their loss, this year reveals an impressive list of books published, with new poets coming to the fore as well as established names producing new collections. Almost every collection listed in the bibliography is noteworthy.

In a country with 12 official languages, translation and multilingual texts are part of the publishing terrain. This is particularly so in the poetry this year. Two anthologies, I Wish I’d Said and The Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Anthology, contain poems in multiple languages. Leading Afrikaans poet Antjie Krog had her latest collection, Pillage, translated into English by fellow poet Karen Press. Bester Meyer translated his own collection Rebel Song (raising questions about whether this should appear under poetry or translation). Celeste Fritze, better known as an Afrikaans novelist, produced a debut collection of poetry, some in English and some in Afrikaans. Jim Pascual Agustin has lived in South Africa since 1994 but Bloodred Dragons is his first locally published collection, including his own translations of work originally published in Filipino. He is one of several poets to bring out selected or collected works, along with Barbara Grenfell Fairhead, David Friedland and Stephen Symons. Kelwyn Sole and Douglas Reid Skinner each published their 8th collection, with Harry Owen bringing out a 9^th volume.

Particularly impressive debut collections appeared from Sarah Lubala, Teamhw SbonguJesu and Melissa Sussens, with Lubala winning the Humanities and Social Sciences Award for A History of Disappearance. Second or third collections appeared from Michèle Betty, Khadija Heeger, Nick Mulgrew, Linda-Ann Strang and Makhosazana Xaba. Xaba blurs the lines between poetry and fiction in her unusual collection The Art of Waiting for Tales. Xaba works with a novel, Grace, by Barbara Boswell and uses found poems to retell the novel’s story. Xaba’s stature as a writer was recognised by Rhodes University with an honorary doctorate.

Links between genres are seen in the drama section with Sindiwe Magona adapting her novel Mother to Mother in collaboration with Janice Honeyman and Thembi Mtshali-Jones. The novel, published in 1998, is based on the death of American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl, killed by a group of young men in Gugulethu, Cape Town, in 1993. The mother of one of the killers addresses the mother of the victim. The play was first produced in 2009 and has been performed to critical acclaim in South Africa and abroad for its powerful message of reconciliation and forgiveness. Hopes of reconciliation are challenged by The Red on the Rainbow by Monageng Motshobi, also inspired by a real-life murder. In this case a 2017 incident in Coligny, where a young man on a farm was killed after being accused of theft, highlights the continued violence and fractured race relations. Aphiwe Livi and Buhle Qinga’s Thank You for Your Service focuses on a veteran of the armed struggle against apartheid and was the winner of Best Script Award at the 2021 Baxter Zabalaza Theatre Festival.

Clare Stopford’s Covid Moons explores the experiences of the Covid lockdown, focusing on strangers living in a block of flats, alone and isolated, navigating a relationship around the dividing wall of their balconies. Lockdown by Warren Ndebe explores grief, trauma and healing and the impact of violence on children. Are We All Met? is an anthology of extracts from South African plays, aimed at teenage actors, intended for class projects and rehearsals, compiled by Robin Malan. Malan, through his Junkets Press, continues to be a significant force in publishing plays.

Unlike some years when there are one or two “big” books dominating the fiction, this year sees an impressive field, with new works from many established authors, with those by C. A. Davids, Finuala Dowling, Bronwyn Law Viljoen and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu particularly praised. A promising sign for the future of South African literature is the substantial number of powerful debuts. The 25-book longlist for the Sunday Times Award for Fiction included nine debuts (the shortlist has not been announced at time of writing).

Interestingly, not all the debuts come from young writers, with three authors in other fields turning to novels in their 70s and 80s. Playwright Nicholas Ellenbogen’s A Vet, Three Mares and a Hound Called Max focusses on a vet who assists with the relocation of horses from World War II Poland to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). Dov Fedler, a political cartoonist, joins forces with his novelist daughter, Joanne, to produce his first work of fiction, also set during the War. In Gagman a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp can only survive so long as he can make the commandant laugh. Fedler had been working on this project for many years until his daughter came on board to help edit and complete the story. Lodewyk du Plessis has published a collection of short stories but his first novel The Dao of Daniel was originally published in Afrikaans and translated by novelist Michiel Heyns. An elderly farmer visits his estranged son in China and comes to terms with his remorse and guilt.

This year sees a substantial number of noteworthy debuts. Two dominant themes are novels set in the past, and those focusing on the Indian experience. Laila Manack’s Sisters of the Circus follows twin girls who were kidnapped from their home in India and sold to a travelling circus in Europe where they perform as trapeze artists and is a compelling account of the power of sisterhood and trust. Ashti Juggath’s Peaches and Smeets follows a young woman growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, caught between the traditions of India and “modern” life in South Africa. Shevlyn Mottai draws on her ancestors’ history in Across the Kala Pani, which follows four women who sail from India to colonial Natal in 1909 to work on the sugar plantations, as part of the indentured labour scheme which led to the large diasporic Indian community in South Africa. Aman Singh Maharaj’s A Dalliance with Destiny spans a century and is set in South Africa and India. African history forms the backdrop to Lufuno Mulaudzi’s The Parchments of Mpemba Kasi, which is set in the 13^th century African kingdoms of Mpemba Kasi and Mapungubwe, and The Daughters of Nandi by Nokuthula Mazibuko Msimang which moves from the 19^th to 21^st centuries as three women must work to undo a curse laid on the Zulu people by Nandi, mother of Shaka kaSenzangakhona, the famed 18^th century Zulu king.

Onke Mazibuko moves into the more recent past with The Second Verse, a coming-of-age story set in the late 1990s as a young man navigates the different constructions of manhood of his Xhosa culture and Western influences of his affluent school. Things My Mother Left Me by Pulane Mlilo Mpondo traces the lives of women coping with the harsh realities of life in contemporary South Africa. The Other Me by Joy Watson tells the story of a woman determined to reinvent herself and escape the damage of her past. Thabile Shange addresses xenophobia in In the Midst of It All while Lester Walbrugh’s Elton Baatjies is based on a true case of a serial killer preying on young men in the Cape Flats. Quarisha Dawood’s Stirring the Pot focusses on a group of women in Durban’s Muslim community.

Speculative fiction is not as prominent as in previous years, with most of the speculative fiction in the debut and young adult novels. Particularly noteworthy is Alistair Mackay’s It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way which is set in the present and near future and follows three queer friends in a world of cataclysmic climate change and dystopian inequality. The Last Feather is a fantasy by Shameez Patel Papathanasiou which focusses on a young woman who wakes up in a magical realm where she must work to break a curse and save her dying sister.

Dragon Forged by Nerine Dorman was a finalist in the 2017 Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature (for an unpublished manuscript) and has now been published. It is a pure secondary world fantasy of dwarves, dragons and a young girl resisting her patriarchal society. Blood to Poison is Mary Watson’s third young adult urban fantasy novel, but the first with a South African setting. Thea Booysen’s debut The Marked Children is a dystopian thriller. Hannes Bernard’s 2019 Afrikaans debut appears in English as Halley’s Comet and is a coming-of-age novel set in apartheid South Africa. Busisekile Khumalo’s debut Her Silent Scream moves between South Africa and Nigeria and focuses on a mute Muslim girl whose coming-of-age story is disrupted by ghosts from her mother’s past. Thandeka Makhubu, herself a teenager, has a debut Where We Belong focussed on two young men grappling with their sexuality and social pressures. Fred Khumalo is an established writer of novels and short stories and now turns to young adult fiction, with two novels for younger readers: Two Tons O’ Fun is a coming-of-age story set in contemporary South Africa, while Crossing the River is a darker novel dealing with human trafficking and refugees.

Khumalo’s characters are not the only ones to move between Zimbabwe and South Africa. Authors such as Sue Nyathi and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu who move between countries blur the boundaries of what constitutes South African literature, producing novels set in Zimbabwe but published in South Africa, and being nominated for South African literary awards. Nyathi’s An Angel’s Demise is an epic saga of two families on a farm in Rhodesia / Zimbabwe against the backdrop of the battle for independence. Ndlovu’s The Quality of Mercy explores the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state. While linked to her earlier two novels, it is a stand-alone story.

Poet Mzi Mahola focusses on South Africa’s liberation struggles in his second autobiographical novel, Heroes of the Struggle, showcasing now-forgotten activists in the Eastern Cape. C A Davids moves between South Africa, China and America in How to Be a Revolutionary where the contemporary characters are haunted by secrets of the past, with linkages between apartheid South Africa, China’s Cultural Revolution and American author Langston Hughes’s correspondence with South African authors. Bronwyn Law-Viljoen’s Notes on Falling moves between the 1970s and 1990s, from South Africa to New York, with three characters linked by photographs.

In Finuala Dowling’s The Man Who Loved Crocodile Tamers a woman attempts to write a novel about her father, in an attempt to learn more about his life. Chasing Marian follows four strangers, fans of author Marian Keyes, who are brought together in an attempt to meet her when she visits South Africa. The novel is an unusual collaboration of four authors, Amy Heydenrych, Qarnita Loxton, Pamela Power and Gail Schimmel. Sarah Lotz, a frequent collaborative writer, has a solo novel. After several dark thrillers she moves into lighter terrain with romantic comedy The Impossible, which has been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, RNA Fantasy Romantic Novel and the Comedy Women in Print Prize. Cat Hellisen has been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award for Cast Long Shadows. Hellisen has two works of fantasy published in this year, along with Thief Mage, Beggar Mage, both reworkings of fairy tales of magic and witchcraft. Mark Winckler has a very different focus on witches, with an historical novel The Errors of Dr Browne set in England in 1662, against the backdrop of one of England’s last witch trials, and explores the limits of reason, superstition and patriarchal control of women.

Margie Orford and Ian Sutherland set their new crime thrillers in foreign countries. Orford’s The Eye of the Beholder moves between South Africa, Canada and Scotland and focusses on three women who must contend with the spectres of male violence and sexual abuse. Sutherland’s Catastrophe is set in America and Ukraine, against the backdrop of the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Disaster. Crime fiction continues its popularity with Sally Andrew, Andrew Brown, Wessel Ebersohn, Peter Hain, Priscilla Holmes, Mike Nicol, Michael Stanley and Irma Venter (translated from Afrikaans) producing new volumes in their respective series focussing on established detectives.

For all the focus on multilingualism in South Africa, in this year all the translated works were originally published in Afrikaans. It is hoped that the other 10 official languages will be better represented in future years. Iconic and iconoclastic Afrikaans author André Brink has had one of his early novels posthumously translated into English as Lobola for Life. First published in 1962, this experimental novel broke new ground in Afrikaans literature. Another iconic Afrikaans author, Etienne van Heerden, has had his latest novel (first published in 2019) translated as A Library to Flee. Monumental in scope (and length, at 630 pages), it is set against the backdrop of the Fees Must Fall protests on university campuses in 2015 and 2016. The complex novel has been described as a novel of ideas, historical fiction, a blurring of fantasy and realism, and Dickensian in scope, yet has been highly praised.

Surprisingly few short story collections appeared, but all were impressive: a debut collection from M. A. Kelly, A Bed on Bricks, new collections from Terry-Ann Adams and Niq Mhlongo and a posthumous selection of stories by Afrikaans author Koos Pretorius who died in 1994, translated by Gerrit Olivier. In criticism, The Short Story in South Africa brings together critical essays and interviews with short story writers.

No anthologies of short stories appeared; however there were multi-genre works containing stories, poems and non-fiction. Racism, Violence, Betrayals and New Imaginaries: Feminist Voices brings together poetry, short stories, academic essays and creative non-fiction by black women from South Africa and Brazil. The Beautyful Ones Have Just Been Born is the fourth volume of the Gerald Kraak award anthology, bringing together fiction, non-fiction and poetry from across Africa with a focus on gender, sexuality and social justice.

Novelists Nechama Brodie, Tony Park and Bryan Rostron all have works of non-fiction. Brodie’s Farm Killings in South Africa explores violence on farms, highlighting the politicised narrative and the intersections of race, land and violence, while Park works with Johan Jooste to tell his account of fighting rhino poaching in Rhino War. Rostron’s Lost on the Map is a personal account of coming to terms with his family’s colonial history. Most of Denis Hirson’s books deal with memories of apartheid South Africa. His latest memoir, My Thirty-Minute Bar Mitzah, returns to that fertile field, with a focus on his relationship with his father, and the impact of being the child of an anti-apartheid activist. Two posthumous collections of writing by prominent novelists appear. Culture and Liberation brings together essays and articles by Alex la Guma, published in journals and magazines between 1966 and 1985 while la Guma was in exile. The pieces include travel writing, literary criticism, political discussions and essays. In Lauretta Ngcobo: Writing as the Practice of Freedom, editor Barbara Boswell brings together selections from Ngcobo’s novels as well as her essays, interviews and other non-fiction, as well as providing a literary biography and examination of Ngcobo’s legacy and influence. Letters to Lionel contains letters written by Jane Fox to her husband Lionel Abrahams after his death, interspersed with “snapshots”, brief memories of Abrahams and their life together. The book is both a meditation on grief and a portrait of the life, work and love of two authors.

Foundational African Writers brings together critical essays on Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Es’kia Mphahlele and isiZulu writer Sibusiso Nyembezi, written to celebrate the centenary of their births in 1919. Jabavu is also commemorated in Nontando Noni Jabvu 1919–2008 by Asanda Sizani, which includes contributions by authors and family members. Can Themba is the subject of a critical biography in Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi by Siphiwo Mahala, himself an author. While the bulk of the criticism focusses on individual authors, ranging from early foundational figures to contemporary writers, it is interesting to note the number of texts exploring South African literature within a broader context. These include Racism, Violence, Betrayals and New Imaginaries, bringing together writing from South Africa and Brazil; Literary Connections between South Africa and the Lusophone World; and two collections situating South Africa within the African context: African Literature as World Literature and African Literature Comes of Age. The special issue of Journal of Literary Studies on pandemic literatures mentioned previously, while focussed on South African literature also includes articles (not listed in the bibliography) on literature of Uganda, Malawi and Zimbabwe.