Locating the popular-democratic in South African resistance literature in English, 1970-1990.

351 Pages·2013·7.03 MB·English

Locating the popular-democratic in
South African resistance literature in
English, 1970-1990.
Gayatri Priyadarshini Narismulu
submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Literature at
the Centre for the Study of Southern African Literature and Languages in the Faculty of
Arts at the University of Durban-Westville.
Promoter: Professor A.J. van Wyk
January 1998
Locating the popular-democratic in South Mrican resistance literature in
English, 1970-1990.
Abstract
Chapter One: Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The constructs of "the people" and "the community"
1.3 Culture
1.4 The concepts "popular" and "democratic"
1.5 Challenges and caveats attending the popular
1.6 The popular-democratic
Chapter Two: Home and dislocation: resistance writers
address structural oppression 17
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Townships
2.3 Hostels and migrant workers
2.4 Forced removals
2.4.1 "Black spot" removals
2.4.2 The Group Areas Act
2.4.3 Township removals
2.4.4 Shacks and squatter camps
2.5 Commuting from the dumping grounds
2.6 Homeless people
2.7 Exile
Chapter Three: Security force repression: resistance writers
"touch this darkness and give it meaning" 48
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Attacks on neighbouring states
3.3 Internal repression
3.3.1 The security forces
3.3.2 Effects of repression on family and loved ones
3.3.3 Attacks on townships: "the tyranny of place"
3.3.4 "Total onslaught"
3.3.5 "Border" patrol
Chapter Four: "Here be dragons": challenging "liberal"
literary constructions 77
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Conservative liberal constructions of literature
4.3 Conservative liberal constructions of audience
4.4 Challenging conservative liberal subjectivity
4.5 "Them" and "us": standards and privileges
4.6 Questions of form and expression
Chapter Five: Black Consciousness: "spilt like this my
blood speaks"
102
5.1 The impact of Black Consciousness
5.2 Satire against the apartheid regime and the liberals
Chapter Six: Labour struggles
133
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Trade unionism
6.3 The harassment and persecution of workers
6.4 Mining
6.5 MayDay
6.6 The MAW U strike and The Long March
6.7 SARHWU workers and Township Fever
6.8 Focus on cultural production
Chapter Seven: Representivity and representation 167
7.1 Audience: addressing the active subjects of the struggle
7.2 The rise of the United Democratic Front
7.3 COSAT V and the UDF
Chapter Eight: Culture and media: censorship and
resistance 196
8.1 The censorship of culture
8.2 Challenging censorship and other forms of cultural repression
8.3 Media: challenging censorship and the "mainstream" media
Chapter Nine: Addressing the killings committed by
the state 235
9.1 Challenging the security force killings
9.2 Addressing the hangings of activists
9.3 Funerals
9.4 Militance
9.5 Self-criticism
Chapter Ten: Reconstructing education and history 282
10.1 Education struggles
10.2 Memory and history
Bibliography 311
F or my students,
from whom I learn so much
Abstract
As a conjunctural construct located between politics, society and art, the popular-democratic
construes the resistance literature of the 1970s and 1980s as being expressive of an entire
social movement to end oppression and transform society. Through the construct of the
popular-democratic voices that have been marginalised, fragmented, dislocated, excluded or
otherwise silenced can be seen in relation to each other and to the sources of oppression.
The introductory chapter addresses the characteristics of the popular-democratic, and the
caveats and challenges that attend it. The remaining nine chapters are divided into three
sections of three chapters each.
The first section examines repression of different types: structural repression, coercive
repression/state violence and cultural repression. An important index of the structural
oppression of apartheid is the home, which a range of resistance writers addressed in depth
when they dealt with city life and the townships, forced removals, homeless people, rural
struggles, migrants and hostels, commuting, the "homelands" and exile.
The coercive apparatus of the state, the security forces, were used against dissidents in the
neighbouring states and within the country. The literature addresses the effects of the cross
border raids, assassinations, abductions and bombings. The literature that deals with internal
repression examines the effects of the mass detentions, restrictions, listings and bannings as
well as the impact of the states of emergency, P.W. Botha's "total strategy", and the actions of
the death squads.
An examination of the conservative liberal constructions of resistance literature helps to
clarify why resistance literature remains inadequately conceptualised ("Soweto poets",
"protest literature") although there has been a vibrant and challenging corpus. The way in
which the audience of resistance literature is constructed is identified as a key problem. The
responses of various resistance writers, in poems, interviews, letters and articles, to
conservative liberal prescriptions are contextualised.
The middle section of the argument focuses on the organisations that developed to challenge
oppression. Through an examination of the literature that was influenced by the activism and
the cultural and philosophical production of Black Consciousness, it is apparent that the
movement was continuous with the rest of the struggle for liberation. The satirical poems that
challenged both the state and the conservative liberals offer powerful displays of verbal wit.
The struggles of workers are addressed through texts that deal with their plight and call for
worker organisations. The trade union COSAT V paid close attention to the development of
worker culture, which proved to be critical when the state cracked down on the resistance
organisations. The production values and effects of very different plays about strikes, The
Long March and Township Fever receive particular attention.
The rise of the United Democratic Front (UDF) is anticipated in literature that celebrates the
potential of ordinary South Africans to achieve political significance through unity.
Constructed out of substantial ideological pluralism, the UDF arose as an act of political
imagination and organisational strategy. The ideological convergence between the UDF and
COSATU on the question of bidding for state power constituted a turning-point in a nation
built on the intolerance of difference.
The last section focuses more closely on the productive responses of the culture of resistance
to specific aspects of repression, such as the censorship of the media and the arts, the killings
of activists, the struggles around education and the keeping of historical records (which
enable an interrogation and reconstruction of discursive and interpretive authority).
\ Chapter One: Introduction
1.1 Introduction
A literature is being born in the process of social crisis and political change.
We should be able to say: we were here; and this is how we were (Gwala,
1989:71).
The following research seeks to conceptualise what is referred to as resistance literature, in
the medium of English in South Africa, with attention to the period from the 1970s until the
early 1990s.
Although South Africa became a "republic" in 1961, the majority of people had few basic
rights. South Africa remained an oppressive society, with the white minority maintaining
political and economic control. Black people continued to remain powerless, with no access
to economic and political power. In the late 1960s the culture of resistance, that the state had
tried to decimate earlier in the decade, began to regenerate. The resistance took the form of
local organizations which advanced the struggles of the political organisations that had been
banned. In addition to challenging the existing social order, the resistance organisations tried
to reconstruct South African society (Zulu in Meer, 1989:20).
The resistance struggle was accompanied by a literature that anticipated a liberated society.
Cultural activity in the struggle did more than just accompany or reflect the liberation
process. As Cabral contends, during resistance a
reciprocal relationship between culture and the struggle develops. Culture, as
a foundation and a source of inspiration, begins to be influenced by the
struggle; and this influence is reflected more or less clearly, in the changing
behaviour of social categories and individuals as well as in the development
of the struggle itself (Mattelart and Siegelaub, 1979:211).
In a highly politicised society many writers and artists would not allow themselves to be
alienated from the key political struggles. Resistance literature was seen not just as the
expression of individuals or small groups but of an entire social movement to end oppression.
Writers and oral composers resisted the repression and censorship of the state and the
prescriptions of the conservative liberal critics. Literary activists developed tactics to deal
with the silencing. Intervening in various discourses of power they demonstrated that in
practice there was little separation between the
"literary" and "imaginative" on one side and the political and institutional
world ... on the other (Merod, 1987:9-10).
2
As awareness of the constructive and constitutive potentials of culture developed many
resistance writers acted reflexively, to challenge and transform the social meaning of
literature and cultural practice. In the process they redefined the discursive terrain:
Calling something literary depends on the relationship between literary and
extraliterary orders. What is literary in one social system is not necessarily in
another. The literary code in South Africa has consistently absorbed functions
which are generally the province of other communicative subcodes -
journalism, pamphleteering, etc - in less precarious societies (Cornwell,
1980:60).
Cultural development in this period was shaped and advanced by the struggles of students,
workers, youth, civic, religious, educational and women's structures.
1.2 The constructs of "the people" and "the community"
The people have become the social category which is the agent for an
immense hope of changing people's lives (Mattei art and Siegelaub, 1983: 18).
Although it is frequently used in political discourse, the construct of "the people" lacks
theoretical precision, as is characteristic of discourses that are part of a subaltern bid for
power. However, the broad shifts in the meaning of the term "the people" in the resistance
discourses of the 1970s and 1980s offer reasonable markers of the path of the struggle for
liberation.
The core reference of the term "the people" has been to that sector of the population most
oppressed by the apartheid regime, who have been named and misnamed during colonial
history, and who have been referred to as "black Africans" in the social sciences. The
redundancy in the terminology tells more about the remoteness of the different authorities,
than about the nature of the subjected people, who laboured under a range of names which
detracted from or imposed identity, rather than affirming it. Owing to the form of naming in
common use, the group most oppressed by apartheid will be referred to in this study as
Africans, with the recognition that they have stronger claims to the appellation than other
South Africans who have some, however remote, elements of unAfrican origin.
Owing to the hegemonic forces of colonialism, apartheid and neocolonialism, the construct
"African" has not functioned ali a marker of inclusive belonging, locatedness and identity, as