On June 30, South Africa commemorates the official abolition thirty years ago of all the segregationist laws introduced by the racist regime when it came to power in 1948. The triumph of multi-party democracy is the result of the struggle of political activists but also of intellectuals and writers. Return with the author Ivan Vladislavic on the opposition of intellectuals to apartheid.
RFI: Edward Said described as “out” the role that intellectuals played in times of social and political crisis. Does this prism apply to the fight against apartheid in South Africa?
Ivan Vladislavic (1): The answer is “yes” because intellectuals, writers and artists have played a leading role in the fight against apartheid. Above all, they sensitized the public to the immoral aspect of racial segregation. From the first years of the establishment of the apartheid regime, we saw men and women from different sectors of South African society speak out against this unjust system. The first name that comes to mind is Alan Paton, an English-speaking white writer. This novelist, who had his heyday with Pleure, O mon pays beloved published in 1946, created the Liberal Party in the 1950s and took an active part in the political struggle against apartheid. Alan Paton inspired Nadine gordimer in its struggle against apartheid.
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Among black South Africans, before the rise of Mandela, there were historical figures such as John Dube or Magema Fuze, who challenged the colonial and segregationist project whose first laws governing race relations date back to 1910. John Dube, known as a teacher who founded in 1912 the South African Indigenous National Congress, forerunner of the African National Congress (ANC). A forgotten figure in the black intellectual pantheon, Magema Fuze, for his part, belonged to the first generation of converts to Christianity. He had invented himself as an intellectual and placed himself at the crossroads between tradition and modernity. Voices were also raised in African civil society. The most significant story is that of Bram Fischer, a lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and his co-spokesman at the Rivonia trial in 1964, before he himself was accused by the courts of conspiring to sabotage. He died in prison.
The historiography of the struggle against apartheid also remembers Pastor Beyers Naude, the religious leader of the Dutch Reformed Church, who, after the riots in Soweto, distanced himself from African nationalism. Both Fischer and Naude were involved in the struggle against apartheid because they were driven by moral principles. They challenged their home communities, who called them “traitors,” to stay faithful.
Paradoxically, the intellectuals had been the origin of African nationalism …
The Sauer report from which the Africans of the National Party drew their ideas and teachings when they came to power had been written by a group of ultra-nationalist intellectuals, consisting of politicians, religious leaders and journalists. The rapporteurs called for a systematic institutionalization of segregation. It must be said that most of these intellectuals had been educated in Germany and the backbone of the African government was formed by Nazi sympathizers. South African history was not related to this radicalization of the senses. The Boer War and the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 under British dictatorship had been perceived as humiliation by the Africans and had accentuated the antagonism between Anglophones and Africans. The latter worried about their language and their identity. Brought to power in 1948 by a wave of populism, they will be able to take revenge and implement a policy of racial discrimination that affects all areas and crystallizes centuries of racism.
What role have South African writers played in the apartheid protest movement?
I would say a primordial role in raising awareness. During the years 1950-60, we witness the emergence of a real war literature under the pen of white and black writers. The authors are named Nadine Gordimer – who is no longer presented – but also Peter Abrahams and Ez’kia Mphalele whose short story collections published in the 1940s mark the real beginning of black South African fiction. These authors are interested in testifying to the moral and human consequences of apartheid. Their stories highlight the ability of ordinary people to resist, to remain human even during the worst dictatorships. We are talking about testimonies and competition literature, which reached its peak with the literary production of the African-speaking author, the most famous of which are André Brink and Breyten Breytenbach. This duo is part of the movement called “sixties” (those in the sixties). The “Sixties” had set the task of renewing African-language literature, which was still deeply influenced by 19th-century techniques and themes.
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Influenced by modern and postmodern European literature, their productions break the taboos and conventions of African society. They are intended to be experimental, but are characterized above all, as we see in Brink and Breytenbach’s work, by their fierce struggle against the moral and political principles of apartheid. André Brink’s first novel, Kennis van die Aand (In the Dark of Night), published in Johannesburg in 1973, stages a love story between a mixed race and a white woman, while the laws of segregation prohibit interracial sex. The novel will be described as pornographic and censored in South Africa, as well as later works by Breytenbach, which reveal the growing tensions between the regime and South African intelligence.
What impact have these tensions had on intellectual life during apartheid?
A catastrophic impact, especially since the speech of intellectuals has always been complicated in a country as diverse as South Africa, ethnically and linguistically fragmented. South African intellectuals speak to their home communities and rarely to the nation as a whole. During apartheid, with books being regularly censored, protesters being thrown in jail for a yes for a no, generations of black writers being forced into exile to avoid jail, it was impossible for the intellectual elite to engage in meaningful conversation with their audience. . All lines of communication were strictly controlled by the government. Surveillance intensified with the rise of social and political tensions from the early 1970s when the country experienced an increase in strikes, which were brutally suppressed by the regime. In response, the militant black consciousness movement, which advocated the feeling of a black identity, gained ground, especially among young people. Conditions were ripe for a revolutionary explosion in the churches. It was under these circumstances that alternative publishers were born that Ravana Press gave voice to the regime’s critics and urged them to freely express their anger and visions.
What did these visions consist of?
These were calls for revolution, for total war, but not only. What was important was that these different visions could be expressed. When Soweto’s children demonstrated in the streets in 1976 and refused African as a language of instruction, their demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the police, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. Voices against these murderous oppressions found a tribune in the magazine Staffrider, which was launched in 1977 by Ravan Press. Ravan was a progressive publishing house, founded in 1972, under the direction of the Christian Institute, to initially publish academic reports on the state of South African society during apartheid. Texts dedicated to the history of social movements in South Africa, presented from a popular and progressive point of view, not to say Marxist, form an important part of the publications in the Ravan editions. By creating Staffrider, whose name refers to young blacks who risked their lives on the roofs of trains, Ravan’s editors wanted to gather literary production from the townships stimulated by the events in Soweto. The magazine will become a real literary melting pot where new voices from black writers and poets have emerged, such as those from Miriam Tlali, Sipho Sepamla, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Achmat Dangor … Not to mention the huge Njabulo Ndebele, author of a seminal essay published in Staffrider Pages redefine literary engagement. It can be said that by urging writers not to be content with pursuing a spectacular description of injustices in order to embrace the reality of their society in all its complexity, Ndebele has created the conditions for a peaceful intellectual and artistic life in post-apartheid Africa. .
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(1) Ivan Vladislavic praises a rich work with ten titles, almost all translated by the Swiss editions Zoé. Distance (2019), his latest novel translated from English by Georges Lory, published by Zoé.
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