KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY MINISTER OF ARTS AND CULTURE, DR.
Z. PALLO JORDAN AT THE SOUTH AFRICAN LITERARY AWARDS,
8 DECEMBER, GALLEGHAR CONVENTION CENTRE.
Thank You Programme Director,
Esteemed Guests,
Distinguished nominees,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We approach the end of a year that has seen South African literature
lose some of its most distinguished practitioners. I want ask us all to
be upstanding, to observe a moment’s silence, to remember Noni
Jabavu and Eskia Mphahlele.
Thank You.
Noni Jabavu and Eskia Mphahlele were exact contemporaries and they
passed away within months of each other. Apart from the gender
difference, there is a great deal that separates Mphahlele from Jabavu,
though born of African parents in the same country, at about the same
time, their circumstances diverge sharply.
Helen Nonthando Jabavu was the eldest daughter of South Africa’s
leading African academic, Professor D.D.T. Jabavu. D.D.T. himself was
the son of the father of African journalism, John Tengo Jabavu. “Jilli”,
as everyone called him, was linked to the University of Fort Hare from
its birth. At least three generations of young men and women passed
1
through his hands before he retired in 1946. His influence among the
African elite was consequently unequaled.
Living on lands handed down to him by his father and married to the
daughter of another illustrious pioneer, Elijah Makiwane, their eldest
daughter was born into an environment of security and relative
comfort.
Eskia Mphahlele, in contrast came from a working class home and
though born in the city, was sent to the rural areas at a young age.
The rough and tumble existence of the young Mphahlele, with the
usual rural apprenticeship, then school in Marabastad leading to St.
Peters. He studied for his matric while holding down two jobs. He then
went on to complete his BA in 1949 still working at one daytime job.
From the age 13 Noni Jabavu lived and studied in Britain, returning to
South Africa only thrice, before her final return home in 1987.
Eskia Mphahlele departed South Africa to pursue his career as a
teacher in Nigeria. After an African, then a lengthy American sojourn,
he found exile unbearable and controversially returned to South Africa
in 1977 to take up a professorship at Wits.
Noni Jabavu’s return went virtually unnoticed. She had visited South
Africa thrice previously: The death of her mother in 1952 in the
company of her daughter Hope “Thembi”. Her husband, Michael
Crossfield, could not accompany her because of the Immorality Act in
force at the time. Her second visit was again under tragic
circumstances. Her brother, Ntengo, the youngest of Jilli’s children,
had been fatally stabbed in Johannesburg. Once again the Immorality
Act dictated that she would endure her bereavement without her
husband’s support. Her third visit was in 1979, when she worked
briefly for Donald Woods before being forced to leave.
Noni Jabavu, like Eskia
controversially in 1987.
Mphahlele,
returned
to
South
Africa
The parallel tracks along which these two lives run conceal glaring
divergences while revealing amazing intersections. Mphahlele
experienced his entire youth and a significant portion of his working
life as an African in the Transvaal, then one of the most brutally
segregated parts of South Africa. He was a self-made man, painfully
edging his way up the social ladder by dint of application and hard
work. His ambition to be a teacher was thwarted by the racist
2
authorities and he could only pursue it outside the borders of his
country.
Noni Jabavu was born into an elite African family. Her father, the first
Black South African to hold a university chair, was a well-traveled
person and a prolific writer (especially in Xhosa) in his own right. From
age thirteen she moved to Britain where she was not compelled to
survive the “in-your-face” racism that pervaded the Transvaal of the
1930s and 40s. When a fellow South African, Michael Harmel
encountered her in the radical political circles of London and suggested
they return home, she responded: “To be what in South Africa,
Michael? A ‘kaffer-meid’?”
In a sense, Noni Jabavu’s parent’s status and wealth her bought her a
way out! Eskia Mphahlele, from a poorer home, had to endure and
learn to survive in a South Africa where, no matter what his age, he
would be regarded by most Whites as a “kaffer jong”, subjected to
pass laws, special permits, die nag-pas, die trek-pas, absurd and
degrading liquor laws and the ever present threat of arbitrary
imprisonment.
Like Eskia Mphahlele, Noni Jabavu made her literary debut with the
autobiographical, “Drawn in Colour”. Given their contrasting
backgrounds, Mphahlele’s “Down Second Avenue” comes at life in
South Africa from the diametrically opposite angle. Ironically, both
authors wrestle with the themes of an African modernity, the tensions
arising from the African’s encounter with Europe, and attempt to map
out an intelligent African response to both. While Mphahlele would
have happily described himself as “the personification of the African
paradox – detribalised, westernised but still African”.
Noni Jabavu would have eschewed such a characterisation.
Experientially, she was no longer an African, having spent her
formative years in Europe. Yet she found the pull of her African roots
irresistible and, even as outsider, she appreciated the abiding validity
and value of cultural practices her European contemporaries would
have found strange at best, barbaric at worst.
While Eskia Mphahlele, especially during his latter days, sought to
underscore a shared African-ness among the people of the continent,
Noni Jabavu was struck by the differences amongst the various African
peoples and seems to prefer the vaunted universality of modernity.
Both were at pains to search out and discover an identity. Mphahele
often felt he had discovered it, but his writings betray a sense of it
slipping away everytime he had to contend with the discontinuities life
3
imposed real, living Africans. While Noni Jabavu at first sight appears
comfortable in her dual identity of an African-born Black European,
she, like Mphahlele felt compelled to return to South Africa, to end her
life in the eastern Cape, her ancestral home.
Many of the dilemmas facing the African writer are brilliantly captured
in the work of these two authors. The unresolved riddles they have left
us are for the emergent and surviving writers to unravel.
Programme Director,
Since the reduction of human speech to writing, we have employed
literature to both record and to interpret information and experience.
Through mastery of the art of writing humanity has been able to
transmit information and knowledge form one generation to the next,
at a reduced risk of misinterpretation and loss. Literacy is thus a vital
and empowering capacity for both the individual and society in the 21 st
century. This is why the development of literature and increased
literary awareness remain among the top priorities of the Department
of Arts and Culture.
Not surprisingly, illiteracy has, through the ages, been seen as one of
the means by which to render people powerless. During the centuries
of the Atlantic Slave trade, it was considered absolutely essential that
slaves be denied the skills of reading and writing.
One of the ironic outcomes this has resulted in is the history of
Afrikaans literature in South Africa. It is a little talked about fact, but
the first books in Afrikaans were written
In the Arabic script by literate Indonesian and Melayu resisters who
had been deported to the Cape as slaves after being defeated in battle
by the Dutch. It only recently came to light that Khitab, an old
manuscript, preserved over two centuries by a Muslim family in
Simonstown, was not, as the family had thought, sacred writings, but
rather a diary kept by an ancestor who had been sold in to slavery by
the Dutch colonizers of Indonesia and South Africa. What is more,
though he employed the Arabic script, the language is actually in the
Dutch spoken in the Cape during the late 18th century.
As a Department, we are still engaged with the elders of the Muslim
community of the Cape in an endeavour to have these manuscripts
released for systematic study and analysis. South Africa has just
recently hosted the exhibition of the Timbuktu Manuscipts from the
Ahmed Baba Library of Mali. Who knows what lies hidden in the
manuscripts
4
that have been gathering dust in homes in Cape Town, Simonstown,
the Hex River Valley and in other parts where there were Indonesian
and Melayu slaves? South Africa owes it top humanity that we uncover
these!
Whether stimulated by a search for meaning or in pursuance of a state
of spiritual grace, the human animal has since time immemorial been
stirred by the question: why not? Consequently artistic creation and
speculative thinking have been important dimensions of humanity’s
quest to create a better world.
On another occasion, I argued that “writing was probably the most
profound cultural revolution experienced by human kind prior to the
twentieth century. Books, consequently occupy an important place in
the preservation and transmission of information, knowledge and
experience.” Writing gave us the ability to record our past, transmit
knowledge from one generation to another, and to teach our offspring
about the essential values of humankind.
Human values have been conveyed through didactic discourse, but
seem to be integrated into societal life more lastingly through the arts.
The literary artist especially has the challenging task of conveying and
persuading us of these values while he/she creates characters and
situations that compel us to interrogate even that which we think we
know and understand.
As Harold Pinter, the playwright, in his Nobel Lecture. November
2005.
Art, Truth & Politics, says:
“Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the
search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the
endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble
upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image
or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without
realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never
is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are
many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other,
reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to
each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in
your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.”
5
Yet, life demands that we make moral choices. In a world, where the
writer suggests there is no “truth”, can we hope that in such a world
one could discover “good”?
The institution of the South African literary awards dates from the
2005, when we installed the late Professor Mazisi Kunene as poet
laureate of South Africa. It is both the means by which we reward and
encourage excellence and hope to stimulate the growth and expansion
of a South African literary tradition. Through these South African
Literary Awards we prefer to honour an entire body of work, produced
by the writers who have been chosen in recognition of their
contribution to the development of South African Literature.
In pursuance of an undertaking made on that occasion, we have taken
huge strides towards the establishment of a national literary journal.
“Boabab” is now in its second issue. We invite both old and new
writers to support and contribute to this journal. Its relevance and
survival are in the hands of South Africa’s writers.
This year alone we have embarked on a course that will hopefully lead
to the revival of writing in the African languages. A writer of children’s
books that are well suited to primary schools, through an grant from
the Department of Arts and Culture has been able to fill orders for
such equipment from three provincial education departments.
The Xihlovo Xa Vutivi project, established in 2005, is an attempt to
put into practice the vision of the Freedom Charter by providing
publishing opportunities for aspirant writers in all official languages
and across all genres.
It is a collaborative effort between the Department of Arts and Culture
and Umgangatho Media and Communications. This partnership is a
token of the Department of Arts and Culture’s commitment to
establishing sustainable public-private partnerships and making a
positive contribution to the publishing industry. This venture forms
part of a series of projects initiated by the Department of Arts and
Culture to mark the first decade of our democracy. It is one of our
primary obligations to discover and nurture young writing talent.
In mid-November the first editions of the reprinted African languages
classics came off the press in the shape of one novel in each one of
the nine official African languages. We will see many more such works
in print in the not to distant future.
6
Because publishing books is not the core business of either the DAC or
the National Library, from this podium I once again send out our
appeal to the South African publishing business to rise to this
challenge. I insist too, that it makes perfect business sense to explore
and tap into this potential market.
We have supported these literary awards both for their intrinsic value
and as a token of the government’s commitment to eradicate illiteracy
and to nurture a society of informed citizens.
Esteemed guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
South Africa and this region of our continent have a myriad small and
very long stories to tell the world. The drama that unfolded on the
African continent during the last century alone is rich in the themes
that make for great story-telling. Unless we Africans have the skills,
determination and the courage to tell them, unadorned, they will be
lost in the mists of forgetfulness over time.
A conference in 2006 on the adaptation of literature for the screen,
brought together the minds, the voices and the eyes that are mapping
out a programme of action to expand our film industry by integrating it
more comprehensively with South African literature. The intercomplimentarity of these two disciplines is self-evident and should be
an additional spur to those who aspire to greatness through the
written word.
The written word has thrown open to our people the access road to
the vast wealth that is humanity’s literary heritage. Through the work
of Write Associates, our publishing industry and the creative power of
our authors, we can make South Africa’s own unique contribution to
that heritage , which belongs to people everywhere.
Thank You.
7
8