‘Then … Horror! Horror!': Laughter, Terror and Rebellion in the Unpublished Plays of H.I.E. Dhlomo

ABSTRACT

The New African poet, playwright, and intellectual H.I.E. Dhlomo is often cited as one of twentieth-century South Africa’s most important cultural figures. In contrast to his celebrated theoretical writings, however, Dhlomo’s actual literary work tends to receive mixed reviews from scholars. This paper seeks to reassess Dhlomo’s much-maligned use of Romantic and Gothic tropes by focusing on two of his lesser-known plays: Men and Women and The Expert. These plays, which date from towards the end of Dhlomo’s playwriting career, have never been published, yet reveal a great deal about both the nature of his literary project and the conditions of Black cultural production in segregation-era South Africa. Indeed, I argue that these plays engage in some of the most radical social critiques found anywhere in pre-apartheid South African drama, and, furthermore that the melodramatic and incongruous elements of these works are essential to their intended impact. Having experienced segregation-era South African society as an unfolding nightmare, for H.I.E. Dhlomo laughter and horror were intimately related. Ultimately, I contend that Dhlomo’s linkage of laughter to the supernatural and the Gothic marks an important moment in South African history, illustrating powerfully the dashed hopes and aspirations of the New African generation within the context of tightening white philanthropic control.

KEYWORDS:

• drama
• Gothic literature
• H.I.E
• Dhlomo
• satire
• horror
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

This article is a significant revision to a chapter of my doctoral dissertation mentioned below. My initial research was supported by a 2019 Fulbright-Hays D.D.R.A. grant. I wish to thank all those who contributed to the process of this article’s creation, especially my Ph.D. supervisor Peter Alegi, my dissertation committee – Sekibakiba Lekgoathi, Ed Murphy – and Michael Stamm, the staff of the Campbell Collections in Durban which houses Dhlomo’s literary archive, my anonymous reviewers, and Joey Kok of African Studies for helping me hone my manuscript and prepare it for publication. All errors, however, are my own.

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest was declared by the author.

Notes

1 My use of the term ‘captive’ in this paper follows Les Switzer’s (1988) discussion of The Bantu World newspaper’s place within the white-owned, Black-edited ‘captive African press’.

2 Ray Phillips is an extremely important figure in 1930s Johannesburg, and in 2019 he and his wife, Dora, were posthumously awarded the Order of the Baobab by the South African government. See Chérif Keita (2019).

3 Indeed, considering the extent of ties between the Rand mining sector and scholarly enterprises dedicated to ‘race relations’ in Johannesburg, the phrase ‘academic-industrial complex’ should be taken quite literally. Both the Bantu Studies Department (founded 1923) at the University of the Witwatersrand and the South African Institute of Race Relations (founded at a meeting in Ray Phillips’s home in 1929) were funded in large part by the Chamber of Mines and affiliates (as, for that matter, was the University of the Witwatersrand itself, which began life as the South African School of Mines). See Ellen Hellmann (1979) and Anjuli Webster (2017, 15–27).

4 A vivid example of one such critical prescription from Dhlomo’s own lifetime – ironic in the context of this study – is a 1939 letter from R.H.W. Shepherd of Lovedale Press quoted by Corinne Sandwith (2021, 108–109) that criticises Dhlomo’s novel An Experiment in Colour for both its supernatural elements and its over-seriousness ‘unrelieved by any lighter touches’.

5 The Gothic, an idea with roots in late eighteenth-century Europe, is a highly complex and multifarious concept. My discussion of South African expressions of the Gothic is informed by Duncan (2018).

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Notes on contributors

Robin K. Crigler

Robin K. Crigler is a visiting assistant professor of history at Dickinson College. In 2021 he earned his PhD from Michigan State University with a dissertation entitled ‘Laughter and Identity: A Social and Cultural History of South African Humor, 1910-1961’. His chapter on 21st century South African stand-up comedy appears in Izuu Nwankwọ’s collection Stand-Up Comedy in Africa: Humor in Popular Languages and Media.