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Abstract
This article addresses twelve South African autobiographical texts, focusing on (paired) authors’ portrayed experiences of apartheid in order to give recognition to the enduring relevance of their life writing and resistance work. Life writing materials by Es’kia Mphahlele and Chris van Wyk; Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe and Bessie Head; Ray Alexander Simons and Emma Mashinini; Ronnie Govender and Sindiwe Magona; Mxolisi “Bra Ace” Mgxashe and Harold Strachan; Zarina Maharaj and Pregs Govender cumulatively demonstrate how battling apartheid damage required complex endurance strategies and diverse contributions to the collective struggle for sociopolitical change.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Vambe and Chennells, “Introduction,” 2. Compare other comparative work on South African autobiography by Raditlhalo; Ndlovu; and Gagiano.
2 Lionnet and Shih, Introduction, 27.
3 Lara, Textures, 113 (emphasis added).
4 Lara, Textures, 34–35.
5 Cf. “strange tapestry” in Chris Van Wyk’s Shirley, 112.
6 Ndebele, Fine Lines, 39.
7 The term is from Gagiano, “Moving beyond compartmentality,” 133, and indicates the social enclaves South Africans tend to see themselves as inhabiting.
8 Gilroy, Against Race, iv.
9 Erasmus, “Recognition,” 72. Erasmus’s later monograph subtitle uses a significant present participle: Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa.
10 Mbembe, “African Modes,” 272.
11 Quayson, “Symbolisation compulsions.”
12 In his 1972 novel G, John Berger wrote: “Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one” (iv). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie more recently discussed “The danger of a single story.”
13 Mphahlele, Down, 11.
14 Before Jacob Dlamini in Native Nostalgia emphasized the point, writers like Mphahlele and Masekela showed that apartheid-era township life contained much that was warm and good.
15 Mphahlele, Man Must Live—a collection eminently worth rereading, studying and teaching despite its author’s demurral.
16 Mphahlele, Down, 164.
17 Mphahlele, Down, 194.
18 Mphahlele, Down, 194; 196.
19 Mphahlele, Down, 210.
20 The title of van Wyk’s Shirley, Goodness and Mercy quotes the author’s childhood mistake: substituting his mother’s name for “Surely” in reciting Psalm 23.
21 Van Wyk, Shirley, 283–286.
22 Van Wyk, Shirley, 254.
23 Johennesse was a fellow poet (several of Van Wyk’s most well-loved poems feature in his memoir).
24 Van Wyk, Shirley, 12.
25 Van Wyk, Shirley, 99.
26 Van Wyk, Shirley, 112.
27 Van Wyk, Shirley, 215.
28 Van Wyk, Shirley, 317.
29 Compare Gagiano’s reading of Head’s letters as an “intermittent autobiography” in “Writing a Life.” See also Riehle’s “Epistolography,” invoking letter collections as life writing.
30 Sobukwe, Wounds, 458.
31 Nelson Mandela’s prison letters were republished by Norton in 2018.
32 Poems Brutus smuggled out of jail appeared in Letters to Martha in 1968.
33 Sobukwe, Wounds, 547.
34 Sobukwe was arrested on the day of the Sharpeville protests, which he had orchestrated as PAC leader. He would remain in prison (mostly solitary confinement) for nine years.
35 Sobukwe, Wounds, 4.
36 Sobukwe, Wounds, 4.
37 Sobukwe, Wounds, 45.
38 Sobukwe, Wounds, 308–309.
39 Sobukwe, Wounds, 535–538.
40 For letters between Head and the Cullinans see Cullinan, Imaginative Trespasser. Eilersen’s biography of Head, Thunder behind Her Ears, cites several letters, while Desiree Lewis’s Living on a Horizon has a chapter on the letters. Find three contributions on Head’s letters in Lederer et al.
41 Head, Gesture, 17.
42 Head, Gesture, 9; 85–86.
43 Head, Gesture, 216.
44 Head, Gesture, 64.
45 Head, Gesture, 84–85.
46 Head, Gesture, 218.
47 The author is more usually referred to as Ray Alexander, or (affectionately) as Ray. I refer to her as Alexander.
48 Mashinini’s text appeared before the abolition of apartheid laws, and centres on her imprisonment, much of it in solitary confinement. Ndlovu’s “Prison and solitary confinement” provides a detailed, somewhat dispassionate, analysis of the psychic harm this caused her, given that isolation has been condemned as torture (see Spitz). An even fiercer account of incarceration than Mashinini’s is Madikizela-Mandela’s, in the “Journal” section of 491 Days.
49 Alexander, All, 63.
50 Alexander, All, 195.
51 Alexander, All, 345.
52 Alexander, All, 345.
53 Alexander, All, 13.
54 Mashinini, Strikes, 39.
55 Racism was much more virulent in South Africa than anti-Semitism or (white) xenophobia. Alexander was well educated; while Mashinini’s schooling also ended at fifteen, it was certainly far inferior.
56 Three of Mashinini’s children died in infancy. Their father was her first husband, whom she left.
57 Mashinini, Strikes, 20.
58 Govender, Manure (Preface), n.p.
59 Govender, Manure, 23.
60 Govender, Manure, 55.
61 Many South Africans’ Indian ancestry stems from the British colonial system of indenture that brought workers from India to brutal bonded labor on the Natal sugar cane estates. The subsequent loss, through racist forced removals, of arduously established homes and gardens in Cato Manor was a vicious blow to this community. Govender wrote moving stories and plays about this event and its effects.
62 Govender, Manure, 65.
63 Govender, Manure, 85.
64 Govender, Manure, 116 (emphasis added).
65 See Chetty, At the Edge.
66 Govender, Manure, 213.
67 Govender, Manure, 222.
68 Magona, Children (Preface), n.p. This text launched Magona’s writing career.
69 Magona, Children, 2–3.
70 Magona, Children, 37–38.
71 Magona, Children, 92.
72 For many years, any South African teacher who fell pregnant lost her position or was suspended.
73 Magona, Children, 139.
74 Magona, Children, 145.
75 Magona, Children, 183.
76 MK refers to Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC.
77 Mgxashe, PAC, 17–19.
78 Mgxashe, PAC, 21.
79 Mgxashe, PAC, 46–50.
80 Mgxashe, PAC, 51–58.
81 Mgxashe, PAC, 84.
82 Mgxashe, PAC, 137.
83 Mgxashe, PAC, 141–160.
84 Mgxashe, PAC, 194.
85 Mgxashe, PAC, 219.
86 Make a Skyf Man! is Strachan’s second autobiographical text. The title refers to incarcerated smokers’ bonding over a shared, hand-rolled, illegal cigarette.
87 Strachan, Skyf!, n.p.—comment by Dan Jacobson, fellow South African author.
88 Strachan, Skyf!, 17. Strachan insistently uses the term “police state”—rejecting “fascism” as inappropriate, since fascism “isn’t about bad laws,” but “about no laws at all,” 97.
89 Strachan, Skyf!, 19.
90 Strachan, Skyf!, 23.
91 Strachan, Skyf!, 41.
92 Strachan, Skyf!, 69.
93 Strachan, Skyf!, 69–70.
94 Strachan, Skyf!, 116.
95 Strachan calls the prison an “evil” place, and those who run it, “ogres,” 147. After his release he provided proof of abuses for newspaper articles written by Benjamin Pogrund. Furious, the government again charged Strachan, and he was jailed for another year.
96 Strachan, Skyf!, 177–178.
97 I omit Meer’s autobiographical texts, one focused on a period of imprisonment and another recent volume in which her whole life is recalled, as both Meer and her writings have attracted much attention.
98 Govender, Love, 252.
99 Maharaj, Dancing, 13.
100 Maharaj, Dancing, 25.
101 Maharaj, Dancing, 43–93.
102 Maharaj, Dancing, 78–79.
103 Maharaj, Dancing, 91.
104 Maharaj, Dancing, 194.
105 Govender, Love, 58–59.
106 Govender, Love, 89.
107 Govender, Love, 105.
108 Govender, Love, 105.
109 Govender, Love, 126.
110 Govender, Love, 132.
111 Govender, Love, 137.
112 Govender, Love, 159.
113 Govender, Love, 180.
114 Govender, Love, 234.
115 Govender, Love, 252.
116 See Ndebele’s 2018 Nelson Mandela Foundation lecture online. http://www.thejournalist.org.za/spotlight/professor-njabulo-ndebeles-full-speech-at-the-nelson-mandela-annual-lecture
117 Fanon, Black Skin, 155.