Organised forgetting in South Africa: Peter d McDonald's the literature police: Apartheid censorship and its cultural consequences

Abstract

The Literature Police by Peter McDonald is the first account of apartheid‐era censorship to make use of the archives of the Publications Control Board. McDonald's book is a selective history of modern South African literature and the impact of government attempts at post‐publication control. He analyses the role of censors, writers, publishers and booksellers; and presents a number of case studies. This review article places McDonald's research on the bureaucracy of literary censorship in a broader context of repression, both statutory and informal, that impacted upon creativity and the flow of ideas and information. Ultimately it became part of the state security mechanism, a far cry from intended cultural protection. All forms of censorship possessed inherent contradictions that sometimes stimulated authorship. But their varying impact on English‐ and Afrikaans‐speaking, white and black writers thwarted the development of a truly South African literature. McDonald concludes that the policing of literature is basically impossible and agrees that creative writing cannot be considered a factor in nation building. Nor did a common anti‐apartheid struggle necessarily mean a common vision of the autonomy of writers, one of the reasons why they were so difficult to organise even when under shared severe threat.

Keywords:

• Peter McDonald
• The Literature Police
• Publications Control Board
• censorship
• literary guardianship