The year 2024 marks the bi-centenary of two publications of literary significance: The South African Commercial Advertiser and The South African Journal, the latter title originally envisaged as ‘The South African Literary Journal.’ Both were published in the British Cape Colony and provoked confrontation between the governor, Lord Charles Somerset, and the editors Thomas Pringle and John Fairbairn together with the printer George Greig. The confrontation – authority versus the right of independent opinion – bankrupted the settler, Pringle. The struggle for a free press would be continued to success, nonetheless, by Fairbairn. (South Africa continues to enjoy a free, even a combative press.) While contributions ranged somewhat haphazardly from affairs in the colony to news from metropolitan centres, Tony Voss perceives in these publications the tentative beginnings of a ‘South African imaginary.’
The remainder of the contributions are general rather than thematic. Derek Attridge reflects on the book, In a Province: Studies in the Writing of South Africa, by the late Graham Pechey, while Soham Chakraborty and Avishesk Parui consider ‘plasticity and affect’ in J M Coetzee's Slow Man. Gerhard Genis and Malanie Moen pursue a ‘psychological’ reading of war poetry in the context of the Angola/Namibia border war of the 1980s. Julia Martin turns an ecological lens to a protest poem, 120 years ago. Addamms Mututa and Keyan Tomaselli explore a ‘cultural studies’ paradigm in analysing a film version of Njabulo S Ndebele's collection of short stories, Fools while Marek Pawlicki offers penetrating insights into Nadine Gordimer's reading of Franz Kafka. Kevin Jared Hosein's recent ‘Trinidadian’ novel, Hungry Ghosts, has received considerable critical notice. Gopika L Ramesh and Sharon J grant the novel ‘postcolonial’ attention.