SOUTH

AFRIC

AN

L I T E R A T U R E

CULTURE AND

*Background about South

Africa

*South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of Africa. It has 2,798 kilometres (1,739 mi) of coastline that stretches along the South Atlantic and Indian oceans. To the north lie the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; and within it lies Lesotho, an enclave surrounded by South African territory. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area, and with close to 53 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation.

*Literary Writings of South Africa

*South Africa has a rich and diverse literary history, with realism, until relatively recently, dominating works of fiction.

*Fiction has been written in all of South Africa’s 11 official languages - with a large body of work in Afrikaans and English. This overview focuses primarily on English fiction, though it also touches on major poetic developments.

*The Colonial Adventure

*The first fictional works to emerge from South Africa were produced by colonial writers whose attitude to indigenous South Africans was, at best, ambivalent, if not outright hostile.

*This is especially true of the writers of adventure-type stories, in which colonial heroes are romanticised and the role of black South Africans was reduced to that of enemy or servant.

*The Colonial Adventure

*One such writer, Rider Haggard, wrote many mythical and adventure stories, beginning in the early 1880s. His most famous book is King Solomon’s Mines (1886), a bestseller in its day (and filmed several times up to the 1980s).

*Like subsequent novels such as Allan Quartermain and She (both 1887), its central character is the hunter Allan Quartermain, Haggard’s ideal of the colonial gentleman.

*Biblical Influence

*The Afrikaans-speaking people of South Africa are mainly descended from Dutch Calvinist and French Huguenot immigrants of the 17th century. The Bible has been an important factor in their life and thinking. The Afrikaans language (a variant of Dutch) took shape in the late 19th century, and biblical influences were reflected in it and in the early literature. Scriptural themes were common in the Afrikaans novel, and some Afrikaans verse was influenced in its subject matter and style, notably by Psalms and Ecclesiastes.

*I Am An AfricanWayne Visser

Die Stem ( The Call of South Africa )C.J. Langenhoven

*Ringing out from our blue heavens, from our deep seas breaking round;Over everlasting mountains where the echoing crags resound;From our plains where creaking wagons cut their trails into the earth -Calls the spirit of our Country, of the land that gave us birth. At thy call we shall not falter, firm and steadfast we shall stand,At thy will to live or perish, O South Africa, dear land.

*In our body and our spirit, in our inmost heart held fast;in the promise of our future and the glory of our past;In our will, our work, our striving, from the cradle to the grave -There's no land that shares our loving, and no bond that can enslave.Thou hast borne us and we know thee. May our deeds to all proclaimOur enduring love and service to thy honour and thy name.