NEO•GRIOT

South Africa:

Writing and the

Rising Black Middle Class

 

Reviewing the new anthology African Pens 2011: New Writing from Southern Africa, with stories selected by JM Coetzee, literary critic Chetty Kavish  asks over at Mahala how an anthology of new Southern African writing does not include writing from a single black Southern African author. Chetty offers an hypothesis:

... Black embourgeoisement [in South Africa] is a (relatively, as ever) recent phenomenon. Hence, the amount of black students who find themselves coming from families which genuinely place cultural capital and value on metaphysics, romantic poetry, Oedipus Rex and/or psychoanalysis is likely to be slim. I’m not suggesting that there is some definable lifeline pumping from the study of the arts into the production of writers, but the interdependency between the two is possibly something worth exploring. I’m sure there is some other naked theorising here to account for this fact, and if yours grips you in the right place, slather it all over the comment threads.

But in the judgment of art, there are two poles: the producers and the assessors. Sleuthing around the back of this book with an agenda in mind, I discover that there isn’t a black dude or dudette on the editorial board or reading panel either. I’m trying my best not to sledgehammer race into what is simply a curiosity of the way classes emerge and consolidate in a fairly fresh democracy – but I think we have a puzzle on our hands here. Is it possible to compile a volume called African Pens without (strictly speaking) an African anywhere in the process? (more)

Perhaps the question ought to be: when will the the blood in the lifeline become thoroughly thickened with the blood of Southern Africa's rising black middle class and privilege?

Speaking of new black Southern African writing,  below is a panel from Mail & Guardian 2010 Literary Festival led by Wits university Leon de Kock which includes South African authors Thando Mgqolozana and Zukiswa Wanner: