A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / The aim of this dissertation is to offer a close, critical examination of the particular dilemmas and responses of concempocary white English-speaking South Africans as these are reflected in South African English poetry. This aim ought not to be construed as a denial of the legitimate claims of other ethnic groups for attention; nor should it in any way be interpreted as an attempt to reinforce artificial racial categories or to bolster restrictive barriers between communities. The purpose, rather is to help advance mutual understanding and awareness by focussing on the specific problems of a complex and intriguing, yet strangely neglected group of people in this country. By examining the difficulties facing the white English- speaking group as registered and articulated in the work of South African English poets, this dissertation moves beyond a purely sociological account of the group. The dissertation will include both a study of the direct critique by South African English poets of the dilemmas and responses of their white English- speaking countrymen, as well as an investigation of the ways in which the poets themselves, consciously or otherwise, have responded as white English-speaking South Africans in their poetry to these dilemmas. The understanding of the white English-speaking group to be gained in this fashion though differing from that to be derived from a sociological study, need not be any the less authentic or assiduous, In particular the ability to examfne the group from both subjective and objective points of view may enhance illumination. As such, in order to comprehend fully what the poetry reveals about the white English-speaking South Africans, it is necessary to investigate how it does so, and so this dissertation will adopt a primarily literary critical approach to the poetic texts under consideration This dissertation will isolate and examine four of the most important and characteristic dilemmas confronting contemporary white English-speaking South Africans. After an introductory chapter, the second chapter will focus upon the "crisis of identity" experienced by modern-day English-speakers, and will discuss the disturbingly incohesive and vague nature of the English-speaking group, as well as what has been seen as its uncertain and precarious position within the 'wider South African social context. The third chapter will concentrate upon English-speakers "damaged sense of place their feelings of alienation both from the land of their birth and from the European source of much of their cultural heritage, their sense of having no true home. The fourth chapter will be concerned with the feelings of profound dread which seem to have permeated the white English-speaking South African consciousness, both the fearful anticipation of violent political upheaval, as well as a less explicit anxiety about some undefined menace or force which threatens to breach the white South African "laager". Finally, the fifth chapter will examine the attitudes, conduct and political orientation of contemporary white English-speaking South Africans, and will suggest that while a large aggregate of English-speakers may be conservative and apathetic, there exists nonetheless a substantial minority within the group (including most poets) who are enlightened, progressive and activist in outlook and who thus represent a significant "tradition of dissent' in white South African thought. / Andrew Chakane 2018

Submitted in the partial fulfilment for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of African Literature University of the Witwatersrand, March 2017 / This research reads the popular literature genre, chick lit, as a site for the elaboration of new forms of womanhood in post-Apartheid South Africa and through an analysis of the novel Happiness is a Four-Letter Word seeks to discover how new constructs of black female identity in the genre of chick lit disrupt as well as extend earlier representations of female experience in South Africa. The literary aspect of this research is essentially a genre study that attempts to identify how we recognize genre. Chick lit was initially read as a homogenously white normative genre, it was imagined, theorized and researched through the western gaze to the exclusion of other races and classes. This research rejects this essentialism of gender and as such recognizes that when addressing gender in Africa not only race and class need to be contextualized but further historical and cultural contexts are fundamental when constructing the black woman’s subjectivity. Postfeminism is understood as a modern social sensibility declaring that women are ‘now empowered,’ and celebrating and encouraging their consequent ‘freedom’ to return to normatively feminine pursuits. There is a growing field of research around postfeminism and chick lit pertaining to black African women and this is where this research locates itself. By positioning existing western literature, on chick lit, in dialogue with scholarship around chick lit in Africa, a transnational analytic and methodological approach to the critical study of chick lit and postfeminism can be made. Chick lit signals a transition for black women living in post-Apartheid South Africa, one of upward social mobility. This research looks at the contradictory space that black middleclass women occupy in this transition. There is a spectral ‘other’ that restricts black women in fully expressing their agency in the private sphere despite the progress made for women on a national scale. This I have called ‘the Ghost of the Township.’ I explore the extent to which the narrative opens up alternative avenues for writers to represent women’s interests. The author, Cynthia Jele, like other authors writing chick lit about black African women, illustrates how women writers can rethink and reposition the roles of women as they continue to live in patriarchal societies that marginalize and oppress them. In this research, I endeavor to explore if and how these new roles for women create contradictory zones for women by at once empowering and oppressing them. I also ask to what extent things have changed for black women and examine the effects of these changes. / XL2018

As a conjunctural construct located between politics, society and art, the popular-democratic construes the resistance literature of the 1970s and 1980s as being expressive of an entire social movement to end oppression and transform society. Through the construct of the popular-democratic voices that have been marginalised, fragmented, dislocated, excluded or otherwise silenced can be seen in relation to each other and to the sources of oppression. The introductory chapter addresses the characteristics of the popular-democratic, and the caveats and challenges that attend it. The remaining nine chapters are divided into three sections of three chapters each. The first section examines repression of different types: structural repression, coercive repression/state violence and cultural repression. An important index of the structural oppression of apartheid is the home, which a range of resistance writers addressed in depth when they dealt with city life and the townships, forced removals, homeless people, rural struggles, migrants and hostels, commuting, the "homelands" and exile. The coercive apparatus of the state, the security forces, were used against dissidents in the neighbouring states and within the country. The literature addresses the effects of the cross border raids, assassinations, abductions and bombings. The literature that deals with internal repression examines the effects of the mass detentions, restrictions, listings and bannings as well as the impact of the states of emergency, P.W. Botha's "total strategy", and the actions of the death squads. An examination of the conservative liberal constructions of resistance literature helps to clarify why resistance literature remains inadequately conceptualised ("Soweto poets", "protest literature") although there has been a vibrant and challenging corpus. The way in which the audience of resistance literature is constructed is identified as a key problem. The responses of various resistance writers, in poems, interviews, letters and articles, to conservative liberal prescriptions are contextualised. The middle section of the argument focuses on the organisations that developed to challenge oppression. Through an examination of the literature that was influenced by the activism and the cultural and philosophical production of Black Consciousness, it is apparent that the movement was continuous with the rest of the struggle for liberation. The satirical poems that challenged both the state and the conservative liberals offer powerful displays of verbal wit. The struggles of workers are addressed through texts that deal with their plight and call for worker organisations. The trade union COSA TV paid close attention to the development of worker culture, which proved to be critical when the state cracked down on the resistance organisations. The production values and effects of very different plays about strikes, The Long March and Township Fever receive particular attention. The rise of the United Democratic Front (UDF) is anticipated in literature that celebrates the potential of ordinary South Africans to achieve political significance through unity. Constructed out of substantial ideological pluralism, the UDF arose as an act of political imagination and organisational strategy. The ideological convergence between the UDF and COSATU on the question of bidding for state power constituted a turning-point in a nation built on the intolerance of difference. The last section focuses more closely on the productive responses of the culture of resistance to specific aspects of repression, such as the censorship of the media and the arts, the killings of activists, the struggles around education and the keeping of historical records (which enable an interrogation and reconstruction of discursive and interpretive authority). / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1998.

Fictional Constructions of Grey Street by Selected South African Indian Writers. This thesis explores the fictional constructions of Grey Street by selected South African Indian writers to establish a deeper understanding of the connection between writers, place and identity in the South African Indian context. The concepts of 'place' and 'space' are of particular importance to this thesis. Michel Foucault's (1980) theories on space and power, Frantz Fanon's (1952) work on the connection between race and spatial politics, and Pierre Bourdieu's (1990) concept of 'habitus' are drawn on in this thesis in order to understand the ramifications of the spatial segregation of different race groups in colonial and apartheid South Africa. The specific kind of place focused on in this thesis is the city. Foucault's (1977, 1980) theorisation of the Panopticon is used to explain the apartheid government's panoptic planning of the South African city. As a counterpoint to this notion of panoptic urban ordering, Jonathan Raban's Soft City (1974), Michel de Certeau's "Walking in the city" (1984) and Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project (2002) are analysed to explore an alternative way of engaging with city space. These theorists privilege the perspective of the walker in the city, suggesting that the city cannot be governed by top-down urban planning as it is constantly being re-made by the city's pedestrians on the ground. The South African city is an interesting site for a study of this kind as it has, since the colonial era, been an intensely contested space. This dissertation looks primarily at the South African Indian experience of the city of Durban which is a characteristically diasporic one. The theories of diasporic culture by Vijay Mishra (1996) and Avtar Brah (1996) form the foundation for a discussion of the Indian diasporas in the South African colonial and apartheid urban context. Two major Indian diasporic groups are identified: the old Indian diasporas and the new Indian diasporas. Each group experiences the city in different ways which is important in this study which looks at how different Indian diasporic experiences of the city shape the construction of Grey Street in fiction. One of the arenas in which diasporic histories are played out, and thus colonial, nationalist histories are challenged, is the space of fiction, Fiction provides diasporic groups with a textual space in which to record, and thus freeze, their collective memories; memories that are vital in challenging the hegemonic 'nationalist' collective memories often imposed on them. Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase's (1989) work on nostalgia is useful in this thesis which proposes that the collective memories of diasporic groups are quintessentially nostalgic. This is significant as the fictional constructions of place in the primary texts selected are remembered and re-membered through a nostalgic lens. The fictional works selected for this thesis include Imraan Coovadia's The Wedding (2001) and Aziz Hassim's The Lotus People (2002). Although other Indian writers have represented Grey Street in their works, including Kesevaloo Goonam in Coolie Doctor (1991), Phyllis Naidoo in Footprints in Grey Street (2002), Mariam Akabor in Flat 9 (2006) and Ravi Govender in Down Memory Lane (2006), the two novels selected respond most fully to the theories raised in this thesis. However, the other texts are referred to in relation to the selected texts in order to get a fuller picture of the Indian South African perspective of Grey Street. The selected primary texts are analysed in this dissertation in their historical context and therefore a brief history of Indians in South Africa is provided. The time period covered ranges from 1886 with the arrival of the first Indian indentured labourers to Natal to present day. Although this thesis focuses largely on the past and present experiences of Indian South Africans in Grey Street, questions are raised regarding future directions in Indian writing in the area. Thus, attention is also given to forthcoming novels by Hassim, Coovadia and Akabor. Research such as I am proposing can contribute to the debate on the cultural representation of urban space in South Africa and hopefully stimulate further studies of Indian literary production centered on writers, place and identity in the country. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

Space can be read through text. Space is also constructed through text. Literary and critical theory has, however, emphasised time over space. However, space, place and location are crucial determining factors in any literary study. Through reference to theories of construction of place as well as writings on spatial history and the city I will discuss how place is created through text and how the urban environment affects literary production. Using the work of Michel Foucault (1986, 2002) on space and power, Michel de Certeau's approach to cities (2002) and WaIter Benjamin's (2002) theories on space, time and the city, as well as South African theoretical approaches to space and the city, I will attempt an analysis of place in chosen pieces of literature set in the postapartheid city by selected writers. I have chosen to focus on the cities of Durban and Johannesburg, and in particular the innercities, because it is here that major transformation in the use and representation of space has occurred. By looking at selected apartheid and postapartheid texts I will be able to analyse how the representation of literary space has altered with political and socio-economic changes. The time period I will look at primarily will be the postapartheid period. The interdisciplinary nature of this project means I will draw from literary criticism, critical theory, geography, sociology and economic history as well as elements of postcolonial and postmodem theory. The South African city today is a post-city; postcolonial and postapartheid. So too, the texts I have selected are post-texts, postmodem and post-struggle and I will conduct my analysis with this in mind. The concept of 'city' in literature is much more than just buildings and streets. It exists also in social relationships and links between people, both in the city and places outside of the city. The city is a set of social, political and cultural conditions that manifests itself in space and it is this aspect of 'city' which is represented in these texts that I will investigate. Through focusing on the autobiography Man Bitch (2001) by Johan van Wyk together with Never Been At Home (2001) by Zazah P. Khuzwayo and No Way Out (2001) by Zinhle Carol Mdakane all set in Durban, and Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001) by Phaswane Mpe and the short story "Autopsy" (1996) by Ivan Vladislavic set in Johannesburg, I will investigate the representation of urban space in these texts of postapartheid literature. By way of introduction, I will examine relevant selected apartheid texts that deal with the cities of Durban (Lewis Nkosi's novel Mating Birds (1987)) and Johannesburg (selected poems of Mongane Wally Serote) and I will attempt to construct a literary image of the space of these cities under apartheid. A close reading of the texts selected will construct a clear picture of the current (and past) urban space through the medium of literature. It will be seen that major issues affecting South Africa's city inhabitants emerge as themes: AIDS, crime, migration and architectural degradation drive these narratives as does access to once restricted space. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.

This dissertation–half of the MA in English Studies by coursework and dissertation–examines selected works of the playwright, poet and novelist, Kendrew Lascelles, who spent his youth and young adulthood in South Africa, and who since the mid-1960s has resided in the United States. The study – the first extended evaluation of Lascelles's work – focuses on those of his plays that feature an African dimension and on his 'post apocalyptic' novel, Tamara Hunney. The argument is that Africa, as a real and symbolic location, persists alongside the US influence in Lascelles's work, whether explicitly, as in his play about living in apartheid South Africa, or by suggestive parallel in his recognition of intercultural potential: for example, his contrast in Tamara Hunney of Los Angeles urban realism and native American ('Red Indian') spiritual redemption; that masculinist worlds (e.g. colonial or apartheid Africa; the US 'wild west', whether past or present) are tempered (educated) through gender sensitivity, or a feminine principle; and that an apparent paradox might but be a paradox in a writer who subscribes to foundational (romantic-conservative) values rather than to the trendy-liberal expositions of a media-saturated American society. The moral vision is captured not only thematically, but is embodied in 'form' as meaning: in surprising shifts of generic convention and style. The study suggests that Kendrew Lascelles's literary work is deserving of serious consideration. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of Durban-Westville, 2002

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Murdoch University, 2006. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Arts. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [137]-146).

Relying on Lucien Goldmann's theory of genetic structuralism, this study examines the relationship between ideology (world vision) and the autobiographical form in South African writing. The five autobiographers selected for discussion represent different social groups in the South African social formation. The central argument of this thesis is that there is a relationship between autobiographical self-portraiture and the collective interests, values and attitudes of particular social groups in South Africa. Therefore, most South African autobiographies are more concerned with the articulation of collective consciousness than with the celebration of individual talents and achievements. Chapter 1 on Peter Abrahams explores the values underpinning the ideology of liberal humanism and their influence on the process of self-representation within the mode of autobiography. The second chapter examines the apparently contradictory conceptions of self-identity in Bloke Modisane's autobiography. Chapter three focuses on the conflict between Naboth Mokgatle's ethnic loyalty to the Bafokeng tribe and his newly acquired radical working class consciousness. The fourth chapter examines the liberal-Christian ideology in Alan Paton's two volumes of autobiography. The fifth and final chapter explores counter hegemonic modes of self-definition in Sindiwe Magona's two-volumed autobiography. In all the five chapters there is an attempt to link the authors' self-presentation to specific social classes or groups. The thesis argues for a literary-sociological approach to the analysis of autobiography and seeks to challenge the deconstructive theoretical perspectives on autobiography which, by rejecting the validity of humanist assumptions regarding human subjectivity, deny any possibility of meaningful socio-political action. / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (English)

The concept of a distinctively South African poetry in English has been, and still is, derided as a "pipe dream" as part of the fallacy which stems from the desire for a "national" literature. In 1955, for instance, C.J. Harvey (in an article containing much common sense as well as sound literary judgment) denounced the self-conscious hunting for "Local Colour" which engrosses so many South African writers. Harvey claimed: "Our civilization is not "South African", except in trivial details, it is Western European, and more specifically as far as poetry written in English is concerned, English ... ". There is a serious error of emphasis here. It would be more accurate to say that our ancestors brought Western European civilization to this continent. To imagine that this civilisation has not undergone and is not still constantly suffering a subtle but far-reaching metamorphosis in Africa would be to fly in the face of reality. White South Africans do not only carry the same identity-card but they can be distinguished from Frenchmen, Englishmen or Irishmen by more than "trivial details". This thesis is an examination of some af the earliest English written in southern Africa, particularly of the verse produced by our poetasters and near-poets. It attempts, during the course of this examination, to call attention to a few of the more significant changes which have arisen as the result of the importation of Western civilsation to an African frontier. Further I hope to show some at the varying ways in which these differences affected the white pioneer and how this has been reflected in our verse since pioneering times. In this sense the Frontier may be thought of as the background against which South African English writers developed certain characteristic traits. Intro., p. 1-2.