In March and April 2000, Writers & Company presented The New South Africa: a special series that takes you into the lives and writings of novelists and poets, with experiences of detention, banning, exile -- and celebration.

Read more about The New South Africa

Author information and reading list

Throughout its turbulent history, South Africa has captured world attention perhaps more dramatically than any other colonized nation. In the past decade, the release of Nelson Mandela, the first democratic election in April 1994, and the signing of a new constitution have been landmarks in an ongoing process of cultural transformation. Through the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the country has attempted to confront its traumatic past. Now South Africans of all races must re-imagine their future.

South Africa's best-known writers-J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Breyten Breytenbach, Andre Brink and others-continue to produce challenging work that reflects the complexities of their country. But South Africa is a place of many languages and many voices. In this special series, Eleanor Wachtel travels to post-apartheid South Africa and takes listeners into the lives and writings of a variety of new novelists and poets. Their experiences of detention, banning and exile tell a remarkable story of struggle...and celebration.

Some of the writers interviewed for the series, in Cape Town and Johannesburg, are playwright Zakes Mda, storyteller Gcina Mlophe, novelists Mandla Langa, Achmat Dangor and Tatamkhulu Afrika, and rap poet Lesogo Rampolokeng. Also featured is a conversation with Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. Complementing the series are interviews with leading Afrikaner writers Breyten Breytenbach and Antjie Krog, as well as the celebrated novelist and critic J. M. Coetzee, recent winner of England's Booker Prize. Former activist, now Justice, Albie Sachs also appears in a special program, on THE ARTS TODAY.

February 6, 2000 - Breyten Breytenbach

Writer, painter and activist, Breyten Breytenbach has been described as an "Afrikaner Dante"- the finest poet in the Boer language. With roots in South Africa dating back to the Cape Colony's founding, he has been a longtime passionate observer and critic of his country. Born in 1939 in Bonnievale, in the Western Cape, Breytenbach left South Africa at 20 for Paris. In 1975, at the height of his literary success, he was arrested and jailed for "terrorism" when he returned to South Africa under a false name, on behalf of an underground anti-apartheid group. He spent seven and a half years in prison, the first two in solitary confinement. His powerful trilogy about South Africa-A Season in Paradise, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist and Return to Paradise -documents his experiences of exile, return and imprisonment. Breytenbach has published at least 15 volumes of poetry in Afrikaans. His other work in English includes the essay collection The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution. His most recent book is a poetic memoir titled Dog Heart (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999).

March 12, 2000 - Antjie Krog

Afrikaner poet and journalist Antjie Krog was born in 1952 in Kroonstad, Orange Free State. She has worked as a teacher, lecturer and editor, and in the 1980s, as an anti-apartheid activist. She has published eight collections of poetry in Afrikaans (some available in English translation). Her first prose work in English, Account of a Murder, was published in 1995. As a reporter for South African radio, Krog covered the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and her passionate account of her experience, Country of My Skull: Guilt, Shame and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa (Random House, 1998), has won international praise. She recently resigned as parliamentary editor for the South African Broadcasting Corporation in order to focus on her writing. She lives in Cape Town.

March 19, 2000 - J. M. Coetzee

Acclaimed novelist and literary critic J. M. Coetzee, born 1940, is widely considered to be South Africa's finest writer. His many award-winning novels include Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, Foe, Age of Iron and The Master of Petersburg. A collection of his essays and interviews, titled Doubling the Point, edited by David Attwell, is published by Harvard University Press, 1992. His most recent works include a memoir, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (Secker & Warburg, 1997); The Lives of Animals (Princeton University Press, 1999); and the novel Disgrace (Secker & Warburg, 1999), winner of the 1999 Booker Prize. (He is the only writer to win the prize twice.) Coetzee is a professor at the University of Cape Town. Famously reticent, he avoids discussion of his own work. In this exclusive interview, recorded at his office in Cape Town, Coetzee talks about world literature and he reads from Disgrace.

The New South Africa March 26, 2000 - Program 1: Mandla Langa

A preacher's son, novelist Mandla Langa was born in 1950 on the northern Natal coast. He studied at the University of Fort Hare, where he became involved in the Black Consciousness Movement. In 1976, a time of student protest, Langa was arrested and held in jail for 101 days. After his release, he went into exile, to neighboring Botswana. Langa served the African National Congress in exile for 18 years, as editor, speechwriter and cultural attache, working in Zambia and London. Since his return to South Africa in 1994, he has held a number of prominent positions in the country's cultural institutions, including director of television programming at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Currently he chairs the Independent Broadcasting Authority (the equivalent of Canada's CRTC). Langa is one of the first South African writers to give voice to the trauma of return from exile. In addition to three earlier novels, he has published a collection of stories, The Naked Song (1996); and recently he collaborated on an opera with another former exile, Hugh Masakela. His collection The Naked Song and his new novel, The Memory of Stones, are published by David Philip in Cape Town. Mandla Langa lives in Johannesburg.

April 2, 2000 - Program 2: Gcina Mlophe and Zakes Mda

Writer, performer and director Gcina Mlophe was born in Hammarsdale, Natal, in 1958, to Zula and Xhosa parents. She spent her early years with her paternal grandmother, but at age 10 she was "kidnapped" by her mother and taken to live in the Transkei, in the Eastern Cape. Later, while living in a women's hostel in Alexandra Township in Johannesburg, she drew upon the upheaval of her childhood in her play Have you seen Zandile, which has been produced internationally. Inspired by her grandmother, Mlophe has also revived the traditional art of storytelling through her own performances and through the storytelling group she has founded. She has toured the world - in theatre productions, and performing her own poems and stories solo. In 1994 she released an album of children's songs with Ladysmith Black Mombazo, and she has her own radio and television series, "Gcina and Friends." She is based in Johannesburg.

Playwright and novelist Zakes Mda was born in 1948 in the Eastern Cape. He grew up in a political family: his father, a teacher and lawyer, was a prominent African nationalist. In the early 1960s, after his father was arrested, the family went into exile to Lesotho, where Mda finished his schooling. He continued his education in the U.S., earning two masters degrees and later a PhD in Drama from the University of Cape Town. Mda returned to South Africa in 1995, settling in Johannesburg, where he now teaches, paints and writes. His plays have been widely produced both within the country and abroad: five years ago he made theatrical history in the Johannesburg area when he had eight plays opening within weeks of each other. (Several volumes of his plays are available from the University of Witwatersrand Press in Johannesburg.) As well as plays and fiction, he writes for film and television. His prize-winning 1995 novel, Ways of Dying, is published by Oxford University Press. His most recent novel, She Plays With the Darkness, is published by Africa World Press Inc.

April 9, 2000 - Program 3: Lesogo Rampolokeng and Tatamkhulu Afrika

Lesogo Rampolokeng

One of South Africa's most innovative, edgy young poets, Lesogo Rampolokeng was born in Orlando West, Soweto, in 1965. He studied law at the University of the North, but since dropping out he has made his name as a writer and performer. He has performed his work with musicians such as Vusi Mahlasela, and in 1993 he produced a CD titled End Beginnings with the Kalahari Surfers. Rampolokeng uses the language of the townships in his work; his influences include the Black Consciousness poets, Caribbean dub poetry and reggae, and talking dithoko songs from the seSotho. He often performs his work in Europe and England. His poetry collections include Horns for Hondo (1990), Talking Rain (1993) and most recently The Bavino Sermons (Gecko Poetry, 1999). He lives in Johannesburg.

Tatamkhulu Afrika

Poet and fiction writer Tatamkhulu Afrika, born in 1920 in Egypt to an Arab father and a Turkish mother, has had a remarkable life, with some fascinating twists and turns. His parents died shortly after coming to South Africa in 1923; he was raised by an English Methodist family under a new name, with no awareness of his background. He was a prisoner of war for three years in Italy and Germany and worked for 20 years in Namibia - in mining and as a barman and drummer. After settling in Cape Town, he converted to Islam and had himself classified as "coloured." He founded an activist group, Al Jihaad, which led to his arrest for "terrorism" in 1987; for five years he was listed as a banned person. Under the name Tatamkhulu Afrika - a code name from his activist days - he emerged as a major poet in his seventies and has continued to win praise and prizes for his writing. His poetry collections include Nine Lives, Dark Rider, Maqabane and most recently The angel and other poems (Carapace Poets, Snailpress, Cape Town, 1999). Afrika's 1994 novel, The Innocents, based on his experience with Al Jihaad, is published by David Philip, Cape Town. He lives in a shack in the Bo Kaap area of Cape Town.

April 16, 2000 - Program 4: Nadine Gordimer and Achmat Dangor

Nadine Gordimer

Novelist and essayist Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in 1923 in Springs, South Africa, and has lived for most of her life in Johannesburg. She is the author of 12 novels and numerous volumes of short stories. Through her writing and her continuing dedication to the cause of freedom in South Africa, she has long been viewed as "the literary voice and conscience of her society." Her insight, integrity and compassion inspire critical admiration. Her novels include The Conservationist, Burger's Daughter, July's People, A Sport of Nature and None to Accompany Me. Her most recent works are Writing and Being: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1994 (Harvard University Press, 1995); The House Gun (Penguin, 1998) and Living in Hope and History: Notes from Our Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).

Achmat Dangor

Novelist Achmat Dangor was born in Johannesburg in 1948, the year the Nationalist Party won power in South Africa. Raised a Muslim, he spent his formative years in Cape Town's District Six - the "coloured" area famously demolished by the apartheid government. At university in the 1970s he became involved in the black student movement founded by Steve Biko, and was "banned" for six years. In fiction such as the Z-Town Trilogy he has explored the tensions between personal and private life in a time of struggle, and relations between the races in the townships. A kind of magic realism often pervades his writing, especially his latest novel, Kafka's Curse (Random House, 1997), which has been described as a "dense surrealist fable". Dangor is currently chief executive officer of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. He now lives in Johannesburg.

March 21, 2000 - Albie Sachs on THE ARTS TODAY

Complementing THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA series on WRITERS & COMPANY is a 30 minute interview with Albie Sachs, also recorded in South Africa, and heard on THE ARTS TODAY. Activist lawyer Albie Sachs is best known for his remarkable book The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs. On April 7th, 1988, Sachs was in his car in Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, when a bomb exploded. In a matter of seconds, he lost an arm and the sight in one eye, barely escaping with his life. At the time of the bombing, Albie Sachs was in exile. At home in South Africa, he worked as a civil rights lawyer, anti-apartheid activist, and member of the African National Congress. Twice in the 1960s, he was detained in South Africa without trial and tortured by the security police ... a period detailed in his diary. In 1966, Sachs fled first to England, then Mozambique, where the car bombing took place. In 1992 he finally returned to a free South Africa and took part in negotiations for the country's new constitution. Now 65, he is Justice Sachs, a member of the South African Constitutional Court, and a busy and powerful judicial figure in the country. A new edition of his memoir, The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter, has just been published by the University of California Press.

The names featured above are just a few of the most interesting new voices in contemporary South African writing. For a sampling of others, some useful anthologies are:

World Literature Today: South African Literature in Translation, Vol. 70, Number 1, Winter 1996 (University of Oklahoma): includes criticism, poetry, fiction, interviews.

West Coast Line: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Criticism, Number Twenty, Fall 1996 (Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC): "Making New: A Selection of Recent South African Writing." (poetry)

The Lava of This Land: South African Poetry 1960 - 1996 (Triquarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press, 1997).

Atlanta Review, Vol. V, Issue Number 2 (P.O. Box 8248, Atlanta, GA 31106): Africa Feature Section, 1998. (poetry)

At the Rendezvous of Victory and Other Stories, ed. Andries Walter Oliphant, Kwela Books, Cape Town, 1999. (fiction)

*All eight tapes are available for purchase at a cost of $80.00 (or $20.00 each).

Please send cheque payable to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to:
CBC Writers & Company: P.O. Box 500, Station "A" Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6

The series The New South Africa was produced for Writers & Company by Sandra Rabinovitch.