Mind Your Colour by V. A. February

Author:V. A. February [February, V. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317849001
Goodreads: 52134623
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The poor are unthinkable1

Anyone familiar with the South African cultural scene will immediately be struck by the dearth of non-white novelists. Somehow, the novel has appeared too arduous a literary exercise. The strains and tensions of a vigorous political climate created an atmosphere whereby it became rather difficult to distinguish fact from fantasy. The inability to grasp and come to terms with the complex whole, apparently precluded the portrayal and the delineation of the single, the individual, who in many cases sinks into the bottomless pit of the whole. White and black writers in South Africa find it extremely difficult to circumvent the all-pervading group-consciousness. Durrant, in his review of Guy Butler’s A Book of South African Verse, writes:2

What I complain of is an exaggerated concern for one self as a member of a particular group — as a Christian amongst the heathens, a white man among blacks or Coloureds, an Englishman among Afrikaners, a European in Africa, or a South African in Europe.

Unlike his European counterpart, the non-white invariably has, as his base of operation, nay origin, the semi-literate to the illiterate peasant and unsettled urban proletariat. Their disabilities are his. It is as if the creative black artist finds it impossible at times to fictionalize his nightmare, whereby it becomes the nightmare of all mankind.

The black writer cannot feign innocence when he knows that his people are living under oppressive circumstances. Nor can he only celebrate the tribe. Mphahlele has openly conceded that, within the South African context, the white absence is unthinkable. Ί personally cannot think of the future of my people in South Africa as something in which the white man does not feature. Whether he likes it or not, our destinies are inseparable.’3

Ironically, therefore, the non-white creative artist, writing about a semi-literate public, and hoping in many cases to reach it through his works, finds himself dependent upon the urban, sophisticated European public, European critical standards, and publishing companies. The black artist will also be involved in the struggle for freedom, be committed to his people. What Kenneth Ramchand observes for the West Indies, in his book The West Indian Novel, is fairly true of what is now generally referred to as the ‘third world’: ‘Since 1950, most West Indian novels have been first published in the English capital, and nearly every West Indian novelist has established himself while living there’.4

The choice of one’s capital of exile was largely determined by the nature of colonialism and the actual colonizer himself (e.g. mostly Paris or London).

The writing of a novel in an atmosphere of political and economic prosperity is a luxury seldom afforded the ‘third world’ writer. The work of the black artist in South Africa has, as has been overtly clear until now, been permeated with the stench of colour. The operative words for most blacks are economic, psychological and physical survival. There was, and still is, little room for culture and creation in the accepted European sense. Mphahlele observes: ‘It is not easy

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