Finding the Power in Not Telling: A Critical Exploration of the Strategies Used by South African Writers to Avoid Apartheid Literary Censorship from the 1950s to the 1980s

Abstract

One of the most unfortunate circumstances that characterised apartheid South Africa was the banning of writers whose literary works were deemed undesirable and/or offensive by the then government. The banning of writers and their artistic works was driven by the need to prevent literary artists from the alleged peddling of falsehood about apartheid and its deleterious effects on the majority of Black South Africans. It was this censorious climate in the history of South African politics that prompted various scholars to interrogate the effects of apartheid’s identitarian policies and censorship especially on writers in general. While some looked at why literature became the object of repressive measures under apartheid South Africa in particular, others traced the historical continuum on how literature came to be viewed as a phenomenon in need of regulation in the world in general. This article observes that none of the existing studies looks at the strategies employed by writers, amid serious repressive measures and censorial mechanisms put in place, to expose the injustices faced by Africans under apartheid. The article sought to investigate various strategies used by John Maxwell Coetzee, James Matthews, Dyke Sontse, Ezekiel Mphahlele, and Nadine Gordimer in their respective literary works to expose the effects of apartheid policies on South Africans. To achieve this, the article critically analysed selected short stories and novels written from the 1950s to the 1980s—a period during which censorship laws were constantly revised and tightened to deprive writers of freedom of expression. The findings of this study revealed that writers employed complex narrative strategies such as, amongst others, omission and concealment, symbolism, and allegorism to find spaces within the censorious system to get their voices heard.