Representations of Black Popular Culture in Drum Magazine in the 1950s to 1965 in South Africa

Abstract

One of the ways in which apartheid sought to normalise its ugly face and violent culture was to attempt to persuade African people that since apartheid was ugly, life was ugly. In so doing, the agents of apartheid openly tried to set blacks against blacks in the townships. This worked in some instances, but in most cases, black people resisted being co-opted to become accomplices in their own humiliation. One creative site through which black agency was represented in writing and through photography in the 1950s and 1960s was the publication called Drum. This creative site manifested various ways in which black people used to survive the onslaught of the apartheid system. This article demonstrates that black people engaged in open political resistance to oppose apartheid. In addition, black people in the locations or townships also created spaces that they owned for themselves, at which popular music, such as jazz, was popularised. Black authors and journalists who published in Drum created a lasting impression that the vulnerable in society have the capacity to reverse their misfortunes. Having argued this, this article notes with dismay that resistance registered in Drum appears to be linked only with the agency of black men. This underplays the positive agency of black women who feature in photographs in Drum. In short, this article argues that both black South African women and men created the Drum culture of the 1950s and 1960s, which established a template for cultural resistance that might be viewed as a political precursor to the more visible forms of armed resistance adopted in the 1980s in South Africa.