JAMES MATTHEWS AT 82!!!

By Deon Simphiwe Skade

South African-born author, James Matthews, has turned 82. This milestone was celebrated by The Centre for the Book, part of the National Library, by inviting fellow writers and readers to observe this special day. Even though Matthews' birthday was on the 22nd of May, the centre hosted the event celebrating his life and achievements on the 23rd.

Matthews is a crucial part of world's writers. Here one refers particularly to those writers who through their writing and speech, not only denounced any form of oppression against anyone, but were as brave as willing to face any consequences that emerged. Dennis Brutus’ name springs up from many names of such heroes. Some of Matthews’s fellow writers spoke of his illustrious writing career, but highlighted his ability to remain honest in any subject he engaged in. Often referred to as one of District Six's prominent writers along the likes of Alex La Guma, Matthews is a sage that we should celebrate as such. Young or old writers should drink from his well of wisdom. When I asked him for an advice that he may give to a young writer like me, he said: ''Be honest in your writing and don't pay too much attention to the critics. Believe in what you do and be true to that.''

Matthews' confidence at 82 may unsettle many young folk. The honesty that he referred to, which was also a piece of advice he gave to another young journalist writer a few years ago, characterizes his speech too. In his opening remarks as the guest of honour, he shared an anecdote about a bathing experience he recently had, in which he fell as he tried to stand up. He did not use any euphemistic words in relating this unfortunate incident. As a result, the audience were in stitches over his sharp and unrestrained wit. One admired Matthews even more.

Happy belated birthday James Matthews. May you see many more years to come. The young need your wisdom and guidance.

SOME OF JAMES MATTHEWS' BOOKS:

Black voices shout
Cry rage!
The park and other stories
No time for dreams
Poems from a prison cell
The party is over

SELLO DUIKER: A LITERARY GENIUS

By Siphiwo Mahala

Kabelo Sello Duiker would have turned 37 on April 13 this year (2011)had he not extinguished his own flame on January 19 2005.

At the time of his death Duiker had already published two acclaimed novels: He won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book: Africa Region for his debut novel, Thirteen Cents (David Philip, 2000), and the Herman Charles Bosman Prize for The Quiet Violence of Dreams (Kwela, 2001). His third novel, The Hidden Star (Umuzi, 2005) was published posthumously.

If there is anything we can learn from Duiker, it is that the literary landscape is a universal landscape and should not be defined along racial lines. Duiker was not a good black writer; he was just a great writer. His peers, literary giants and critics all acknowledged his contribution to our literature.

Duiker is to literature what Steve Biko is to politics, both having died at the tender age of 30 but leaving indelible footprints in our collective memory. Duiker’s writing distinguished itself with its courageous interrogation of issues relating to sexuality, identity, mental illness and Hiv and Aids. Thirteen Cents is a moving account of a 13-year old homeless boy, who in his struggle to survive on the streets of Cape Town, finds himself being sexually abused by adults. The Quiet Violence, on the other hand, centres on the tumultuous life of Tshepo, a Rhodes University student who is confined to a mental asylum in Cape Town.

Indeed a close reading of Duiker’s works reveals that the thread that runs through his writing is identity in its diverse forms. Azure, the teenage protagonist in Thirteen Cents loses his identity and becomes Blue; and Tshepo becomes Angelo-Tshepo in The Quiet Violence. The circumstances surrounding this change of identity have largely to do with the effects of racism that permeate the lives of these characters.

Six years after his demise, Duiker remains one of the best writers ever to come out of South Africa and arguably the best to have emerged since the turn of the century. It was surely because of these extraordinary achievements that the South African Literary Awards (Sala) saw fit to name an award after him.

Naming an award after Duiker is the greatest accolade bestowed on his memory, but more needs to be done to preserve and celebrate his legacy. Duiker should be a figure that aspirant writers strive to emulate.

* This is a very condensed version of the author’s article, published in The Mail and Guardian April 8 – 14 2010 edition

MEET GHANA'S GREAT PLAYWRIGHT

Book Review by Judith Greenwood.

The Legacy of Efua Sutherland:
Pan-African Cultural Activism,
Anne V. Adams and Esi Sutherland-Addy.


All nations as they brave the tides of history need good navigators if they are not to founder, and Ghana was fortunate to have such a pilot in the theatre practitioner Efua Sutherland, who helped to steer its course culturally, socially and politically after it achieved independence in 1957. This collection of essays, timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of that event, has been brought together to demonstrate and celebrate the fact that the irresistible force which was Dr. Efua Theodora Sutherland seems never to have encountered an immovable object.

Efua Sutherland was born in Cape Coast, Ghana in 1924 and died in Accra in 1996. Educated in Ghana by Yorkshire nuns, who introduced her to literature and the performing arts, she went on to study at Homerton College Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London before returning to the newly independent Ghana in 1957, where she set up the Ghana Writers Society “all of a sudden because I felt that a newly independent country needed a force of creative writers.” [Sutherland p. 160]

It is evidence of her passion and energy that the word ‘sudden’ occurs so frequently in Sutherland’s interviews:

“Suddenly in 1951 I started…creative writing seriously”, [Sutherland p. 161]

“I suddenly saw …[w]e needed a programme to develop playwriting and…that led to… the Ghana Experimental Theatre” [Sutherland p. 161]

“The Drama Studio came as a sudden answer to a problem I had been having, starting the theatre programme.” [Sutherland p. 162]

This was the Ghana Drama Studio, which she established first in an aluminium shed on the beach in Accra in 1958 until it moved to new premises in 1960 and celebrated with a production of Everyman attended by Kwame Nkrumah.

The social health of a nation can be measured by the value it places upon artistic energy and culture, in the widest sense of those words, and Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party, with its drive for reform from the very grass roots of society, was never going to restrict the country’s artists to the role of dissidents. But with Ghana’s freedom came the responsibility to answer the universal and eternal questions which must be addressed by every independent society: how should we educate our children, how can we build the future on the best of the past, and how do we live fulfilled lives in our communities?

Efua’s answers were characteristically pragmatic. She set up the Children’s Drama Development Project and she became “the first Ghanaian writer to take a serious interest in writing for children … (and) who attempted to produce a book with an indigenous background for children in Ghana.” [Komasi p. 69]; she encouraged the government to set up the Ghanaian National Commission on Children and chaired it. She built stages, established acting companies and wrote plays to express by modern theatre means her “vision of the socially regenerative power of the traditional rituals” [Adams p. 112] which she shared with other African writers; she insisted that everyone’s talent should be exercised for the good of the whole of society, because “[w]hat we cannot buy is the spirit of originality and endeavour which makes a people dynamic and creative.” [Sutherland p. 77]. She shared Nkrumah’s belief in and vision for the integration of different ethnic groups on the continent, stating in her play Foriwa (1967) through the character Labaran, “Who is a stranger anywhere in these times in whose veins the blood of this land flows?”

The book is divided into three sections under the titles Efua Sutherland’s Artistic Space (13 essays) Efua Sutherland and Cultural Activism (4 essays and 2 personal interviews with Sutherland by Robert July and Ola Rotimi), Reminiscences and Tributes (9 essays), and the student’s essential toolkit of a Chronology, a Bibliography and a Biographical Sketch. With contributions from theatre practitioners, playwrights, actors, musicians, writers, teachers, academics, architects and Sutherland’s family, the essays cover in fascinating, thorough and diverse detail the astonishing range of her artistic and political activities. Her plays, her writing for children and her storytelling initiatives are reviewed and analysed; her role in the creation of many of Ghana’s arts institutions is examined and then brought to life through interviews with Sutherland herself; essays by her contemporaries demonstrate how far-ranging was her influence in modern African theatre – Biodun Jeyifo states that “[t]he programme of experimental theatre which Efua Sutherland began in Accra between 1958 and 1961, and the Ghana Drama Studio which she built to house her experimental work are two of the most important ‘happenings’ in the creation of modern drama, not only in West Africa but in the entirety of the African continent” [p. 36], whilst Anne V. Adams asserts that “her work forms part of the foundation on which the contemporary production of written literature by Africans rests.” [p.105].

Her leadership and activism, the social application of her drama work and her influence on the Diaspora are all discussed in analytical and descriptive essays, whilst memoirs and reminiscences bear testimony to her extraordinary generosity and skill in mentoring and nurturing talent. As the eponymous heroine says in Foriwa, “I want to be able to look up as I walk and see dignity in the place of my birth. All of us should want that.”

ULLI BEIER DIES

Many followers of African literature have been saddened at the demise of Ulli Beier, who did so much for the continent's literature around fifty years ago. He was able to publish the initial works of some of the continent's all-time great writers, like Wole Soyinka, Kofi Awoonor, J.P Clark, Alex la Guma, and Dennis Brutus.

The following pertinent profile of Beier is from Wikipedia:

Horst Ulrich (Ulli) Beier (30 July 1922 – 3 April 2011) was a German editor, writer and scholar, who had a pioneering role in developing literature, drama and poetry in Nigeria, as well as literature, drama and poetry in Papua New Guinea. His wife Georgina Beier had an instrumental role in simultaneously stimulating the visual arts in both Nigeria and Papua New Guinea.

Beier was born in Glowitz, Germany, in July 1922. His father was a medical doctor and an appreciator of art and raised his son to embrace the arts. After the Nazi party' rise to power, the Beiers, who are non-practicing Jews, left for Palestine. In Palestine, while his family were briefly detained as enemy aliens by the British authorities, Ulli Beier was able to earn a BA as an external student from the University of London. However, he later moved to London to earn a degree in Phonetics. A few years later, after his first marriage to the Austrian artist Susanne Wenger, he was given a faculty position at the University of Ibadan to teach Phonetics.

While at the University, Beier transferred from the Phonetics department to the Mural Studies department. It was at the Mural Studies department he became interested in Yoruba culture and arts. Though, he was a teacher at Ibadan, he ventured outside the city and lived in nearby cities, of Ede, Ilobu and Osogbo, this gave him an avenue to see the spatial environment of different Yoruba communities. In 1956, after visiting the First Congress of Negro Artists and Writers organized by Presence Africaine at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France Ulli Beier returned to Ibadan and founded the magazine Black Orpheus, the name was inspired by Jean Paul Sartre's essay "Orphée Noir". The journal quickly became the leading space for Nigerian authors to write and publish their work. The journal became known for its innovative works and literary excellence and was widely acclaimed. Later in 1961, Beier, co-founded the Mbari Artists and Writers Club, Ibadan, a place for new writers, dramatist and artists, to meet and perform their work. In 1962, he co-founded (with the dramatist Duro Ladipo) Mbari-Mbayo, Osogbo. In the early 1980s he founded and directed the Iwalewa Haus, an art centre at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.

Ulli Beier was known for his efforts in translating African literary works. He emerged as one of the scholars who introduced African writers to a large international audience for his works in translating plays of dramatists such as Duro Ladipo and publishing Modern Poetry (1963) an anthology of African poems. After Beier left Nigeria in 1968, he worked in Papua New Guinea and intermittently returned to Nigeria for brief periods