By Flaxman Qoopane and Vangile Gantsho
The African Century International African Writers Conference held at the University of Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa on 7-10 November 2012, gave a platform to academics and writers to share information among each other, and also imparted skills to younger writers.
Faith Ben-Daniels from Ghana presented a paper entitled The Global Stage for Humanity and the African Disposition, a case study of Efo Kodjo Mawugbe’s Upstairs and Downstairs.
According to Daniels, Upstairs and Downstairs is an absurdist play from the African perspective. It is centred on three lunatics and the Light House. In the play, the lunatics discuss issues concerning Africa such as poverty and bad governance. The lunatics’ role is to open audiences eyes to the challenges that Africa is facing and the don’t provide a solution.
Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Laureate, read from her latest novel: No time like present. The novel is about a Jewish Steven Reed and a Methodist Jabulile Gumede. Gordimer explores the couple’s relationship in exile in Swaziland, as a married couple and how they cope with their different backgrounds in the political climate of the time.
Bramwel Oita Akileng, Director of Jacaranda International Property Business Consultants, presented a paper: The Challenges Facing the Modern Writer and the Benefits of the Proper Use of Copyright.
Akileng said: “The paper covered the objectives of the African writers on the continent and from the diaspora in writing their literary works. The main objective has been to tell the African story of the struggle, colonialism, slavery, competition, poverty, homelessness etc. Very few, if any, have pursued the profit objective of copyright.”
Prof Anne-Marie Beukes from the University of Johannesburg presented a paper: Translation as a Tool for Creating Discursive Space: The Political Dimensions of Translation in South Africa. She said: “I used the case study of what the Afrikaaner Nationalists did after 1925. They used intellectuals such as teachers, clerks, writers, journalists and translators to fast track the development of Afrikaans, of establishing Afrikaans from a kitchen language to a public language. They referred that period of fast-tracking the development as our century of translation because the Bible was translated into Afrikaans.”
Prof Beukers added that translation has been modernised as a social practice in post-Apartheid South Africa. “I say it is time for a new century of translation, but an inclusive century, involving all our languages to develop and intellectualise our languages.”
Dr Polo Belina Moji, Pose doctoral fellow from the University of Kwazulu Natal presented a paper-Domesticating Ivorite: Equating Xenophic Nationalism and Women’s Marginalisation in Tanella Boni’s novel Martins de couvre-feu 2005 Ivory Coast.
Dr Moji presented a novel Martins de courve-feu (Mornings of the Curfew) by Tanella Boni, a well-known writer, philosopher and a poet from Ivory Coast. Boni writes in French, which is why her work is unknown in English speaking Africa. Dr Moji told me that; “My research interest is bridging the knowledge gap in literary studies between the French and English speaking countries in Africa. The novel deals with issues of Xenophobic nationalism in Ivory Coast (Ivoirite) and African women’s marginalisation domestication. The novel won the Ahmadou-Kourouma Literary Award in 2005”.
Prof. Andries Oliphant delivered a paper- The role of Literary Journals in African Struggles for Cultural and Political liberation. He focused on the role of the missionaries by establishing the Printing Press in Lovedale, Eastern Cape in 1823 and at Morija in Lesotho. With the establishment of those printing presses, Xhosa and Sesotho Literature started to be published in newspapers, he added that Drum magazine was also established in Africa.
He said that Es’kia Mphahlele became the literary editor of Drum magazine. Lewis Nkosi, Bessie Head, Can Themba, just to mention a few became journalists and the started writing fiction for the magazine. After Sharpville massacre, the ANC and the PAC were banned. Prof. Keorapetse Kgositsile. Dennis Brutus just to name a few went to exile. In 1978, Staffrider magazine was published by Ravan Press in Braamfontein South Africa. Prof Oliphant edited the magazines for many years.
Ikeogu Oke, author and poet from Nigeria presented a paper- The Poetry of Dennis Brutus and the Dynamics of Africa’s Literary Struggles. Oke said; “The poetry of Brutus is poetry that validates the fact that the struggle for justice is never autochthonous, that its origin is always in something other than itself, and that man never began to care for justice, to struggle for it, until man began to visit injustice on his kind, and that the roots of such struggle are often in the need to reverse the deprivation of justice, of humanity, to those who wage it. It is, in effect, the poetry of a true poet in whose works a sense of beauty is inseparable with a sense of mission. Its overriding goals, as Wayne Karim has affirmed, are “compassion, understanding, truth and equitable, fair shake for all in access to health, safety, food, shelter, and opportunity and right for the enhancement of ours and the Earth’s well being without doing harm to others”. These goals are proof that though South Africa was Brutus’s country, humanity was his constituency.
Elinor Sisulu, a writer and biographer said; “I thank Ikeogu Oke for giving a presentation on Brutus. I grew up in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, when I was attending school, Brutus’s father was my principal. My first connection with Robben Isaland was through the poetry of Dennis Brutus. After his death in December 2009, how much is Brutus read in South Africa. Is his poetry appreciated in this country, how can we pass the legacy of Brutus to the next generation?”
Dr. Neville Choonoo from the University of New York, USA, presented a paper- Black Autobiography, Resistance and the Diaspora. During an interview with me he said; “I was trying to show that within the black experience under white hegemony, we developed mechanism of survival. We created black spaces among ourselves, which were very rich in terms of our construction of mode of our survival”.
Dr Wangui wa Goro from the University of London presented a paper- Intercultural Knowledge Production and Management through Translation and Traducture. In memory of Neville Alexander and Michel Henry Helm.
Dr Wa Goro told me that; “My key message is centrality of translation and traducture, life is unequal. You can’t see translation is complicated political and it involves issues of power.
“Our languages are dying fast and like the trees and forest. We need to protect our languages urgently. The restorative project, sustainability project, they have to happen at the same time. Our survival as African people is dependent of the survival of our languages, as we seat here our languages are dying”
It was an honour to have an author Winston Tsietsi Mohapi to facilitated a short story workshop at the conference 9-10 November. Ten participants attended and they learned about the structures that make a short story. There was an exercise for participants where they read two stories, The Suit by Can Themba and The Suit Continued by Siphiwo Mahala.
They discussed, analysed, and commented about the conflict, protagonist, climax, resolution, settings in these two stories. The participants gained valuable skills about how to write short stories. They left the conference with a believed that they are going to be a future short story writers.
On Saturday 10 Novenber 2012, at 14-15 hour, during the conference author Siphiwo Mahala participated during the Book Reading and Discussion session. The session was facilitated by Flaxman Qoopane. Mahala read from a collection of his short stories African Delights (Jacana). He read stories including the Suit Continued, this was followed by questions from the audience and the author responded well.
