• 

ISSUE SIX  •  200;

Bad Times
for Two
Bards

I  HE 

spate 

of

c e n s o r s h ip

decried 

department 

nleased  by  the
d  u  c  a  t  i  o  n
of
~~ Gauteng  province
outh Africa  seems to  brook
' bounds, as even the 'classics'
are taken to cleaners.  In efforts
at  'tidying-up'  and  'sanitizing'
the  school  curricula,  a sizeable
volume of works by Shakespeare
and  Jonathan  Swift  are  being
shoved  towards  the  door  for
recently  proclaimed  sins.
Shakespeare  is  claimed  to  be
"boring, unlikely and ridiculous",
while  Swift  is  replete  with
humour regarded as "foreign" to
South Africans.
An  appointed  committee  of
teachers  who  arrived  at  these
conclusions 
the
purported failings of the English
bard, Shakespeare, as including
a  lack  of  "cultural  diversity",
predilection  with  "unhappy
endings" and failure to "promote
the  South African  constitution's
rejection of racism and sexism."
Based  on  the  criteria  appealed
to  by  the  committee,  Julius
Caesar  could  not  survive  an
enshrined sexism as it "elevates
men",  while  the  Taming of the
Shrew and Antony and Cleopatra
were not only undemocratic, but
also racist.  Hamlet was claimed
to lack optimism as much as it is
not "uplifting", King Lear is "too
despairing",  violent,  "unlikely
and ridiculous".
Interestingly,  The Merchant  of
Venice 
through
censorship,  even  when  many
observers of the fare wondered
how 
its  thinly-veiled  anti-
semitism could pass for anything
other  than  racism.  Equally,
surviving the shove are Macbeth
and Romeo and Juliet which must
by
have 
standardsprecluding 
the
declared  criterion  of  "unhappy
endings."  Swift's  Gu///Ver's
journeyed  out  of
Travels 
>ning  by  reveling  in  alien

slipped 

been 

judged 

Gordimer's
Leash

The wave of  reactions  issuing from this
act  of  censorship  has  prominent  South
African writers, who have written to protest
the  Gauteng  province's  education
department's decision and are planning to
write  the  ruling  ANC  about  this  act  of
"political  correctness  gone  mad",  rallying
to  her defence.

In her career as literary artist, Gordimer's
contemplation  of  South African  society as
'deformed'  in the various  imbalances and
distortions  it  engenders  among  races,
examines  the  delusions  evident  in  white
society,  the  ignorance  pertaining  to  the
black folk and their ways, and depicts with
supreme  understanding,  the  workings  of
the master/slave  relations that has riddled
the country for so long.

July's Peop/e,now regarded as having an
improbable  plot  and  reinforcing  a
questionable  past,  deals  with  a
revolutionary  moment  when  a  reversal
occurs and a white  household seek refuge
with their black servant. This is when some
of  the  latent  dictatorial  attitudes  of  the
servant  starts to  evolve.

The shock attending this latest censorship
of  Gordimer's  book  by  the  Gauteng
education  department,  as  related  to  by
sections of literati and readers seems to be
the  deliberate,  if  willful,  attempt  at
perpetrating  silence  by  knocking  off  the
chronicle  of  a  reality  now  considered
'racist.'  Even  then,  the  reality  under
representation, 
if  not  a  slew  of
interpretation,  could  be  preserved  as
testament of what is undesirable about the
past,  and  what  needs  to  be  desperately
forestalled.

Born in Transvaal, South Africa, Nadine
Gordimer won the Booker Prize in 1974 for
her narrative work, The Conservationist, and
rejected  the  prestigious  women-only
Orange Prize in 1988.

Nadine Godimer
I ERHAPS in an ironic twist of
circumstance,  South  African
I liberal  intellectual,  essayist,
and  1991 Nobel Laureate in
I Literature, Nadine Gordimer,
who  has  spent  most  of  her
adult life and career in the strive against
racism and apartheid in South Africa, both
as writer and African National  Congress
(ANC)  activist,  had  to  bear  the  brunt  of
certain  'transformations'  laying  hold  on
the  South  African  educational  system.
Her  1981  novel,  July's  People,  has
become the fourth  in a 22-book  oeuvre
to slide into the grip of censorship.

Described  as  a  "political  novelist
celebrated  for  her  grasp  of  history  and
delicate sensitivity to the human tensions
of  apartheid",  and  proponent  of  the
"essential  gesture" that  merges the  role
of literary and political activists, Gordimer
who  has  reiterated  her  belief  in  South
Africa's post-1994 democracy, is the most
recent  victim  of  the  ethos  she  warred
against for over four decades.

In  April  2 0 0 1, 

the  education
department  of  Gauteng  province,  the
most  important  in the  country, declared
Gordimer's  book  as  flawed,  "deeply
racist,  superior  and  patronising",  which
means it has to be removed from school
curricula. And, this consolidates an earlier
position in which three of her books had
been censored by the apartheid regime.

Gathering  Tongues

j  of voices seem to  be re-focusing  and lending  remarkable verve to the

I growing corpus of recent African literary writing. Apart from Tade Ipadeola,
I whose newly published collection of poetry A Time of Signs is regarded as a
I triumph of exquisite crafting, some of these purveyors  of the written word -
: having  undergone  considerable  literary exposure, even when some of their
works have not been published  - include the South African civil activist/ writer,

Nombon.so  Gasa. Her prose writings, Dancing with  Grandmother and In the Heart of My
Song are set to be released by Cape Town publishing firm, David  Phillip
Equa ly, award - winning  Nigerian  poets, Angela Agali and  Emman Usman  Shehu are
about coming out with their  poetry collections. Waking Dreams and The Blue in My Blood,
while Helon Habila's  "Love Poems" made the shortlist for the 2001  Caine Prize