Academic literature on the topic 'South African Historical fiction'

Two millenarian events, one in Brazil (Canudos Rebellion, 1897) and the other in South Africa (Bulhoek Massacre, 1921) have inspired two works of narrative fiction: Mario Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World (1981) and Mike Nicol’s This Day and Age (1992). In both novels the events are presented from the perspectives of both the oppressed landless peasants and the oppressors, who were the ruling élites. In both instances, governments which purported to be models of enlightenment and modernity resorted to violence and repression in order to uphold their authority. Vargas Llosa's novel was written in the Latin American tradition where truth and fiction mingle indistinguishably while in the South African novel fictional elements override historical truth.

Historical studies of nature conservation and literary criticism of fiction concerned with the natural environment provide some pointers for the study of South African children’s literature in English. This kind of literature, in turn, has a contribution to make to studies of South African social history and literature. There are English-language stories, poems and picture books for children which reflect human interaction with nature in South Africa since early in the nineteenth century: from hunting, through domestication of the wilds, the development of scientific agriculture, and the changing roles of nature reserves, to modern ecological concern for the entire environment. Until late in the twentieth century the literature usually endorsed the assumption held by whites that they had exclusive ownership of the land and wildlife. In recent years English-language children’s writers and translators of indigenous folktales for children have begun to explore traditional beliefs about and practices in conservation.

This article begins with a survey of flash fiction in “post-transitional” South Africa, which it relates to the nation’s post-apartheid canon of short stories and short-short stories, to the international rise of flash fiction and “sudden fiction”, and to the historical particularities of South Africa’s “post-transition”. It then undertakes close readings of three flash fictions republished in the article, each less than 450 words: Tony Eprile’s “The Interpreter for the Tribunal” (2007), which evokes the psychological and ethical complexities, and long-term ramifications, of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Michael Cawood Green’s “Music for a New Society” (2008), a carjacking story that invokes discourses about violent crime and the “‘new’ South Africa”; and Stacy Hardy’s “Kisula” (2015), which maps the psychogeography of cross-racial sex and transnational identity-formation in an evolving urban environment. The article argues that these exemplary flashes are “hyper-compressions”, in that they compress and develop complex themes with a long literary history and a wide contemporary currency. It therefore contends that flash fiction of South Africa’s post-transition should be recognized as having literary–historical significance, not just as an inherently metonymic form that reflects, and alludes to, a broader literary culture, but as a genre in its own right.

Abstract Focusing on Anglophone West Africa, particularly Nigeria and the Gold Coast (Ghana), this article analyses the historiography of World War Two, examining recruitment, civil defence, intelligence gathering, combat, demobilisation, and the predicament of ex-servicemen. It argues that we must avoid an overly homogeneous notion of African participation in the war, and that we should instead attempt to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, as well as differentiating in terms of geography and education, all variables that made a significant difference to wartime labour conditions and post-war prospects. It will show how the existing historiography facilitates an appreciation of the role of West Africans in distinct theatres of combat, and examine the role of such sources as African war memoirs, journalism and photography in developing our understanding of Africans in East Africa, South and South-East Asia, and the Middle East. More generally, it will demonstrate how recent scholarship has further complicated our comprehension of the conflict, opening new fields of study such as the interaction of gender and warfare, the role of religion in colonial armed forces, and the transnational experiences of West Africans during the war. The article concludes with a discussion of the historical memory of the war in contemporary West African fiction and documentary film.

English is in many ways the language that is assumed to be the giant in the South African literary field. The mere mention of South African literature has a different nuance to, let's say, African literature, since African literature has a vast array of national, colonial and post-colonial contexts, whereas South African literature is focused on one nation and one historical context. This difference in context is important when evaluating the use of English in South African Literature. In many ways, the South African literary field has grown, not only in number of contributors, and the diversity represented there, but also in genre or style. South African literature is becoming more fluid, more energetic, and more democratic in all the ways that the word implies. Writers like Lauren Beukes and Lily Herne are writing science fiction worlds where Cape Town is controlled by autocratic fascists or zombie wastelands that stretch from Table Mountain to Ratanga Junction; Deon Meyer writes crime thrillers, and Renesh Lakhan plumbs the depths of what it means to be South African after democracy. In many ways, the entire field of literature has changed in South Africa in the last twenty or so years. But one aspect has remained the same: the expectation, that while anyone who has anything to say at all, creatively, politically or otherwise, can by all means write it in their mother tongue, if the author wants to be read by more than a very specific fraction of society, then they need to embark on the perilous journey that is translation, and above all, translation into English.

AbstractIn South Africa, the house is a haunted place. Apartheid’s separate publics also required separate private lives and separate leisures in which to practice ways of living apartheid’s ideological partitions into reality. This essay analyzes the compulsive interest in black domesticity that has characterized South Africa since the colonial period and shows that domestic labor in white homes has historically shaped the entry of black women into public space in South Africa. In fact, so strong is the latter association that theDictionary of South African English on Historical Principlesreveals that in South African English the wordmaiddenotes both “black woman” and “servant.” This conflation has generated fraught relations of domesticity, race, and subjectivity in South Africa. Contemporary art about domestic labor by Zanele Muholi and Mary Sibande engages with this history. In their art, the house is a place of silences, ghosts, and secrets. Precursors to these recent works can be found in fiction, including Sindiwe Magona’s short stories about domestic workers in her collectionLiving, Loving and Lying Awake at Night(1994) and Zoë Wicomb’s novelPlaying in the Light(2006), in which a woman passing for white allows her mother into her house only under the pretense that she is a family servant. Muholi and Sibande have engaged the legacy of black women in white households by revisiting the ghosts of the house through performance, sculpture, and photography. Both were inspired by the intimate reality of their mothers’ experiences as domestic servants, and in both cases the artist’s body is central to the pieces, through installations based on body casts, performance, embodied memories, and the themes of haunted absences, abandonment, and longing.

Several English and Afrikaans novels written during the nineties focus on confrontation with the past by exposing past injustices and undermining various myths and legends constructed in support of ideological beliefs. This commitment has gradually assumed the proportions of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A comparison of two recent novels dealing with events preceding and during the Anglo-Boer War, Manly Pursuits by Ann Harries and Op soek na generaal Mannetjies Mentz (In search of General Mannetjies Mentz) by Christoffel Coetzee provides an interesting angle to this debate. This article is an attempt to contextualise these novels within the larger framework of a contemporary South African reality; to acknowledge and reconcile, or assemble, disparate “faces” of a South African historical event at a specific moment in time. In Manly Pursuits, Ann Harries focuses on the arch imperialist, the “colossus of Africa”, Cecil John Rhodes, to expose the machinations behind the scenes in the “take over” of southern Africa, while in the Afrikaans novel, Op soek na generaal Mannetjies Mentz, the General becomes the embodiment of collective guilt. Written within a postmodern paradigm, both texts problematize the relationship between history and fiction by revealing deviations from “historic data” suggesting alternate versions of such "documentation" and by juxtaposing the private lives of historical personages with their public images.

The post-independence era in sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by progressive underdevelopment. From the 1960s till date no meaningful development has occurred, and all known development strategies that have so far been adopted have defied all logic. Accordingly, some social scientists and scholars of development theories have come to the sad conclusion that with respect to Africa, all development theories have hit the rocks (Chambua, 1994, p, 37). The implication is that in all spheres of human endeavour, Africa south of the Sahara has failed. The leadership problem is one of the plagues that have bedevilled the West African sub region. And from the failure of leadership stems a truckload of woes: infrastructural deficit, corruption, neo-colonialist propensity, unemployment, ethnicity, educational backwardness, declining living standards, etc. This situation has left Africans disillusioned and disappointed. And African writers from the Anglophone and Francophone worlds have not relented in their condemnation of the post-independence malaise. Their oeuvre is a clear reflection of the battered landscape. Thus, in the works of Chinua Achebe, Wale Okediran, AhmadouKourouma and J.R. Essomba, the reader is led into the very soul of a continent in turmoil. These authors are selected from both sides of the linguistic divide. Whereas, Achebe and Okediran are Anglophones from Nigeria, Kourouma and Essomba are Francophones from Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon respectively. This paper therefore attempted a diachronic investigation of the works of these authors in order to uncover the pervasive indices of underdevelopment. In other words, between Achebe and Okediran on the one hand, and between Kourouma and Essomba on the other hand, one discovers that the ills which the earlier novelists condemned in the first decade of independence have only gone from bad to worse some five decades later. The methodological approach adopted for this research work is textual analysis/ intertextuality, while privileging a socio-historical framework.
 Key Words: underdevelopment, West Africa, dynamics, Achebe, Okediran, Kourouma, Essomba

AbstractAfter the end of apartheid in 1990 and the new constitution of 1994, the genre of the contemporary South African novel is experiencing a heyday. One reason for this is that, with the end of censorship, the authors can go about unrestraint to take a critical look at the traumatized country and the state of a nation that shows a great need to come to terms with its past. In this context, trauma and narration prove to be a fertile combination, an observation that stands in marked contrast to the deconstructionist view of trauma as ‘unclaimed’ experience and the inability to speak about it. Michiel Heyns’ Lost Ground (2011) and Marlene van Niekerk’s The Way of the Women (2008) are prime examples of the contemporary South African trauma novel. As crime fiction, Lost Ground not only tells a thrilling story but is also deeply involved in South African politics. The novelist Heyns plays with postmodernist structures, but the real strength of the novel lies in its realistic milieu description and the analysis of the protagonist’s traumatic ‘entanglements’. The Way of the Women is mainly a farm novel but also shows elements of the historical novel and the marriage novel. It continues the process of the deconstruction of the farm as a former symbol of the Afrikaner’s pride and glory. Both novels’ meta-fictional self-reflections betray the self-consciousness of their authors who are aware of the symbolization compulsions in a traumatized country. They use narrative as a means of ‘working through’, coming to terms with trauma, and achieving reconciliation. Both novels’ complex narrative structures may be read as symbolic expressions of traumatic ‘entanglements’ that lie at the heart of the South African dilemma.

This research engages with a contemporary theoretical debate in the literary field, namely the ability of fictional texts to contribute to archival records. Contemporary research in archival discourse suggests that there are many intersections between fiction and the archive. Using Hamilton and others’ seminal text Refiguring the Archive (2002) and Pasco’s “Literature as Historical Archive” (2004) as point of departure, this dissertation offers an analysis of the South African English translation of Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat (2004, translated 2006). In both form and function, the novel is viewed as a simulation of an archive. In Agaat, Van Niekerk has compiled a fictional archive of two indigenous South African cultures through her portrayal of the two main characters: Afrikaner culture during apartheid as embedded in the focalization of Milla de Wet and remnants of Khoi and/or San culture as emerge from the fictionalised subjectivity of her coloured housekeeper-nurse, Agaat. Through a conceptual and theoretical exploration of archival discourse, I argue that literary texts, such as Van Niekerk’s novel, have the potential to refigure (or creatively redefine) the archive and to enhance its scope and relevance, especially as South Africa undergoes transformation.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2002.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates the possibility that there are other ways in which to represent the past, not just the traditional way as practised by historians. For instance, other forms such as historical fiction in the historical novel, and therefore, narrative, can act as an important conduit for conveying historical meaning. Through the examination of the historiographic metafiction of the South African writer, Etienne Van Heerden, this study has concluded that through a reading of both the author's belletristic and theoretical texts, readers interested in history and literature will gain some understanding of the problems that come with writing up the past. At the same time, they will gain some knowledge of a different way of writing about South African history, because the author portrays the historical events in a refreshing, vivid and imaginative way. However, it needs to be said from the outset that in no way is the writer of this thesis neglecting the merits of traditional history or advocating its abolition, which is, ultimately, the scientific way of representing the past and remains sacred and paramount for the historian, both amateur and professional.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis ondersoek die moontlikheid dat die verlede volgens ander sienswyses voorgestel kan word en nie slegs volgens die tradisionele sienswyses van historici nie. Daar is byvoorbeeld ander vorme, soos historiese fiksie wat in historiese novelles gebruik word, en daarom kan die narratief as 'n belangrike kanaal dien om historiese betekenis mee oor te dra. Deur 'n ondersoek van die historiese metafiksie van die Suid-Afrikaanse skrywer, Etienne van Heerden, kom hierdie studie tot die gevolgtrekking dat deur die lees van beide die skrywer se belletristiese en teoretiese tekste, lesers wat in die geskiedenis en literatuur belangstel, 'n begrip sal kry van die problematiek wat gepaard gaan met die skryf van geskiedenis. Terselfdertyd sal hulle 'n begrip kry van 'n alternatiewe skryf van die Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis, omdat die skrywer historiese gegewens in 'n verfrissende, helder en verbeeldingryke wyse oordra. Dit moet egter beklemtoon word dat die skrywer van hierdie tesis geensins die meriete van tradisionele geskiedskrywing negeer of die afskaffing daarvan voorstaan nie, aangesien die wetenskaplike voorstelling van die verlede kosbaar en van kardinale belang vir beide amateur en professionele historici bly.

Both historiographical and literary practices have undergone revision in recent years in attempting to address the inheritance of nineteenth-century realism. Since the object of realist stylistics, employed in both the writing of fiction and history, is to render authorship authoritative or even invisible, the ideological import of these narratives is often such that the constructedness of the historical record and its absences are veiled. In developments beginning in the 1980s with the advent of ‘New Historicism’ and with the emergence of postmodern literary techniques, the interface of literature and history became of seminal importance, since both were now credited as being products of narrative and discourse, and hence, to varying degrees, of the literary imagination. This movement intersects interestingly with developments in postcolonial studies, since it is the voices of the marginalized and disempowered colonized peoples that are routinely co-opted and excised from nineteenth-century realist histories. These concerns are now being fully explored in the literature of the contemporary post-transitional South African moment, since authors in this country seemingly now feel freed up to look back to histories that precede the immediate traumas of apartheid. The concern, in relation to apartheid developments but also on a broader universal scale, is this: if history is viewed as perpetual emergences of modernities, then one of the great absences in the record is the historical determinants of any given epistemology. The attempt to recreate such an epistemological genealogy is thus simultaneously postcolonial, historiographical, and literary. Russel Brownlee’s Garden of the Plagues (2005), Ingrid Winterbach’s To Hell with Cronjé (2010), and Etienne van Heerden’s The Long Silence of Mario Salviati (2002) attempt to bridge this gap in the recorded sensibilities of any historical moment by representing a ‘lived experience’ of the past, and in the process imaginatively recreating the cultural, historical and psychological locations of the proponents of an emerging modernity. This study concerns itself with the ways in which these authors address the influence of realist historiography through the use of literary innovations that allow for the departure from realist stylistics. Most commonly, all three authors draw on forms of magic realism, but multiple refigurings and recombinations of notions of temporality, narrative, and characterization likewise work to defamiliarize the once stable discourse of history.

Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2001.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of various historical novels which dealt to a greater or lesser degree with the Great Trek and were written between the 1840s and the 1930s in Dutch, Afrikaans and English but with particular emphasis on H.P. Lamont's War, Wine and Women and Stuart Cloete's Turning Wheels (1937). The analysis of all these fictional reconstructions focuses on the portrayal of the Voortrekkers found in them. Much attention is also paid to the historical contexts in which the two principal works in question were written and the great controversies which they occasioned because both of their authors had had the temerity to challenge the long-established myth of the heroic Voortrekkers, one of the holiest of the iconic cows in the barns of their Afrikaner descendants. Chapter I, "Introduction", is a statement of the purpose of the study, its place in the context of analyses of the history of Afrikaner nationalism, its structure and the sources on which it is based. Chapter II, "The Unfolding of the Myth of the Heroic Voortrekkers", traces its evolution from the 1830s to the 1930s and explores how both English-speaking South Africans and Afrikaners, especially Gustav PrelIer, purposefully contributed to it. Also highlighted in this chapter is the significance of the Great Trek Centenary and the events leading up to it in the middle and late 1930s in intensifying Afrikaner nationalism. Chapter III, "The Heroic Myth in Early Dutch and Afrikaans Novels about the Great Trek", considers especially how these works were used as vehicles for placing before Afrikaners the historic virtues of their ancestors both to provide models for emulation and to stimulate their ethnic pride. Chapter IV, "Sympathetic English Reconstructions of the Great Trek", deals with two novels, Eugenie de Kalb's Far Enough and Francis Brett Young's They Seek a Country, both of which reproduced the heroic myth to some extent. Chapter V, "Rendezvous with Disaster? The South Africa in Which Lamont Wrote War, Wine and Women" establishes the context of intensifying Afrikaner nationalism which this immigrant from the United Kingdom encountered in the late 1920s when he accepted a lectureship at the University of Pretoria and why this context was hostile to a novel which was critical of Afrikanerdom. Chapter VI, "Wa1~ Wine and Women: Its General Context and Commentary on South Africa" explores how this work, conceived as a "war book" dealing with the 1914-1918 conflict in Europe, depicted both Englishmen and Afrikaners negatively. Chapter VII, "Academic Freedom vs. Afrikaner Nationalism: The Consequential Strife over War, Wine and Women" deals with the hostile reception of Lamont's pseudonymously published novel, the physical assault on him and his dismissal from his lectureship at the University of Pretoria. Chapter VIII, "The Rhetoric of Revenge in Lamont's Halcyon Days in Africa", explores how the author, after relurning lo England, used his pen as a weapon for striking back al his Afrikaans foes in South Africa. Chapter IX, "Stuart Cloete's Portrayal of the Voortrekkers in Turning U'heels", focuses on the portrayal of various ethnic types in his gallery of characters. Chapter X, "The Con troversy over Turning U'heels", handles the hostile and apparently orchestrated reaction to Cloete's book and how it was eventually banned. Chapter XI, "Conclusion: Quod Eral Demonstrandum", summarises several thematic findings which a detailed examination of the novels in their historical context yields.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie verhandeling is 'n interdissiplinêre studie van verskeie historiese romans waarin daar in 'n mindere ofmeerdere mate op die Groot Trek gefokus word en wat geskryfis tussen die 1840's en die 1930's in Nederlands, Afrikaans en Engels, maar met die klem op H. P. Lamont se War, Wine and Wamen en Stuart Cloete se Turning Wheels (1937) in die besonder. Die analise van al hierdie fiktiewe rekonstruksies fokus op die uitbeelding van die Voortrekkers daarin. Daar word ook in die besonder aandag gegee aan die historiese kontekste waarbinne hierdie twee hoofwerke geskryfis en die groot polemiek daarrondom, omdat beide outeurs die vermetelheid gehad het om die lank reeds gevestigde mite van die heldhaftige Voortrekkers, een van die heiligste ikoniese koeie in die skure van die Afrikanernageslagte, uit te daag. Hoofstuk I, "Introduction", stel die doel van die studie, waar dit staan in die konteks van analises van die geskiedenis van Afrikanernasionalisme, die skruktuur en die bronne waarop dit gebaseer is. Hoofstuk II, "The Unfolding of the Myth of the Herioc Voortrekkers", volg die evolusie van Afrikanernasionalisme van die 1830's tot die 1930's en ondersoek op beide Engelssprekende Suid-Afrikaners en Afrikaners, veral Gustav Preller, doelgerig hiertoe bygedra het. In hierdie hoofstuk word daar ook beklemtoon hoe betekenisvol die honderdjarige herdenking van die Groot Trek en die gebeure wat daartoe aanleiding gegee het gedurende die middel- en laat 1930's, bygedra het tot die versterking van Afrikanernasionalisme. Hoofstuk III, "The Heroic Myth in Early Dutch and Afrikaans Novels about the Great Trek", bespreek veral hoe hierdie werke gebruik is om aan Afrikaners die historiese deugsaamheid van hulle voorvaders voor te hou en wat as voorbeelde moet dien wat nagestreef moet word en om hulle etniese trots te stimuleer. Hoofstuk IV, "Sympathetic English Reconstructions of the Great Trek", bespreek twee romans, Far Enough van Eugenie de Kalb en TheySeek a Country van Francis Brett Young, wat altwee die heroïse mite in 'n sekere mate herproduseer. Hoofstuk V, "Rendezvous with Disaster? The South Africa in Which Lamont Wrote War, Wine and Women" vestig die konteks van groeiende Afrikanernasionalisme wat hierdie immigrant van die Verenigde Koninkryk in die laat 1920's teëgekom het toe hy 'n lektoraat aan die Universiteit van Pretoria aanvaar het, en hoekom hierdie konteks vyandiggesind was teenoor 'n roman wat krities was teenoor die Afrikanerdom. Hoofstuk VI, "Wa1~ Wine and Women: Its General Context and Commentary on South Africa" ondersoek hoe hierdie werk, beskou as 'n "oorlogsboek" wat handeloor die 1914-1918 konflik in Europa, beide die Engelse en die Afrikaners in 'n negatiewe lig gestel het. Hoofstuk VII, "Academic Freedom vs. Afrikaner Nationalism: The Consequential Strife over War, Wine and Women" skenk aandag aan die vyandige ontvangs van Lamont se roman (gepubliseer onder 'n skuilnaam), die fisieke aanval op hom en sy ontslag as lektor van die Universiteit van Pretoria. Hoofstuk VIII, "The Rhetoric of Revenge in Lamont's Halcyon Days inAfrica", ondersoekhoe die outeur, na hy na Engeland teruggekeer het, sy pen as wapen gebruik het in 'n teenaanval op sy Afrikaanse vyande in Suid-Afrika. Hoofstuk IX, "Stuart Cloete's Portrayal of the Voortrekkers in Turning Wheels", fokus op die uitbeelding van verskeie etniese tipes in sy gallery karakters. Hoofstuk X, "The Controversy over Tumng Wheels", bespreek die vyandige en klaarblyklike georkestreerde reaksie op Cloete se boek, en hoe dit uiteindelik verban is. Hoofstuk XI, "Conclusion: Quod Era! Demonstrandum", bied 'n opsomming van verskei tematiese bevindinge aan, wat deur 'n gedetaileerde ondersoek van die romans opgelewer is.

In this essay we demonstrate how the burgeoning field of South African crime fiction has responded to the birth and development of a democratic, post-apartheid South African state. First, an overview of South African crime fiction in the last 20 years is presented. Then the essay presents an argument for South African crime fiction to be regarded as the ‘new political novel’, based on its capacity for socio-political analysis. We use Deon Meyer, arguably South Africa’s most popular and successful crime fiction author, as an exemplar for our argument. In the following section, the genresnob debate and the resurgence of such terms as ‘lowbrow’ and ‘highbrow’ are considered in relation to crime fiction and the role it plays in the socio-cultural arena of post-apartheid South Africa. We conclude with a comment on the significance of popular literary genres for democracy and critical discourses which underpin that democracy. The essay shows that crime fiction is a strong tool for socio-political analysis in a democratic South Africa, because it promotes critical discourse in society, despite being deemed lowbrow or ideologically ambiguous.

This article is a review of a burgeoning literary genre, South African crime fiction, as much as it is a review of specific texts. First, for the purposes of contextualisation and historicisation, an overview of the primary literature is provided. Then criticism and theories of extant crime fiction in mainly the UK and USA, of which South African crime fiction is a descendent, are outlined. This outline is followed by descriptions of two sub-genres (the crime thriller novel and the literary detective novel). Two exemplar texts, Devil’s Peak (2007) and Lost Ground (2011) are then reviewed. The artistic merit of the respective sub-genres and their capacity for social analysis is also considered. The article ends with some brief inferences and the claim that the credibility and heft of this popular literary genre have been established

This thesis examines the role that speculative fiction plays in imagining the city spaces of the future. Considering the rapid pace of change that has marked post-apartheid South Africa as an impetus for emerging literary traditions within contemporary South African speculative fiction, the argument begins by sketching the connections between South Africa's transition to democracy and the emerging speculative texts which mark this period. Positioning speculative fiction as an umbrella term that incorporates a wide selection of generic traditions, the thesis engages with dystopian impulses, science fiction, magical realism and apocalyptic rhetoric. Through theoretical explication, close reading, and textual comparison, the argument initiates a dialogue between genre theory and urban theory as a means of (re)imagining and (re)mapping the city spaces of post-apartheid Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Includes bibliographical references.<br>This thesis explores some of the memories and recollections of World War Two in South Africa today. It aims to address an absence of work done on South Africa in relation to World War Two, memory and commemoration. This thesis is as much about the diverse processes of remembrance and recollection as it is about the war itself and assumes that memories of the war can be located in different media. Accordingly the chapters herein are each delegated a media form, from newspapers, literature, memorials, film and photography to oral interviews, in which ‘memories’ of the war are located. The arrangement of the chapters mimics the history of the war’s remembrance in South Africa as it moved from public to private remembrance. This follows the historical context of South Africa from the war period until approximately mid-2013. The white Anglophone experience is given prominence in approaching the subject of commemoration and World War Two in Cape Town. This is motivated by Vivian Bickford- Smith and John Lambert, both of whom recognise it as South Africa’s ‘forgotten identity.’1 Nevertheless other non-white memories of the war are also discussed as important to understanding South Africa’s relationship to it. In particular, the sons and daughters of the Cape Corps briefly feature in this thesis in recognition of a greater Anglophone identity that is not necessarily bound by race. Black recruits are also touched upon as an oft-forgotten group involved in the war. Accordingly this thesis emphasizes that although some experiences and memories were shaped by race, there were others that transcended it. Lastly the different media forms discussed within this thesis are suggestive of technology’s advances and its impact on the way memories are stored and retrieved. Ultimately, despite the fact that the war has fallen out of public remembrance in Cape Town today, this thesis concludes that it remains important to a few groups and individuals for whom it continues to inform a sense of history and identity.

Prevailing critical practice tends to view South African literature as comprising a number of writing communities in the country whose works and concerns have little to do with each other. Hence literary works in English and in Afrikaans, by black and by white South African writers are rarely considered in relation to one another. Literary criticism in South Africa has, in other words, proceeded along much the same lines as the political determinations of the country, dividing the literature into distinct racial and linguistic camps. While I have chosen to consider South African short fiction with reference to different major writing communities in the country, an underlying principle of this study is the essential unity of South African literature. Works in different languages and by writers of different social groups are seen as comprising a single national literature. Consequently I have followed the practice throughout of frequently drawing comparisons between stories by writers in English and in Afrikaans, by black and by white writers. One sees as the study develops how works by writers in all of the communities are closely related to one another. Black and white South African writers share a host of common concerns in their works. The short story has been chosen as the genre for consideration in this work because it is a predominant literary form in all of the major South African communities. It has been at the cutting edge of developments in South African prose fiction since the 194-0's. The short story sharply illustrates not only historical and social changes in the country but also changing patterns within the writing communities. The historical context of this study is that of the short period of ascendency of Afrikaner nationalism during the 1950's and 1960's and the indications of this movement's gradual disintegration and collapse during the 1970's and 1980's. This is seen against the emergence of African nationalism as the most forceful adversary of white racism in South Africa. The section on the white short fiction in English takes as one of its key points of examination the notable range and diversity in its works; this is directly linked with the fact that this community is at a remove from the central historical clash between Afrikaner and African nationalisms. The short fiction of Afrikaners is considered in two phases, that of the 1950's and 1960's, and then from the 1970's on. In the first phase the writers were striving to modernize their prose tradition and to a great extent abandoned pressing local issues for an involvement in the fashionable trends and concerns of contemporary European and American writers. By the 1970's, however, Afrikaans writing returns to share the concerns of English South African writers about the ravages of apartheid in the region. Black short fiction of this era is viewed as dealing with a central tension in the black community: namely, the threat of violence against traditional values of communalism. The study concludes with an appraisal of the literature of apartheid assessing its place within African and international literary traditions. The principal writers discussed in this study are: Hennie Aucamp, Chris Barnard, H.C. Bosman, M.C. Botha, Breyten Breytenbach, Jack Cope, Achmat Dangor, Abraham De Vries, Ahmed Essop, Nadine Gordimer, Henriette Grove, P.J. Haasbroek, Bessie Head, Christopher Hope, Dan Jacobson, Elsa Joubert, Alex La Guma, E.M. Macphail, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, James Matthews, John Miles, Casey Motsisi, Es'kia Mphahlele, Mbulelo Mzamane, Njabulo Ndebele, Welma Odendaal, Alan Paton, Jan Rabie, Richard Rive, Sheila Roberts, Barney Simon, Can Themba, and Peter Wilhelm.

The student protests in South Africa (2015–2017) triggered shifts in pedagogical practices, such that by 2020 many South African higher education institutions had begun to make some concrete moves towards more socially just pedagogies within teaching and learning (Quinn, 2019; Jansen, 2019). In March 2020, however, South Africa went into lockdown as a result of Covid-19, and all higher education teaching became remote and non-synchronous. This paper reports on the effects of the move to remote teaching on the implementation of a new decolonial ‘emplaced’ pedagogy at one South African university. The idea of emplacement draws on the careful incorporation of social space as a teaching tool within the social sciences, such that students can situate themselves as reflexive, embodied persons within concrete spaces and communities which carry particular social, economic and political histories. This paper draws on data from course evaluations and student assignments, as well as a description of course design, to argue that many of the benefits of careful emplacement in historical and contemporary context can happen even where students are never in the same physical spaces as one another or their lecturers. This relies, however, on students’ having access to both the necessary technology and to an environment conducive to learning.