Writing In The Shadow of Apartheid (by: Gcobani Qambela)

South Africa has endured and survived over 300 centuries of colonial rule and just over 40 years of apartheid rule which censored and favoured particular and often representationally biased narratives on or about South Africa and in the process silencing many opposing accounts not deemed in the interest of the country.



The gradual fall of apartheid in the late 1980’s and the eventual first democratic elections on the 27th of April 1994 unlocked a new a new market for the narration of the South African struggle to the rest of the world, largely ushered in by the first post-apartheid President of the Country, Nelson Mandela’s ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, an autobiographical account of his life in the struggle for the liberation of South Africa.


However as South Africa steadily rehabilitated itself from the world as a global pariah to one of the most successful transition stories in world history and (re)positioned itself as a leading nation both in Africa and the world, we witnessed a shift in the world interest from its apartheid past, to a new curiosity about the ‘new’ life in the now largely integrated South Africa. This is an opportunity many young writers from across all racial lines took up with great exhilaration....

Kindly see the ORIGINAL ARTICLE at: http://www.thiis.co.za/culture/writing-in-the-shadow-of-apartheid/