Panel on South African Fiction and Autobiography

Extract

I will not say much about autobiography in South Africa because it’s a given. It’s the kind of thing that has emerged naturally from South African conditions, and in fact, we are seeing it emerge all over Africa as a literature of self-definition. It has become a peculiar genre in Africa, a genre that depicts the very social conditions that have given rise to it.

My remarks this morning will be concerned mostly with the novel. This is a more problematic genre in South Africa than in other parts of Africa, and we may need a long time to debate and discuss the issues surrounding it.

Before I go on, however, I would like to add to what Mazisi said this morning, even though it is not connected with my talk. I want to say this by way of preface. Since we are talking about South Africa, we need to know that we are talking about African people rather than about ethnic groups, rather than about “tribes.”