These writers — with the exception of Abrahams and Hutchinson, whose books are banned individually — are under total ban now, and we cannot read what they have written, nor shall we be able to read what they may write in the future. One whose name I have not mentioned yet, Lewis Nkosi, is probably the greatest loss to us of them all. This young man, who left his home in South Africa on an exit permit in 1965, published a book of essays entitled Home and Exile. I took the opportunity to buy and read the essays while on a visit to Zambia, for Lewis Nkosi is on the list of exiles whose word and work are under that blanket ban of April this year. The book contains critical writing of a standard that has never before been achieved by a South African writer, white or black. Here is the sibling Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, F. R. Leavis we have never had. If the ban on his work did not prevent me quoting from two of the essays — the first a brilliant exploration of the conflict between truth as the individual has laboured to discover it for himself and truth as the glib public proposition dictated by the contingencies of political life; the second a cool, erudite look at fiction written by black South Africans — it would not be necessary for anyone to take my word for it. The book is divided into three sections. ‘Home’ includes an autobiographical chronicle of the fifties in Johannesburg that might perhaps have been entitled ‘Know the White Man’, had Nkosi with his wit and candour not long since outgrown the categorical approach. ‘Exile’ contains two fascinating encounters with New York that ring with the overwrought sensibility of the stranger in town. ‘Literary’, the outstanding section, is devoted to criticism of life and letters. The book clearly does not seek to present final answers on the author’s behalf, but deals with questions proposed to him by exile and the perspective of foreign countries. It is a long hard look at South Africa, at himself, at all of us, black and white, among whom he belongs.
In 1963 I wrote about the proliferating forms of restriction of free expression in our country, in general, and the effect of the (then) new Publications and Entertainments Act in particular. I pointed out that most of the writings of black South Africans who had recorded the contemporary experience of their people were banned; the process is now completed. No association of writers or intellectuals, English or Afrikaans, has protested against this virtual extinction of black and Coloured South African writers. One can only repeat, with a greater sense of urgency, the questions I asked then: These books were written in English and they provide the major part of the only record, set down by talented and self-analytical people, of what black South Africans, who have no voice in parliament or any say in the ordering of their life, think and feel about their lives and those of their fellow white South Africans. Can South Africa afford to do without these books?
And can South Africans boast of a ‘literature’ while, by decree, in their own country, it consists of some of the books written by its black and white, Afrikaans and English-speaking writers?
— 1966
A MORNING IN THE LIBRARY: 1975
Recently I spent a strange morning in a library.
It was the Reference Section of the Johannesburg Municipal Library; I had entered, made my request to a solicitously-attentive librarian, followed her to a glass-fronted case, waited while she unlocked it and removed a large, looseleafed volume for me.
Now I sat down with the other users of the library at one of the drawing-room-glossy tables. It was good to find myself among people of all colours, absorbed in their reading; faded and ridiculous, those days not long ago, when to work here and take advantage of the courteous and knowledgeable help of the librarians whites kept for themselves. A crumbling at the edges of the apartheid fortress had at least taken place. Now all my fellow Johannesburgers were surrounded by books. Some had piled a lair against distraction; some stared at an array set out like a hand of patience. A young girl opposite me was making notes, hovering from source to source above spread volumes. Quietly, with the creaking of boots or the lisp of crepe rubber, the offices of this temple of learning were performed as people went back and forth between the shelves, taking and replacing books, more books.
I alone had only one before me. It occupied me the whole morning; it was, in a sense, the Book of Books, whose word is set up against that of all others. My book was jacobsen’s Index of Objectionable Literature, the bible of South African censorship. And so, while the search for knowledge, know-how, spiritual enlightenment, and the pleasures of poetry went on about me — like most writers, I am as practised a squinter as I am an eavesdropper, and I noted Wittgenstein, Teach Yourself Accountancy, Pascal’s Pensées, Seventeenth Century English Verse—I read on down the lists of banned books in Jacobsen.
There is a great deal of trash, of course. Paperbacks of the kind that are twirled round on wire stands in chewing-gumand-smokes shops and airports; the titles of the banned ones don’t sound any different from those I see on sale everywhere. The sheer volume of sub-literature swamps the resources of censorship, in that category. And there are books I suppose we could be said to be lucky to do without? Dr Rubin never gets a chance to tell us Everything We Always Wanted to Know About Sex and Were Afraid to Ask.
The ‘highest literary judgment’ South Africans are constantly assured is a qualification of the government-appointed censors who consider literature, plays, and films apparently is just as good for extra-literary purposes: the censors are expected to bring this judgment to bear upon and indeed have banned T-shirts bearing saucy legends, a black fist, and even the peace sign. Let us not bother to recall the famous pantyhose packet; there was also a glass that, on being filled with liquid, showed the figure of a nude woman. There they are, listed in Jacobsen.
But it’s easy to laugh at the South African censors. Our amusement, their solemn ridiculousness — these have not undermined their power. Indeed, as we know, the renewed and tightened censorship legislation (it was first imposed in the sixties) that came into force on April 1 this year protects the newlychosen personnel both from ridicule and from exposure should their decisions be challenged. The right of appeal to a court of law against bannings has been taken from writers, and it is now an offence against the law to criticise members of the special Appeal Board set up within the censorship organization to hear appeals against decisions made by its own regional censorship committees.
Most titles my finger was running down, page after page, were banned by the old Publications Control Board, before April. They constitute virtually the entire oeuvre of black South African fiction writers, essayists, and some poets, including Lewis Nkosi, Alex La Guma, Ezekiel Mphahlele and Dennis Brutus, and individual works by myself, Jack Cope, Mary Benson, C. J. Driver, Andre Brink, and others, black and white.
Bans on British, American, and European writers include works by Kingsley Amis, Vladimir Nabokov, Bernard Malamud, Norman Mailer, John O’Hara, John Masters, James Baldwin, Edna O’Brien, John Updike, Frederic Raphael, Joseph Heller, Robert Penn Warren, Gore Vidal, Han Suyin, James Purdy, William Burroughs, Erica Jong, Langston Hughes, Doris Lessing, Paul Theroux, Truman Capote, Alan Sillitoe, Sinclair Lewis, William Styron, Alison Lurie, Phillip Roth, Jakov Lind, J. P. Donleavy, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jack Kerouac. Translations include books by Joseph Kessel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Romain Gary, Alberto Moravia, Carlos Fuentes, Roger Peyrefitte, Jean Genet, Francoise Mallet-Joris, Junichiro Tanazaki, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Colette, Nikos Kazantzakis, Jean Cocteau, Alfred Jarry, Vasco Pratolini, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marguerite Duras, Guy de Maupassant, and Pierre Louys.