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Title: | Zulu Writing: The Constraints and the Possibilities, with Special Reference to Osibindigidi Bongqondongqondo and Ikhiwane Elihle by Lawrence Molefe |
Author: | Gunner, Elizabeth |
Year: | 1988 |
Periodical: | African Languages and Cultures |
Volume: | 1 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 149-162 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | Zulu language novels Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Literature, Mass Media and the Press |
About persons: | John Langalibalele Dube (1871-1946) Rolfes Robert Reginald Dhlomo (1901-1971) Benedict Wallet Vilakazi (1906-1947) Lawrence Molefe |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1771697 |
Abstract: | The 1950s have been referred to as 'the golden age of Zulu literature' in South Africa. But before this decade, writers such as R.R.R. Dhlomo, B.W. Vilakazi and J.L. Dube had marked out areas of preoccupation and created various forms of dialogic interaction with their present and their past. The era of the fifties also was a season of false promise. The 'Drum' writers, on the whole, chose exile, and writing in Zulu became in time more inward-looking and lost its sense of existing in a dialectical relationship with its society and its readership. The imposition of Bantu Education in 1953 was possibly the cause of a great plethora of less challenging material. Yet the examples of the early masters remained and Zulu as a written, literary language continued, particularly in the form of the novel and the short story. This is illustrated by Lawrence Molefe's 'Osibindigidi bongqondongqondo' (The brave and the clever ones, 1985) and 'Ikhiwane elihle' (The beautiful fig, 1985). Bibliogr., notes, ref. |