Botsotso 19: Fiction

Description

The Botsotso literary journal started in 1996 as a monthly 4 page insert in the New Nation, an independent anti-apartheid South African weekly and reached over 80,000 people at a time – largely politisized black workers and youth – with a selection of poems, short stories and short essays that reflected the deep changes taking place in the country at that time. Since the closure of the New Nation in 1999, the journal has evolved into a stand-alone compilation featuring the same mix of genres, and with the addition of photo essays and reviews. The Botsotso editorial policy remains committed to creating a mix of voices which highlight the diverse spectrum of South African identities and languages, particularly those that are dedicated to radical expression and examinations of South Africa's complex society.
Botsotso 19: Fiction. True, False and Fantastical includes thirty-one pieces by a wide range of southern African writers accompanied with photographs by Moshe Sekete Potswana. The edition focuses on fiction that covers a wide range of themes and situations: Thabisani Ndlovu’s “Making a Woman” is about patriarchy and rising feminism in a Zimbabwean village, Mpumelelo Cilibe’s “Keep the Ship Moving!” is set during the emergence of the first trade union at a Ford motor plant in the late 1970’s in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and Muthal Naidoo’s anthropomorphic satire “Stone Walls” is about exploitative friendships. Botsotso 19 displays the art of storytelling in many forms and styles and moves the reader through a wide range of emotions.

Sujets

• Littérature Africaine
• Littérature Africaine

Informations

• Publié par: Botsotso Publishing
• Date de parution: 29 décembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781990922039
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 20 Mo

Extrait

Fiction True, False and Fantastical

BOTSOTSO19

First published by Botsotso in 2018

Box 30952 Braamfontein 2017 Email:[e-mail] Website: www. botsotso.org.za

The stories © the writers themselves

Photographs © Moshe Sekete Potsana Cell: [phone]

ISBN 978-0-9947081-3-7

Editors: Allan Kolski Horwitz, Siphiwe ka Ngwenya, Mboneni Ike Muila Design, layout and make up: Vivienne Preston

Botsotso would like to thank the National Arts Council of South Africa for supporting the publication of this anthology.

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B ehind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. Truth in art is not any correspondence between the essential idea and the accidental existence; it is not the resemblance of shape to shadow, or of the form mirrored in the crystal to the form itself; it is no echo coming from a hollow hill, any more than it is a silver well of water in the valley that shows the moon to the moon and Narcissus to Narcissus.

Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.

Oscar Wilde (‘De Profundis’)

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C ONTENTS page On Language –Edîtorîal 1 Alexandra Wallace –Abîgaîl George 11 Killing the Goat –Davîd Kerr 20 A Letter to the Saad Family –30Habîb Ahmadzadeh Lelik –Jolynne Phîlîps 36 Making a Woman –40Thabîsanî Ndlovu Light Purple and a Bit Hazy –52Rîcky Groenewald Love from Colombo –57J Kaval Sex is the Opium of the People –Monde Nxele 62 Baziana –Jean Francoîs Couvadîo 69 Black Boy Fly87– Thabîso Tshawo Goodbye Sokhulu –89Andîle Cele Memories of Her –Elîzabeth Joss 95 The Pregnancy –98Monde Mdodana (Extract from)Keep the Ship Moving!105– Mpumelelo Cîlîbe Mr Mothlalogo –119Itumeleng Molei Face the Nation –131Afrîca Boso The Eye of the Storm– John Sîmon 137 Stone Walls –Muthal Naîdoo 141 Psychodelic– Allan Kolskî Horwîtz 153 Dust –Dîna Segal 162 An Ugly Name is a Curse –Lungîle Lethola 166 Pinky, the Side Chick –Brîan Khumalo 169 The Train Home –173Shanîce Ndlovu Two Soldiers –179Collîns Chînhanho Thole Utoponil –Martîn Labuschagne 193 Identity –Joyce Greenop 200 The New House Wife– Hyun-Jung Anna Kîm 204 The Matter of my Grandfather’s Ghia –Rudî Benadé 207 He Wakes Up– Bîlly Rîvers 214 The Parlour Trick– Estelle van der Spuy 218 (Extract from)The Politician –222Colîn Jîggs Smuts

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E ditorial

It’s all about language

“The historical consciousness, through the feeling that it creates, constitutes the safest and most solid shield of the cultural security of a people. This is why every people seeks only to know and to deeply live their true history, and to transmit its memory to their descendants. The most essential thing is for people to rediscover the thread that connects them to their ancestral past.” Cheikh Anta Diop

“Most South African students of applied language agree that the most difficult obstacle in the way of the rapid development of the African languages is what Ngugi wa Thiong’o has called “the colonised mind” — that is to say, the fact that the vast majority of black people simply do not believe that their languages can or should be used for higher-order functions even though they cherish them and are completely committed to maintaining them in the primary spheres of the family, the community and the church.” Neville Alexander

Are we all agreed that language is the key means for human communi- cation? And that being able to use a common language is vital in terms of generating, understanding and participating in the worldviews and value systems that societies create in order to satisfy individual and collective needs. And that, because this is the case, language choice, knowledge and status are critical in giving expression to the develop- ment of human culture and in so doing make possible the exchange of ideas and the spread of economic trade.

Now in Africa alone there are more than 2,000 languages with sev- eral being spoken in more than one country viz Swahili (the main language of Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda) and Arabic (spoken all over north and some of central and east Africa). Other languages spoken by many millions include Berber and Somali (north and east Africa), Oromo and Am-

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