In his editorial in this recent issue of ALT, Eldred Jones outlines the literary challenges South and Southern Africans face in the post-independence, post-apartheid years:

“The dismantling of legal apartheid has liberated the culture and with it the languages and literatures of South Africa into the outside world. It has also freed the country itself from a monumental block which limited the creative imagination, forcing it into a posture of reaction against an all-pervasive, oppressive government... The coincidence of protest politics and protest literature has been overtaken by events. Now shorn of its inhibitions, the literature must assume a wider and deeper responsibility.”

Meanwhile, in post-independence Zimbabwe, the works of contemporary writers, Jones further writes, face “uncomfortable questions of inequality -privileged versus under-privileged, men versus women, black on black oppression.”

These particular issues, including many others, in South and Southern African literature are carefully examined by the contributors in this volume.

ABOUT THE EDITOR
ELDRED DUROSIMI JONES & MARJORIE JONES were both editors of Africa Literature Today from 1968 to 2001.

CATEGORY
Cultural Studies/AFRICA