South African Short Stories by Dr Nwabisa Bangeni from Stellenbosch University

In this mini lecture, Dr Nwabisa Bangeni from Stellenbosch University discusses short stories by Nadine Gordimer, Njabulo Ndebele, and the group of writers associated with the DRUM magazine in the 1950s. Dr Bangeni examines how their writing reflects the social and political complexities of life under apartheid. She explores the dynamics of interaction between the racialised, gendered and classed individuals represented in Nadine Gordimer’s ‘What You Were Dreaming’ (1985) through analysis of language and register. In her reading of Njabulo Ndebele’s ‘Uncle’ (1983), Dr Bangeni then explains how his 'rediscovery of the ordinary' represents the family, community, maturation and socialisation in Black townships. Finally, in her analysis of the stories and reports collected in The Drum Decade, Dr Bangeni outlines the role of DRUM in fostering a distinctive urban African voice, and recording and archiving the pressures of everyday life under an oppressive system.

Reading

Michael Chapman, ed. The Drum Decade: Stories from the 1950s (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012)

Nadine Gordimer, Jump and Other Stories (London: Bloomsbury, 1991)

Njabulo Ndebele, Fools and Other Stories (London: Pearson, 1987)