Black consciousness poets in South Africa, 1967-1980, with special reference to Mongane Serote and Sipho Sepamla

The Sharpeville, Langa, and Vanderbijl Park massacres of 21 March 1960 were an important watershed in the political and cultural history of South Africa. Political persecution and cultural repression followed. Censorship and the imprisonment, banning, and exile of leading Black literary figures retarded the growth of South African literature between i960 and 1966. Many Black writers of this period either ended up in exile or published their work outside South Africa. With the rise of Black Consciousness in 1967, a new group of writers emerged in South Africa, the majority of whom were poets. This study deals with the poets of the Black Consciousness era between 1967 and 1980, with special reference to the two leading poets of the period: Mongane Serote and Sipho Sepamla. Chapter One reviews existing critical literature on Black writers from South Africa; places the work of the Black Consciousness poets in its historical, political, cultural and literary context; and gives an exposition of Black Consciousness mainly through Steve Biko's writings, which were seminal in the development of writers of the Black Consciousness era. Chapters Two and Three are detailed studies of Serote and Sepamla respectively, tracing the development of their ideas through their poems and arguing that Black Consciousness provided the main springboard for their work. Chapter Four traces the poetic renaissance after Sharpeville to the emergence of Dollar Brand as a poet, provides a survey of the remaining major poets of the Black Consciousness era, and ends with a discussion of the Soweto poets who emerged in response to the Soweto massacres of 16 June 1976. Chapter Five reasseses the impact of Black Consciousness on the poets who emerged in the period covered in this study, summarizes the characteristics of their poetry, and evaluates their contribution to literature.