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.