Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

C'onstuzrct~ons of Protest Poetqj
unequal nature of academic-student relations raises the spectre of the 'Nat
lnfonnant'". The ovelworked, racist construct of the 'Native infonilant' has long be
on Westen1 bourgeois notions of artistic fonn:
pilloried by Wally Serote (1972:9) in The Actual Dialogue', and by Watsol
colleague Peter Horn (1991:75). While F-Tom's title 'A Vehement Expostulatio
parodies upper class English histrionics, Horn's speaker represents a caricatu
designed to challenge the hypocritical demands conservative liberals make of th
We are not going to be told how to re-live our t'cclings. pains and aspirations
by anybody who speaks from the platform of his own rickety culture. We'll
write our poerns in narrative form; we'll write journalistic pieces in poet~y
forni; we'll dramatise our poetic experiences; we'll poeticise our llistorical
'Native Informants' by way of securing their material, social and psychic comfort: dramas. We will do all these things at the same time.
Tliis Meddem. is thc situation as 1 see it:
We live in a black-out, 1 can'tpaint itwhite
with words. But for ready cash there arc do~ninees
[...I
So what do you expect. Mcddem'?'I'hat I write
soothing verse
to send afew rnillion trusting souls to sleep'!
110 yo11 iriiply that 1 cion't do my duty,
if1 am desperate? Or that 1 should writc about
ciaisics?
1990s the institutional power of the conservative liberals remains secure, and
seminate minority values and to naturalise their continuing
domination. This has been evident in the reception of Albie
urselves for freedom' (De Kok & Press 1990: 19-29), and, in
e to Sachs' (1990:19) partly serious, partly tongue-in-cheek
mbers should be banned from swing that culture is a weapon of
framing statement and his subsequent reminders that his
Or do you. Meddetn, undcr these circumstances.
cxpect nie
to writc ~ cll balanced. polished verse'! About wlrat?
Arruics? Revolutions? Bloodshed? Apartl~eici?
audience of ANC cadres in exile, many of the beneficiaries of
onservatives) used the paper to support their contention that
cal. Therefore, instead of cautioning cadres against the use of
r action, Sachs' words were used to quell politically-sensitive
Or- a hilarious sonnet about our irnpcnding peace?
ittle question of taking into account positions that challenged
I'raise be tllc absent Lord! You never kno~v. ies (De Kok & Press 1990:30-35) and Malange et a/ (1 990:99onc
clay I might beconic responsible arld writc
some evqliisitc and co~itrivcd poeln
about my colnplicatcd sot11 (Horn 1991 :75)".
1995, Rolf Solberg was still eliding Sachs' point in his comment
ted putting a ban on the Struggle as a theme for writers'
8: 181). This was stated during an interview with Wally Serote,
111 contrast to the fears of conservative liberal critics like Watson,
(1990:62) takes a more open and constructive approach consistent with democr
process, where standards evolve through contestation. In a talk given to the Ellg
Acadeniy of South Africa in 1956 Njabulo Ndebele (1 99 1 : 10 1) characterised
chauvinisln that drove its members to t ~y to expand the influence of the Ian
retaining control over it as the 'art of giving away the bride while insisting t
belongs to you'. Ndebele was responding in particular to Butler's (1985) ess
and the English in the new South Africa'. The writer and anthologist
Mutloatse (1 980:5) was equally assertive in his refusal to entertain liberal p
estion regarding 'protest literature' in the following way: 'I don't
test poetry. It is a very unfortunate category and name'
181). It is symptomatic of the continuing hegemony of
scholarship in South Africa that there is only an uneasy
veness in response to such questionable constructions. Clearly the maps (i.e. the
ntations) of the conservative liberal hegemony cannot be mistaken for the
n the maps of the ancient cartographers who thought that there
the region of southern Africa. Scholarship that addresses the
literature with greater rigour and ideological clarity is needed if we are to
about the subject than the inclinations of its professional observers.
" Sec Spivak (1990:66). Watson's ventriloquism further confinns the accuracy of Spiv
(1 987: 107) and Trinh Minh-l~a's (1989:67) portrayals of the cynical ways in which i~ltellec
discourse ciiii be used to conimandeer oppressed people.
''
I~Iorn first publ~shed the poem in his 1979 anthology Silence in.lc~ilii.
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Department of English
University of Durban-Westville