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Annual Report
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PRESIDENT’S REPORT – 13 AUGUST 2011
The English Academy of Southern Africa is 50 years old. In this our
Golden Jubilee year we reflect on what has been achieved and respond
creatively to the challenges and  opportunities which
now present themselves. But a Jubilee is not an internal occasion: it
calls for public celebration – for making more widely known what we are
and what we are doing. As we have much to be proud of, that should be a
pleasant task.
The Academy was founded in response to conflict and oppression.
English was explicitly under threat from a narrowly nationalist
government. But there were larger concerns with education, particularly
trends in Bantu Education, and with increasingly anti-democratic
practice. The direct critical engagement of our founders in 1961 has
borne fruit. The Academy is widely known among policy-makers, both for
sharing its depth of expertise and for being willing to take a stand.
One of our Vice-Presidents chairs the English National Language Body,
and a number of its members are from the Academy. We have members on
several Provincial Language Committees. And we have members on the
Council of the National English Literary Museum and on the Board of the
Friends of NELM. We are also known for our English Advisory Service,
Grammarphone, which is drawn on by public organisations and private
individuals. In a country which is seeking to do justice to a variety
of identities, many of which have been bruised by our national history,
it is not surprising that English, with its confident international
status, should sometimes be resented. However, the cogency of the
arguments which members present in public forums generally wins the
day. While we prefer to be engaged directly in language matters rather
than shouting from the sidelines, we have never been afraid to take a
stand. In our comment on the Protection of Information Bill and the
proposed Media Appeals Tribunal, we are clear that the Bill and the
mooted tribunal “are radically at odds with the spirit of liberation
enshrined in our national Constitution, and represent a drift back to
the oppressive spirit of the apartheid state” and we detail some of the
ways in which that is so. In our comments on the Draft Curriculum we
recognise the positive aspects while commenting on shortcomings, not
least in highlighting the contradiction between a regulatory ethos and
the flexibility which the methods proposed require for success.
Exco member, Malcolm Venter, made a personal submission on the
curriculum which was received in a very positive spirit and resulted in
a significant rethink on the examination. It is possible to be heard.
Our founders saw early on that an oppositional and defensive role
should be complemented by ways of recognising achievement and
encouraging best practice. The series of prestigious Academy prizes and
awards represents a range of initiatives taken over many years.
- The Thomas Pringle Award is our award of longest
standing, initiated in 1962. Two early awards were for newspaper
articles, but the pattern soon emerged of making the award in four
categories, since 1972 three each year. The awards for creative writing
(poetry, short story, one-act play) and for arts reviews are made
annually, and those for a literary article and an article on English in
Education alternate. Past winners include Nadine Gordimer, Sipho
Sepamla, Lionel Abrahams, Alan Paton, J M Coetzee, Douglas Livingstone,
Patrick Cullinan, Andries Walter Oliphant, Peter Strauss and Ivan
Vladislavic, not always in the category one might have expected.
Michiel Heyns, Stephen Watson and Leon de Kock are the 2010 winners.
The awards will be presented at the Golden Jubilee Conference in Cape
Town. After he had accepted the award, Stephen Watson died. His widow
has indicated her willingness to attend the ceremony and receive the
award on her late husband’s behalf.
- The Olive Schreiner Prize was started in 1964 to
recognise new or emerging literary talent in the three categories of
poetry, drama and prose. An award is made in each category once every
three years. The first award was to Anna M Louw for Twenty Days that
Autumn. It signifies the English Academy’s openness to what is good in
South African culture that it was the first to give an award to this
important Afrikaans novelist, albeit for a novel in English. The list
of winners who were new or emerging at the time the awards were made
includes Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali, Douglas Livingstone, Ahmed Essop,
Chris Mann, Ivan Vladislavic, Zakes Mda, Antjie Krog, John Kani,
Rustum Kozain and Michael Cawood Green. This year’s winner is Finuala
Dowling for poetry. As she is a Capetonian, the prize will be presented
at the Golden Jubilee Conference next month.
- The Percy Fitzpatrick Prize for Youth Literature was
an initiative of the South African Institute of Librarianship and
Information Science in 1970. It recognises work written for readers
between the ages of 10 and 14 – a hugely important age for engaging
young people as independent readers. The English Academy has been
responsible for the award since 2000. The prize is given every second
year. On our watch, winners have been Elana Bregin, Patricia Pinnock,
Michael Williams, Jenny Robson, and Darrel Bristow-Bovey. This year’s
winner is Andy Petersen for Daniel Fox and the Jester’s Legacy. The
award will add further texture and excitement to the Conference.
- Our most recent venture is the Sol Plaatje Prize for
translation from another South African official language into English.
The prize reflects our understanding of English as a South African
language in a multilingual and multicultural context, and is made for a
translation which has literary merit in its own right. The award is
made every second year. The first winner was Michiel Heyns for his
superb translation from Afrikaans of Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat. We
had hoped to make the second award for a translation from one of the
African languages, but to our great sadness the awardee has felt
obliged to withdraw his acceptance. Working across cultures sometimes
requires collaboration, and the issue, which we are in no position to
resolve, is the degree of recognition given to those who have
contributed in some way to the final work. A panel on translation at
the Golden Jubilee conference will pursue some of the issues involved.
Perhaps our most important heritage is a tradition of rigorous and
penetrating discussion, with the foundations laid and built on by
figures like Gwen Knowles-Williams, Guy Butler and Michael O’Dowd. This
heritage expresses itself in conferences, summer schools and symposia,
lectures and publications.
- The Academy’s founding conference was in 1961. The
third conference in 1969 was the first to raise the question of South
African writing in English and its place in schools and universities.
The proceedings of this historic conference are available in English
Studies in Africa 13.1 (1970). Other conferences have regularly opened
up the question of adequate access to English and of issues relating to
English teaching in schools. Linguistic and literary topics and the
media have also been themes, with a particular concern for English in
an African context and for keeping alive the traditions of debate and
reflection on which healthy democracies depend. The Golden Jubilee
Conference, to be held in Cape Town next month has the theme
Literature, Literacy and Language, and is drawing in speakers and
participants from around the world. Paradoxically, the quality of our
concern with the local makes what we do far more widely relevant.
- Widely appreciated summer schools and symposia have
been organised over the years in a number of centres. Last year I
challenged the Vice Presidents to organise special events in their
regions to mark our Golden Jubilee. The response has been imaginative
and enthusiastic. There have been three highly successful events
and two more are planned:
- In the Eastern Cape, Academy Vice President
Lawrence Wright organised a mini conference for teachers from rural
areas, building on the outstanding work of the Institute for the Study
of English in Africa. A core group of more than 20 selected
participants were engaged and inspired by the intensive programme, and
will, undoubtedly have more imaginative and practical resources to
bring to their classrooms as a result.
- Life Member Thayalan Reddy and Council member
Betty Govinden organised a lively half-day programme in Durban in
partnership with the Consulate of India. The event both celebrated the
150th anniversary of the birth of Rabindranath Tagore and demonstrated
the vitality of local writing and drama in English by Indian
South Africans. There were about 50 enthusiastic participants, several
of whom had not encountered the Academy before. The Consul of India
committed himself to working with the Academy in offering programmes of
this kind more frequently.
- Vice President Nandi Neeta organised the first
English Academy event in Venda, attended by members, staff of the
university and interested people. The theme was “The Pervasiveness of
Language across Disciplines: the Challenge for Second Language
Education.” Associated with this event was the 2011 Commemorative
Lecture on E'skia Mphahlele, delivered by Council member Nhlanhla
Maake. The Vice-Chancellor of the University was present for the whole
event. Nhlanhla Maake's lecture honoured the memory of E'skia
Mphahlele, emphasising his courage and integrity and pointing to the
threats to what he stood for in the current situation in South Africa.
It was very well received. The symposium made such an impression that
the lecturers from across disciplines present resolved to ask the
Academy to arrange monthly meetings at the University to pursue the
highly relevant issues that had been raised.
- Vice-President Colin Gardner convened a group of
members who have arranged an ambitious day symposium in
Pietermaritzburg on 3 September. The theme is the role of the media,
and a number of editors and key media figures have agreed to
participate.
- In Bloemfontein, Vice President Margaret Raftery
has organised a Golden Jubilee poetry reading with some surprise
elements in the programme for the fourth quarter.
What is particularly exciting about these events is that they provide a
basis for ongoing activity of the Academy in various regions.
- We have two major lectures each year: the English
Academy Percy Baneshik Lecture and the Commemorative Lecture. In last
year’s report, I mentioned that the Baneshik lecture would be given by
Mark Gevisser. He presented a fascinating illustrated lecture which
raised deep questions about the construction of identity. The audience
at the University of Pretoria included some who had ventured far from
home for the occasion, but disappointingly few from the Johannesburg
region. In the Cape we speak of the Liesbeek barrier beyond which be
dragons and terra incognita for Capetonians. I am told there is a
Jukskei barrier between Johannesburg and Pretoria. In the spirit of
multiculturalism perhaps we could have modest projects to surmount such
barriers. The 2011 Baneshik Lecture has still to be finalised.
Nhlanhla Maake’s highly relevant Commemorative Lecture in honour of the
late E’skia Mphahlele has already been mentioned. It is wonderful that
the Academy is able to demonstrate so clearly its engagement with the
issues of the day and its non-doctrinaire inclusiveness, helping build
the country in the spirit of our national Constitution.
- In earlier years, the Academy published Better than
they Knew, an account of the contributions of English-speaking South
Africans, and Guidelines on Terms and Punctuation. It has also
published conference proceedings and occasional papers. The most
significant publications currently are The English Academy Review:
Southern African Journal of English Studies (EAR), and Teaching English
Today (TET).
- EAR has a long history as a forum for academic
articles and debates. In 1985 when accreditation was a new requirement
for the recognition of publications by the Department of National
Education, EAR was immediately accepted on the grounds of its
established excellence. It has since become an internationally
recognised publication of standing, published on our behalf by UNISA
Press and Taylor and Francis. Every report I have seen attests to the
excellence of its editing and management under Council members Michael
Williams and Rosemary Gray. The acid test, however, is the intellectual
quality of what is attracted and published. As President, I have never
been disappointed. We can be really proud of our flagship publication.
- TET is a relatively new venture designed to
develop a community of practice among teachers. This pioneering
Web-based publication, initiated and sustained by Council member
Malcolm Venter, has attracted considerable interest, both in South
Africa and beyond our borders. One advantage of web publication is that
it can easily lead to comment and conversation. There are comments on
articles every week, mostly from South Africans, but about a third of
the “hits” are international and some comments and articles are being
attracted from far afield. Members have a role in establishing a new
publication of this kind, both by writing articles and soliciting
contributions and by helping find financial support.
Last year we took the bold move of opting to spend more than we were
bringing in annually to pave the way for attracting more support and
funding. This has meant that the office has been open full time and our
Administrator, Naomi Nkealah, has been able to do far more justice to
keeping in touch with members and prompting action. We are receiving
support. Rosemary Gray's meticulousness has won us considerable
credibility at the Lotto, and we have received funding for the
Conference and are awaiting a response to our request for five-year
funding for awards, expanding office functions and publishing TET. The
conference funding will enable us to do more than we had thought we
were going to manage. The other funding, if it is granted will allow us
to realise some of the plans which have fallen dormant. Having said
that, we cannot be dependent on chance. The English Academy has a very
modest endowment. It needs to build it steadily and carefully. Even the
President is unable to move as much as is desirable to support regions,
even on the lowest of budget airfares, and, as the event organisers
this year will confirm, we arrange major initiatives on what is a
shoestring, sometimes missing important opportunities as a
result. We have recently increased the amounts awarded in prizes,
but inflation over a long period has made what were generous amounts
now quite small. To illustrate the scale of the challenge, the Golden
Jubilee Bursary Fund needs to be able to award a significant amount
annually when the cost of higher education has risen to between R40
thousand and R65 thousand a year. We have been trying to develop a
rolling five-year budget to enable us to see the implications of trends
more clearly. It emphasises the need to grow our resources, both
solicited support for particular projects (like the Lotto grant) and
building our endowment through gifts and bequests. We must ask members
to be alert to possibilities of more support, and to remember the
Academy when making their wills.
An organisation's strength is its members. A few years ago we were
deeply concerned at our steeply ageing profile. Now it is a fact of
public life that moves to change often take six to ten years to start
rolling. I am happy to report that we have a number of new, younger
members and that our membership is growing in representativeness. The
challenge to all members is to keep that ball rolling, using both
public events and personal contact to build our complement. We also
need to recover our corporate membership. Let us get that ball rolling
as well.
Beyond the Jubilee we need to ask how we build on the growing interest
our events this year have aroused and how we keep up the impetus of
events which make the Academy a living presence in our regions. We need
to consider as an ongoing challenge how we engage with the
schools situation and the need to build a fuller sense of literacy as
capacity to make sense. We need to look further at how we can use the
world wide web and social media. There are interesting, exciting and
demanding challenges ahead.
It is time to conclude.
I am sad to report the passing of Past President Angus Rose and recent
Council member Clive Bruckmann, both stalwarts of the Academy. We
remember them with respect and pleasure and continue to appreciate
their example and their contribution to the life of the Academy. We
have also lost two fine creative talents this year, Patrick Cullinan
and Stephen Watson, both of whom still move and provoke us through
their writing.
There are endings and beginnings. One momentous new start concerns a
person connected to us all. Naomi Nkealah, our Administrator, graduated
PhD in English Literature at Wits in July. Our warm congratulations, Dr
Nkealah.
Finally, an organisation like the Academy flourishes through the
dedication of its staff and members and friends. To Naomi Nkealah and
Rosemary Gray, warm thanks for your efficient and proactive management
of the Office and the President. To the University of the
Witwatersrand, our gratitude for hosting us for so many years. To our
editors, Michael Williams and Rosemary Gray of EAR and Malcolm Venter
of TET unqualified appreciation for work of the highest quality. To the
Vice Presidents and other regional events organisers and to the Golden
Jubilee Conference Committee, delighted thanks for your investments of
vision and energy. And last to the Executive Committee and Finance
Committee members, for your collegiality and for constantly attending
to how we can make things happen, my appreciation and respect.
Stanley Ridge
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