"Africa in Literature" CONFERENCE, CAPE TOWN JULY 2005

Conference delegates, Dr Barbara Basel, Dr Sipho Koyana (Council members), Mr Zwelaki Mtsaka, Mr Rangarirai Musvoto (Zimbabwe)

The single biggest change this year was our collaboration with the Association of University Teachers of English (AUETSA), The South African Writers Association (SAWA), Die Suid Afrikaanse Vereeniging vir Algemene Literatuurwetenskappe (SAVAL) and the South African Association for Commonwealth Language and Literary Studies (SAACLALS]) for our 15th international conference, from 10-13 July 2005 in Cape Town.

Almost inevitably, the bulk of the organization fell on Academy members and, in this connection, I should like to thank Professors Peter Titlestad and David Attwell, Mrs Idette Noomé, Mrs Kulukazi Soldati-Kahimbaara, Ms Estelle Olwagen, Ms Natalie Gillman, Ms Lynda Spencer and Ms Naomi Nkealah for their unstinting contribution to the success of the conference.

Our aim was to bring together people who use English as a primary means of communication and to ask them to concentrate on the theme of Africa in Literature. Communicating ideas, mythologies and dreams remains one of our most empowering activities; and, in bringing together people from different cultures, generations, nationalities, perspectives and disciplines to concentrate on a theme such as the one chosen, our intention was to encourage conversation, mutual exchange and academic debate, and to engender hope in a time of global conflict. Judging by the many letters of appreciation and congratulation received afterwards, we succeeded in this aim, at the same time endorsing Ben Okri’s conclusion that “beneath the strife of our age, internecine warfare, tribal antagonisms, religious intolerance, racial violence, the disharmony of sexes, beneath all these lurks the most ordinary discovery that we are human, and that life is holy”.

The broad interdisciplinary theme of the conference attracted some 120 delegates and proved a rich topic for consideration. For the first time we brought together critics and creative writers, whose exploration of ideas of or on Africa proved that Africa itself is the very lifeblood of writers and critics throughout the continent and as far afield as Japan, Australia, Russia, India, America, England, Germany and Italy. The sub-themes or focal areas were the Renaissance in Africa/Africa in the Renaissance/the African Renaissance; colonialism and post colonialism; gendered representations; the landscape as motif; history and its literary representation; JM Coetzee (Nobel Prize winner) and other prominent African writers; writing the nation; representing Africa in letters/diaries/ biographies and autobiographies; theorizing aspects of Africa; the Diaspora; oral literature and story telling; new perspectives; creative writing; hegemonic discourse and language issues.

The NLDTF and National Arts Council funding enabled us to assist a number of doctoral and Master’s candidates in attending the conference, and to attract no fewer than six outstanding local and overseas scholars as keynote speakers, all of whom added indisputable academic stature to the conference. Most of the delegates stayed on the upper campus of the University of Cape Town; and the gracious panelled dining hall of Smuts Hall, with its gallery of distinguished UCT achievers, and upper common room, with its panoramic view of Cape Town, provided a happy contrast to the somewhat Spartan hostel accommodation and inadequate ablution facilities!

The conference caught the imagination of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, who gave us a 24-minute slot to promote our association, thank our sponsors and publicize the role of the conference in fostering academic discourse.

We used the opening session of the conference to confer the English Academy Gold Medal on Professor Njabula Ndebele, Vice-Chancellor of UCT and prize-winning author and critic. (The full text of his acceptance speech will appear in EAR.) I am most grateful to Professor Stephen Watson, Head of English Studies at UCT, for his role as caring conference host.

The highly scholarly plenary sessions by Professors Bracha Ettinger (Tel Aviv), Laurence Wright (Rhodes), Peter Alexander (New South Wales), Elleke Boehmer (London), Michael Chapman (UKZN) and Bernth Lindfors (Texas), coupled with three highly successful book launches by Kwazulu-Natal University Press and Wits University Press – David Attwell’s Re-Writing Modernity and Jeff Opland’s Dassie and the Hunter, on the one hand, and Patrick Cullinan’s Imaginative Trespasser: Letters between Bessie Head, Patrick and Wendy Cullinan 1963-1977, on the other; Professor Chris Mann’s Heartlands: Poetry in Performance; in addition to Professor Bracha Ettinger’s art slide show, and Mr Keith Gottschalk’s SAWA group’s poetry recitations at the gala dinner, coupled with Professor Njabulo Ndebele’s enlightening acceptance speech, were the undoubted highlights of a most memorable conference. The guests of honour were, of course, all the delegates, without whom there would have been no conference. The conference proceedings will be available before the close of 2005.

— Rosemary Gray

Performing Poets - Cape Branch of the SA Writers Association.