Out of History

Re-imagining South Africans Pasts

Lauretta Ngcobo’s death in November 2015 robbed South Africa and the African continent of a significant literary talent, freedom fighter, and feminist voice. Born in 1931 in Ixopo in the then Natal Province, South Africa Ngcobo was one of three pioneering black South African women writers – the first to publish novels in English from the particular vantage point of black women.

This lively, engaging and witty collection of lectures brings together the renowned African and African-American scholars - Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr and Wole Soyinka - to reflect on the public meaning of the iconic Nelson Mandela. Any one of these authors would have been a pleasure to read in his own right, but to have all three of them enjoined in this common intellectual effort is an enlightening experience.

How has the end of apartheid affected the experiences of South African children and adolescents? This pioneering study provides a compelling account of the realities of everyday life for the first generation of children and adolescents growing up in a democratic South Africa. The authors examine the lives of young people across historically divided communities at home, in the neighbourhoods where they live, and at school. The picture that emerges is one of both diversity and similarity as young people navigate their way through a complex landscape that is unevenly post-apartheid. Historically and culturally rooted, their identities are forged in response to their perceptions of social redress and to anxieties about others living on the margins of their daily lives. Although society has changed in profound ways, many features of the apartheid era persist: material inequalities and poverty continue to shape everyday life; race and class continue to define neighbourhoods, and integration is a sought-after but limited experience for the young.

Miriam Tlali was a novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, and activist against apartheid and patriarchal confinement. She worked consistently to build literary and political community, was one of the founders of Staffrider magazine, promoting the work of younger writers, and was the most prolific writer of her time.