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ALFRED HUTCHINSON

Although Alfred Hutchinson belongs to the decade of the 1950s in South African literary and cultural history, he is practically invisible within it largely because of a certain intellectual reading of this historical moment. The reading of this decade has been determined by the valorization of the Drum magazine as the quintessential expression on the ‘Fabulous Fifties’. This seems to be the accepted view by acclamation as well as by consensus. It is very questionable in what sense Drum magazine represented the essence of the 1950s more profoundly or cogently than Liberation journal or the Fighting Talk monthly. Although it is inarguable that Drum magazine seems to have had a greater feel than the other two political and cultural organs for the making of South African modernity in this particular decade, it is very much arguable whether this of itself should give primacy to the magazine. While Liberation could be excluded from consideration since it was predominantly a political journal, Fighting Talk has as much legitimacy as Drum in being considered the cultural expression of this decade, especially from the time in 1954 when Ruth First took over as the editor of the monthly. The reasons are various for this consideration. First, Fighting Talk published the short stories of Lewis Nkosi, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Alfred Hutchinson, and these appear to be uniformly better than those that appeared in Drum. Second, the monthly excerpted the diaries of Alex La Guma, as well as one or two chapters from Richard Rive’s then new novel Emergency, both of these generic forms never found much serious representation in Drum. Third, while Drum disengaged culture from politics, Fighting Talk articulated a cultural politics in opposition to the apartheid state in this most political of decades. Fourth, in contrast to Drum, Fighting Talk published literary criticism and theorization of African literature by Joe Matthews and others. Fifth, the reviews Ezekiel Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue, Alfred Hutchinson’s Road to Ghana, Todd Matshikiza’s Chocolates For My Wife in Fighting Talk, were much more serious than the review of Peter Abraham’s Return to Egoli in Drum magazine. Sixth, while Drum was enthralled with the connection between New Negro modernity and New African modernity, Fighting Talk was examining on its pages the nature of the African Revolution which was then unfolding, as well as the politics of the African Independence Movement. Seventh, before going into voluntary exile in 1957, Mphahlele as literary editor lamented the quality of Drum magazine, while in Nigeria beginning in 1958 to 1962, he wrote important essays in Fighting Talk on Langston Hughes, on New York city as the quintessential city of modernity, on the African personality, as well as on the politics and nationalism of the African Independence Movement. Eighth, Lewis Nkosi wrote serious film criticism in Fighting Talk than any that appeared in Drum. Given these achievements of Fighting Talk, it is very puzzling perhaps even troubling that Drum magazine has been given much greater prominence in representing the 1950s. In other words, Fighting Talk was as much as expressive of the cultural logic of the 1950s as Drum magazine, and given that Lewis Nkosi, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Richard Rive, Harry Bloom, Alex La Guma were to be found on its pages as on those of the other magazine, clearly then, Fighting Talk was equally a representative forum of the Sophiatown Renaissance cultural movement as any other review of that era. Given a portion of the intellectual pleaid surrounding Hutchinson on the pages of the monthly, and given also that the thematic patterns and stylistic form of his short stories were not fundamentally different from those of, for instance, Bloke Modisane or Can Themba, there is therefore no historically informed reason for not including him in the Sophiatown Renaissance. A Nigerian scholar writing in the late 1980s recognized the belongingness of Hutchinson thematically to a group of South African writers and intellectuals: “Among the frequently encountered themes in the works of black or coloured South African writers are: (a) police brutality; (b) racial conflicts among Blacks, Coloureds, Indians and Whites; (c) the humiliation or moral defeat that is the lot of the black man or coloured man in South Africa; (d) the necessity to abscond from South Africa and stay in exile in order to save one’s integrity as a writer and/or human being. All these themes, which are found to a greater or lesser degree in Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom. Ezekiel Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue, Dennis Brutus’s Sirens, Knuckles, Boots or Alex La Guma’s The Stone Country and A Walk In The Night, are contained in Alfred Hutchinson’s Road to Ghana but my intention is primarily to focus on theme (d)---Hutchinson’s flight and painful exile from his land of birth. While doing this, Hutchinson’s remarkable artistic creation will be under close observation because it is really in this light that his autobiography shpuld interest us as students of literature” (Tony E. Afejuku, “Exile sand The South African Writer: Alfred Hutchinson’s Road to Ghana, Presence Africaine, no. 148, 1988). It needs to be said in this context that perhaps not only writers who appeared on the pages of Drum magazine were ‘Drum’ writers. Hutchinson would seem to be the primary example of this. It needs to be said in the larger context of the historical coordinates that inform and construct a particular era, that whereas Drum magazine expressed its culturalism, Fighting Talk monthly articulated its Communism. It is perhaps in relation to this that Lewis Nkosi argues in his fundamental essay, “The Fabulous Decade: The Fifties”, that what principally constituted the 1950s was the unparalleled combination of Jewishness and Africanism. This is a provocative and challenging thesis that postulated an unusual and correct reading of that moment. When Fighting Talk is given its rightful preeminence in the 1950s, the intellectual portrait of Alfred Hutchinson emerges in its dramatic form. Hutchinson, being a major contributor to this remarkable review combined in his intellectual personality this Communism and culturism which were necessary armours against the fascism of the apartheid state. Given his serious contribution to the monthly, it is not surprising that Fighting Talk commissioned a political and intellectual portrait of him as well as giving ample space to a serious review of his book. The portrait, among other things, makes the following observations: “This humility of Hutch has made him a favourite with practically everyone. At his room in Alexandra Township, he is never lonely. Sometimes a colleague comes round to confide in Hutch; sometimes it is his neighbor who just wants to talk to somebody about himself, and often it is the cripple ‘Texas’ who does not mind Hutch’s outbursts of temper against him because he knows that he will ultimately get his own way. For Hutch loves life. He believes that every person is basically good. It is not surprising that his hero is the great Czech writer and martyr Julius Fucik. Hutch is most populary known as a people’s writer. His development since the days when he was a student at Fort Hare College, ewhere he carried away a distinction in English in his arts degree, has been an interesting though painful, process. For Hutch comes of very well-off parents; his father is Scottish, and his mother is from some Royal Swazi house. Hutch could quite easily have chosen to manage his father’s farm as he is the eldest child, and so passed his life in the obscurity of Hectorspruit. But when he came to teach in Johannesburg in 1951, Hutch came under the influence of Duma Nokwe, a college friend, who was then studying part-time for his law degree. Two more dissimilar persons could not be imagined: the one a rigorous logician and even at that time a man of the people and the other, an easy going individualist, rather fearful of the ‘masses’. When the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust laws came in the winter of 1952, it accelerated a process of painful heart-searching for Hutch. He was honest enough to admit that something had to be done about the mounting tide of oppression that came with the Nationalist government, and he could see the importance of the Defiance Campaign. But it also demanded he renounce his whole upbringing, and the relative comfort of his profession. In the end his honesty saved him, and he volunteered to defy the Unjust Laws. . . . In December 1952, Hutch defied the Unjust Laws in the same batch with Manilal Gandhi and Patrick Duncan. To this day he considers this the best thing he has ever done. At any rate, this action helped to smash his individualism, and set him steadfast in the search for the new life. . . . When Hutch was arrested at the Central Indian High School where he was teaching, the pupils did their best to restrain their emotions. For Hutch was not merely a teacher, he was a friend to every one of them. . . . Hutch is a born teacher, but not one who sees only the blackboard, the textbook, and the four walls of his classroom. Life is his interest, and it throbs in his writing. The penetrating description, the deft, feeling phrase, his needle-sharp perception and his deep sensitivity make his lines and paragraphs unforgettable” (Henry G. Makgothi, “Treason Trial Profile: Alfred Hutchinson”, Fighting Talk, November 1957). Several factors account for Alfred Hutchinson’s shift from the bourgeois individualism of his earlier years to the Communism of his mature years: Duma Nokwe, who had made his own particular re-alignment earlier from the African nationalism of A. P. Mda and Anton Lembede to the Leninism of J. B. Marks and Moses M. Kotane, influenced Hutchinson in embracing Marxism; his personal honesty and integrity convinced him that oppression and injustice were fundamentally inseperable from capitalism; his visit in 1953 to the 4th World Festival of Youth and Students For Peace and Friendship at Bucharest in Rumania enabled him to experience actually existing socialism as a real alternative to capitalism. The ‘new life’ he entered into was very political. He became in the 1950s the ANC Transvaal provincial secretary, and subsequently the national executive committee of the organization. Because of his role in the Defiance Campaign of 1952 and his vehement oipposition to Bantu Education resulted in his being one of the 156 Treason Trialists who were put on trial between December 1956 until late 1958. During this period he studied for a law degree at the University of the Witwatersrand, but never completed the course. His political flight into exile in Ghana is portrayed in his autobiography Road to Ghana (1960). Fighting Talk carried a review of the advanced copy of the book: “As far asI know, Alfred Hutchinson was front page news only once in his life. For a brief moment the press featured his arrest in Tanganyika on a charge of entering the country without official documents. For a day or two, while they filled in the background of Hutchinson’s career---A. N. C. official, school-teacher, treason trialist---the news-hawks followed his story. They told of Tanganyika’s declaration that he was a prohibited immigrant; of Christian Action’s immediate offer of an air-fare anywhere he desired to prevent his forced repatriation to South Africa; of his air flight to Ghana and his appearance at the Accra Conference as a delegate of the African National Congress. And there the story ended. After a brief moment, Hutch faded from the news as suddenly and mysteriously as he crashed into it. . . . Perhaps this is because Hutch is something special. Not special because he got away. Others have done it before, often more easily, more legitimately, less painfully. Amongst the Non-White writers of talent, Arthur Maimane, Bloke Modisane, Zeke Mphahlele have all made the break from Verwoed’s South Africa. Before then, even before the days of Nationalist government, there were others who made the break, so long ago and finally that they are no longer ‘our people’ but aliens---Gerard Sekoto, painting rootlessly in Paris, Peter Abrahams writing rootlessly in London. Doubtless those who knew them all could enter special pleadings, special justifications for their decisions. South Africa is a grim place for all who are not White. It is doubly grim for those who feel. React and desire more keenly and sensitively than the rest of us, and thus are able to depict their emotions artistically and dramatically to others. . . . Hutch is---above all else---a writer.And the justification of a writer is his writing. In his few months of escape in Ghana, Hutch has justified his decision by writing a book, a fine, sensitive book, worthy of his great talent for descriptive prose. In all his years in South Africa he wrote little---an unsuccessful and unsatisfisfactory novel, some promising short stories, some magnificent but slender descriptive sketches mainly for small circulation magazines like Fighting Talk. None of it was worthy of the real ability of the man. And all of it written with such tremendous pain and suffering, such torturing, and only under relentless pressure and nagging by editors and friends. In South Africa as it is today, Hutch’s talent would have slowly shrivelled up and died, leaving behind it only the stray flash of inspiration to tell of what might have been” (L. Bernstein, “He Wanted No Tomorrow”, Fighting Talk, December 1959). By eventually ending in Nigeria in the late 1960s, Alfred Hutchinson, like Ezekiel Mphahlele, Lewis Nkosi, and Bloke Modisane, forged a rapprochement between modern South African national literature and modern Nigerian national literature, represented by eminent writers such as Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, Gabriel Okara, Chinua Achebe, John Pepper Clark. This was no mean feat on the part of Hutchinson. Today Alfred Hutchinson lies buried in Nigeria as a symbol of the rapprochemont that occurred nearly fifty years between these two great literatures.

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