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DON MATTERA |
| Although Dan Mattera was born and raised in Sophiatown and generationally belongs to the group of intellectuals, writers, artists, and journalists who forged the Sophiatown Renaissance cultural movement in the 1950s, it was only in the 1970s with the publication of his poetry in the context of the Black Consciousness Movement and the Staffrider literary generation, that South African literary history found it necessary to resituate him back in his proper artistic position in the "Fabulous Decade" of Drum magazine. There are two plausible explanations for this displacement: one, is that as a poet the Sophiatown Renaissance seems historically unable to accommodate this genre within its cultural formation; two, Mattera lived and experienced Sophiatown at the time not through intellectual pre-occupations, but rather, through the violent engagements of his youthfulness. In a recent interview with a German internet review, Bang 2000, Don Mattera revealed not only the singularity of his historical consciousness about the 1950s but also the reasons, the nature and the peculiarity of his peripherization: "Sophiatown war nicht nur ein kosmopolitanes, sondern auch ein hochst politisiertes Viertel und folgte dem amerikanischen Lebenstil. Dort wohnten Manner und Faruen, die als Jazzsanger oder auch als Opernsanger bekannt waren. Morgens konnte man Bach horen, weil irgendwer Schallplatten mit seiner Musik sielte, und auch Jazz-man konnte alle Kulturen wahrnehmen, die hier in Sophiatown aufeinander trafen. Nelson Mandela, der Indian Congress, der Demokratische Congress, der ANC---alle diese politischen Organisationen hatte ihre Basis in Sophiatown, denn dort lebten ja alle die Menschen, die diese Organisationen erreichen wollten. Sophiatown war fur sudafrikanischen Regierung eine Bedrohnung ihrer Idee von Puritanismus, Rassismus und Separation---so wie as nach 1948, ab 1950 Gesetz wurde. . . . 1954 wurde ich Mitglied der Wester Area Student Association, der WASA. Das war paradox, denn zur selben Zeit war ich Anfuhrer einer Gang und Wortfuhrer der WASA. Selbst als ich den ANC verliess, konnte ich nicht richtig, ihn verlassen zu haben. Als der ANC gebannt wurde, hatte es noch eine Spaltung in der Politik gegeben: 1958 wurde der PAC gegrundet, der Pan African Congress. Mir gefiel, was sie sagten, denn sie sprachen von der Ruckgabe des Landes an die Afrikaner." (http://www.baeng-2000.de/Unsere_Themen/Afrika/Don_Mattera/don_mattera.html)" [My translation of the passage: "Sophiatown was not only cosmopolitan, it was also one of the most politically conscious of places and was enamored to the American style of living. There lived men and women who as jazz singers or also as opera singers became famous. In the mornings one could hear the records of Bach being played as well as those of jazz---one could identify with the intermingling of cultures in Sophiatown. Nelson Mandela, the Indian Congress, the Congress Alliance and the ANC---all these political organizations had support from the people who lived in Sophiatown. To the South African government, Sophiatown contradicted the image of the purity of races, racism and apartheid they wanted to effect and project, which they began implementing in 1948 and put into law as from 1950. . . . In 1954 I became a member of the Western Area Student Association (WASA). There was a paradox here in that while I was a leader of a streetgang I was at the same time associated with WASA. When I turned my back on ANC I could not with certainly say that I had actually left the organization. Just before the ANC was banned [in 1960], a split happened within the organization which resulted in founding of the Pan African Congress (PAC) in 1958. The political position of the PAC that the land should be given back to the African people deeply resonated with me."]. As already indicated, among the reasons for Mattera's displacement, was his preoccupation with matters of violence, rather than those of intellect. Another plausible reason is that he was more susceptible to the winds of political change. But one fundamental gain from this historical displacement is that when the Sophiatown Renaissance came to a terminus, largely triggered by the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 which in turn forced many of Drum literary exponents into exile, it was Don Mattera who formed the intellectual bridgehead between this 'disappeared' literary generation of Can Themba, Lewis Nkosi, Ezekiel Mphahlele and others and the emergent Staffrider literary generation of the 1970s or the Black Consciousness Movement's cultural acolytes (Mbulelo Mzamane, Njabulo Ndebele, Mafika Gwala, Wally Serote and others). In this context, his memoir of the Sophiatown Renaissance period, Memory is the Weapon (the 1986 South African edition) or Gone With the Twilight: A Story of Sophiatown (the 1987 English edition) or Sophiatown: Coming of Age in South Africa (the 1989 American edition), is an enabling instrument of this historical connexion. The achievements of Don Mattera are exemplary and will endure. His cultural, political and intellectual activities in the present form a historical arch with the other achievements of New African intellectuals within the New African Movement across the South African modernist experience in the twentieth century: the poetry of Mattera should be appreciated in relation to the poetry of Isaac Wauchope in the late nineteenth-century as well as that of Peter Abrahams in the late 1930s; his editorial stewardship of the Sowetan newspaper in the 1990s should be compared to R. V. Selope Thema's guidance of the Bantu World newspaper in the 1930s; his assistance in the founding of the Union of Black Journalists in the late twentieth-century should be seen in line of continuity with the first organization of African journalists founded by Solomon T. Plaatje (editor of Tsala ea Batho, among other newspapers) and F. Z. S. Peregrino (editor of South African Spectator) in 1903; his directorship of the Skotaville publishing house in the 1980s should be be related to T. D. Mweli Skota's 1930 publication: The African Yearly Register; his participation in the National Forum should perhaps be viewed in relation to Anton Lembede's African nationalism of the 1940s; and lastly, his involvement in the founding and establishing of the Congress of South African Writers in the late 1980s should make us recollect the founding of the Native Educational Association in 1879 by Xhosa intellectual such as Elijah Makiwane, William Wellington Gqoba, Paul Xiniwe, John Tengo Jabavu and others. The achievement of Don Mattera is enormously impressive when viewed in the of the making of South African modernity. | |