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CAN THEMBA |
| Perhaps more than anyone else Lewis Nkosi has written the most penetrative, yet very severe, judgements on the historical achievements of his fellow Drum writers in the form of reviews, prefaces, introductions, obituaries, critical appraisals, lectures, etc. It is not surprising that the death of Can Themba in Swaziland in 1967 gave him the opportunity in the form of an obituary to appraise the intellectual engagements of his close friend with South African cultural history. Remembering the recent deaths of Nat Nakasa and Ingrid Jonker in the form of suicide that preceded that of Can Themba, Lewis Nkosi wondered about their devastating effect on South African intellectual history. What is astonishing about Nkosi’s appraisal is that neither the sad circumstances of the occasion nor the deep intellectual friendship that had existed between them to the end were allowed to hinder what he believed was a total unsentimental evaluation of an intellectual practice of a fellow Drum intellectual: “Can Themba’s most splendid moments of journalism were therefore the celebration of this life, which is not to say he wished for the continuance of slum conditions in order to engender a spurious vitality but because, for Can Themba, the African township represented the strength and the will to survive by ordinary masses of the African people. In its own quiet way the township represented a dogged defiance against official persecution, for in the township the moments of splendour were very splendid indeed, surpassing anything white Johannesburg could offer. . . Can Themba’s actual achievements are more disappointing because his learning and reading were more substantial and his talent proven; but he chose to confine his brilliance to journalism of an insubstantial kind. It is almost certain that had Can Themba chosen to write a book on South Africa, it would not only have been an interesting and to use an American word ‘insightful’ book, but it might have revealed a complex and refined talent for verbalising the African mood. And no doubt, such a book would have been a valuable addition to the literature of South Africa. As it is, we mourn a talent largely misused or neglected: we mourn what might have been. But to have known Themba, to have heard him speak, is to have known a mind both vigorous and informed, shaped by the city as few other minds are in the rest of Africa” ( Lewis Nkosi, “Can Themba”, Transition, no. 34, vol. 7 no. 3, December 1967/ January 1968). It was with such perceptive critical judgement that Lewis Nkosi established himself as the foremost theoretician of South African modernity in the tradition of his great master H. I. E. Dhlomo. Nkosi’s critical evaluation of Can Themba as possessed of a formidable intellect was confirmed nearly two decades later by Nadine Gordimer in an indirect appraisal of the legacy of the Sophiatown Renaissance: “Well, when I came to Johannesburg in 1949, it was a kind of revelation to me when I actually got to know journalists and musicians through friends, many of whom came from Sophiatown. Zeke Mphahlele was my first black friend. . . We would visit shebeens in Sophiatown. They were shabby, friendly places---just rooms where people gathered and drank. Sometimes we went on pub crawls in Doornfontein with Jim Bailey. . . The Drum school of writing, as it’s now known, had a certain style; an ironic, witty way of attacking apartheid. As a style, it would be frowned upon today among many black writers. In my own experience most black writers today regard that work as too much influenced by whites in the sense that it wasn’t overtly, sufficiently committed. Can Themba, for example, was a great reader. He knew his Shakespeare well and his Dostoevsky. I find that young black people who write today don’t read much and if they do, it’s mostly black writers---literature began about 20 years ago for them. But the Fifties intellectuals and artists read anything and everything. They were city people, educated before Bantu Education and their English was wonderfully, tremendously lively. Illiteracy didn’t pass as innovation, then” (Nadine Gordimer, “Nadine Gordimer[: An Interview]”, in Sophiatown Speaks, (eds.) Pippa Stein and Ruth Jacobson, Junction Avenue Press, 1986). Before briefly examining Can Themba as a “great reader” of the cultural space of the Sophiatown Renaissance, it is essential to note what he made of Sophiatown as a historical construct. His Sophiatown was tinged with a deeper strain of pessimism and melancholy than that of his Natal friend, who was a dozen years younger: “Here is the odd thing about Sophiatown. I have long been inured to the ravages wreaked upon Sophiatown. I see its wrecks daily, and through many of its passages that have made such handy short cuts for me. I have stepped gingerly many times over the tricky rubble. Inside of me, I have long stopped arguing the injustice, the vindictiveness, the strong-arm authority of which prostrate Sophiatown is a loud symbol. Long ago I decided to concede, to surrender to the argument that Sophiatown was a slum, after all. I am itchingly nagged by the thought that slum clearance should have nothing to do with the theft of free-hold rights. But the sheer physical fact of Sophiatown’s removal has intimidated me. . . These are only high lights from the swarming, cacophonous, strutting, brawling, vibrating life of the Sophiatown that was. But it was not all just shebeeny, smutty, illegal stuff. Some places it was as dreams are made on. . . We do not only talk about this particular subject. Our subjects are legion. Nkrumah must be a hell of a guy, or is he just bluffing? What about our African intellectuals who leave the country just when we need them most? But is it honestly true that we don’t want to have affairs with white girls? What kind of white supremacy is this that cannot stand fair competition? In fact, all those cheeky questions that never get aired in public” (Can Themba, “Requiem for Sophiatown”, in Langston Hughes’ An African Treasury, Crown Publishers, New York, 1960). From this historicization of the spatial forms of Sophiatown, Can Themba was to formulate a distinct intellectual project for himself which resonated throughout his writings: he believed that the Sophiatown Renaissance writers, artists and intellectuals should bridge the historical divide between high culture and low culture by emphasizing and valorizing popular culture. Themba’s major essays in Drum magazine and the Golden City Post newspaper were an attempt to make sense of South African popular culture within modernity. For instance, his brilliant essay on Dorothy Rathebe was in this vein (Drum, “Dolly and Her Men”, January 1957; “Dolly In Films”, February 1957; “Dolly”, March 1957; “Dolly”, April 1957; “Dolly”, May 1957). This is also true of Themba’s obituary “Henry Nxumalo” in the Masterpiece in Bronze series of Drum (February 1957). But not all the New African intellectuals of the Sophiatown Renaissance movement were in agreement with Can Themba’s historical project. In contrast to Themba, Ezekiel Mphahlele passionately believed that the Drum writers should preoccupy themselves with creating a high literary culture. Themba’s essay on Ezekiel Mphahlele (Drum, “Zeke Past Bachelor of Arts!”, September, 1957) takes on unintended historical weight. It is such extraordinary intellectual tensions among Sophiatown Renaissance writers, intellectuals, artists, such as that between Can Themba and Ezekiel Mphahlele, that made this cultural movement such a remarkable event it was in our intellectual history. | |