Caroline Davis

Histories of Publishing under Apartheid: Oxford University Press in South Africa

This history of Oxford University Press (OUP) in South Africa draws on archival records and oral testimonies. It first considers OUPs rationale and vision for its work in pre-war South Africa. This is followed by a discussion of the development of the branchs anti-apartheid general and academic lists alongside its educational list from the late 1940s to the 1960s, reflecting on the dilemmas and contradictions entailed in this dual policy. It then reviews the radical change of management approach towards South Africa in 1970 and the ensuing crisis in the branch and conflicts in London and Oxford, as the branchs liberal position was sacrificed in order to maintain its commercial position in the country. The article contends that OUP in the UK as well as Cape Town increasingly depended on profits from the publication of Bantu Education approved texts, which led to an avoidance of the publication of ‘controversial’ or anti-apartheid texts. It reviews how OUP represented its work in South Africa in narratives and histories of publishing that veiled the companys commercial interests while emphasising its cultural and educational mission.

Publishing anti-apartheid literature: Athol Fugard’s Statements plays

This article addresses the creation of Athol Fugard’s plays not as performances or as texts, but as material objects, and examines how the meaning and value of his plays were constructed through the interventions of his publisher. The paper draws attention to the sharp distinction in the way that Fugard’s performances and published plays have been received, most acutely with respect to the plays Sizwe Bansi is Dead, The Island and Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act. These plays directly addressed and attacked apartheid legislation and enforcement. In performance in South Africa between 1972–1973 they were regarded as radical and subversive by the South African authorities as well as by audiences and critics. The Oxford University Press edition of this trilogy, Statements: Three Plays (1974), was by contrast packaged as a literary and commercial product that circulated free from censorship. This essay explores the reasons for this dichotomy through a detailed author/publisher case study of the publication history of the plays. It analyses the means by which Fugard was re-branded as an “Oxford author” through the book’s publication in the Oxford Paperback Series, and assesses the impact of this brand on the reception of Fugard’s plays. The published book was also a more individualistic creative product than the performances of the plays: the Press applied a conventional model of authorship which served to defuse the radical, interracial partnership between Fugard and his co-writers Winston Ntshona and John Kani. Likewise, the political content was neutralized as the plays were promoted as allegorical literary works of universal significance. By these means, it is argued, Fugard was successfully incorporated into the literary establishment in the UK, the USA and South Africa under apartheid.

From Royalism to E-secessionism: Lozi Histories and Ethnic Politics from the Early Twentieth Century

This essay is about the ways in which successive Lozi thinkers turned the potentialities of the book to political work and appropriated them with a view to advancing specific understandings of Lozi identity. It will begin by placing the origins of Lozi historical literature in the context of the colonial encounter between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The argument will be advanced that Litaba tsa Sechaba sa Marotse (History of the Lozi Nation), the first full-length history of a Zambian people to be published in the vernacular in 1910, amounted to a tool for the furtherance of the cause of the Lozi monarchy in the neo-traditionalist politics ushered in by colonial rule. Our attention will then turn to the emergence of a Lozi vernacular ethnography in the middle decades of the twentieth century. By setting these texts against the background of the mature colonial period and the coeval economic decline of Barotseland, our analysis will foreground the main moral concerns of their authors. Due emphasis will be placed on the manner in which their literary efforts contributed to foster the ethnic particularism that underlay the fraught constitutional negotiations that would eventually lead to the incorporation of Barotseland into a unitary independent state. Finally, the argument will be made that Lozi particularism, once anchored in published histories and ethnographies, is presently drifting away from these moorings. This claim will be supported by a consideration of the links between conventionally and electronically published Lozi cultural material, and of the latter’s increasingly separate and self-sustaining existence. Lozi ‘e-secessionist’ arguments, we will conclude, constitute an attempt to break from the confines of both an established literature and the post-colonial state.

A Question of Power: Bessie Head and her Publishers

This article examines Bessie Head’s turbulent relationships with her publishers and literary agents in London and New York, focusing on the publication of A Question of Power in 1973. It traces her business negotiations carried out from Serowe, in Botswana, and the difficulties she faced in getting the manuscript accepted before it was eventually taken on by Heinemann Educational, Davis-Poynter and Pantheon Books. Based on new archival records, the article analyses the impact of the publishers’ interventions in the text and paratexts of the novel, and it assesses her contracts with these publishers and her difficulties in obtaining royalties or remuneration. While her publishers and biographer have attributed her battles with the literary establishment to her volatile nature or to mental illness, this article draws attention instead to the difficulties that Head faced in forging a literary career.

Introduction: Print Culture in Southern Africa

Research into print culture studies in Africa has largely been dominated by histories of how European missionaries, colonial administrators and traders brought the book and literacy to Africa, by what Isabel Hofmeyr describes as ‘the idea of the imperial gift’. Indeed, Africa has been marginalised within the discipline of book history, and has been either omitted or assigned only the briefest mention in the major book history companions, dictionaries and readers, while histories of British publishers routinely overlook their profitable enterprises in Africa. As a result, a number of gaps and silences remain. This collection addresses some important issues that have been widely neglected; the focus here is on black southern African writing, publishing and readerships, in contrast with the often white-dominated narrative of print culture, even within African scholarship. Print culture holds important implications for questions of identity, nationality and colonial or post-colonial politics, and, as David Johnson states, there is a need for close attention to ‘how “print, text and book cultures” have functioned and continue to function within South Africa’s vastly unequal political economy’. Drawing together interdisciplinary research and diverse methodologies, this journal special issue encompasses a range of perspectives, including literary studies, anthropology, publishing studies, the history of the book, art history and information science. Many of the articles are based on previously unexamined archives and collections, for example authors’, publishers’ and state archives, and oral history research. They are, thus, evidence-based histories that uncover previously unacknowledged or unheard voices and that counter the anecdotal nature of much research on African publishing and print culture. This work has its origins in the British Academy project ‘Print Culture and Publishing in South Africa in the 20th Century’ (2012–16), based at Oxford Brookes University and the University of Pretoria and led by the guest editors of this volume. This project promoted research into the emergence and constitution of reading publics in the country, the trans-regional networks of print, and the impact of the transnational book trade. A programme of colloquia and seminars in the UK and South Africa brought together international scholars from both regions as fora for multi-disciplinary research. Many of the articles in this issue are based on papers presented in the final three conferences of the project: Print Culture and Colonisation in Africa at the University of Cape Town (May 2015), the Annual Book History and Print Culture seminar at the University of Pretoria (May 2016), and the Print Culture and Publishing in Africa colloquium at Oxford Brookes University (September 2016).

Creating a Book Empire: Longmans in Africa

The impact of the British publisher in Africa is a matter of some contention. Publishers’ memoirs, oral histories and company histories have tended to narrate their history in the continent as a cultural mission, vital to the education and enlightenment of Africa.1 Competing interpretations have been voiced by a number of African publishers and postcolonial scholars, who criticise British publishers as agents of neocolonialism or cultural imperialism that served to prevent the growth of an indigenous publishing industry.2 This chapter aims to analyse Longmans’ contribution to African print culture, and its historical legacy in the continent in the context of these debates.

Publishing Athol Fugard

This chapter is concerned with the creation of Athol Fugard’s plays not as performances or as texts, but as material objects: it explores how the social conditions of textual production and circulation have affected their interpretation. It charts the transformation of ‘Fugard’ into an increasingly valuable piece of literary property, on which different meanings have been inscribed.

Publishing Wole Soyinka: Oxford University Press and the creation of “Africa’s own William Shakespeare”

This article considers the impact of Wole Soyinka’s adoption of Oxford University Press (OUP) as his first international publisher. Formerly one of the main producers of school books for “native education” in Africa, OUP in the immediate post-independence period continued to operate under colonial modes of publishing. This study considers how OUP dealt with the political critique of Soyinka’s early plays, several of which were regarded in performance as radical and subversive in their critical engagement with Nigerian politics and history. Using previously unexamined archival sources, it concentrates on the negotiations surrounding each stage of the publishing process. It assesses how Soyinka’s texts were filtered through OUP’s publishing apparatus and how the paratextual elements created by the publisher – within the book and beyond – influenced the reception of his works. The article concludes that the publisher’s interventions had a profound impact on the construction of the literary identity of Soyinka, and on the creation of his persona as “Africa’s own William Shakespeare”.