Using three fairly recently published South African texts – David B.
Coplan’s In the Time of Cannibals – The Word Music of South Africa’s
Basotho Migrants (1994); A.H.M. Scholtz’s Vatmaar – ’n Lewendagge
verhaal van ’n tyd wat nie meer is nie (1995) in its English translation, A
Place Called Vatmaar (2000) and Mongane (Wally) Serote’s Come and
Hope with Me (1994) – this essay looks at the role such texts can play to
give public expression to the voices of formerly silenced communities. The
essay contends that the deep fissures in South African society require
intense efforts in order to make those isolated from one another mutually
intelligible. All South Africans need to broaden their cultural vocabularies.
This is where texts such as novels and those containing the oral art of
neglected communities can function as ‘translations’, and have profound
social importance. It can be predicted that rehistoricising writings and
culturally recontextualising teaching practices will continue to be required in
this country, but also texts that contain the vision of a shared South African
future.