Rediscovery Revisited

Abstract

Many South Africans with an interest in reading or teaching South African literature will recall the impact of Ndebele’s seminal essay, “Turkish Tales and Some Thoughts on South African Fiction,” published in

Staffrider in 1984. To understand this impact, one needs briefly to sketch the political and cultural context of his intervention. The same number of Staffrider included an article by Lawrence Mshengu (“Forward with the Workers’ Struggle”) and an interview with Mbulelo Mzamane (reprinted from the April 1983 issue of the Nigerian journal, Okella). Mshengu was a shop  teward at OK Bazaars, and his article is a narrative of his growing commitment to and involvement in the workers’ struggle. It concludes with a series of familiar slogans and calls to action. The message is clear: if workers open their eyes and stand together, they can prevail against the apparently more powerful bosses. Mzamane, on the other hand, describes his more privileged secondary school education in Swaziland.