Xhosa poetry (1973–1990): testimony to a cacophony of contending ideologies

Abstract

Central to this interdisciplinary study is the argument that the ideologies of Apartheid, Black Consciousness and the Charterism of the African National Congress, which competed during the last phase of the Apartheid epoch (1973–1990), impacted profoundly on Xhosa poetry. An analysis and interpretation of a representative sample of texts confirm that structural transformations on the political terrain had a profound influence on the literary terrain. As Therbon (1980: VII) would say, the contending ideologies, ‘overlapped, competed and clashed, drowned or reinforced each other’. The ideological impact manifests itself in both the form/structure (i.e. aesthetic ideology) and content (i.e. authorial ideology) of the poetry of this phase.