In praise of Miriam Tlali: Apartheid critic, author and feminist

Renowned South African author Miriam Masoli Tlali passed away on February 24 2017, aged 83. Born on November 11, 1933 in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, Tlali was the first black South African woman to publish a novel in English within the country’s borders. She is best known for this work, first published as Muriel at Metropolitan in 1975 by Ravan Press.

It was re-issued in 2004 by the title she had preferred from the start, Between Two Worlds. Based on her time as an administrative assistant at a furniture store in downtown Johannesburg during the height of apartheid, the novel documents the daily humiliations of petty apartheid.

There were two types of apartheid, grand apartheid and the petty version, which the New York Times once described as the practice of segregation in the routine of daily life — in lavatories, restaurants, railway cars, buses, swimming pools and other public facilities.

Muriel at Metropolitan/Between Two Worlds was the first literary text that portrayed the degrading conditions under which African women laboured during apartheid. It highlighted how strict influx control into “white” cities hampered black women’s opportunities for employment and fulfilling family lives.

Tlali hated the original title of her first novel. She agreed to have it published under that name because her mother was close to dying, and she wanted her to see the novel in print before her death. In the preface to Between Two Worlds, Tlali recounted that after the novel’s publication: “I returned to my matchbox house in Soweto, locked myself in my little bedroom and cried… Five whole chapters had been removed; also paragraphs, phrases, and sentences. It was devastating, to say the least.”

Despite these misgivings, Muriel at Metropolitan made a big impact globally. Forty five different editions of the novel were published between 1975 and 2005, with translations into three languages.

Tlali recovered from her devastation, going on to publish the Black Consciousness novel Amandla (1980). It was grouped by critics as part of the “Soweto School” of protest literature.

The novel is a rich evocation of the youth uprising against apartheid education and the apartheid state in 1976. Inspired by the uprising and Steve Biko‘s Black Conciousness ideology, it centres around Pholoso, a young freedom fighter who rallies the youth of Soweto against apartheid. He goes on to become part of the underground resistance, eventually going into exile.

Soweto, and its abject relationship to the wealthy Johannesburg, was an enduring concern for Tlali in her fiction. She published Footprints in the Quag: Stories and Dialogues from Soweto (also published as Soweto Stories), a collection of short stories delving in the experiences of Sowetans (mostly women) in 1989.

She also published a collection of short stories, interviews and essays in Mihloti (1984), published by Skotaville Press, which she helped establish. Tlali was also a frequent contributor to the anti-apartheid literary journal Staffrider, which she co-founded. The journal was an important vehicle for publishing black literature and criticism during the apartheid years, often the only South African outlet for black creative writing.

Because of her stature internationally and the political content of her novels, Tlali became an enemy of the state. Both her novels were immediately banned by apartheid censors. Her political and literary prominence made her a target of the regime’s notorious Security Branch. This dreaded secret police unit repeatedly harassed, arrested and assaulted Tlali as a tactic of intimidation.

Barbara Boswell is a Senior Lecturer, English, at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. This article was originally published on http://theconversation.com