, ENG2603 Assignment 3 (COMPLETE ANSWERS) 2024 -
DUE 13 September 2024 ;100% TRUSTED workings,
explanations and solutions
In Welcome to Our Hilbrow, Refentše is depicted as a creative
writer who notes a problem with the suppression of writing
literature in African languages. In one of the passages in the
novel Refentše is addressing Refilwe about the difficulties of
writing in a language NOT of one’s own. Refentše says: She did
not know that writing in an Afri-can language in South Africa
could be such a curse. She had not anticipated that the
publishers’ reviewers would brand her novel vulgar. Calling shit
and genitalia by their cor-rect names in Sepedi was apparently
regarded as vulgar by these reviewers, who had for a long time
been reviewing works of fiction for educational publishers, and
who were deter-mined to ensure that such works did not of-fend
the systems that they served. These systems were very
inconsistent in their attitudes to education. They considered it
fine, for instance, to call genitalia by their cor-rect names in
English and Afrikaans biology books—even gave these names
graphic pic-tures as escorts—yet in all other languages, they
criminalised such linguistic honesty. . . . In 1995, despite the so-
called new dispensa-tion, nothing had really changed. The leg-
acy of Apartheid censors still shackled those who dreamed of
writing freely in an African The leg-acy of Apartheid censors
still shackled those who dreamed of writing freely in an African
language. Publishers, scared of being found to be on the
financially dangerous side of the censorship border, still rejected
manuscripts that too realistically called things by their proper