Introduction
Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow is a novel steeped in the realisms of postapartheid South Africa, in which the question of language is by no means decided.
The literature suppression highlighted by Refentše is a good strapline example of the
harrowing legacy of apartheid ...
, Introduction
Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow is a novel steeped in the realisms of post-
apartheid South Africa, in which the question of language is by no means decided.
The literature suppression highlighted by Refentše is a good strapline example of the
harrowing legacy of apartheid censorship and the continued margins of African
languages in the literary sphere and, therefore, within education. This essay will try
to show how Mpe uses language in Welcome to Our Hillbrow to engage in the
broader debates among African writers on whether they should write in African or
colonial languages. Such views will be brought in from Obiajunwa Wali, Ngugi wa
Thiong'o, and Chinua Achebe, not only to use their ideas to set ground for the
debate, but to help in assessing whether the debate holds water in the 21st century.
Phaswane Mpe's Use of Language in Welcome to Our Hillbrow
The multilingualism that characterizes Mpe's novel reflects the diversity of languages
represented in South Africa. Having the protagonist Refentše, Mpe questions the
colonial attitudes that bleed into modernity in determining which languages mean
literature. The excerpt demonstrates the African languages are policed much more
rigidly while paradoxically being more accommodating of English an d Afrikaans. For
instance, the mention of explicit language in Sepedi is deemed vulgar by publishers,
yet the same educationally or even more explicit expressions in English or Afrikaans
are just a little behind being encouraged within educational material.
This inconsistency is founded on a deep-seated bias against African languages,
carrying a colonial notion that African languages are inferior or inappropriate for
literary expression. In the novel, Mpe uses these same arguments as weapons to
uncover the cultural censorship that still exists in South Africa, even after apartheid.
He challenged such norms in the novel by using African languages along with
English, not to be ignored.
Obiajunwa Wali’s Perspective in “The Dead End of African Literature?”
Obiajunwa Wali, in writing the essay "The Dead End of African Literature?" argues
that the African story could never really be captured in its totality by African literature
written in colonial languages. He says that if true African literature has to be
achieved, it must be written in African languages since these languages carry the
culture and philosophy of the people. It is in this context that Mpe's lament in the
novel about the suppression of Sepedi as a language falls in line with Wali's
argument. Mpe wants to draw attention to what African writers have gone through as
they try to write in their native languages, only to be gagged or dismissed by the
publishers who favored colonial languages.
The perspective of Wali hints at the fact that Mpe's novel, by criticizing this act of
suppression, takes it upon itself to say that African literature should be freed from the
constraining bonds of colonial languages. Fact that Mpe himself tried to write in
Sepedi and the rejection met by him subsequently holds a mirror to Wali's
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