Alert! Following Pinky Khoabane’s alarm-bell ringing about the late Zulu poet Mazisi Kunene’s manuscripts possibly leaving South Africa for a new home in California, Andrew Martin, the energetic representative of the National English Literary Museum (NELM), has seconded her call for all Kunene writings to remain firmly on SA soil.
NELM already has a substantial collection of Kunene’s works, writes Martin, and would gladly house further material; what’s more, keeping the manuscripts in SA would ensure that African researchers would have ready access to an immensely important literary heritage collection:
Kunene was indisputably the country’s foremost Zulu poet and one of the finest poets in Africa.
It would be a tragedy to see his manuscripts leave this country, let alone the continent.
If they are to research this material at all, local scholars of Zulu and English literature will be forced to find sizeable research grants to be able to get these works. As much of Kunene’s large corpus of Zulu poems have never been published, Zulu language scholars would need to arrange lengthy stays in California to truly justify their travel expenses.
Kunene died in Durban in 2006; click here for an obituary. BOOK SA would be grateful to receive further tips on this developing story.
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Photo courtesy Kagablog
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December 22nd, 2009 @21:56 #
Eish. I am not a fan of SA's MS treasures leaving our soil, unless there are really good reasons for the shift. Hope sense prevails.
December 24th, 2009 @06:49 #
This is the sort of out of the box thinking that is so desperately needed to preserve the manuscripts and keep them local. Kudos to NELM for making this initiative and to Andrew Martin for stepping up with this offer.