messages” (ibid.: 12). This development was again unique in the sense that the re-
emergence of poetry was almost to the exclusion of other forms of literature. In an
exposition by Nadine Gordimer (1976:132-133), this was because other forms, especially
fiction, were considered by the apartheid government as particularly explicit in treating
matters which were at the core of black agitation and opposition. It was this situation that
inspired young black writers to seek “a less vulnerable” mode of literature with which “to
give expression to an ever greater pressure of grim experience.” From printing in the
little magazines and journals like The Classic (Michael Chapman 2007:11), the second
generation of South African poets emerged with their individual publications. Prominent
among these are Mongane Wally Serote, Njabulo Ndebele, Oswald Mtshali, and Casey
Motsis.
Despite the censorial and inhibiting space they inhabited, they found a propitious medium
in poetry and,
their poetry states, in varying degrees of subtlety and explicitness, that they will
remain human, alive and free in the face of whatever destructive forces outside
reality might be aiming at them. This is a form of psychological self preservation and
the most effective vehicle for it is poetry. (Robert Royston 1973:7)The result of this resolution was the production of a vibrant tradition of poetry which held
sway and held the fort for other literary forms while the evil days of apartheid lasted.
Apart from the defining oeuvre of simplicity that one identifies with this generation of
poets on the continent, the predisposition to orality is another index of the generation’s
articulation. Related to the above, by way of summation, is the way this generation has
radicalized African poetry through the incorporation of dramatic elements and
performance, a trope upon which the third generation of African poets like Remi Raji
(Nigeria), Kgafela oa Magogodi (South Africa), among others, have built.
Justification of Study
The overall justification of this study is underpinned by the need to examine the poetic
representation of Africa’s post-colonial susceptibility to exile in about the last thirty