ABSTRACT
Over time, a canon of “important” South African books has developed, partly through the declarations of literary critics and historians, partly through the prescription of books for study in schools, and partly through public opinion based on people’s reading or vague memories of their parents’ conversations about their favorite books. A few authors or books, whether read or not, become a convenient shorthand in the media for what is South African in literature, and they can end up as national symbols. During the rule of the National Party after 1948, the Post Office often featured Afrikaans writers on postage stamps as part of a deliberate project of the government and cultural groups to assert Afrikaans culture. In reaction to this, a public outcry in 1984 led by the English Academy of Southern Africa shamed the authorities into issuing a special series on English writers. Those chosen were Thomas Pringle, Olive Schreiner, Percy FitzPatrick and Pauline Smith, whom the President of the English Academy, Prof. Ernest Pereira, recommended as the pioneering, defining, English South African writers up to the 1930s.
