Jack Cope - a short biography and bibliography of this KwaZulu-Natal author.
Jack Cope (1913-91), South African
novelist, short-story writer, poet, and
editor, was born in Natal, South Africa and attended
boarding school in
Durban, afterwards becoming a journalist on the Natal
Mercury and then a
political correspondent in London for South African
newspapers. At the
outbreak of the Second World War, in a state of some
disillusionment, he
returned to his father's farm and, while working at
various jobs, took up
creative writing. During the following four decades Cope
published eight
novels, more than a hundred short stories, and three
collections of poetry,
the last one in association with C.J. Driver. For twenty
of those years,
beginning in 1960, he edited Contrast, a bilingual
literary magazine
that published contributions in both English and
Afrikaans. He co-edited The
Penguin Book of South African Verse
(1968) with Uys Krige and, as general editor throughout
much of the 1970s,
produced the Mantis editions of southern African poets. In
1980 he moved to
England, where he published The Adversary Within:
Dissident Writers in
Afrikaans (1982) and his Selected Stories
(1986).
Cope's first novel, The Fair House (1955),
considers the Bambata Rebellion
of 1906 in an attempt to account for the later racial and
political
conditions in his country. Later novels, including The
Golden Oriole (1958),
Albino (1964), and The Rain-Maker (1971),
chronicle the white man's
destruction of black culture and the ensuing struggle by
the blacks to
regain their pride and identity. However, it is as a short-
story writer that
Cope demonstrated his finest talent. His stories evoke,
according to Alan Paton, 'with a few words the scents and
sounds and colours of our country'.
In 'A Crack in the Sky' (The Tame Ox, 1960)
and 'Power' (The Man Who Doubted
and Other Stories, 1967) his moral vision is clear;
his third collection,
Alley Cat and Other Stories (1973), contains darker
themes such as those of
alienation and loneliness. Among Cope's main achievements
was his influence
on South African literature during the 1960s and 1970s,
important years in
the struggle against apartheid
(From the Contemporary Africa Database -
http://people.africadatabase.org/en/profile/15849.html)
Selected Workfrom The Tame Ox
The veranda of the office looked across a square of low
roofs, and beyond them other buildings of the Native
College could be seen scattered among the wind-swept gum
trees, one- and
two-storey blocks in plain stone masonry topped with
corrugated iron.
Beyond the campus again stretched rolling hills of sugar-
cane
plantations. The College Principal, the Reverend Dr Luke
Njilo,
descended the steps to the broad red-earth square. Along
the left side
was a row of huge old mango trees. It was a tropical day
of broiling
sunshine and limp, hot air. The dust lay still and the
flags round the
platform were motionless. The mango trees had their feet
in circles of
deep shadow. By the time the ceremony was due to begin the
platform
would be mostly shaded.
Dr Njilo went among the people, moving his big body with
an ease that
was solemn but at the same time youthful. The women fixed
on him coy,
bashful looks and smiled. He was a great man, but distant
from them.
That day he was to be honoured by the white race. An
honorary degree, a
Doctorate of Philosophy - these were strange terms to
them. Yet they
knew no other man of the Zulu nation had ever before
arrived where he
had. The word had gone out and the people were coming from
long
distances to see the white men do honour to the teacher,
Luke Njilo.
Dr Njilo had a few words for all he greeted. He put into
his own
language an unusual preciseness, a stiffness of the
printed letter and
book as though he had a proprietary right but no pride in
it. He turned
to his secretary a few times with a remark in English. The
women had
brought beer in earthenware pots and large gourds covered
with a few
willow leaves. He could not refuse the customary offering.
During the
morning he had drunk a good deal and the midday meal had
revived his
thirst. At first he took the beerpots from the Reverend
Gumede's hands,
drank a few gulps, standing, and then wiped his mouth with
his
handkerchief. There was little to indicate his pleasure or
approval.
Perhaps his eyes lit up if he came on a fine brew, but he
silenced his
belches in the European manner and merely nodded as if he
were making a
severe concession in accepting at all.
In the shade of the mango trees an old wrinkled woman,
more pagan than
Christian, remarked in a cracked voice: 'Teacher, if you
stand, the beer
has far to travel -it will make a waterfall: The people
turned their
faces away to hide their smiles, but Dr Njilo burst into a
hearty laugh
in which all joined. 'A waterfall? Is that where the
Amanzimtoti River
started?' He had a resonant, bell-like voice.
Sitting on his haunches, he took a good pull at the old
woman's beer-pot
and handed it back with a compliment. He was speaking more
easily; his
quips flew, and now there was a ripple of amusement where
the solid dark
figure moved, clothed in academic robes. The sun flickered
in patches
between the leaves on his crisp black hair, neatly parted.
He was
sweating freely in the all-pervading heat and breathed
like a strong-chested
horse in the traces. His protruding eyes rolled amiably
and a healthy
pink tongue showed when he threw back his head to
laugh.
At one place six elders were waiting for him, all
greyheaded men. Some
were in European clothes, others in the skins and sandals
of tribal
dress; one man, creased and dimeyed with age, had on the
polished
head-ring of the old royal warriors. Dr Njilo did not know
them -
perhaps grandfathers or great-uncles of students. There
was a short
awkward pause. They regarded him with the cool impassive
bearing of men
who are perfectly assured of their own place. The head of
the eldest
nodded continually and spittle dribbled over his beard.
The others
looked through dark, half-closed eyes, faintly
contemptuous, it seemed.
He had been criticised before; the extremists among his
own people
called him a 'good boy', a 'tame ox'. As editor of the
weekly People's
Voice, he was on the side of moderation, tolerance. He
mixed with white
missionaries, Negrophiles like Miss Poynton, liberals, and
even men who
galled him with their patronage. He glanced at Charles
Gumede and back
at the old men. They were not the kind to criticise him
politically. But
they were studying him, weighing up the future that he
stood for as if
gazing into the clouds to divine what storms or what sunny
days were in
store. Bibliography1948. Marie : A South
African Satire
1958. The Golden Oriole
1959. The Road To Ysterberg : A Novel
1968. The Penguin Book Of South African Verse (Co-
editor)
1969. The Dawn Comes Twice
1971. The Rain-Maker
1973. The Africa We Knew
1974. Lacking A Label
1977. My Son Max
1979. Notes Recorded in sun
1982. The Adversary Within : Dissident Writers In
Afrikaans See also:
Jack Cope entry in Barbara Richter and Roy Muller's
The Bibliography of Criticism of South
African Literature in English.
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