Hard to be creative when the burden of survival makes creativity feel like a luxury

6 Dec 2024

What does the landscape and climate for creative writing and freedom of expression look like in five different African countries today? What are some of the issues that affect writers?

This year, PEN Afrikaans is participating in the Right to Write project together with four other PEN centers, at the invitation of writers’ association PEN International.

The aim of this UN-funded project is to promote public dialogue on issues affecting writers in five African countries (Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe). As part of this project, PEN Afrikaans asked five Afrikaans writers to reflect on pertinent topics.

This is the fourth in a series of five articles. Here, Lynthia Julius reflects on writing in light of the difficulties of poverty and unemployment.

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Translated by André Trantraal

“You’re living the dream,” someone informs me the other day. He was referring to the Jan Rabie and Marjorie Wallace Bursary which I was awarded. Which means that as a writer I can now devote my time to the writing of a novel without having to worry about the cat that is at present draped across the stove. Writing is a luxury. And how do you write when you are beset by poverty, anxious about the electricity running out, about the food that has to be put on the table every single day? I’m reminded of lines from Nathan Trantraal’s poem in Alles het niet kom wôd:

24.6 units on the meter
are 24.6 things
that are right in the world

What’s the use of writing when the meter box beeps and there aren’t 24.6 units? A villanelle, a novel, a short story; they don’t help when you’re looking for work and every CV you submit is unsuccessful. And when the kid comes home and the teacher said they have to bring something to school that doesn’t work, the rest of the fam says he should take you ’cause you’re not working. I know all about the loneliness that comes with unemployment. I know how useless you feel when you are unable to contribute to the household economy. I know how embarrassed you get whenever someone asks: “So what are you busy with at the moment?” And you don’t know what to say, and you know they’re only asking so they can measure their achievements against yours.

I was at home for a year due to unemployment. I had no funds to study further. Empty wasted hours where nothing stirs inside of you, when you lose the urge to write. So you read, to preserve your sanity.

You are reminded of the words of Sylvia Plath: “I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.” But unemployment silences everyone. Poverty silences. “Your application was unsuccessful” silences. The hours of unrelieved monotony make you wilt prior to your best-before date, and nothing “moves or touches you” as Gert Vlok Nel sings.

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the things we need most in the world,” says Philip Pullman. Even as I contemplate the privileged position that receiving a substantial bursary affords me, enabling me to focus on my writing, I continue to empathise with young people who eke out an existence below the breadline. You get a job at Shoprite and your AP-score is 39. You pack shelves. You stand all day. Your feet are burning. What’s the point of writing anyway, when you get home and there are only two slices of bread left in the breadbin and six people that need to eat.

You don’t think about writing a short story when your child is crying of hunger or you’re about to lose your home because you are unable to pay this month’s rent. When you have to make every cent count, it is hard to care about making every sentence count. And if your Shoprite wages can’t get you through the month because you are carrying the whole of the household on your back like an ancient tortoise, you don’t feel like sitting at a table struggling with “showing versus telling”.

Royal misnomer

As a published author you are entitled to royalties, but that I have learned is somewhat of a misnomer. There is nothing remotely princely about the sums involved. You don’t get paid each month, either. But you are nevertheless grateful when royalties are paid. They can keep the statement that says they only pay when the amount payable exceeds R100. Send me the R40. That is two loaves of bread right there. Send less than that, it’s a packet of milk. You’re tired of bothering the lady next door. She is forever grumbling that you never give anything in return.

There are students who have to send their bursary stipend home so that their people can eat. There are young people who labour under the burden of black tax. And when you are working yourself to the bone paying black tax you’re not reaching for paper and pen.

I look at the young people behind the tills in shops in the towns here in the Northern Cape. Young people doomed by a small town mentality to remain perpetually confined to remote little places. There is no hope of looking for a better life, because you need a plan and, more importantly, money to move to the city, and depending on Sassa (SA Social Security Agency) each month or subsisting on the minimum wage likely won’t get anyone anywhere any time soon.

“You’re always involved in this white people stuff. Go on a tour, go to festivals. Take photos with them,” a coloured lady counsels me. Festivals are expensive. Tickets cost money. There are transportation and accommodation costs, food costs money too. Also, it is hard to have a good time at the festival when your father is drowning his sorrows because he cannot provide for his children and you are worried that he’ll cause a disturbance of the domestic kind again. Will the loan sharks come swimming around to collect the money your mother specifically set aside for the 24.6 units? Will your father make the children cry because he is harassing your mother for R30 for another bottle of rooiprop?

When I was in high school my father bought me an HP laptop. I was at my grandmother’s house on the unpaved street sitting behind this laptop when a friend came by looking for me. My grandmother told him I’m inside. He is truly horrified when he sees me with the computer.

“Your parents are raising you like the whites. Those are white people things. You think you’re white.”

I grew up with the expression “white people things”. Things that are valuable and beautiful are “white people things”. I wonder if writing belongs in the same category. The only writer of colour that we learned about at school was Adam Small. Adam could never inhabit the voice of the Northern Cape, nor would anyone expect him to. But I am inclined to believe that there are many young people who still believe that writing is a thing that only white people do.

Writing is costly. To sit behind a computer and write is expensive.

Children are not encouraged to write at school. No one praises the kid who failed Maths but obtained a distinction for creative writing. We teach our children that life is all about pursuing careers that will make you a lot of money. Get a real Northern Cape job, go and work in the mines. Become a boilermaker. Become a lawyer or something. And a lot of young people sometimes just end up something.

Yes, by all means, write your poems or short stories, but write them away from the eyes of the world. Keep them in a drawer, forgotten. Writing will not provide for tomorrow. That is the Lord’s work. He alone provides, not publishers. There’s Antjie Krog. There’s Breyten Breytenbach. How can your writing affect the world? How will writing change your world?

Consolation prize

Go ahead and buy your Black Label six pack if there are any wages left. It’s a consolation prize. Maybe it will help to keep you intact tonight. Maybe the bottle will speak of the things that cannot find the way between the heart and the tongue. It’s no use. Inebriation and hardship over the years connect your father to his father and his father like beads on a string. They have eaten sour grapes and now your teeth are set on edge. Why would it be any different for you? Why do you need to write? A PhD in drinking is much easier to obtain than a PhD in creative writing.

Who studies creative writing anyway? It’s unnecessary. What kind of money do you make? Let others weary themselves with the albatross of authorship. They walk into the sea and you’ve never even been to the sea. The only sea that you know is the sea of sorrow. You stay there every year. It spits you out every now and then but most of the time it swallows you and leaves you with a full bottle and half a pack of smokes.

You’re in Grade 11 and your father passed away three months ago. Your mother is struggling to make ends meet without that income. You get sanitary pads at school. The married guy who stopped next to you the other evening while you were having a furtive smoke next to the shop said he could make your life better. Because of him you are able to take milk and bread home to the family. He makes the world a slightly gentler place for you. You might not work but your ovaries do. You are left holding a mewling infant instead of a matric certificate. He drives past both of you with a cool beer and an untroubled conscience.

Alliteration and quatrains do not console you. DM

The article was originally written and published in Afrikaans.

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Royal misnomer

Consolation prize