Mhlongo Duma E

I have read this anthology during my undergraduate years - majoring in English, Psychology & Education. Thereabouts 25 years ago - yet I have a fresh memory of the tactile strong feel the book had and its papyrus-like smell when I bought it. Honestly - I never academically or universally finished reading The Drum Decade. To confess - I only did so, intellectually. With gratitude to the Drum Decade - I will have an intellectually 'better polished' PhD project which next generations will be proud of - sanitized of any apparent neo-colonial dogma & skewed addiction to Anglicized works. I request of you to read the vibrant & lively pen works of Can Dorsay Themba, served besides Es'kia Mphahlele's brutally honest writings. Your breath will be taken away by Bloke Modisane's soul wrenching satirical offering in The Dignity of Begging versus Richard Rive's abstract realities in Black & Brown Song and the African Song. I now understand why I am psychologically stuck in the 50s time warp. While I was born in the 70s, you will understand why I am so sheepishly in love with the innocently diverse moods in the movies of that 50s era, the low-tech black & white reel documentaries, not to forget the commercially healing post-World War II memorabilia of the economic boom vis a vis the boon of mass advertising which assisted the global embrace of industrial psychology. Drum magazine and its journalists are both the politico-yellow press conjoined twins of this era. Succinctly, this anthology is a fitting literary demo of why the 1960s became an eloquently wild yet softly liberal offspring borne from the pseudo-apocalypse/super-power stupor maternal womb of the 1950s. These great writers escaped the anti-intellectualism wrath imposed by the regional super-power apartheid regime - which failed dismally and embarrassingly to over-exert itself politically & racially, to either imprison or exile these writers' empowering, uniting, liberating and emancipating creative talents and energies. By selecting The Drum Decade, my hugely Anglican by birth & heritage lecturers/module developers succeeded to Africanize my intellect. Reason being - my 12 years of Bantu education years, were spent in History classrooms where narratives of Jan van Riebeeck & co. portrayed him so grossly unfair at the expense of intellectual maturity - as a hero-ambassador of the West/Europe against great absence of historians of African decent & indigenous narratives. Colonia Conquistador. Rather, to intellectually imprison us. Paradoxically, and seemingly - it is an indication that my White lecturers too - warmly embraced being intellectually liberated/influenced by African writers. Buying The Drum Decade is must for the modern university student and lecturer across all disciplines - to read either for leisure &/or for academic analysis. I still aspire to re-pursue a PhD in English Studies of African Writers - thanks to the open & sweet decadence of every short-story lining the The Drum Decade. I believe, this anthology's apparent weakness is the lack of a follow-up project - a well deserved 2nd Edition. Umunt'ngu nga banye a'Bantu. Sincerely; Duma Mhlongo, South Africa. Mentored in the Zulu ways by Khabonina & Mbuduza Mhlongo (my maternal uncles - the historians & custodians of my Zulu heritage - Nina bakaBhebhe kaMthendeka, Njomane. Langeni, Owavel’elangeni! I am the 5th generation direct descendant of Queen Nandi Mhlongo, iNkosazan' ka-Bhebhe - mother to Shaka - King of the Zulu Nation.