Small’s big legacy: Making the taal of the oppressor sing
Poet, playwright, translator, activist and educator Adam Small was a protean man of letters, to which he brought black consciousness sensibility and notable humanity.
A founder of the University of the Western Cape, Small died at the weekend at the age of 79. A life that began in Wellington in the Western Cape on December 21 1936 ended early last Saturday morning in the same town.
Words and learning were in his blood: his father taught at Gorée, outside Robertson, to which the family had moved some years after Small was born. He took his matric in 1953 at St Columba’s High School in Athlone, following that up with a bachelor of arts degree in languages and philosophy at the University of Cape Town and a master’s cum laude in philosophy, focusing on the thinkers Nicolai Hartmann and Friedrich Nietzsche. Later, he furthered his studies at the uni- versities of London and Oxford, returning to teach philosophy at the University of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape.
Of his plays, arguably the most memorable and enduring is Kanna Hy Kô Hystoe: ’n Drama (1965). His final play, Maria, Moeder van God, was broadcast last year on Radio Sonder Grense.
Small wrote mainly in Afrikaans, which for him was far more than the language of the oppressor. His words — both supple and robust, and always moving — showed that Afrikaans could be used by the oppressed just as affectingly, poignantly and pointedly as by the coloniser.
His relationship with the taal extended to the translation Oh Wide and Sad Land — Afrikaans Poetry of NP van Wyk Louw (1975). The Afrikaans literary establishment gave Small the 2012 Hertzog prize for his contribution to drama: too little, too late, many said. Certainly, the award had something of the feeling of those lifetime Oscars, given as consolation prizes to aged Academy Award nominees who have consistently missed out on the Oscar itself.
The prize broke its own rules, which stipulate that it be given to writers who have published new and substantial work in a given genre over the preceding three years. At the time, Small’s last published play was in 1983.
Among his most moving books is Oos Wes Tuis Bes Distrik Ses, with poems by Small and photographs by Chris Jansen (Human & Rousseau, 1973). A limited edition of 1 250 copies, signed and numbered by the authors, it tells in words and photographs the agony and the ecstasy, the glory and the grandeur, and the grottiness and the tragedy of District Six and its human and animal citizens.
Paging through my copy, I came across this old favourite, a poem about the last black cat in town:
Verf skilfer van hout af/ wat kraak in mure/ wat bars,/ waarvan pleister voor skrapers/ wat rondom stoot/ val …/ Net, tot die laaste toe/ — bitter eindeloosheid —/ sit in ’n rinkelende venster/ ’n swart kat We want to get to a situation where we are not constrained by resources, and to become a tool where any parent or teacher who wants to find books in their own languages can. And then, to get the reviews.