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Anthony Fleischer, Cape Town 2011Anthony Fleischer, Cape Town 2011
Anthony Fleischer is a South African author who lives in Cape Town. He has written eight novels, all set in Africa.

This website promotes five of these books - Zulu, Chilembwe of the Lake, Okavango Gods, Garibaldi's Ski-Boat and Children of Adamastor.

VIDEO - Anthony Fleischer and Margie Orford Interview...Click Here




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    Zulu

    The book is Orwellian in a way. The West has collapsed in a "Grand Crash". Post-GC Africa needs to look after itself, not succumb to new colonizers - Chinese or Islamic...Read More

    Buy now on the Kindle Store.
  • chilembwe

    Chilembwe of the lake

    Apartheid Nationalists wanted to control information and limit free expression. Now African Nationalists want to do the same. What's new? Cartoonists, journalists, novelists, protect your right to information and to free expression! Write! Africa Write!...Read More

    the novel has the artistic integrity of genuine tragedy
    Buy now on the Kindle Store
  • Children

    Children of Adamastor

    The terrorist nature of the Marxist revolution in Mocambique is starkly reflected in this story of a brave Portuguese girl who survives assault, tries to rebuild a life in the country of her adoption, but finally has to escape by sea to reach South Africa...Read More

    Altogether, this is a novel of integrity and eminent readability.
    Buy Now in paperback from Amazon.com
  • Okavango

    okavango gods

    The Okavango River Delta in Botswana is about as deep into Africa as one can go. The great river empties, not into the sea, but into the Kalahari Desert, which absorbs it like a sponge...Read More

    This is a wonderful and edifying story by a master of our language.
    Buy Now in paperback from Amazon.com
  • zulucover
  • chilembwe
  • Children
  • Okavango
  • Garibaldi


Goose-quill to Digital

The magnificent Magna Carta, recently displayed by The Bodleian Library in San Francisco, prompts my title. The principles of the Magna Carta, 1215, are at the core of the American Constitution 1776, and the South African Consitution of 1996. The original document contained the principles of liberty which are the foundation of modern democracy, and they were written in Latin on a sheep’s skin.

“The ink is dark brown, occasionally abraded but not powdering, so probably an iron-gall ink….The scribe would have used a quill pen, probably a goose-quill…….. The parchment is a single skin”. Littera scripta manet.

The written word remains, but all documents are now going digital. What does this mean for education at all levels, for university libraries, for study of any kind, and for writers of any kind? What does it mean for print? What future for cherished books in libraries of the world?

Long ago children listened to what they were told. Those who could not read were limited in their access to proof or denial, and those who could read were limited in their access to books. The current distribution of text books to schools in Africa, for instance, is severely limited. Imagine a Kindle in the hands of every child who can read! Imagine instant download of any chosen text. Or imagine digital libraries in every school, with on-line classroom display screens in place of blackboards. Imagine global support for any teacher anywhere, imagine a digital Bodleian.

First man chips a shape on stone and leaves it at the entrance to his cave as a warning. Or he receives great messages from a plethora of gods and repeats them on stone. Parchment was an advance, and the skin of an animal. Then man discovers print, handles it most reverently. He designs elaborate holy words, tells stories for best-selling early bibles. Then great publishers find great authors, print authority grows and great libraries, like the Bodleian, become even more precious. Then man develops high-speed printing presses for newspapers with daily sales of 10 million copies or more – all telling stories, some the product of imagination.

Imagination is very personal. New ideas can arise in any mind and they can be expressed in any language. The individual thinker needs protection and so does his language. The principles of freedom and free expression can now be shared more rapidly than ever before. Print was a great advance, radio and TV followed, but perhaps the greatest advance since Gutenberg is the current digital revolution. It will give greater freedom to writers, greater freedom to those who have great principles to promote.

The Magna Carta is available on the internet, as well as many books of the Bodleian. Digital access will prove to be a liberating power. Shared principles of intellectual freedom, as taught and cherished at Lincoln, will flourish in the digital age.

Anthony Fleischer - BLitt. Oxon. (1952)
President, South African PEN


 Video Clip :: President and Executive Vice President of South African PEN Discussion - Click to View

"In this clip, President and Executive Vice President of South African PEN talk briefly to Congress about the the past and the future. I would like to add that Carles Torner of Catalan PEN was largely rsponsible for drafting the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights. Carles asked me to join his working group some years ago and I happily agreed. I am also happy to add that I in turn asked South Africans Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi to support the UDLR in principle. They all agreed. The Girona Manifesto, also prepared by Catalan PEN, is a magnificent summary of linguistic principle, matching our revered PEN Charter. It is endorsed by International PEN. Margie Orford talks convincingly about the need for PEN to promote not only free expression and literature but also LITERACY. South Africa has 11 official languages, the African continent more than 1000.

Please note the bookAFRICAN PENS 2011, the last of a series. It is also a privilege to record that 12 authors whose work appeared in our PEN series of 10 editions, have gone on to publish their own literary titles.

Read! Africa Read! Write! Africa Write!

Engadinwa nangomuso! Pula! Khotso!

Anthony Fleischer
President
South African PEN"



AFRICAN PENS 2011.

This final PEN volume, containing the winning short-stories chosen by Nobel Laureate John Coetzee for the final £10 000 PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Award, was launched in Cape Town on 19th May 2011, I read the stories in original typescript, I like the graphics and the layout and would like to thank Jacana for producing an appealing final edition of AFRICAN PENS. Twelve authors whose work appeared in the series, have gone on to publish their own literary titles.

However, I want to express my disappointment that black African writers are so poorly represented in AFRICAN PENS 2011 - the tenth volume of a series. I asked our highly efficient Secretary, Deborah Horn-Botha, who strictly maintains PEN’s anonymity policy, to give me some idea of the “racial” origin of submissions. This was her reply: “A, am dismayed at having to answer your question re. racial stats but have pulled out the ID’s and quickly checked them. A rough figure is say 190 out of 390 authors were non-white. This equates to about 48.5%.” Deborah also reminded me that we were once asked by the National Arts Council to advise “the racial profiles of each finalist, eg African, Colored, Indian, Chinese and White.” We refused.

SA PEN strives to be non-racial and the principles of our PEN Charter are close to those of the South African Constitution of 1996. I believe that in upholding free-expression we should honour all heritage and therefore the diversity of the world. Clearly, in an open literary competition, we cannot ensure “proportional representation” or apply racial “quotas” as the current South African government tends to do. The concept is suspect in all fields of endeavour. It is as unacceptable under the current potential of un-constitutional black racism as it was under past white racism. We cannot address literacy and literature problems by quota. We hope to encourage young writers of exciting diversity, and it is the writing which interests us, not the race which may explain it.

Our scrupulously observed “anonymity” principle meant that no reader, no member of the Editorial Board, and certainly not the final judge Nobel Laureate John Coetzee, knew the name of any author of any story submitted. We had entries from many of the fifteen SADC countries but the imbalance persisted. Is it our failure to build literacy and literature in our society? Music and art are thriving in South, what about literature? Is it the failure of our country’s educational systems over the years? Is it PEN’s insistence on English? Is it the short-story format? Is it the judging? Is it an African distrust of mere literary prose and a preference for more rewarding political polemic? Is it a current rejection of mere fiction by black writers?

I can’t believe the latter: in 2007 Petina Gappah from Zimbabwe and Stanley Kenani from Malawi were both clear winners. Petina’s story, “At the Sound of the Last Post” and Stanley’s “For Honour”, were both marvellous fiction.

Write! Africa Write! SA PEN says so loudly from Cape Town but it is mainly the whites, particularly white women, who seem to respond. If a society is threatened does it produce more thinkers and therefore more writers? Has it been existential “threat” that has produced so many Jewish Nobel Laureates? Afrikaans writing seems to be particularly strong at the moment – is that a product of the threat to its existence? Does fear really make the creative juices flow? Or am I asking the wrong questions?

Perhaps I am. SA PEN is an English-language centre of International PEN upholding the principles of the admirable PEN Charter. We also encourage literature - in English. English PEN in London will also encourage literature, in English. Catalan PEN in Barcelona will encourage Catalan; French PEN in Paris, French; Italian PEN in Rome, Italian. Switzerland has a German-speaking Centre and a Reto-Romanish-speaking Centre. Hong Kong has a Chinese-speaking Centre and an English-speaking Centre. There is a Canadian PEN in Toronto as well as a “Quebecois” Centre in Quebec. . Perhaps the answer lies here. International PEN should encourage writers in Africa to establish their own PEN Centres, promoting literacy and literature - particularly in their own languages. That could mean around 1000 centres in Africa – a wonderful example of diversity and indeed a potentially powerful PAN - or PEN African Network. SA PEN has already suggested the establishment of a Zulu-language centre in Durban. If free expression is to survive in Africa, should not expression in mother-tongue also survive?

I still write in English but my own language will lose its historic dominance in the face of burgeoning cultures and languages in the East - already more people in the world speak Mandarin than English. I do not fear for its survival, but English may well need continuing strong support from its practitioners - just like other minority languages. Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has already supported the idea of establishing a Zulu-language PEN Centre in Durban. I would like to be a member of it. My latest novel is entitled ZULU: it is in English, and is dedicated to the Zulu poet Benedict Wallet Vilakazi. His message was “honour your heritage”. Honour your own language too, Read it, write in it.

But if the young can’t read, how will they ever write?

“Write! Africa Write!” we have shouted for so long from Cape Town. Now we will prepare to address the urgent issue of literacy under the slogan “Read Africa Read!”.

Anthony Fleischer
President
SA PEN

11 November 2011 - Breaking News:

Twigs of earlier Kindle have built the FIRE! The new kindle ebook reader was launched on 11 November 2011.

Anthony Fleischer's latest titles are available in the Kindle Store:

ZULU - the end of the alphabet and the world as we know it. Dedicated to the Zulu poet Benedict Wallet Vilakazi.

CHILEMBWE OF THE LAKE - original censored in apartheid South Africa, now available globally on kindle.

KING PROTEAS - a short story about aliens, both people and flowers. Visit Amazon.com. Download on to your kindle Fire.

Click here to view these titles on the Amazon Kindle store.

FROM AMERICAN PEN:

To celebrate Banned Books Week, taking place from September 24 to October 1, we invited PEN Members to recommend banned or challenged books that have influenced them as writers and readers. Below, Anthony Fleischer, president of South African PEN, discusses how his own banned book brought him to the organization.

My first novel was written under the pen name Hans Hofmeyer. It was entitled The Skin is Deep and published by Secker & Warburg of London in 1958. The book was well reviewed by The Times Literary Supplement and others, but was banned by the apartheid government when it reached South Africa. I then joined South African PEN to support its charter and its free expression principles. I was inordinately upset by that ban. How can any government anywhere tell its citizens what they might or might not read? After Mandela was released, I published in the U.K. and locally under my own name. And now, in reaction to the new threats of official censorship, I have revisited my first book and  have published it on Kindle as an e-book. The title is now Chilembwe of the Lake, and his lake was Lake Malawi. In the new democracies of the world, no one should be a foreigner.

Write! Africa Write!

"On my 83rd birthday - I ask you to read my new novel ZULU on kindle. ZULU joins CHILEMBWE OF THE LAKE on kindle. Chilembwe was the hero of my first novel, the SKIN IS DEEP by Hans Hofmeyer, traditionally published by Secker & Warburg in 1958. The book was banned in South Africa under Government Notice 1314 of that year. I reissue the story of CHILEMBWE on kindle under my own name in protest against the current South African government's wish to censor and to control the press.

ZULU is dedicated to the Zulu poet Benedict Wallet Vilakazi who was my revered lecturer at Wits University. He taught me Zulu, and he taught me to honour my heritage. This has become a global injunction - Honour your heritage. Honour your heritage from A to Z. In South Africa, honour heritage from Afrikaans to Zulu."

Anthony Fleischer
8 July 2011

Anthony Fleischer was born in South Africa and educated at the University of the Witwatersrand and at Lincoln College, Oxford. Recently, he wrote this 'memoir' of his Oxford days for IMPRINT, the Lincoln College journal:.

African PENS    -    Anthony Fleischer    -    May 2008    

Three bumps for Lincoln VIII during Eights Week in 1950; tours of France with Lincoln rugby XV and Greyhounds; Sunday cricket with Lincoln Lollards, and finally a B.Litt. (Oxon) conferred in 1952. My Oxford career!

Academic memories are mainly of Rhodes House, Professor (Sally) Herbert Frankel, Professors Hancock and Wheare, and wise counsel from Sir Keith Murray, then Rector of Lincoln, later Lord Murray of Newhaven. Sir Keith encouraged me to complete my thesis on “Social and Administrative Problems of Labour Migration in South Africa” – now in the Bodleian, still in typescript form. The thesis was never published – not surprising considering the title – but the subject of ‘migration’ is of increasing significance today, not only in Africa. The “push” and “pull” factors of socio-economic imbalance are behind the recent xenophobia in my country.

I returned home to South Africa armed with my B.Litt. degree, got a job with the Chamber of Mines at a salary of £50 a month and did the smartest thing of my life – married Dona Dolores Carlotta Kent de Paiva Rapozo. Together we produced my first novel, THE SKIN IS DEEP, published by Secker & Warburg in London in 1958. I was after all a Bachelor of Letters from Oxford and should surely write! Dolores helped me with that first literary effort and we were both very pleased to read positive reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, and other newspapers in the United Kingdom. The story dealt with the trials of Chilembwe who migrated to South Africa from Malawi to work on a gold mine

I have on file a letter from Sir Keith Murray congratulating me on my second novel GARIBALDI’S SKI BOAT, published by André Deutsch in London in 1960. That letter is far more precious to me than any review in any newspaper anywhere. That book was also published in Germany by Rex Verlag, Munich, and in Italy by Mondadori, Milan, but Sir Keith’s early recognition of the André Deutsch English edition is still the most cherished. Sadly, I last saw Sir Keith on his death bed in a London hospital.

When THE SKIN IS DEEP reached South Africa in 1958 it was banned under Government Notice 1413. I was deeply upset by the ban and in the same year I joined the South African Centre of International PEN, the global writers’ organisation which champions free expression. Dolores and I have worked together for PEN ever since, and I have been a member of South African PEN for fifty years, and President for the past seven years.


Together Dolores and I attended PEN Congresses as South African delegates in Barcelona, Edinburgh, Prague and Santiago de Compostela. In Barcelona I was asked by Carlos Torner of Catalan PEN to join his task group on a Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights. Back in South Africa I was able to obtain signatures to the UDLR
from President Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi. South Africa has eleven official languages and throughout Africa linguistic rights and free expression go together.

SA PEN’s main purposes are to defend free expression and encourage literature. While publishing our own titles over the years, we have also together motivated and been instrumental in the production of eight PEN volumes of new writing, culminating in AFRICAN PENS in 2007. Our purpose has always been to encourage new authors.

The Caine Prize for African Writing is a greater effort in the same field. It is pleasing to be able to report that the work of three young authors on the 2008 Caine Prize short-list of five first appeared in AFRICAN PENS, the third volume of short stories which SA PEN selected and published in Cape Town in 2007. The Caine Prize will be presented at a dinner to be held in the Bodleian on 7th July – a day before my 80th birthday! Dolores and I hope to be there to celebrate with the authors:

Stanley Kenani for For honour, set in Malawi
Henrietta Rose-Innes for Poison, set in Cape Town
Gill Schierhout for The day of the surgical colloquium hosted by the Far East Rand Hospital, set in a mine hospital in South Africa

Nobel Laureate and SA PEN member JM Coetzee selected the first two stories as winners for the 2007 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award, which is to be followed by the PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Award series for 2009, 2010 and 2011, with annual prizes totalling £10,000, kindly donated by benefactor John Studzinski.

The new PEN series will be headed by SA PEN member Shaun Johnson, Rhodes Scholar and Commonwealth Prize winner for his first novel THE NATIVE COMMISSIONER. Shaun also heads the Mandela Rhodes Foundation which provides scholarships for talented young people from Africa, some of whom may become Rhodes Scholars. Some may even become established authors.

Write! Africa Write!

Anthony C Fleischer
President South African PEN Cape Town May 2008

I was asked the other day which of my novels I liked best while writing it.  I could very quickly answer “GARIBALDI’S SKI-BOAT” because it had to do with the sea and with fishing.   I also liked this comment from a review in TIME & TIDE in London when the novel was first published:  “It is difficult to pin-point the extraordinary attractiveness of this story, perhaps it is because the author never, by so much as a nod towards a more complex world, leaves the setting and the characters he has drawn.”   I stayed on the Umzimvubu River and then went out to sea with Garibaldi to catch some fish.

At one stage Garibaldi says: “And really if you have lived does it matter that the living must stop? If you have known does it matter that you will forget? If even for a moment there is the joy and clear beauty of living do the cloudy dismal times cancel it out? Does it matter that you have to pay for it? Pay for the living pay for the joy? Does it matter? A soul smiles and a body is alive and, knowing the insecurity of being that way, it serves until the time comes. Do not fear the end, only feel its inevitability which is there always to spice the joy and exalt the soul.  When it comes be ready for you have not been robbed.”

Another reason for choosing to comment on GARIBALDI SKI-BOAT in this introduction is that Sir Keith Murray, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, my guide and mentor through wonderful years at a great University liked the story.  It is with great respect for Sir Keith that I repeat the first paragraph of his warm letter to me dated January 2nd 1961:

Dear Tony,

I wanted to say again how much I enjoyed ‘Garibaldi’s Ski-Boat’.  I took it home for Christmas and re-read it and it appealed to me even more on this second occasion; the characters of Garibaldi, Sky and Lifwana stand out so clearly and you have drawn them with extraordinary sensitivity.  Finally of course, the sea and river complexes are wonderfully outlined and the final descriptive passages of the last trip of the ski-boat are absolute first class.  I do congratulate you in the whole creation”…………..

Yours ever,

Keith

Lord Murray of Newhaven has sadly left us.  I saw him last in hospital in London.  More than fifty years ago he pushed me to finish my first book, an unpublished thesis which would allow me to sign if I wanted to:

Anthony Fleischer, B.Litt Oxon.

President South African PEN Cape Town April 2007

Big Crab


Write! Africa Write!