Читать книгу A Bosman Companion - Craig Mackenzie - Страница 7

1867 Discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West.

1870–71 Diamond rush to Kimberley.

1877 Proclamation of Transvaal as British Crown Colony.

1879 Anglo–Zulu War.

1880–81 First Anglo–Boer War.

1883 Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm published.

1886 Discovery of main gold reef on the Witwatersrand.

1890 Cecil Rhodes becomes Prime Minister of Cape.

1895 Dr Jameson launches raid into Transvaal.

1897 Annexation of Zululand to Natal.

1899–1902 Second Anglo–Boer War.

1899–1900 Sol Plaatje writes his diary recording events during the siege of Mafeking (eventually published as The Boer War Diary of Sol T. Plaatje in 1973).

1905 HCB born, 3 February, at Kuils River, near Cape Town, the first son of Elisa (née Malan), a teacher, and Jacobus Bosman, a mine labourer. A second son, Pierre, is born in 1906.

1907 J. Percy FitzPatrick’s Jock of the Bushveld published.

1910 Union of South Africa established.

1912 South African Native National Congress (SANNC) formed; Sol Plaatje is one of the founding members.

1913 Natives Land Act promulgated, in terms of which Africans are prohibited from owning land outside of designated reserves (7% of SA’s land area).

1914–18 First World War.

1916 The Bosman family moves to Potchefstroom, the Malan family’s home town. Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa published.

1918 Jacobus Bosman finds a job on the Witwatersrand mines, and the family moves to Johannesburg. HCB is enrolled at Jeppe Central School.

1920, 21 HCB begins his sketches for The Sunday Times, and also publishes some material in The Jeppe High School Magazine.

1922 Matriculates from Houghton College after moving there from Jeppe High, where he has a chequered academic and disciplinary record. White miners strike; Rand Revolt.

1923 Registers at Wits University and the Normal College for teachers.

1924 Sarah Gertrude Millin’s God’s Step-Children published.

1925 HCB contributes various pieces to The Umpa. Jacobus Bosman dies in a mining accident; Elisa Bosman marries William Russell. Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka published in Sesotho (published in English translation in 1931); Pauline Smith’s The Little Karoo published.

1926 Marries Vera Sawyer in January; is posted two days thereafter to a small farm school at Zwingli. Publishes a sketch describing this in The Umpa (“A Teacher in the Bushveld”). The first issue of the literary review Voorslag appears under the editorship of Roy Campbell, William Plomer and Laurens van der Post; Plomer’s Turbott Wolfe and Pauline Smith’s The Beadle published.

July: Returns to the family home in Johannesburg for mid-year holidays; is evidently very unhappy about the atmosphere in the home and the relations between the Russells and the Bosmans. On the eve of his return a scuffle breaks out between Pierre and David, and HCB fires a shot into David Russell’s bedroom; David is killed instantly. Is arrested and appears in court on 11 and 15 November; is sentenced to death by hanging and taken to Pretoria Central Prison, where he is placed on death row.

1927 Jan: Is reprieved and sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour; this sentence is later reduced by half. Begins writing poetry and sketches in prison; some are published.

1929 The satirical journal The Sjambok appears under Stephen Black’s editorship; Deneys Reitz’s Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War published. HCB’s poem “Perhaps Some Day” appears in The Sjambok, 5 July 1929.

1930 31 May: HCB’s sketch “In the Beginning” appears in The Sjambok. Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago, the first full-length novel by a black South African writer in English, and Roy Campbell’s Adamastor published.

Sept: HCB released from Pretoria Central Prison.

Dec: The literary magazine The Touleier appears under the editorship of HCB and Aegidius Jean Blignaut. It carries HCB’s first Schalk Lourens story, “Makapan’s Caves”.

1931 The Touleier carries HCB’s second Schalk Lourens story, “The Rooinek”, in two parts (Jan–Feb and Mar). HCB and Blignaut launch The New L. S. D. following the death of Stephen Black in Aug. The launching of The New Sjambok by the pair follows. Various HCB stories, including “In Church” (2 Jan) and “The Night-dress” (13 Feb), appear in its pages. HCB’s poetry pamphlet The Blue Princess appears.

1932 HCB’s second and third small poetry collections, Mara and Rust, appear. HCB marries Ella Manson in Oct.

1933 Jesus: An Ode appears. The year also sees the appearance of two short-lived Bosman–Blignaut publications – Mompara and The Ringhals, which carries HCB’s story “A Nun’s Passion: A Christmas Story”, and lands the pair in court on charges of blasphemy.

1934 HCB and Ella leave for England, where they spend most of the next six years, with some visits to the continent. “Veld Maiden”, the first of a set of classic OSL stories HCB sends back from London over the next few years, appears in The South African Opinion in Dec.

1935 The South African Opinion carries “The Music Maker” in July, and “Mafeking Road” in Aug.

1936 HCB begins work at The Sunday Critic, a short-lived four-page tabloid. It carries some of his reviews and essays, as well as the lurid series Leader of Gunmen, featuring the gangster Claude Satang, which HCB intends ultimately to publish in novel form (nothing comes of this in the end).

1937 The Sunday Critic ceases publication in Feb. HCB goes into a lengthy creative hiatus.

1939–45 Second World War; the Bosmans are repatriated to SA in 1940.

1941–42 HCB publishes a number of journalistic pieces in various SA periodicals.

1943 Mar–Oct: Takes job as editor of The Zoutpansberg Review and Mining Journal in Pietersburg; this provides the setting for the novels Jacaranda in the Night and Willemsdorp; meets Helena Stegmann and begins relationship with her; is fired from The Zoutpansberg Review following a court appearance in Oct on charges of procuring an abortion; is later released after Helena drops charges; the Bosmans return to Johannesburg late in the year.

1944 HCB divorces Ella in Feb and marries Helena in Mar; takes on job as literary editor of relaunched South African Opinion. HCB begins the most productive period of his writing life: from this point on until his death he produces dozens of Schalk Lourens stories and scores of journalistic pieces.

1946 Peter Abrahams’s Mine Boy and Es’kia Mphahlele’s first collection, Man Must Live and Other Stories, published.

1947 Jacaranda in the Night and, later, Mafeking Road published.

1948 Begins publishing numerous Bushveld stories in the bilingual periodical On Parade; several stories appear in Afrikaans versions, sometimes before their appearance in English (the notable example here is “Tot Stof”). The Herenigde Nasionale Party (later Nasionale Party) wins general election with its policy of apartheid; Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country published.

1949 Cold Stone Jug and Veld-trails and Pavements published. Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act promulgated; Nadine Gordimer’s Face to Face, her first collection of short stories, published.

1950 On 15 Apr begins the Voorkamer sequence with “The Budget”; the series will run to 80 pieces in all. Immorality Act amended; Population Registration Act; Group Areas Act; Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing published; the stage show King Kong, with music by Todd Matshikiza, first performed. HCB begins work as proofreader for The Sunday Express.

1951 (March) First issue of Drum magazine appears in Cape Town as African Drum. 14 Oct: HCB dies of cardiac arrest at his home in Lombardy East. 19 Oct: His last Voorkamer piece, “Homecoming”, appears after his death.

1953 Bantu Education Act; South African Communist Party (SACP) formed underground.

1955 Sophiatown, a black ‘location’ north-west of Johannesburg, and the home or temporary abode of many artists and musicians, destroyed.

1956 ANC approves Freedom Charter; 20 000 women march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the extension of the pass laws to women; Nadine Gordimer’s Six Feet of the Country published.

1957 Lionel Abrahams publishes his selection of HCB’s journalistic essays as A Cask of Jerepigo.

1959 Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) formed; Es’kia Mphahlele’s Down Second Avenue published.

1960 Sharpeville massacre; State of Emergency declared; ANC and PAC banned; Douglas Livingstone’s first poetry collection, The Skull in the Mud, published.

1961 South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth and becomes a republic; ANC adopts armed struggle.

1963 Lionel Abrahams’s selection of HCB’s Bushveld stories appears as Unto Dust. Bloke Modisane’s autobiography, Blame Me on History, and Dennis Brutus’s poetry collection Sirens, Knuckles, Boots published.

1965 Abrahams’s perennial seller, Bosman at His Best, appears.

1966 Verwoerd assassinated; Vorster becomes Prime Minister; Sydney Clouts’s One Life, the only collection of poems to appear in his lifetime, published. District Six cleared and declared a white area. Like Sophiatown, District Six was the home or meeting place of numerous writers and musicians.

1969 Jan: First performance of Willem Prinsloo’s Peach Brandy, Percy Sieff’s adaptation for the stage of some HCB stories and extracts from Cold Stone Jug, in Cape Town. Nov: Patrick Mynhardt opens his one-man Bosman show, A Sip of Jerepigo, which runs for over three years, and is followed by various other one-man Bosman shows by Mynhardt, until his death in 2007. Athol Fugard’s Boesman and Lena published.

1971 Abrahams’s selections of HCB’s Voorkamer stories appear as Jurie Steyn’s Post Office and A Bekkersdal Marathon. Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali’s Sounds of a Cowhide Drum published.

1972 Mongane Serote’s Yakhal’inkomo published.

1973 Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead and Bessie Head’s A Question of Power published.

1974 Abrahams’s selection of HCB’s poetry appears as The Earth is Waiting. J. M. Coetzee’s Dusklands and Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist published.

1976 Sunflower to the Sun, Valerie Rosenberg’s biography of HCB’s life and work, the first full-length work on HCB, appears. The Soweto Uprising occurs; resistance becomes widespread and hundreds are killed; others go into exile. 1970s and 1980s poetry collections by Mafika Gwala, Oswald Mtshali, Mongane Serote, Sipho Sepamla, Ingoapele Madingoane, and others go on to reflect both a new urgency of tone and a more militant artistic agenda. Sipho Sepamla’s The Blues Is You in Me published.

1977 Willemsdorp appears, with some cuts to get round the censorship board. Steve Biko murdered in detention, sparking an international outcry.

1978 Ahmed Essop’s The Hajji and Other Stories published; the first issue of Staffrider, founded and edited by Mike Kirkwood, and espousing a workerist, egalitarian aesthetic, appears: it will go on to publish the work of Njabulo Ndebele, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Miriam Tlali, Ahmed Essop, and Mothobi Mutloatse, among many others.

1979 Mtutuzeli Matshoba’s Call Me Not a Man published.

1980 Stephen Gray’s selection of HCB’s stories, Selected Stories, appears.

1981 HCB’s Collected Works appears in two volumes; this edition gathered all of the published HCB volumes to date, and was the most comprehensive gathering of his work at the time. Patrick Mynhardt releases his selection of Bosman favourites as The Bosman I Like. Mongane Serote’s To Every Birth Its Blood and Achmat Dangor’s Waiting for Leila published.

1982 Ruth First assassinated by parcel bomb in Maputo.

1983 Jeremy Cronin’s Inside and Njabulo Ndebele’s Fools and Other Stories published.

1985 Ellen Kuzwayo’s autobiography, Call Me Woman, published.

1989 P. W. Botha suffers stroke; F. W. de Klerk becomes State President; De Klerk meets Mandela for the first time; Ivan Vladislavi´c’s Missing Persons published.

1990 De Klerk unbans ANC, SACP and other opposition parties; Mandela’s unconditional release announced.

1991 De Klerk announces that all apartheid laws will be repealed; Mandela elected president of the ANC; Nadine Gordimer wins Nobel Prize for Literature.

1993 Mandela and De Klerk announced joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.

1994 First democratic elections held; Mandela becomes president; his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom published.

1996 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) begins hearings.

1998 Human & Rousseau begin releasing two volumes per year of the Anniversary Edition of Herman Charles Bosman, which will end in 2005, with all of his work released in 14 volumes. TRC report published; Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull published.

1999 Thabo Mbeki succeeds Mandela as president; J. M. Coetzee’s Booker-winning Disgrace published.

2003 J. M. Coetzee awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.

2005 To mark the centenary of HCB’s birth, Stephen Gray’s biography, Life Sentence: A Biography of Herman Charles Bosman, the most detailed and comprehensive examination of his life and work to date, is released. Valerie Rosenberg releases the third version of her biography, Herman Charles Bosman – Between the Lines. The 14-volume Anniversary Edition concludes with Homecoming: Voorkamer Stories (II).