Lewis Nkosi and the Politics of PEN

In 1976, Lewis Nkosi addressed PEN International in The Hague, asking for the South African chapter of PEN to be expelled by the international body. By this time, PEN South Africa had fallen into disrepute for its perceived lack of distance from apartheid. Despite attempts to revive it under a progressive leadership in the late 1970s, it was too fragmented by then to sustain itself as a local organisation. This was why the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW), rather than a South African chapter of PEN, assisted formerly-banned writers such as Nkosi, Dennis Brutus, and Lauretta Ngcobo return to South Africa for the New Nation Conference in 1991. By 2000, however, COSAW had itself fallen into disrepute, with many prominent writers calling for it not to be revived, and in the 2000s PEN South Africa established itself as a credible organisation. Reviewing Nkosi’s address to PEN in 1976 in relation to the PEN Charter and the history of PEN prompts questions about the politics of this writers’ organisation, not only in the twentieth century but also in the contemporary era.