African literature in the next millennium

Abstract

There is an ongoing feeling that the literature of African languages is childish and immature. The feeling stems from the view that the literature of African languages is not up to the standard of English and Afrikaans in this country. There is some truth in this because the growth of the literature was stifled by the prescriptions of the missionaries and later the apartheid regime. This article looks at the African novel of the 1990s. It shows that the novel of the 1990s has developed to the degree that the literature of the African languages can be said to be entering the new millennium with justifiable confidence.