Publishing under Apartheid: OUP in South Africa

Abstract

The intention in this chapter is to contribute towards writing the histories of publishers in apartheid South Africa. There are several histories in circulation of independent publishers in this period, of Ravan Press, Skotaville, Taurus, Ad Donker, Renoster Books, Bataleur and David Philip.¹ These publications emphasise the publishers’ conflict with the state, their challenge of censorship legislation and their success in discovering new, marginalised authors. Educational publishers, by contrast, have been more circumspect about their histories in South Africa. For example, the officially commissioned Oxford University Press: An Informal History by Peter Sutcliffe, with its self-described ‘episodic approach and its concentration on a few outstanding individuals’, privileges the work of the Press in Oxford and London, but is virtually silent about the work of OUP in South Africa.²

Historically discredited players who, only a few years ago, could talk the language of fundamental pedagogics (based on the National Party’s ideology of Christian National Education) now present themselves as torch-bearers of liberation, democracy and progressive education.

-Glenn Moss, ‘Publishing in Post-Apartheid South Africa', p. 141