Detective Stories During Apartheid: H.I.E. Dhlomo as a Precursor of Drum

This article aims to contribute the discussion of English-language crime fiction by black South African writers before 1994 exploring H.I.E. Dhlomo’s relatively overlooked contribution genre in first decade apartheid. In particular, I intend close read three detective stories written between late 1940s and early 1950s Dhlomo, namely “Village Blacksmith Tragicomedy”, “Flowers”, “Aversion Snakes”, compare them with more celebrated published Arthur Maimane popular magazine Drum a few years later. Notwithstanding their different re-elaboration tropes fiction, argue that both Dhlomo resorted this productive strand literature reassert claim knowledge denied Africans, saturating texts new local meanings exceeding Western conventions.