This text attempts to retrieve and make accessible the oral literature of South Africa, which is largely absent from accounts of literary history in the country. The author considers ways of recovering oral forms for literary debate and offers strategies for "reading" oral texts. Throughout, athe aim is to engage with oral texts in their own particular historical and discursive contexts while remaining alert to their possible significance for the contemporary scene. The text covers the oral literature of the /Xam Bushmen, the praise poetry of the Zulu nation, the combining of the oral tradition with the rituals of black separatist churches, the use of oral poetry by the Black Consciousness movement and the role of poetry and performance in the struggle for democracy in the 1980s and 1990s.