Chronicle written by a German in S. Africa (4)
I believe the answer is:
saga
'chronicle' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'written by a german in s africa' is the wordplay.
'written by' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'german' becomes 'g' (abbreviation).
'in' indicates putting letters inside.
's africa' becomes 'sa'.
'a'+'g' is 'ag'.
'ag' placed into 'sa' is 'SAGA'.
(Other definitions for saga that I've seen before include "Chronicle; adventure" , "Lengthy tale" , "long series of events" , "Long heroic, family, story" , "Icelandic or Norse story" .)