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Writing the Child in South African Literature Xiaoran Hu Undoing Apartheid, Becoming Children: Writing the Child in South African Literature Xiaoran Hu Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen Mary University of London Department of English September 2017 1 Statement of Originality I, Xiaoran Hu, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Xiaoran Hu Date: 13/09/2017 2 Table of Contents ABSTRACT 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5 INTRODUCTION 7 CHAPTER 1 ENTANGLED TEMPORALITY, THE CHILD, AND THE BLACK SUBJECT: DRUM WRITERS REVISITED 28 CHAPTER 2 NADINE GORDIMER: CHILDHOOD AS METAMORPHOSIS 63 CHAPTER 3 IRONIC VOICES, AMBIGUOUS HISTORIES: WRITING THE CHILD THROUGH TRANSITION 101 CHAPTER 4 J. M. COETZEE: POLITICS OF THE CHILD, POLITICS OF NONPOSITION 138 AFTERWORD 177 BIBLIOGRAPHY 180 3 Abstract This thesis examines the trope of the child in South African literature from the early years of apartheid to the contemporary moment. The chapters focus on some of the most established and prolific authors in South African literary history and roughly follow a chronological sequence: autobiographies by the exiled Drum writers (Es’kia Mphahlele and Bloke Modisane) in the early 1960s; Nadine Gordimer’s writing during the apartheid era; confessional novels by Afrikaans-speaking authors (Mark Behr and Michiel Heyns) in the transitional decade; and J. M. Coetzee’s late and post apartheid works. I argue that, while writing from diverse historical and political positions in relation to South Africa’s literary culture, these authors are all in one way or another able to articulate their subjectivities—with their underlying ambiguities, contradictions, and negations—by imagining themselves as the child or/and through childhood. My analyses of the works under discussion attend to the subversive and transformative potential of, and the critical energies embedded in the trope of the child, by investigating narrative reconfigurations of temporality and space. Firstly, I will be looking at the ways in which the images, structures, and aesthetics making up the imaginings of the child disrupt a linear temporality and serve as critique of a teleological historiography of political emancipation and the liberation struggle. Secondly, I will pay attention to the spatial relations with which representations of the child are bound up: between the country and the city, black townships and white suburbs, the home and the street. By attending to specific transgressions and reorderings of these spatial relations, my reading also explores the ways in which spatial underpinnings and ideological boundaries of national identities are contested, negotiated, and restructured by forces of the transnational, the diasporic, and the global around the figure of the child. 4 Acknowledgements I would like to offer my special thanks, first of all, to my supervisors: Andrew van der Vlies and Rachael Gilmour. Without their patient guidance, steadfast encouragement, and constructive criticism every step of the way, neither this thesis nor me as a person would be the same. Their professional expertise, integrity, and different styles of sense of humour have been of utmost value to me. I see them as trustworthy mentors and dear friends. I would also like to extend my thanks to the people who have provided generous and useful comments at different stages of this project. Jacqueline Rose offered valuable advice and help at the beginning of my research. Bill Schwarz and Sam McBean read parts of the draft chapters and gave useful suggestions. China Scholarship Council and Queen Mary University of London Joint Scholarship fully funded my PhD studies, which gave me the precious opportunity to do research and live in the exciting city of London. Queen Mary University of London Postgraduate Research Fund (QMPGRF) and the Doctoral Allowance in the School of English and Drama offered funding for my conference trips to South Africa and the United States. During the course of my studies, I have benefited very much from the vibrant research culture and the supportive environment in the Department of English at Queen Mary University of London. The Postgraduate Research Seminar series every Thursday afternoon and the regular training programmes on research and teaching have been immensely helpful. My special thanks are also given to Charlotta Salmi, for her inspiring seminar on J. M. Coetzee in 2014, and to Mark Currie and Molly Macdonald, for offering valuable advice on teaching. I also feel lucky to be among a very international cohort of PhD students, many of whom have become my friends: Lottie Whalen (and her lovely dog Frank), Akshi Singh, Lotte Fikkes, Melissa Schuh, Alexandra Effe, and Andrea Thorpe. 5 I would also like to thank my personal friends from London and afar: Xiaofan Xu, Xiaohan Xu, Jingjing Zhao, Panpan Yao, and Shengzhang Ma. They have, like family, given me the most heartfelt encouragement and support throughout my PhD studies, especially in some moments of extreme difficulty. Finally, my deepest gratitude is for my parents in China. Thank you for spoiling me and always giving me the freedom to be a child. This thesis is for you. 6 Introduction On the occasion of his first state-of-the-nation address to the Houses of Parliament on 24 May 1994, Nelson Mandela, the country’s first democratically elected leader, read Afrikaner poet Ingrid Jonker’s poem ‘The Child Who Was Shot Dead by Soldiers at Nyanga’. The child is not dead the child lifts his fists against his mother who shouts Africa!... The child is not dead Not at Langa nor at Nyanga nor at Orlando nor at Philippi where he lies with a bullet through his brain... the child is present at all assemblies and law-giving the child peers through the windows of houses and into the hearts of mothers this child who only wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere the child grown to a man treks on through all Africa the child grown to a giant journeys over the whole world without a pass!1 The poem was originally composed in the aftermath of the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March 1960, when the South African police opened fire on the crowd of anti-pass law protestors in the eponymous black township, south of Johannesburg. This watershed event in South African history was followed by further demonstrations in the same year in Langa and Nyanga townships in 1 Nelson Mandela, ‘State of the Nation Address by the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela’, <http://www.anc.org.za/content/state-nation-address-president-south-africa-nelson-mandela> [accessed 14 August 2017] 7 Cape Town, which directly gave rise to the writing of Jonker’s poem. Inspired by the poet’s visit to the Philippi police station, where she saw the body of a black child who had been shot dead in his mother’s arms during an anti-pass demonstration, the poem evoked the shocking image of brutality against children that was to become a prominent symbol in the iconography of anti-apartheid struggle. In the Soweto Uprising that began on 16 June 1976, when approximately 20,000 high school students marched onto the streets protesting the imposition of Afrikaans-medium instruction in local schools, the police again shot into the crowd, this time directly at the children. The 13-year-old Zolile Hector Pieterson, one of the first students to be shot dead, was captured in journalist Sam Nzima’s famous photograph. The image of the dead boy being carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo, with Hector’s sister Antoinette Sithole running beside them, appeared in newspapers worldwide and became, in an instant, a globally iconic image revealing the extremity of apartheid’s brutalities and the intensity of the anti-apartheid struggle. Former president of the African National Congress (ANC) Oliver Tambo, in his opening speech at the International Conference on Children, Repression, and the Law in Apartheid South Africa held in Harare in September 1987, again turned to the symbolism of the dying black child as a rallying cry for the demise of the apartheid regime. Also quoting Jonker’s poem at the beginning of his speech, Tambo said, ‘the mangled remains of the black child who wanted only to play in the sun are justification for the existence of the largest and most sophisticated machinery of repression that Africa has ever known’.2 Contextualized in the hopeful moment of the nation’s democratic transition, Mandela’s reference to Jonker’s poem in his speech, however, seems to pivot not so much on the image of the child under violent abuse, which is a disturbing reflection of historical realities,3 as on the symbolic resonance of the child 2 Children of Resistance: Conference on Children, Repression and the Law in Apartheid South Africa: Papers, ed. by Victoria Brittain and Abdul S. Minty (London: Kliptown, 1987), p. 25. 3 For a report on relevant statistics about human rights violation of children during apartheid, see Piers Pigou, ‘Children and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, in Children and Transitional Justice: Truth-Telling, Accountability and Reconciliation, ed.
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