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1 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 3 1.1 Truth 7 1.2 Retribution 7 1.3
1 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 3 1.1 Truth 7 1.2 Retribution 7 1.3 Religion 8 1.4 Reconciliation 8 2. Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 10 2.1 Memory 12 2.1.1 Private Trauma vs. Public Truth 12 2.1.2 Silence vs. Articulation 15 2.1.3 Individual Guilt vs. Collective Guilt 18 2.1.4 Dealing with the Past 20 2.2 Confession 21 2.3 Retribution 22 2.4 Reconciliation 23 2.5 Conclusion 25 3. J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 28 3.1 The Trial 30 3.1.1 Religion 30 3.1.2 Confession 31 3.1.3 Remorse 33 3.2 The Attack 35 3.2.1 Truth 35 3.2.2 Responsibility 37 3.3 The Sacrifice 38 3.3.1 Retribution 38 3.3.2 Justice 39 3.4 Reconciliation 42 2 3.4.1 Redemption 42 3.4.3 The New South Africa 43 3.5 Conclusion 44 4. Nadine Gordimer’s The House Gun and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 46 4.1 Awaiting the Trial 50 4.1.1 Truth 51 4.1.2 Individual Guilt 53 4.2 Postponement of the Trial 55 4.2.1 Reversal of Roles 55 4.2.2 Religion 57 4.2.3 Collective Guilt 58 4.3 The Trial 59 4.3.1 Climate of Violence 61 4.3.2 Justice 61 4.3.3 Retribution 62 4.4 After the Trial 63 4.4.1 Forgiveness 63 4.4.2 Reconciliation 64 4.5 Conclusion 65 5. -
The Afrikaner Grotesque: Mediating Between Colonial Self and Colonised Other in Three Post-Apartheid South African Novels
The Afrikaner Grotesque: Mediating between Colonial Self and Colonised Other in Three Post-Apartheid South African Novels Ken Barris Rob Nixon has argued that during the apartheid years, [t]he successful conversion of the anti-apartheid cause into a world movement was in large part proportionate to the Manichean clarity of the issues at stake, as a showdown between good and evil, victims and villains, black and white, oppressed and oppressors, the masses and a racist minority. (Nixon 78, qtd. in Barnett 288) In this paper I will discuss a literary trope that exemplifies the Manichean clarity to which Nixon refers, namely the figure of the oppressive Afrikaner. The term ‘Afrikaner’ historically describes white Afrikaans-speaking people, and has in the past been used interchangeably with the term ‘Boer.’ This literally means farmer, but metonymically extends to Afrikaners, who thus valorise their pastoral history.1 I do not refer below to real Afrikaans- speaking people, but to a mode of literary representation. The same cautions apply to my use of ‘civilised’ and ‘savage,’ which need not be taken at face value. The trope of the oppressive Afrikaner, strongly associated with apartheid, boasts a certain longevity. A number of 21st Century novels that employ such figures have been well received. These include The Madonna of Excelsior (2002) by Zakes Mda, Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit (2001), The Good Doctor (2003) by Damon Galgut, and Karoo Boy (2004) by Troy Blacklaws. The first three of these have enjoyed substantial critical and English in Africa 41 No. 1 (May 2014): 91–107 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/eia.v41i1.6 92 KEN BARRIS scholarly attention, while Bitter Fruit and The Good Doctor were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. -
Portrayals of Masculinity in the Post-Apartheid Novel
“A Man of His Generation”: Portrayals of Masculinity in the Post-Apartheid Novel Roger Blanton Jr Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen Mary, University of London School of English and Drama March 15, 2018 Appendix A: Required statement of originality for inclusion in research degree theses I, Roger Blanton Jr, 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: Roger Blanton Date: March 15, 2018 2 Abstract While portrayals of women in post-apartheid literature have attracted a great deal of academic attention, far less consideration has been given to the depiction of men. My project begins from this point of omission by examining a range of novels to consider how constructions of masculinity have been influenced by South Africa’s transition from apartheid rule to democratic governance. -
Thirteen Cents and Bitter, Too Sam Raditlhalo University of Cape Town
A Victory of Sorts, All Thirteen Cents and Bitter, Too Sam Raditlhalo University of Cape Town 266 We defeated them, the enemy and their agents. Well, a victory of sorts. Now we have to live with the consequences. War is like that. Introduction Democratic South Africa is in many ways an ordinary society with extraordinary sto- ries emerging from its communities. The disintegration of ‘formal’ apartheid brought by the 1994 elections has left in its wake a nation with a constitution that is admired for its democratic ethos following years of legalised racial inequality. Prior to 1994, the question that was constantly being asked of writers was concerned with what they would write about now that apartheid as a theme had been dismantled. This was as a result of Albie Sachs’s provocative article, “Preparing Ourselves for Freedom”,1 which initiated a general debate on aesthetics and politics that henceforth “real criticism” should replace “solidarity criticism” and “political correctness”, seen then as inimical to good artistic works. Though hardly original, the article was an indicator of the lib- eralizing voice within circles of members of the African National Congress and how writers allied to the liberation struggle would react became a crucial arena of debate. In the years since it was published, writers have had a good occasion to probe the interstices of interiority, complexity and ambiguity in South African human rela- tions. The years leading up to ten years of democracy have seen an efflorescence of literature. And yet, by and large, such literature tended not to focus on dysfunctions of families but on larger socio-political issues. -
“Revisiting „Strange Fruit‟: an Exploration of Culture and Anti
“Revisiting „Strange Fruit‟: an Exploration of Culture and Anti-Apartheid Activism” Frankie Nicole Weaver When asked about the power of music, Pete Seeger said the following: All we know is that sometimes a short song, taking just a few minutes, can have as much impression on a listener as reading a whole novel can. A song is often a triumph of oversimplification. A novel can go into details. The song is more like a basketball backboard and you bounce the experiences of your life against it and it bounces back new meanings.1 Indeed, Seeger is correct in asserting that short songs can turn out to be incredibly powerful. Some songs open up spaces and provide potent ideas which previously were not available. And sometimes a seemingly simple song can have such strong reverberations that it is able to cross an ocean, transcend time and convince people to rethink their relations with each other and maybe even with the world. “Strange Fruit” is such a song and its echo can be heard in the anti-apartheid protest song, “Hanging on a Tree.” Central to both songs are explicit lyrics which confront listeners with the subjects, racism and lynching. While researching international anti-apartheid activism, I found a little known song entitled, “Hanging on a Tree.”2 In 1963 Vanessa Redgrave, supporting both the British Anti- Apartheid Movement and the British Labour Party, wrote “Hanging on a Tree” and sang it at an anti-apartheid rally in Trafalgar Square (which was and is a popular site for political demonstrations in London). -
Winnie Mandela: Homophobia and Dystopia in One of Achmat Dangor’S Forgotten Short Stories
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Johannesburg Institutional Repository WINNIE MANDELA: HOMOPHOBIA AND DYSTOPIA IN ONE OF ACHMAT DANGOR’S FORGOTTEN SHORT STORIES Andy Carolin University of Johannesburg [email protected] Abstract: This article focuses on a transition-era short story by Achmat Dangor – ‘Mama & Kid Freedom’ (1995) – which has thus far been wholly overlooked by literary scholars. The story depicts a political dystopia that is characterised by assassinations, arbitrary violence and the mass incarceration of those deemed to be homosexual. There are also clear overlaps between the eponymous character Mama and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The story reproduces the binary tropes that surround Madikizela-Mandela and her then estranged husband, Nelson: whereas he is cast as the hero of the narrative of nation-building, she is cast as its villain. In this article, I argue that Dangor weaves a story that pulls together two particularly salient transition-era political discourses: Madikizela-Mandela as a homophobic and violent woman, and sexual rights as a bellwether of the country’s project of democratic modernity. The story evidences a homonationalist logic in which the recognition or non-recognition of sexual rights comes to be read as the axis on which post- apartheid democracy and human rights depend. Keywords: Achmat Dangor; ‘Mama & Kid Freedom’; homonationalism; transitional literature; short story; Madikizela-Mandela; sexual rights South African writing requires new forms for thinking about reality. Not history enclosing fictions, but fictions nudging – absentmindedly, even irresponsibly – at history’s outer edge. (Boehmer in Oliphant 1996, 60-61) South African writer Achmat Dangor’s most significant contributions to transition-era literary cultures are undoubtedly his critically-acclaimed novels, Kafka’s Curse (1997) and Bitter Fruit (2001), which have attracted widespread scholarly attention. -
University of Southampton Research Repository Eprints Soton
University of Southampton Research Repository ePrints Soton Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF ENGLISH Violent Southern Spaces: Myth, Memory, and the Body in Literatures of South Africa and the American South by Denise Anne Greenfield Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2013 i ABSTRACT ‘Violent Southern Spaces’ examines the narratives, archetypes and metaphors of memory, myth and the body that writers from South Africa and the American South have used to contest histories of racial oppression and segregation. In so doing, it seeks to identify significant transnational interactions and connections between the aesthetic forms, politics and histories of literary texts from South Africa and the United States. By analysing texts and situations that are both analogous and singular, this thesis utilises Jean-Luc Nancy’s Inoperative Community as well as Sam Durrant’s Postcolonial Narrative and the Work of Mourning to depict how works of literature interrupt Southern and South African forms of community as well as the myths upon which they are founded. -
1 Speaking Rape “Like a Man”: Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit Meg
1 Speaking rape “like a man”: Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit Meg Samuelson Achmat Dangor is becoming an important interpreter of the South African condition. Following the positive international reception of Kafka’s Curse , Bitter Fruit has recently been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. In Kafka’s Curse , Dangor made forays into the fantastic – or ‘magical realist’ – mode. Bitter Fruit sees him returning to realism as he documents the years of the South African transition and its turn to the past. As its plot engages with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Bitter Fruit offers yet another set of stories to the burgeoning archive of the national collective memory. At the same time, it grapples with questions of representation: what does it means to speak of a traumatic past, and what constraints shape the voices of those who bear witness to it? Bitter Fruit is set in late 1998, as the TRC’s Final Report is being drafted for presentation to then-President Nelson Mandela. Silas – husband and father in the Ali family on whom the novel is centred – is caught between calls for justice and the national prioritising of reconciliation. His job involves “liaising between the Ministry of Justice and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (59). In the opening pages of the first section – titled “Memory” – Silas has an “inevitable” encounter with the past when he bumps into François du Boise, the white security policeman who, nineteen years earlier had raped his wife, Lydia (7). It is through Silas’s rather than Lydia’s memory that we first return to the scene of rape. -
Interview with Achmat Dangor
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Online Kunapipi Volume 24 Issue 1 Article 6 2002 Interview with Achmat Dangor Elaine Young Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Young, Elaine, Interview with Achmat Dangor, Kunapipi, 24(1), 2002. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol24/iss1/6 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Interview with Achmat Dangor Abstract South African writer Achmat Dangor was born in 1948, as the Nationalist government — the architects of Apartheid — came to power. In 1973 he was banned for five years for his involvement in the radical black cultural group Black Thoughts, which he had helped to establish. Although forbidden to attend public gatherings and publish any of his writing during that time, Dangor wrote in secret and, in the 1980s, helped found the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW), a group of mainly black writers dedicated to the freedom struggle. From 1986 to 1991 he was executive director of the rural development agency Kagiso Trust, and in 1992 taught South African literature and creative writing at the City University of New York. He was subsequently appointed Director of the Independent Development Trust and, in 1999, was made Chief Executive Officer of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. Alongside his work in the development field he continued ot write, and has published seven works of fiction and poetry to date. -
Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor, “Nietverloren” and Disgrace by J.M
Commonwealth Essays and Studies 34.2 | 2012 Reappraisals A Polychromatic Approach to the Rainbow Nation Today: Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor, “Nietverloren” and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee Madeleine Laurencin Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/ces/5488 DOI: 10.4000/ces.5488 ISSN: 2534-6695 Publisher SEPC (Société d’études des pays du Commonwealth) Printed version Date of publication: 1 April 2012 Number of pages: 51-60 ISSN: 2270-0633 Electronic reference Madeleine Laurencin, “A Polychromatic Approach to the Rainbow Nation Today: Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor, “Nietverloren” and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee”, Commonwealth Essays and Studies [Online], 34.2 | 2012, Online since 19 April 2021, connection on 23 July 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ ces/5488 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ces.5488 Commonwealth Essays and Studies is licensed under a Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. A Polychromatic Approach to the Rainbow Nation Today: Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor, “Nietverloren” and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee Achmat Dangor in Bitter Fruit and J. M. Coetzee in both “Nietverloren” and Disgrace reveal aspects of the Rainbow Nation wrestling with questions of Black, White, and Co- loured identities, as well as with the difficulty of reconciling the past with the present. These texts of fiction map some of the directions South Africa and its literature are taking today, wondering to what extent the idea of the Rainbow Nation has survived intact, more than fifteen years after the end of apartheid. In 1994, during his first month of office, Nelson Mandela proclaimed that every South African was “as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as [...] the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld […] a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world” (“Inauguration Speech”). -
The Cape and the Cosmopolitan: Reading Zoë Wicomb” Aims to Advance an Extended Interdisciplinary and Interregional Dialogue on and Around Wicomb's Work
THE CAPE & THE COSMOPOLITAN: READING ZOË WICOMB Hosted by the Department of English Stellenbosch University 8‐10 April 2010 CONTENTS Acknowledgments Conference theme Programme Biographical Notes Abstracts Maps ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to thank that following donors or sponsors: their donations or financial support have helped to make this conference possible: The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust The English Department, Stellenbosch University The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Stellenbosch University The Faculty of Languages and Cultures, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London The English Society, Stellenbosch University The Research Division, Stellenbosch University The International Office, Stellenbosch University Random House Struik CONFERENCE THEME THE CAPE & THE COSMOPOLITAN: READING ZOË WICOMB This conference returns Wicomb to the Cape both literally and in terms of focusing scholarly attention on the site of her native space where so much of her fiction has converged. Along with this emphasis on the local, however, the conference aims to consider more cosmopolitan connections, to engage with the Cape and its history of global intersections. In doing so, it follows Wicomb in exploring ‘how setting functions much like intertextuality’ for the postcolonial writer, who, by introducing ‘dialogue between texts … brings into being the interconnectedness of the human world in a divided society’ * Building on the colloquium Zoë Wicomb: Texts & Histories (co‐hosted by SOAS, University of London, and the University of York in 2008)*, the conference The Cape and the Cosmopolitan: Reading Zoë Wicomb” aims to advance an extended interdisciplinary and interregional dialogue on and around Wicomb's work. The conference aims to create a forum not only for dialogues between disciplines but also between emergent and established researchers. -
Child and Youth Protagonists in Habila's Measuring Time And
Child and youth protagonists in Habila’s Measuring Time and Dangor’s Bitter Fruit Aghogho Akpome Aghogho Akpome is currently based at the Department of English, University of Zululand, South Africa. His main research interests include post-conflict narratives and recent post-colonial/African writing. Email: [email protected] DOI 10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.55i2.1783 Child and youth protagonists in Habila’s Measuring Time and Dangor’s Bitter Fruit Helon Habila’s Measuring Time (2007) and Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit (2001) deploy child and youth protagonists to offer nuanced and revealing perspectives on contemporary nationhood in Nigeria and South Africa respectively. By these means, these two important novels displace the adult—and mostly male—viewpoints that have dominated novelistic portrayals of postcolonial nationhood for decades. Using notions of the literary symbolism of childhood and the biological family as points of departure, this article analyses the portrayal of these protagonists in terms of their allegorical and metonymic representation of the nation as a social unit. This article explores the ways in which the subjectivities of the protagonists may reflect national anxieties in general and the problems of contemporary socio-political transition in particular. It highlights how the different pathways followed by Habila’s and Dangor’s characters may represent simultaneously dystopian and auspicious futures for Nigeria and South Africa while also bringing recent writing from two of Africa’s eminent literary sites into a rare conversation that helps to extend our understanding of the continent’s contemporary realities. Keywords: children, dystopia, family, nation, transition, youth. Although Helon Habila’s Measuring Time (2007) and Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit (2001) are not necessarily nationalist in outlook, they present marginal and nuanced perspectives on recent socio-political transitions in Nigeria and South Africa respec- tively by focusing on child and youth protagonists.