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The Prison Narratives of Some South African Women

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The Prison Narratives of Some South African Women .. •"' Negoti~ting Truth, Freedom and Self: the Prison Narratives of Some South African Women Sandra M. Young Supervised by Assoc-Prof Dorothy Driver Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts University of Cape Town Department of English Language and Literature 1996 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. For my mother Elizabeth compassionate and courageous in both living and dying iii Abstract The autobiographical prison writings of four South African women - Ruth First, Caesarina Kana Makhoere, Emma Mashinini and Maggie Resha - form the focus of this study. South African autobiography is burdened with the task of producing history in the light of the silences enforced by apartheid security legislation and the dominance of representations of white histories. Autobiography with its promise of 'truth' provides the structure within which to establish a credible subject position. In chapter one I discuss the use of authenticating devices, such as documentary-like prose, and the inclusion in numerous texts of the stories of others. Asserting oneself as a (publicly acknowledged) subject in writing is particularly difficult for women who historically have been denied access to authority: while Maggie Resha's explicit task is to highlight the role women have played in the struggle, her narrative must also be broadly representative, her authority communal. As I discuss ih chapter two, prison writing breaks the legal and psychological silences imposed by a hostile penal system. In a context of political repression the notion of the truth becomes complicated, because while it is important to be believed, it is also important, as with Ruth First, not to betray her comrades and values. The writer must therefore negotiate with the (imagined) audience if her signature is to be accepted and her subjectivity affirmed. The struggle to represent oneself in the inimical environment of prison and the redemptive value in doing so are considered in chapter three. iv The institution of imprisonment as a means of silencing political dissidence targets the body, according to Michel Foucault's theories of discipline and control explored in chapter four. Using the work of Lois McNay and Elizabeth Grosz I argue in chapter five that it is necessary also to pay attention to the specificities of female bodies which are positioned and controlled in particular ways. I argue, too, using N. Chabani Manganyi, that while anatomical differences provide the rationale for racism and sexism, the body is also an instrument for resisting negative cultural significations. For instance, Caesarina Kana Makhoere represents her body as a weapon in her political battle, inside and outside prison. The prison cell itself is formative of subjectivity as it returns an image of criminality and powerlessness to the prisoner. Following the work of human geographers in chapter six I argue that space and subjectivity are mutually constitutive, as. shown by the way spatial metaphors operate in prison texts. The subject can redesign hostile space in order to represent herself. As these texts show, relations of viewing are crucial to self-identification: surveillance disempowers the prisoner and produces her as a victim, but prisoners have recourse to alternative ways of (visually) interacting in order to position the .. dominators as objects of their gaze, through· speaking and then also through writing. Elaine Scarry's insights into torture are extended in chapter seven to encompass psychological torture and sexual harassment: inflicting bodily humiliation, as well as pain, on the body, brings it sharply into focus, making speech impossible. By writing testimony and by generating other scenes of v dialogue through which subjectivity can be constructed (through being looked at and looking, through having the message of self affirmed in the other's hearing) it is possible to contain, in some way, the horror of detention and to assert a measure of control in authoring oneself. For Mashinini this healing dialogue must take place within an emotionally and ideologically sympathetic context. For those historical subjects who have found themselves without a legally valued identity and a platform from which to articulate the challenge of their experience, writing a personal narrative may offer an invaluable chance to assert a truth, to reclaim a self and a credibility and in that way to create a kind of freedom. VI Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction: Breaking Silences 1 1. Subject Positions in South African Autobiographies and Prison Narratives · 9 2. The Dynamic of Interrogation in Prison Narratives and the Position of the Reader 29 3. Representing the Violated Self in Prison and in Prison Writing 48 3.1 The Word as Weapon 3.2 The 'Baring' of Self 4. The Captive Body as Symbol and as Subject 68 4.1 Resisting Significations and the Role of the Body 68 4.2 Michel Foucault and Structures of Discipline 82 5. Bodily Specificities 89 5.1. The 'Body' as Cultural Entity 89 5.2 The Body of Difference 98 5.3 Identity and the Body 103 6. Prison Space and Personal Space: a Closing-in of Subjectivity 9 6.1 Surveillance 132 7. The Body of the Prison as Bearer of Pain 140 7 .1 Anatomies of Prisons and Constructions of Self 7 .2 Pain and Subjectivity ~· Concluding Remarks: Writing as an Agent of Renewal 166 Bibliography 173 vii Acknowledgements This project has benefitted from the contributions of a number of people and institutions whom I now wish to thank. Dorothy Driver's rigorous and inspiring attention to my work made complacency impossible. As a supervisor she has been generous with her time and her insights, with her books and her experience in this field of study, and with her concern. The Departments of English at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Western Cape have been supportive and stimulating environments in which to work and study. Weekly gatherings with Catherine Molteno Corder and Marion Walton provided a seedbed for early ideas {and continuing friendships}. I am grateful to them both and to Robyn Alexander, David Bunn, Tim James, Chris Roper and Andre Wiesner for sharing ideas and suggestions for further reading. I am blessed with faithful friends who have shared my delight in this project and encouraged me in my work and being. I thank in particular Wilma· Jakobsen, my champion and warm-hearted housemate, and Rolfe Eberhard for engaging with the ideas of the thesis and commenting on its chapters with characteristic insight and sensitivity. To my parents I owe the greatest debt of gratitude: to my father for his generosity and careful articulations of support, and to my mother for her wisdom and the extraordinary care which I was privileged to enjoy. viii I am grateful to the University of Cape Town for financial assistance towards research undertaken in the second year of study. Financial assistance of the Centre for Science Development towards this research is also hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and not necessarily to be attributed to the Centre for Science Development. The thesis represents the work of the author and has not been submitted in part or in full for a degree elsewhere. 1 Introduction: Breaking Silences Prison discourse operates within a certain obscurity which is as keenly guarded as the prisoners themselves. For the prisoner this enforced silence is sinister because it carries a particularthreat, both in the silence itself (that is, in the danger that is allowed to continue under cover of the protective silence) and in the breaking of the silence, for the consequences of speaking out are weighty and promise further abuse. A recent report by Human Rights Watch on prison conditions in South Africa suggests ·that even in the 'New South Africa' an ominous veil obscures the reality of abuse behind locked doors, and that prisoners have recourse to few and ineffective means of having their experiences heard and adjudicated without fearing vicious reprisals (Brown, et al, 1994). Prisoners are frequently assaulted by warders (sometimes fatally); privileges are removed arbitrarily and punitively in a manner which contravenes not only the 'standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners' (adopted by the 'First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders' held in Geneva in 1955) but the South African prison regulations themselves, as set out in what was originally the 'Prisons Act' of 1959, renamed the Correctional Services Act and amended as recently as 23 June 1993. The violations of prisoners' bodily integrity occur in the shadows and the cost of speaking up - to be heard beyond the heavily guarded walls of the prison - is great. Cynthia Brown, Bronwen Manby and Joanna Weschler of Human Rights Watch write that most prisoners whom they interviewed were reluctant to give their testimonies for fear of being victimised as a result (Brown, et al, 1994, 39). 2 Those that. did participate said that they had previously been penalised for lodging complaints: In Barberton, a prisoner complained that he had been transferred to the maximum prison from the medium after going on a hunger strike to protest the failure to respond to his requests for a transfer. His books and writing materials were confiscated, and he spent some time in the isolation cells. On January 22, 1993 he was assaulted by a warder, in front of a superior officer, while asking about his security classification.
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