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Reviewing Current Post-Transitional Culture in South Africa Through the Works of Four South African Indian Writers

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Reviewing Current Post-Transitional Culture in South Africa Through the Works of Four South African Indian Writers COPYRIGHT AND CITATION CONSIDERATIONS FOR THIS THESIS/ DISSERTATION o Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. o NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. o ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. How to cite this thesis Surname, Initial(s). (2012). Title of the thesis or dissertation (Doctoral Thesis / Master’s Dissertation). Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/102000/0002 (Accessed: 22 August 2017). Reviewing Current Post-Transitional Culture in South Africa Through the Works of Four South African Indian Writers By Loren Elizabeth Townshend Dissertation Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in ENGLISH in the FACULTY OF HUMANITIES at the UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG Supervisor: Prof. Sikhumbuzo Mngadi May 2019 Declaration I, the undersigned, hereby declare that the dissertation submitted herewith for the degree Master of Arts in English to the University of Johannesburg is my own independent work and where secondary sources have been used, these have been acknowledged and referenced in accordance with the University of Johannesburg and Faculty of Humanities requirements. Furthermore, this work has not been submitted for any degree at any other university. ----------------------------------------------------- Loren Elizabeth Townshend May 2019 i TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Table of contents ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract iv Introduction 1 1.1 Overview of Primary Texts 2 1.2 A Review of Research on South African Indian Life and Writing 4 1.3 A Mapping of Current Trends Within Post-Transitional Theory 7 1.4 A Justification of the Study’s Research Methodology 15 1.5 Overview of Chapters 16 Chapter 1: Reconfiguring Identity Markers in Zinaid Meeran’s Saracen at the Gates 18 1.1 Manichean Idenity markers as precursors for cultural change in the first half of Meeran’s Saracen at the Gates 21 1.2 Redefining identity through a post-transitional lens in the second half of Meeran’s Saracen at the Gates 30 1.3 The role of space and place in the making of idenity in Saracen at the Gates 36 ii Chapter 2: Interiority and Agency in Shaida Kazie Ali’s Lessons in Husbandry 42 2.1. Interiority and agency in Ali’s Lessons in Husbandry 43 2.2 The surrogate wife: transcending gender oppression 49 2.3. Hybridity, intertextuality and connections across time and space 51 2.4. Symbolic imagery in Lessons in Husbandry 55 Chapter 3: Interrogating the Present in Imraan Coovadia’s High Low In- between 60 3.1. Indexes of separation: race, class and power relations 62 3.2. Questioning ‘rainbow-nationalism’ and democracy 66 3.3. Temporality, denialism, and the notion of ‘the looking glass’ 70 3.4. Reading the Post-transition through Coovadia’s female characters 74 Chapter 4: Temporality and belonging in Shubnum Khan’s post- transitional novel, Onion Tears 81 4.1. Haphazard temporality as a representation of the post-transition in Onion Tears 82 4.2. South African Indian identity (Indianness) and the notion of belonging 94 Conclusion 101 Bibliography 106 iii Acknowledgements This project has been a long journey and there are many times in which I wanted to give up. I would not have reached the point of completion without the support and assistance I was given by those around me. I am indebted to my supervisor, Professor Sikhumbuzo Mngadi for their guidance throughout and for accommodating my needs over the long duration of this project. I am grateful for your patience. Thank you for stretching the limitations of my mind and teaching me to think in a more critical way. Whenever I thought I was satisfied with what I had written, you challenged me further. To my family and my children, you have motivated me in ways unknown to you. Lastly, to my husband, thank you for being my rock and for believing in me more than I did myself. Thank you for running our household during the uncountable hours that I was too busy working on this. You are an inspiration. iv Abstract While it has long been seen as a minority corpus in South African literature, South African Indian writing is gaining momentum for its unique stance and reflections of current culture. Contemporary South African fiction allows for a reading of the post-transition, conceptualised through its ambiguities, layered temporalities and paradoxes. This study provides a reading of the post-transition through the varied perspectives captured in contemporary South African Indian novels. The post-transition has been represented as an ambivalent period, in that it portrays complex and progressive movement towards cultural entanglement and national unity, yet at the same time placing these notions under critical pressure through its exposure of the lacunae and flaws in South Africa’s ‘rainbow nation’. Read together and against one another, the novels provide an interesting reading of complex identities, agency and newness, while simultaneously drawing on the bleak realities of the present, marked by a general sense of disaffection post-1994. This project considers Zinaid Meeran’s Saracen at the Gates (2009), Shaida Kazie Ali’s Lessons in Husbandry (2012), Imraan Coovadia’s High Low In-between (2009) and Shubnum Khan’s Onion Tears (2011), for their contributions to the South African Indian literary canon and the critical readings they allow of the post-transition. v Introduction This study aims to consider South African Indian writers and their work through the lens of a growing body of South African literary criticism that conceptualises post-transitional society as characterised by ambiguities, paradoxes, and complex forms of inter-subjectivity. South African Indian fiction has long been considered a minority body in the context of South African literature post-transition. Recognising that South African literature and cultural studies need to accommodate and reflect the nature of the present, Ronit Frenkel notes that South African literature and cultural studies “are at a crucial crossroads; where previous understanding has been debunked and the [literary] canon is being forced to change further to include marginalized writings” (Frenkel, 2011: 2). However, I argue that, although it has gained momentum more recently in current South African literary and cultural studies, South African Indian writing still occupies a largely peripheral position and is not given due attention for its potential in reading current South African culture, post-transition. I read the post-transition as an ongoing movement in current culture that reaches back to 2009-2010, and which has been re-evaluated in more recent theory in the present. My contention here, and the motivation for this study, is that the peripheral position that contemporary South African Indian fiction currently occupies in the South African literary canon needs to be re-addressed in light of the contributions that such fiction makes toward understanding the complexities of post- transitional society. Recent critiques of the term post-transition reflect the complexities of South African current culture as it is situated in the gap between hopeful expectation born at the onset of democracy in 1994, and the harsh realisation that the reality of the present, some twenty-four years on, does not live up to these. The current situation has led to a need for a re-evaluation of the present, in which temporal overlaps of past, present and future contribute to the highs and lows of a society still in its transitional phase. Moreover, the post-transition is a period ambivalent in nature: while it reflects progressive shifts towards a national entanglement and tolerance of difference, at the same time it deconstructs such ambitious manoeuvres in the realisation that the ideal of rainbow-nationalism and equality are far from being achieved in present-day South Africa. 1 The writings of contemporary South African Indian novelists display these undulating trends in South African post-transitional culture from a unique and unconventional perspective: they are Janus-faced in that they simultaneously portray both national movement towards a democratic state and away from this ideal. South African Indian fiction depicts ideas of entanglement and newness through its multifarious markers of South African identity and culture, while also drawing on the bleak realities of the present, marked by disappointment and a general malaise post-1994. Through conducting a close reading of four South African Indian novels, I aim to demonstrate how these literary works are used in modelling the complexities of the post-transition as an entangled, ambiguous cultural sphere in South Africa today. 1.1 Overview of primary texts The novelists under study all adopt the strategy of focussing on the private, interior lives of the individual protagonists. However, this focus is not to the exclusion of the broader concern of post-apartheid society and culture – rather, the focus on interiority affords the authors the space to investigate how an individual (whose character and development form a significant component of these novels) engages with his/her cultural framework. In this way, the reader is presented with an account of both the microcosm of the personal lives and histories of the protagonists and the framework of post-transitional South Africa and the history that continues to play a role in shaping society. Thus, the manner in which these South African Indian authors have adopted intimacy and a focus on microcosms as part of their narrative strategies is effective in exploring the character of the post-transitional society in both a broad and more familiar sense. The focus on private lives in the context of public culture in these novels is, in other words, an example of the move away from what Sarah Nuttall calls the “apartheid optic” towards the complexity of post-apartheid South Africa (Nuttall, 2009: 11).
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