Cultural Responses to Trauma in Post
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Troubled Writing: Cultural Responses to Trauma in Post-Apartheid South Africa Faith Kent Cardiff University 2008 Troubled Writing: Cultural Responses to Trauma in Post-Apartheid South Africa Faith Kent Cardiff University 2008 UMI Number: U585053 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U585053 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Signed (candidate) Date ........... STATEMENT 1 This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD. Signed ............... (candidate) Date ..C'.5l°k.].Q g....... STATEMENT 2 This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. Signed (candidate) Date STATEMENT 3 1 hereby give my consent for this thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signed ............... (candidate) Date ..C?.'P.J.Qh.If?..&, STATEMENT 4: PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BAR ON ACCESS I hereby give my consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loans after expiry of a bar on access previously approved by the Graduate Development Committee. Signed (candidate) Date ] 0 % Summary This thesis proposes that while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) offers an official lens through which to read South Africa’s traumatic past, it has generated a highly problematic historiography. I conceive of apartheid as posing a crisis of representation which presents literary authors, who both support and critique the “healing” process that the government wants to initiate, with a contradiction. In the light of this I argue that post apartheid fiction writers’ engagement with national history exceeds the placatory and symbolic agenda of the TRC, to restore a necessary element of violence to South Africa’s process of decolonisation. The first two chapters of the thesis illustrate that the TRC (an institutional response to trauma) attempts to fuse nationalism and psychotherapeutic principles in a hegemonic spectacle of confession, which aims to construct a new national imaginary based on a collective approach to apartheid as historical trauma. 1 examine testimony, the TRC’s published Report and entries to the Register of Reconciliation to show how the form and content of memorial texts are manipulated to predispose public responses to the past, and that it is necessary to go beyond their words to read apartheid’s ongoing trauma. The final three chapters analyse fiction and autobiography by Andre Brink, J M Coetzee, Antjie Krog, Rian Malan and Zoe Wicomb, who respond to apartheid’s crisis of representation by deliberately agitating the metanarratives of South African literature. The writers use various strategies to restore some of the missing violence to national political transition: a range of literary devices indicates the texts’ function as national allegories, in Fredric Jameson’s sense. These enable a democratisation and honouring of the past that troubles the grand narratives of nation and affirms the transhistorical potency of literature. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Centre for Critical and Theory at Cardiff University for providing the research studentship that made this thesis possible. Special thanks go to my supervisor, Ian Buchanan, whose support and encouragement enabled me to complete this project. Within the department at Cardiff I have also especially valued friendship and academic discussion with Elaine Brennan, Andrea Ochsner and Judith Pryor. The inspiration for this thesis came from time 1 spent in South Africa in 1995, when I stayed for several months with the Pewa family in Johannesburg’s Soweto township. While I was in South Africa many people shared with me their stories of the apartheid years. I rarely initiated these conversations and was frequently moved by their frankness. The family’s request that 1 passed their stories on when I returned home in many ways motivated this study: while I have not retold their stories here I hope that I have communicated some of their faith in the role of storytelling within a transitional society. So, a big thank you to Rose and “Tata” Pewa and their extended family and friends in Soweto, kwaZulu-Natal and New Brighton, for their unconditional welcome. In my non-academic world I would like to thanks Rachel Mortlock, Liz Rose and Mark Seed for making the time to proofread my final drafts alongside their own busy lives and commitments. It also means a lot to have had their friendship, as well as that of Kim Breaks, Alex Harrison, Jo Harrison and Shelby Wigmore, who have helped maintain my sanity over the last few years. Denzel Cat, of course, is aware of the contribution she has made. Sue Ryall has been part of this journey in a different kind of way, and for that I am deeply grateful. Love also to Phil, who has been around for the last part of things and helped make finishing possible: he’s just got to complete his now! However, my biggest thanks and love are due to Jan and Stanley, who have supported me through this endeavour in more ways than it is possible to list, and are possibly even more pleased than me that it is finished at last. Contents Acknowledgements Chronology 1 Introduction 12 1 “Revealing is Healing”: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 39 Memory and the Transition to Democracy in South Africa 2 Witnessing National Transition: the Testimonies and Report of the 84 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Register of Reconciliation and their Roles in National Historiography 3 Representing the Past in Post-Apartheid Fiction: Disgrace by J M 151 Coetzee and The Rights of Desire by Andre Brink 4 Gendering the New' Nation: David's Story by Zoe Wicomb 217 5 Writing the Self into a National Past: Three South African 254 Autobiographies Conclusion 301 Bibliography 311 Chronology 1877-1880 British conquest of Transvaal, Sekhukhuneland and Zululand. 1886-1888 Discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand. De Beers monopolises the Kimberley diamond mines. 1899-1902 South African War. 1905 Report of the South African Native Affairs Commission published. 1904-1911 Johannesburg becomes region’s largest city. African employment on mines exceeds 200,000. 1910 Union of South Africa formed. South African Party government led by Generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts. 1912 Foundation of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) (later African National Congress or ANC). 1913 Natives Land Act passed. Gandhi and 2,500 Indian miners march to the Transvaal. African women march against passes. White workers strike in gold mines. 1914 General J.B.M. Herzog founds National Party. Newspaper Die Burger launched. 1916 Native Affairs Administration Bill institutes segregation. 1918 Formation of Afrikaner Broederbond. ANC Women’s League launched. 1919 Botha dies and Smuts becomes Prime Minister. Clements Kadalie founds Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU). 1 1920 Native Affairs Act creates separate administrative structures for those living in African reserves. Sol Plaatjie completes Mhudi. 1922 Rand rebellion of white mine workers; 214 die as the strike is crushed. 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act extends segregation to urban areas. SANNC becomes ANC. 1924 Herzog’s National Party wins election. Sarah Gertrude Millin publishes God’s Stepchildren. 1925 Afrikaans adopted as an official language. 1925 1930 Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union becomes a mass movement and spreads to rural areas. 1930 White women enfranchised. Plaatjie publishes Mhudi. 1930 1934 Depression and drought. 1931 Wives of full members of ANC granted auxiliary membership. 1932- 1940 Rapid expansion of gold mining; high employment; beginning of manufacturing boom. 1933 1934 Hertzog and Smuts form United Party in response to the Depression; purified National Party under D.F. Malan breaks away. 1935 All-African Convention is founded. Andre Brink bom. 1939 South Africa enters Second World War. Hertzog resigns and Smuts becomes Prime Minister. 1940 Afrikaner paramilitary movement, Ossewabrandwag, founded. J.M. Coetzee bom in Cape Town. 1940- 1946 Wartime industrial expansion. 2 Increasing African militancy: leads to 1941 formation of the African Mineworkers’ Union, strikes and the launch of squatters’ movements on the Rand. 1943 ANC Youth League formed. Women granted full membership and voting rights within ANC. 1946 Mineworkers’ strike. Peter Abrahams publishes Mine Bov. 1947 Security Branch of the South African Police (SAP) formed. 1948 Malan and Nationalists win election. Zoe Wicomb bom. 1949 Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. 1950 Population Registration Act. Suppression of Communism Act. Group Areas Act. Immorality Act. Beginning of “The Drum Decade”. 1952 ANC launches Defiance Campaign. Antjie Krog bom. 1953 Public Safety Act passed in response to the Defiance Campaign. Bantu Education Act passed. CPSA reconstituted as the South African Communist Party (SACP). 1954 Rian Malan bom. 1955 Freedom Charter adopted by the Congress of the People in Kliptown. Eviction of Sophiatown begins. 1956 Coloured voters disenfranchised. Treason Trial begins (ends 1961). 3 20,000 women march to Pretoria to protest against extension of passes to African women. 1958 H.F. Verwoerd becomes Prime Minister. 1959 Black opposition peaks: Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) under Robert Sobukwe splits from ANC.