Diplomsko Delo

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA MARIBOR Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

DIPLOMSKO DELO

Andrejka Šerbec

Maribor, 2015

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA MARIBOR Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

Diplomsko delo PROTIAPARTHEIDOVSKI VIDIK V ROMANIH NADINE GORDIMER

Diploma thesis ANTI-APARTHEID POINT OF VIEW IN NADINE GORDIMER`S NOVELS

Mentorica: Kandidatka: izr. prof. dr. Michelle Gadpaille Andrejka Šerbec

Maribor, 2015

Lektorica: Sonja Simončič, profesorica slovenščine in zgodovine

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my mentor, dr. Michelle Gadpaille, for her guidance, encouragement and valuable advice during my writing.

I would also like to thank my family for all their support.

IZJAVA

Podpisana Andrejka Šerbec, rojena 26. 2. 1976, študentka Filozofske fakultete

Univerze v Mariboru, smer angleški in slovenski jezik s književnostjo, izjavljam, da je diplomsko delo z naslovom Anti-apartheid Point of View in Nadine

Gordimer`s Novels pri mentorici izr. prof. dr. Michelle Gadpaille, avtorsko delo.

V diplomskem delu so uporabljeni viri in literatura korektno navedeni; teksti niso prepisani brez navedbe avtorjev.

Kraj: Maribor

Datum: 23. 1. 2015

______(podpis študentke)

ABSTRACT

My graduation thesis focuses on four novels: Burger`s Daughter, July`s People, The World of Strangers and The Late Bourgeois World, written by Nadine Gordimer. In her novels she used point of view to signal her opposition to apartheid. Nadine Gordimer is a white author who lived in South Africa during the years when the policy of apartheid was very much alive. The novels were published between 1958 and1981. The time setting of all novels is during the apartheid, which plays a significant role in the lives and fates of the characters. These literary works present what it was like living under apartheid and the terrible consequences of it for black South Africans, but mostly for white people who wanted to make their contribution in the anti-apartheid struggle. Her anti- apartheid point of view is reflected through various themes. The main characters in her novels are whites, male and female, who strongly disagree with the institution of apartheid and want to overthrow it, but at the same time she shows the sufferings of exploited black people. She mentions many historical events that took place in South Africa, but she focuses on the lives and emotions of the protagonists and the relationships between them, and she builds a work of literature over historical details. Her literary works provide a mirror through which the people of South Africa in the decades of apartheid could view themselves. Through her characters the whole historical process is crystallized.

KEY WORDS:

- apartheid - anti-apartheid - Nadine Gordimer - Burger`s Daughter - The Late Bourgeois World - The World of Strangers - July`s People

POVZETEK

Pričujoče diplomsko delo je osredotočeno na štiri romane Nadine Gordimer, in sicer: Burger`s Daughter, July`s People, The World of Strangers in The Late Bourgeois World. V svojih romanih Nadine Gordimer zavzema stališče proti politiki apartheida. Nadine Gordimer je belka, ki je živela v Južni Afriki v času, ko je bila politika apartheida najmočnejša. Omenjeni romani so bili izdani med leti 1958 in 1981, njihovo dogajanje pa sodi v čas apartheida, ki je igral pomembno vlogo v življenju in usodah njenih literarnih likov. V svojih delih prikazuje življenje v času apartheida ter njegove grozljive posledice za temnopolte Južnoafričane, predvsem pa za belce, ki so želeli sodelovati v boju zoper apartheid. Avtoričin protiapartheidovski vidik je opaziti v številnih temah, ki jih razvija v svojih romanih. Glavne osebe v njenih romanih so belci, moški in ženske, ki so nazorno pokazali svoje nestrinjanje s političnim sistemom apartheida in ga želeli uničiti, istočasno pa prikazuje trpljenje izkoriščanih temnopoltih prebivalcev. Romani prikazujejo različne zgodovinske dogodke, ki so se zvrstili v Južni Afriki, ki ji služijo kot okvir, znotraj katerega se osredotoča zlasti na življenje in čustva glavnih junakov ter njihovih odnosov. Njena literarna dela služijo kot ogledalo, v katerem se zrcalijo prebivalci Južne Afrike v času apartheida in odsevajo celoten zgodovinski proces.

KLJUČNE BESEDE:

- apartheid - pritiapartheidovski vidik - Nadine Gordimer - Burger`s Daughter - The Late Bourgeois World - The World of Strangers - July`s People

CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………….. 1 2 THE SYSTEM OF APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA ………………...... 2 3 NADINE GORDIMER AS A WRITER ……………………………………… 4 4 ANTI-APARTHEID POINT OF VIEW ………………………………………6 5 THEMES ……………………………………………………………………… 7 Political Engagement…………………………………………...... 7 Collaboration …………………………………………………………………. 13 Rebellion……………………………………………………………………… 19 Passivity….. ……………………………………………………………...... 25 White supremacy and black subservience………………………………...... 32 Search for identity………………………………………………………...... 41 Racial role reversal……………………………………………………………. 46 Flight……………………………………………………………………...... 49 Guilt…………………………………………………………………...... 50 6 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………… 53 7 WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED ……………………………………….56

1 INTRODUCTION

Oppression has appeared throughout history in different forms and in different times and places. One of the most rigorous oppressive systems was the system of apartheid in South Africa, which was legal for more than four decades. Its severe legislation was addressed towards the native black people who represented the majority of the country`s demography, and was carried out by the country`s white minority. The system of apartheid is a frequent theme of many South African authors who used their voice to struggle and protest against oppression. One of the authors who incorporated the apartheid theme into her literature and struggled against such an unjust legal system is Nadine Gordimer who recieved the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. She represents the voice of those who could not state their mind. In her books she presents the suffering of South Africans who were deprived their individual rights under the apartheid system; therefore, her books were often banned and censored. Gordimer`s novels The World of Strangers (1958), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), Burger`s Daughter (1979) and July`s People (1981) will be analysed. Examples from the text will be given to support my arguments. These four novels portray the multiracial society and the choices ordinary people who live in oppressive regimes are forced to make. The author uses various historical events that took place in South Africa, and presents the reactions of people involved in different ways, but she mainly concentrates on their private lives and frightful experiences. Nadine Gordimer shares the anti-apartheid point of view with the majority of the world. She uses various themes through which she demonstrates her stance of apartheid resistance. Her novels concentrate on liberal white people who want to make their contribution in the anti-apartheid struggle as well as black freedom fighters. Her novels show that the endless power of white authority with which she disagrees was not only experienced by black people, but also white individuals who did not share the sympathies towards the ruling system of racial discrimination.

2 THE SYSTEM OF APARTHEID IN SOUTH AFRICA

Apartheid was a system of legal racial segregation in South Africa, which took place from 1948 to 1994, under the strong influence of the leading National Party. The demographic of South Africa showed that only twenty per cent of the population was white; nevertheless the minority ruled the other, non–white population. (http:// South Africa under apartheid) Apartheid developed out of racial segregation in South Africa and it appeared in all its power after the 1948 elections. The National Party brought new legislation for South African inhabitants. The first big apartheid law was the Population Registration Act (No. 30) from 1950. According to this act, the inhabitans were classified into four racial groups: black, white, coloured and Asian. People over eighteen years of age recieved an identity card, specifying their racial group (Library of Congress 1996: 54). Another law from 1950, The Group Areas Act (No. 41), defined each race its own area (Library of Congress 1996: 54). It forced people to live in separate places defined by race. The government laws deprived black people of their citizenship. During the 1960s, 1970s and the early 1980s many black people were forcibly removed to black homelands and the black townships appeared. Race laws were present in all aspects of social life and caused misery for thousands of people. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (No. 55) from 1949 prohibited marriages between people of different races, and The Immorality Act (No. 21) from the year 1950 forbade sexual relations among members of different races (Library of Congress 1996: 54). The government`s aim was to restrict African birth rates, so they also controlled marriages and births. The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act from 1953 reserved municipal grounds for a particular race, which resulted in services offered to black people that were inferior to those offered to white people. The blacks experienced racial segregation in all public services, such as education, medical care, police system and employment. There were separate buses for black and white, separate schools, universities and hospitals. Public beaches, swimming pools, parks, public toilets,

2 churches, some pedestrian bridges and parking places were segregated. Many restaurants and hotels didn`t allow blacks to enter except as staff. Most social contacts between the races were prohibited by law. Children often suffered from diseases because of malnutrition and sanitary problems. The 1953 Bantu Education Act brought a different, inferior system of education for black people. They were supposed to get education suitable only to manage labouring work. Blacks were excluded from living or working in white residental araes unless they had a pass, which proved they have a work in the area. People without the pass very easily arrested and trialed as illegal migrants. The main purpose of the pass law was to limit the freedom of workers and to increase the restrictions and regulate the relations between the races. The oppressive politics of apartheid caused much resistance inside the country. There were several uprisings and protests against the white authority, organised mainly by the members of African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and Steve Biko`s South African Students` Organisation (SASO), but the government used armed police forces to suppress the black campaigns. Many people were imprisoned including Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress, who has been in prison on Robben Island outside Cape Town. One of the biggest protests was held in the township of Sharpeville in 1960, which is also known as the Sharpeville massacre (Library of Congress 1996: 60). The Security branch of the South African Police was given the power to supervise and detain suspicious people without trial. Another important protest was the Soweto uprising in 1976, carried out by secondary students, who protested against forced education in Africaans. The police reacted using guns and the demonstrators started to attack the government buildings (Library of Congress 1996: 63). The majority of white people in South Africa were in favour of apartheid. Only about twenty per cent of whites were against the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination. One of the major organisation that fought against apartheid was the South African Communist Party. The authorities wanted to supress and avoid resistance, so “The Supresion of Communism Act (No. 44) of 1950

3 declared the Communist Party and its ideology illegal” (Library of Congress 1996: 56). Afterwards the organisation went underground with some leaders in exile abroad, which represented a great threat to the officials. The United Nations and other countries were getting more and more concerned about the apartheid regime, and wanted to end the descrimination and racial segregation and the superiority of one race over another. In 1973 the United Nations declared apartheid as a crime against humanity, international opposition to apartheid started to grow and more and more anti–apartheid organisations were formed. South Africa confronted serious political violence during the years 1985 to 1989, when many anti-apartheid organisations struggled against the government. Township people acted against local authorities, which resulted in violence among them, and there was a number of attacks on white civilians. The government banned many organisations and controlled the movement of people and during these years of several unrest and struggle a lot of people were detained. Violence persisted till the 1994 elections, when apartheid was finally coming to the end and widespread changes were made to the security laws in the country.

3 NADINE GORDIMER AS A WRITER

Nadine Gordimer is one of the best known South African writers. She was a novelist and short-story writer and an important member of African National Congress and Congress of South African Writers. She hid ANC leaders and helped them to escape from government arrest and often participated in anti- apartheid demonstations. She was deeply involved in the anti-apartheid movement and she revealed the view of her country at that time. In her opinion “the white author needs to decide whether to remain loyal to the dying white order or to pledge loyalty to the regulation that is about to be born” (Gordimer, “Juzna Afrika” 456).1 1 The article, written by Gordimer, was translated into Slovene by Petrovic Leo. It is my own translation into English.

The majority of her works reveals the moral and psychological tensions in her country, which was to a great extend racially divided, and she expresses strong political opposition against apartheid despite growing up in a community in which white exploitation was accepted as normal. She produced most of her works in the time when apartheid system was in its peak and many of her works were censored and also banned, but she never considered leaving the country and living in an exile. She was commited to black liberation and at the same time she wanted to express her point of view as well as the experiences of many black South African writers whose literary works were banned. Her works are considered to be an artistic record of South Africa in the apartheid regime and at the same time they represent the historical and political dimensions. Nadine Gordimer, born in 1923, was a member of a white family but was from relatively mixed descent. Her father was a Jew from Latvia, and her mother was British. She was born and brought up in South Africa and since 1948 she lived in Johannesburg. From the early years of her childhood she observed how the rights of the black majority were deprived by the white minority. The title of her first short story is “Come Again Tomorrow”. Her first collection of stories Face to Face was published in 1949, in 1953 she published her first novel The Lying Days which was partially based on her own life. The 1950s and 1960s were very productive for Nadine Gordimer. Her second novel, The World of Strangers was published in 1958, in 1963 she published her third novel Occasion for Loving and three years later The Late Bourgeois World. Her success is also due to the novels The Conservationist, dating 1974 and Burger`s Daughter from 1979. Two years later she produced another novel July`s People and continued writing works of fiction. Among her latest novels are The Pickup and Get a Life.

4 THE ANTI-APARTHEID POINT OF VIEW

In her works Nadine Gordimer deals with the human results of apartheid. The novels The World of Strangers, The Late Bourgeois World, Burger`s Daughter and July`s People reflect the main issues of living in South Africa under the apartheid system and express the author`s opposition to apartheid. The novels present numerous whites that sympathise with blacks and make friends with them. The author reveals their political awareness and their engagement in the liberation of blacks, the underground organisations to which they belong, and the sacrifices they make to form a better society for blacks. She also presents the lives of blacks who are ignorant and passive, but become more and more aware till they begin to resist and struggle. The important theme in the novels is the search for identity and alienation. In her first novels like The Late Bourgeois World the main protagonists want to reach political freedom, but the heroes and heroines in Burger`s Daughter and July`s People are also looking for individual freedom. In all four novels she focuses on white liberal individuals and their closest relatives and associates, who object the legal system of apartheid and spend their private and social lives trying to bring it to an end. She presents whites who are actively participating in the anti-apartheid resistance and the growth of black consciousness, and those standing aside. All four novels are set in contemporary Johannesburg and focus on white protagonists who are caught in the rise of black consciousess and the approaching black revolution. Each novel in its own way reflects the connection of private matters with apartheid politics, because South African society is strongly pervaded with politics, and the novels offer the reader to see the history from inside. Gordimer`s novel are anti-apartheid, because as she says “ If you write honestly about life in South Africa, apartheid damns itselfˮ (Gordimer, qtd. in McDonald, 220).

5 THEMES

Gordimer declares herself as as active opponent of apartheid. In her novels she expresses the moral and political dilemmas of South African society and through various themes presents her disagreement with the extraordinary form of control and exploitation in the decades of apartheid system. According to her words, racism is a central fact in South Africa. It is an evil, and in the struggle against it no victims or compromises should matter (Gordimer, “Juzna Afrika” 456). In the main part of my diploma work I will prove that Nadine Gordimer uses an anti- apartheid point of view by discussing the major themes that appear in the novels.

Political Engagement

One of the major themes through which Gordimer expresses the stance of apartheid resistance is the theme of political engagement. Gordimer tackles a delicate theme, since all political movements designed against the local authorities were outlawed, and people who disobeyed the political order were punished. During the years of apartheid, the majority of people in South Africa were in favor of it, but there were individuals who fought against it. Gordimer examines the influence of politics on people. In Burger`s Daughter, which is set in Johannesburg in the 1970s, soon after the Soweto uprising, Gordimer portrays the position of the white Left in South Africa. The novel deals with the lives and emotions of white anti-apartheid activists who are involved in the liberation struggle and want to overthrow the South African government. The destinies of protagonists are viewed in the light of political and historical events in South Africa of that time. Some liberal South Africans act individually, while others establish political organizations that follow the same goal – to end the apartheid system and overcome the racial differences among the country`s people. Many political organizations that fight against the legal institution of apartheid are banned by the local authorities, but its members remain politically active regardeless of the

7 consequences. Some political organizations go underground, some leaders are in exile or in prison, but they still manage to retain their political engagement. They respresent a threat to the government, which wants badly to supress their political activism in order to mantain its power. Political engagement sends many people to prison, where some even die for their beliefs and their need to react against the government. The most politically engaged people fighting the system of apartheid are Lionel and Cathy Burger, the protagonists in Burger`s Daughter. They are constantly under surveillance and are imprisoned several times because of their involvement with black as well as white people who fight for racial equality. Cathy runs a buying office for black and coloured, and Lionel is a respected doctor, but at the same time they are influential white anti-apartheid activists. Both were members of the South African Communist Party, which actively opposed the apartheid government. The Burgers remain politically active when the Communist Party becomes an underground organization in 1950 and still strongly contradict the government`s acts concerning black people. Lionel and Cathy can`t observe the humiliation that black people face every day because of the colour of their skin. They act against the hypocrisy of people who believe they live and work according to God`s will, but who at the same time support discrimination and racial segregation. They disrespect the whites who present themselves as a superior race and want to maintain white racial purity. The Burgers have difficulties with the law because of their political involvement before they were even married in August 1946. There is a raid on the Communist Party offices in Johannesburg and they are both arrested. Later that year the Burgers are charged along with more than fifty other people under the Riotous Assemblies Act because of their involvement in an illegal strike. This trial is the first for the Burger couple where they are both indicted. Both of them are also accused in The Treason Trial in 1957. This time they aren`t convicted, but soon after their marriage Lionel is re-arrested and charged with sedition along with some other members of the Central Executive of the Communist Party in Cape Town, because of the Party`s involvement in the strike of black miners who protest against exploitation. The raids and detentions continue througout their

8 lives and affect the whole family. Cathy Burger is held in prison because of her participation in the street demonstrations against preventive detention. The local authorities try to assure that liberated white people have no contact with other people worldwide who might share their sympathies towards black South Africans. The Burgers are higly influential in their struggle against apartheid. They are out of the country in the Soviet Union, England, Czechoslovakia, but after 1950 they aren`t allowed to leave the country, and their restriction is automatically applied to their daughter Rosa. Their lives and personalities are shaped by the extreme political circumstances under which they live in South Africa. Many people in South Africa put their personal lives at risk, including the Burger family. They are committed to a political cause and never allow themselves to be deflected by personal considerations or ambition (Gordimer, “The Art of Fictionˮ). Lionel devotes all his life to what he stands for, for the equality of races, although he is banned and detained on several occasions. At the last trial he is sentenced to life imprisonment. Lionel Burger is one of those white South Africans who cannot understand how the white minority can direct the lives of the black majority and degradate them to such an extent for more than three hundred years. All his life he has acted against discrimination and is striving to bring African people a national liberation and political rights they deserve. He believes it is his responsibility to act differently, to help black people gain their rights. He feels sorry for the victims of apartheid, and after the court finds him guilty on all counts, he shows his political commitment and says that he acts according to his conscience. He is accused of betraying his people, the white people. In his opinion, his struggle for justice and freedom is not an act of treason. After being sentenced he clearly expresses his view, “I would be guilty only if I were innocent of working to destroy racism in my country ˮ (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 27). Many people gave up their own personal liberty to fight against repression in their country. Rosa is born into a family where political ideas are highly valued. Her family loves her, but exploits her. They feel they are doing this not for each other or to each other, but because the cause demands it. They lack intimate

9 relationships because of their political commitment (Gordimer, “The Art of Fictionˮ). The politics of apartheid shaped fates and the lives of many people living in South Africa. Since her childhood Rosa has bitterly experienced the apartheid system and its consequences through the life of her parents, especially her father. She witnesses the political activism of her parents and becomes politically active herself. Rosa attends all two hundred and seventeen days of the trial against her father in which he is accused of being a traitor to his own country. She is always present at the visitor`s bench at the court in Pretoria and faces the accusations towards her father made by the State witnesses who are forced to speak against him. Her father is a political prisoner; therefore, strict rules apply to him. The government allows Rosa one visit every two months during Lionel`s first year in prison. She can also write and recieve one letter per month with the limitation of five hundred words. During his second year in prison, they allow Lionel some special visits, and Rosa is able to see him every two weeks. After serving the second month of his third year in prison, Lionel Burger dies in a prison hospital. He dies in prison because of his beliefs, but he never regrets it. He strongly believes that the future he is living for can be achieved by black people with the participation of white revolutionaries. Lionel Burger is a political prisoner, and after his death the State claims his body. Politics keeps interfering in his private life, so Rosa can`t even bury him and he doesn`t have a grave. They prepare a memorial gathering in his honour, but many of his closest friends and associates can`t come. Some of them are in prison, some in exile or banned from attending such meetings. In that period the majority of the world outside the country strongly condemns the country`s policy and firmly believes that the apartheid system in South Africa has to end, which reflects in many foreign organisations and political movements. One of the most active is Scandianvian anti-apartheid group. After Lionel`s death, his adherents don`t forget his heroic deeds and assume his daughter will carry on her father`s struggle. In London she meets political refugees and is present at gatherings where they talk about commom African revolutionary cause among

10 blacks from South Africa, Mozambique, Angola and Rhodesia. Their resistance to apartheid is encouraged by Portugal`s withdrawal from Mozambique and Angola. They discuss the African National Congress and their struggle in order to end racism and overthrow Vorster`s government and bring justice and equality for black people. In Europe she hears many encouraging speeches, but in South Africa the political situation is coming to a critical point. Orde Greer is another character who is sentenced because of his political beliefs. He is on trial for treason and is sentenced to seven years` imprisonment. Orde states that his actions are the result of the necessity he feels. Pople are detained day after day simply because they feel they live in an ujnust, hypocritical and cruel society. He spends years observing people who risk their lives in action and writing about them. He believes the time has come for him to act, too: “I would rather go to prison now for acting against evil than have waited to be detained without even having done anything ˮ (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 338). Rosa`s political commitment subsequently gets her into prison, facing charges for sedition. She remains commited to the political activism and the beliefs she inherited from her parents; therefore, she continues her political involvement after her return from Europe. At that time South Africa is witnessing severe unrest, and the resistance to apartheid, in which Rosa takes an active role, increases. The government detain some white people, including Rosa Burger. The Special Branch of the police, who had its people in other countries, was constantly watching Rosa in Europe. Her detention is based on the surveillance report having been aware of her presence at the rally for Frelimo leaders, who offer their service in the liberation struggle. The State tries to establish Rosa`s political connection to the aims of the Communist Party and the African National Congress, which want to free the political prisoners on the Robben Island and end the apartheid system. The theme of political engagement that Gordimer uses to demonstrate her disagreement with apartheid is also depicted in the novel The Late Bourgeois World. Both protagonists are strong political characters and believe in racial equality. While living with Max, Liz Van Den Sandt is politically active and is involved in the anti-apartheid struggle. She isn`t involved in the Liberal Party, but

11 she is a member of Congress of Democrats, where she is mainly working on organizing a propaganda for the African National Congress which encourages peaceful resistance to the discriminatory laws of apartheid. She firmly believes in what she is doing, but she limits her activities because the government reacts by arresting people and passing even more repressive laws. She is a responsible woman, knowing that there is nobody to take care of their son Bobo if both she and Max end up in prison. Since Max is more politically engaged, she is the one who mainly provides money for their household. After their marriage Max leaves university and takes many jobs, but none of them lasts long. They are deeply occupied with study groups, visits in the black townships, open-air meetings and demonstrations. The Communist Party is officially disbanned, but at that time African nationalism catches the sight of the world outside, so Max participates in various passive resistance campaigns in order to free the Africans of colour bars. Liz remains active in the Congress of Democrats long after Max resigns from it. They move frequently because of their inability to have African people visiting the building where they live, but their friends are black, coloured and Indian. The places they live in are raided numerous times by the surveillance. Both Liz and Max have always supported people who fight against racial segregation. They are dissatisfied with the way black people are treated and their share their political ideals with their son. Gordimer uses them as models of how one can react to the social injustices presented in South Africa during the apartheid system. Both are aware of the problems and immorality of the kind of life they live in, and they show their reactions towards the human oppression they witness day after day. Bobo is aware that the majority of his friends and classmates don`t care about blacks. The white boys call their black classmates kaffirs and say bad things about them. Bobo confesses to his mother, “what I can`t stand is him calling them kaffirs and talking as if they were the only ones who ever smell” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 19). He said, ”Sometimes I wish we were like other people.” I said, “What people?” “They don`t care.” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 20)

Liz is aware that, because of their political engagement, she can`t enable their son to live in a typical family with both mother and father. Both Liz and Max grew up in the family environment, but that didn`t provide them what they needed, because their family members were too narrow minded and did not understand their political activism against the apartheid system which was destroying the country. She is convinced their son will be all right despite Max`s death. She feels they have taught him the right values and hopes “ that he looks for his kind of security elsewhere than in the white suburbs” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 12).

Collaboration

Gordimer`s novels are set amid the years of apartheid, in the time of severe racial segregation when integration between the two races is only an illusion and any contacts between members of different races except master-servant relations are strictly prohibited. During the apartheid era some black people collaborate with whites in order to gain certain benefits, and there are individual whites who collaborate with blacks. Collaboration with blacks is regarded as a serious violation of law and is therefore severely sanctioned, most commonly by imprisonment. Nevertheless, Gordimer presents numerous characters who entirely ignore the government`s orders. Collaboration with blacks is seen in their common goal to overcome the meaningless division between the races and provide justice for all. These whites don`t just keep company with blacks; on numerous occasions they provide shelter for black demonstrators, together they plan a revolution, support their cause and fight side by side with blacks in order to enable the native people of the country a decent life. In Johannesburg there are only a few houses where people of different colour meet, people who are indifferent to the skin colour. The majority of whites want to mantain the purity of their race and retain their privileges. These are the people “for whom the colour bar was not a piece of man-devised legislation, but the real

13 and eternal barrier” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 168). However, there are a few people who are more socially conscious and impatient with the meaningless restrictions, and who don`t mind mixing with people of different colours and collaborating with them on many different levels. Although friendship and contacts between members of different races are forbidden, Anna Louw is the one who initiates Toby into the lives of dark-skinned people. She keeps company with black people and takes him to the party where he sees black and white faces together for the first time since his arrival in Johannesburg: “All these people lived together in one country, anyway; all their lines were entangled by propinquity. Yet to have them in one room together, in the voluntary context of a party /…/ did have, even for me, after one month in their country, the quality of the remarkable” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 84). Here Toby experiences the first words spoken to him by a black man that aren`t words spoken on a master-servant basis. Anna, who is active in the liberation movement, tells him that as a stranger he doesn`t have to form an opinion about roles in society:“ you must understand that you are in a country where there are all sorts of different ways of talking about or rather dealing with this thing. One of the ways is not to talk about it at all. Not to deal with it at all. Finished. That`s possible, you know; you`ll find out” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 78). Anna is a member of a Communist party and runs a union of coloured women. Her parents are passionate nationalists and are ashamed of her because of her collaboration with blacks and white liberals. After her visit to Russia, her faith in Communism vanishes, but she remains loyal to the black cause. She is married to an Indian before the Mixed Marriages Act, but she divorces him. Because their marriage is mixed it is hard to keep it personal: “If you quarrel, /…/ immediately you`re the proof that mixed marriages don`t work” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 176). Anna finds herself among those who are arrested on a treason charge, because of her connections and collaboration with the organization of African women where she helped as an unofficial legal adviser. Toby who is hanging out with Steven Sitole and other black friends, confronts the unpleasant consequences of apartheid. Steven takes him into Sophiatown in

14 the middle of the night, and towards the morning the building is raided by the police. Toby and Steven manage to escape, but the first experience of that kind is frightful for Toby. He spends time in black townships without a government pass, ignoring the rules of apartheid. Their friendship comes across many obstacles they face because of racial segregation. Sometimes they want to have lunch together, which is almost impossible because black and white men are forbidden to appear together in Johannesburg, but that doesn`t stop them from seeing each other. Toby keeps appearing in black townships, and Steven visits Toby at his place. He starts to show great admiration towards politics he hears in Sophiatown or in the houses where black and white people meet, which is completely different from the politics discussed among whites at The High House. Steven and Toby break the social rules by hanging out together which makes people around them annoyed. Steven sometimes appears in Toby`s office and even shares lunch in his office with two black men. Miss McCann, Toby`s typist can`t endure the presence of two black men in the office any longer and decides to resign her job. Toby also breaks the discriminatory laws and rules by entertaining blacks in his flat. During the racial segregation, natives are allowed in white buildings only as servants. The caretaker, Mrs Jarvis recieves many complaints from other tenants; therefore, Toby is forced to leave the building:

‘Mr Hood,`ve yoo brought natives into the building. I`v hed complaints yoo been bringing natives in the building, end jis now Mr Jarvis seen yoo coming in the front door with natives. /…/ I wanna tell yoo, Mr. Hood, whatever yoo been used to, this is`n a location, yoo can`t `ev natives. If yoo bringing natives, yoo`ll `ev to go. /…/ Yoo can`t bring kaffirs in my building,’ (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 216).

Although collaboration with blacks is highly prohibited under the apartheid system, the Burgers associate with people of different colour and different descent, sharing the commom goal: to achieve black libearation. Rosa, her brother Tony and Baasie, a son of one of Lionel`s black co-workers, all go to the private

15 school which accepts white, African, coloured and Indian children and is run illegally by one of Lionel`s associates. Burger`s house is always full of people, and the Sundays in their house are widely known. Their house is a place where race boundaries break down. The tradition is that many people come on Sunday, some invited and some not. Lionel prepares picnics, in his pool he gives swimming lessons to black children who have never swum in a pool before, since public swimming pools haven`t been accessible to them. The Burger`s house is the house “where the revolution was planned, and the “placeˮ of those millions who have been dispossessed and for whom the others have made all the decisions ˮ (Gordimer, Burgers`s Daughter 149). In Burger`s house they live for revolution that would change the lives of black people, so that blacks would no longer have to do badly-paid labour in dust and mud, because the well-paid jobs are reserved for the whites. The Burgers collaborate with blacks and fight the rules of apartheid, so that black children wouldn`t be forced to eat leftovers thrown into the dustbin by the whites. They demonstrate against black people carrying passes twenty-five years after the first man who protested against the pass law went to jail. They want to enable blacks to enter the open unions and churches, which would accept people of all colours. The Burgers don`t want to accept the fact that blacks are forced to live in black townships in huts without electricity, picking up the white man`s rubbish. Being black in the times of apartheid means being served in separate sections of the shops for blacks, getting old bread in the shop, half-rotten fruit that whites don`t want to buy. The Burgers support blacks who demonstrate against the inferior health system for them and their children, and Lionel often provides medical care for black people. In that house they want change. They are fighting for justice, equality and most of all for human dignity. They want to educate and unite the blacks. They are against the inferior education blacks can acquire. Burger`s house is raided numerous times, but even the police can`t interrupt their Sundays. In their home they celebrate the occasions when someone isn`t accused in a political trial and they mourn the occasions when “blacks were shot by the police, when people

16 were detained, when leaders went to jail, when new laws shifted populations you`d never even seen, banned and outlawed people ˮ (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 51). Lionel and Cathy often organize a shelter for African National Congress leaders, lawyers and members of Pan Africanist Congress. They are awake all night, Cathy preparing food and Lionel taking care of the wounded demonstrators against pass books. Rosa has grown up through other people and inherited her parents` political commitment, so she has no objections to collaboration with blacks. She believes that going to prison because of political beliefs is a responsibility of adults, and she compares visits in prison with the responsibility of going to work. While her mother is imprisoned, Rosa takes her role in the household and comforts her father who is aware of the fact that soon he can be detained again. She realizes early that her family isn`t a typical white family. They follow different, better goals and make sacrifices because of their beliefs. Lionel Burger cares for blacks more than for himself. While his wife is detained, he puts all his effort in trying to find out where the members of the African families are detained. Many people believe Lionel Burger wasted his life because of his political beliefs instead of building his career as a doctor. In Rosa`s opinion, their family belongs to other people and other people belong to them:

The political activities and attitudes of that house came from the inside outwards /…/ there was nothing between this skin and that. At last there was nothing between the white man`s world and his deed; spluttering the same water together in the swimming-pool, going to prison after the same indictement (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 172).

Rosa has collaborated with blacks since her childhood and has never contradicted her father when he uses her as a mail carrier, a visitor in jail. He expects “his schoolgirl daughter could be counted on in this family totally united in and dedicated to the struggleˮ (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 12). Noel de Witt, one of her father`s associates is put in prison as a political prisoner. Rosa, who isn`t even eighteen at the time, pretends to be engaged to this young man,

17 which gives her the right to visit him in prison and send and recieve letters from him. By doing so she enables him to be in touch with the underground Communist movement and the world outside. She is the one who delivers a false passbook to the border for Baasie`s father, who is an African National Congress organizer and works with Lionel till the day of his last arrest. He leaves the country and returns with false papers. But the third time, when Rosa manages to smuggle the papers through the border, he is caught and thrown into prison, where he hangs himself after serving eight months of detention. People close to Lionel are often in prison themselves because of their political engagement and collaboration with blacks. Many of them are forced to find new jobs because they are excluded from the previous ones because of their involvement with blacks. Flora Donaldson was hidding Nelson Mandela in her cellar, when he was illegally getting in and out of the country. Ivy Terblanche was imprisoned for two years for not wanting to testify against Lionel. She and her husband Dick are both rescricted people under ban and have to report to the local police station twice a week. Later the officials detain the Ternblanches`s daughter Claire, who is also active in the anti-apartheid movement. They have connections abroad, and all of them are convinced that the future is ahead of them since the political tensions in Mozambique and Angola won`t last long and white Rhodesia will collapse. They are told about secret plans for a Portugese army revolt by Noel de Witt, whose mother is Portugese. It is too late for Lionel but there still is time for Rosa. They fight for the future, for their children and for the next generation. They all devote their lives to the right cause, for what they strongly believe in. Contacts between white and black people are prohibited by law, and because of her origin Rosa is constantly under surveillance and is herself regarded as Communist. People who keep company with her have to be prepared of being suspect. She is a named person and the law forbids her from visiting people that are also regarded as suspect or have already been raided, banned or detained. Restricted people are forbidden to visit each other and the police demands identification from everyone being caught in raided buildings. Surrounded by blacks and whites who share her father`s beliefs and face the same consequences, Rosa remains in touch with them and they somehow find ways of getting together.

Rosa breaks the rules when she pays a visit to Marisa Kgosana, a black woman, who lives in Soweto and whose husband Joseph is in prison on Robben Island together with many black men, including Nelson Mandela. Whites are not allowed to go into black townships without a permit, but all of them are convinced they must “stick together” (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 172) and continue to fight for racial equality in South Africa.

Rebellion

The majority of people in South Africa were in favour of the existing legal system, but there were also individuals who opposed the legal system of apartheid with all its distortions and wanted to achieve liberation from it. The majority of these observed from a distance, some of them protested peacefully while others wanted some severe changes and started to rebel. Rebellion against the apartheid system is a theme that appears in Gordimer`s novels The Late Bourgeois World, Burger`s Daughter and July`s People. The novel The Late Bourgeois World is set in Johannesurg in the mid 1960s, not long after the Sharpeville massacre, when South Africa dealt with armed struggle within the resistance. Police forces killed many black protestors and South Africa was considered to be a “police state”, which managed to protect the minority`s power by the severe use of tyranny. During that time many people became aware that pure observation and opposition to apartheid can`t end the state`s unrestricted repression and that some political action is needed in order to build a better, impartial society. “The book is unspokenly directed against the system of apartheid and its supporters” (McDonald 227). Gordimer presents a few people who are brave enough to express their disdain towards the exploitation of blacks and are aware of the faults and fractures in their society. The symbol of resistance, the arrow-and-spear sign, appears frequently on the wall of the viaduct, although there are severe punishments for such actions. A young white girl gets eighteen months of imprisonment for painting the symbol, but the punishments are even

19 more rigorous for black people. People expressing their opposition and rebellion against the local authorities could get into serious trouble, because the authorities were eager to suppress the resistance of any kind. Max Van Den Sandt, the protagonist of The Late Bourgeous World is a rebel througout his life. His rebellion is seen in his private and public life. As a young boy he rebelled against his parents in order to attract their attention. They were always too busy for him, minding their own business, and at the age of three he wanted to blow up the local post office, and he burnt his father`s clothes in order to attract his attention. In their house they talk about money, the property market and cheap black labour that can be acquired, the things their son Max rebelled against while still in his teens. Later he rebels against the local authorities, the white people. He doesn`t share his parents` sympathies towards the officials and is deeply involved in the white liberal revolt. He fights against what he doesn`t believe in regardless of the consequences. His parents strongly disagree with his behaviour, and he gets himself involved in serious trouble disobeying the law, which finally leads to his suicide. During his studies he joins the Communist Party and spends a lot of time with African and Indian students. His rebellion is shown though his visits to areas prohibited for white people. He visits his friends on their locations, in their ghettoes, where he becomes familiar with their life style, which for Van Den Sandts and the superior living standards of white civilization don`t even exist. He is supposed to became a member of a country club and join one of his father`s companies and enter “into the life he was born for” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 26). Sometimes Max rebels on his own and sometimes he joins orgainisations which share his ideas and political views; therefore, the theme of rebellion is closely linked to the theme of political engagement. Max becomes a member of a Defiance Campaign. Accompanied by a group of white people, he marches into an African area that is prohibited to whites, and he also takes part in Durban on a public square, where he protests against segregation and colour bar laws together with some Africans and Indians. He is arrested and the charges against him are

20 dropped. His father loses his chance of becoming a Cabinet minister but that doesn`t stop Max. He chooses a different kind of life from what is expected of a son of a prosperous white politician. He could become a lawyer or a politician, “ but all the professions were part of the white club whose life membership ticket, his only birthright, he had torn up” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 44). His rebellion against the established social norms continues with his membership in the Liberal Party. Max isn`t one of those whites who have a feeling of guilt or compassion towards blacks. He wants to come close to black people of his country, but he is in a way excluded and set aside by the blacks. Some politically active Africans reject the help and friendship of whites no matter who they are, which makes him feel isolated in his struggle, but he refuses to give in. Another example of rebellion is his involvement with the Congress of Democrats, a radical white organization that cooperates with African National Congress and African political movement. Max starts to plan a revolution in African Socialist Movement whose members have resigned from the African National Congress or Pan African Congress. Their goal is a creation of a modern democratic state based upon democratic elements of tribalism, which would be incorporated into a new doctrine of practical socialism. Max cooperates with a black former schoolmaster, Spears Qwabe, working on a new methodology of African socialism, which would serve as a handbook for the African revolution, but they don`t come to an end with it. Max does not only resist the white rule, he also resists his black cooworkers. He feels it is urgent to get things on paper, but “what Spears didn`t need to get down because it was his – an identity wih millions like him, an abundance chartered by the deprivation of all that Max had had heaped upon himself” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 48). During the State of Emergency in 1960, some members of the African socialist movement are detained and the organization breaks up. Some members rejoin the African National Congress, which is banned at that time and it becomes an underground organization. Max wants to contribute making the blacks free; his rebellion pushes him to the limits and he decides to make a bomb, but is imprisoned for sabotage. He is arrested before the bomb even explodes and is tried and sentenced to five years

21 imprisonment. While imprisoned Max is tortured and beaten, and after spending fifteen months in prison when he is kept under interrogation, he collapses and turns State Witness. He is forced to testify against some of his co-workers, black African freedom fighters. He speaks against people whom he lived and worked with for years, and he gets himself out of prison, but he loses his self-respect and experiences this betrayal as a personal failure, a burden he can`t endure and he decides to end his life, driving his car into the Cape Town harbour. Max is a rebel till the moment he dies. In his car they find a suitcase full of papers and documents, the nature of which is indeterminate because of water damage. The papers and their secret go down with him to the bottom of the sea. He dedicates his life in order to destroy the apartheid system. Max succeeds in dying since he does not succeed in living the way he plans. Some people, including his former wife Elizabeth admire Max because of his effort. He is a revolutionary who wants to change the world. He is no hero, but at least he tries although he dies trying:

There may be talk among the boys – but you know he went after the right things, even if perhaps it was in the wrong way. The things he tried didn`t come off but at least he didn`t just eat and sleep and pat himself on the back. He wasn`t content to leave bad things the way they are. If he failed, well, that`s better than making to attempt… some men live successfully in the world as it is, but they don`t have the courage even to fail at trying to change it (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 17).

Max`s life as a rebel is stressfull; he suffers a lot because of his political views and political actions, but he sometimes expects to much of himself, and in the end he realizes he isn`t capable of performing his own demands. His passion lies in politics, but it turns out that the system is too harsh for him. “He risked everything for them and lost everything. He gave his life in every way there is; and going down to the bed of the sea is the last” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 55). The theme of rebellion is also strongly stressed in the novel July`s People. In the previous novel only some individuals and organisations act as rebels, but in

July`s People the rebellion becomes widespread. The novel is based upon a mass black revolt in South Africa. It is set in a fictional war in which native South Africans violently overthrow the apartheid system. Black members of the South African police begin to refuse to arrest and kill their own people, and join the fight against the whites. As a result of their rebellion, public services break down and fighting erupts in the major cities. Black people are killing the whites; they are destroying and burning their properties. The rebels have prepared well, having supplies of guns and bombs, and relying on the help of black people from Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique, as well as non- neighbouring countries of Cuba and the Soviet Union. The protests and revolts against whites do not occur only in urban areas. The news about blacks killing whites reaches remote places such as July`s village, and Bam and Maureen are shocked that such hatred can exist among these simple people, who have little contact with whites. July, their black servant, doesn`t share the revolutionary ideas of his people when he offers shelter to the Smales and risks his life by having them there. Daniel, a simple village man is the opposite of July. Although he has never been to town he acts as a revolutionary and goes to town to join the blacks in their revolution, refusing to face white restrictions of any kind. Daniel is the one who contradicts his rural chief, who doesn`t want to fight against the whites. He uses Bam`s kindness and steals his gun and leaves for town with his raised fist, joining the blacks in their mass revolt to destroy the apartheid system. Another example of rebellion is presented among black people in Burger`s Daughter. Only a minority of liberated white people in South Africa deplored the apartheid system and wanted to help the blacks in their struggle. However, some blacks were grateful for their involvement, but many of them believed they need no whites to make them free and wanted to rebel on their own. The liberation movement among blacks started to spread as they attempted to resist white rule and gain political power. The majority of black people worship Lionel Burger for his effort concerning black people. Several of them are present at the back of the court, and after his last sentence they fall upon him, and Lionel raises his white fist to theirs. Most of

23 them are aware that Lionel is risking his own life for them and are grateful to him and other whites who endanger their lives for their cause. Lionel is called a God`s man and a devil at the same time, based on the point of view they take, but the majority of blacks are on his side. With the rise of black consciousness, several blacks are convinced that Lionel isn`t fighting for them, but for himself, for glory. They believe it is their war, and they need no white man to tell them what to do. With the rise of the Black Consciousness Movement in the 1970s, black opinion changes, and many young blacks see white liberals as irrelevant in their struggle for liberation and question the role of white people in the liberation struggle. Her “black brotherˮ Baasie, who is in London in exile, states his opinion about her, her father and the other whites, opinions adopted on the basis of black consciousness. His rebellion is addressed towards the whole white population. He wants to break off his childhood bonds with the Burgers and accuses her and her father of being the same as other whites, who only care about themselves. He is annoyed because many people even now see Lionel as a hero who helped blacks and suffered because of that. He wonders who feels pity for his father, Isaac Vulindela, and countless black men who also died in prison. Lionel Burger took Baasie into his house at his table because his own father was “always on the run from the police. Too busy with the whites who were going to smash the government and let another lot of whites tell us how to run our countryˮ (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 320). In Baasie` s opinion, nobody cares for the deaths of blacks killed by white people. His real name Zwelinzima Vulindela means “suffering landˮ, the name which in his judgement embodies all the things black people are forced to endure because of the colour distinction, the things he struggles against. Members of the Black Consciousness Movement believe Africans have to run their own organisations and mentally and physicaly liberate themselves. They don`t want to rely on white liberals because of the fear that whites might enter into alliance with white instead of black people. The resistance inside the country increases in the 1970s. Black students in Soweto start to demonstrate against the inferior education. After the Soweto uprising, people experience more demonstrations, more civil disobedience and

24 more boycotts against the officials and their co-workers. Whites are killling blacks, and black people start to kill whites. Many whites, critical of the existing government, join blacks in their demonstrations. The government doesn`t tolerate the breakdown of law and order under any circumstances. In October 1977 many demontsrators are detained or arrested. Most detainees are black members of Black Consciousness organisations or underground liberal movements, who continue their revolt and fight against apartheid.

Passivity

While many ob Gordimer`s characters are politically active and collaborate with blacks because they recognize the injusteces of the ruling legal system and disrespect it, other characters are entirely passive and indifferent to the world around them. Gordimer`s passive characters who ignore black South Africans are presented as a counterweight to characters who are motivated to make necessary changes regarding the apartheid system. Toby Hood, a protagonist of the novel The World of Strangers, a young Oxford-educated Englishman is one of those pasive characters. He is ignorant of and indifferent towards the society. He shows his passive resistance when he refuses to be involved in politics of any kind. He doesn`t share the political ideas and convictions of his parents, who belong to the upper middle class and are passionate supporters of white liberation movement. He is not interested in politics; he simply avoids it. He doesn`t waste time on political tensions and remains ignorant of the world around him. His mother and uncle Faunce are deeply concerned about the problems of human relationships and want to end the injustices of the world, but he is passive, and what he really wants is “ to enjoy what was left of the privileged life to which I and my kind have no particular right, and which exists, even in its present reduced condition, much as it was gained, by discrimination and exploitation” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 35).

He has spent his entire life in England, and he isn`t particularly eager about his unlce`s idea of sending him to Africa. As a foreigner he will have a remarkable opportunity to experience South African culture with its legal institution of apartheid and examine the effects of racial segregation. He is familiar with the political situation in South Africa, but he just wants to have a good time and enjoy life. “ I want to live! I want to see people who interest me and amuse me, black, white, or any colour. I want to take care of my own relationships with men and women who come into my life, and let the abstractions of race and politics go hang. I want to live! And to hell with you all!” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 36). He has been reading about Africa for more than three years, but he wants to continue his non-committal attitude to life. The world of black people is unknown to him and he simply feels an apathy to social norms. “ And the only Africans I had ever met with before were a few students at Oxford, and two writers and a painter in London, and they belonged in the gargoyle class” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 7). He is a member of the upper class and is repulsed by the blacks, and when he sees Africans for the first time his social ignorance comes to light: “I hate the faces of peasants /…/ I hated them in England, those faces in country lanes, red and smiling at nothing. These down among the crates on the quay shone black instead of red under the sweat, that was all ” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 7).

Passivity in Gordimer`s novels is not expressed only by whites but by black people as well. Another character from The World of Strangers who wants to remain indifferent to social norms is Steven Sitole, an educated, young black man who is constantly breaking the established social norms, but doesn`t want to become politically active. He works as an insurance agent, but in the past he also worked for newspapers and spent a year in England. He admits that in his insurance business he in a way exploits poor, naive natives, but he doesn`t feel remorse. He regrets leaving England, because “there`s nothing in Africa I want” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 95).

Like Toby, Steven ignores politics and develops his own sense of independence from social rules. He doesn`t want to be involved in any kind of political movement. He is not connected to any African movement, although he despises the restrictions that apply to black people. Anna Louw works as a lawyer at the Legal Aid Bureau and often represents ignorant African people who can`t afford other professional help in their legal troubles. She supports the Congress and is convinced about Steven that “He doesn`t care a damn about his people; he`s only concerned with his own misfortune in being born one of them” (Gordimer, The World of Stangers 122). Anna believes that Steven should become active in the liberation movement, because “Somebody`s got to do it. Why should you expect somebody else to do it for you? Nobody really wants to” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 122). However, Toby, who also stands aside, believes that people like Steven don`t have to be involved in public life, that they deserve a chance to live a life of their own and not take the pressure upon themselves. Steven is a rebel, who expects the result of the political activity, who wants to get rid of the pass laws and the colour bar, and therefore he should fight for it, not just wait for others to fight for him. Steven choses another form of rebellion. He is a clever man who can outsmart naive black people as well as powerful whites, but he acts as an individual, providing benefits only for himself and not caring for others. In Toby`s opinion Steven as a black man takes advantage of an opportunity to live a satisfactory life without risking too much by getting himself involved in public protests. “I don`t suppose he`s been well fed, but he looks wiry, his schooling hasn`t been anything much, but it seems to me he`s got himself an education that works, all the same, well-paid jobs are closed to him, so he`s invented one for himself” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 124). In Toby`s opinion, Steven is a new kind of man, a product of two societis, two races. All his life he has acted against the rules trying to outsmart the authority. No matter what restrictions there are for blacks, he always finds a way to go round them. However, Steven`s bitterness and individualism leads to tragedy in which he loses his life, which eventually confronts Toby with his self-discovery. Another example of passivity and pure ignorance of the outside world is Cecil Rowe. She is a charming, but extremely selfish white woman, putting her needs

27 before the needs of others. She is used to a life style where everything is settled for her. She lives on her former husband`s alimony and is always complaining about the lack of money. She spends enormous quantities of money on her appearance, but at the same time her house is poorly furnished, and she often quarrels with her maid Eveline for spending too much money on small purchases. She lives “from one treat to the next, free of job, free of her child, free of all the every-day ballast that, I suppose, makes life possible for most people” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 197). Social status is her main preoccupation, and in her greed and fear of life she decides to marry a rich man who will be able to provide her the economic status she craves. On numerous occasions she complains about her life, wishing to have more money and live in Europe instead of living among savages in South Africa. However, neither Cecil nor Steven is prepared to risk the necessary moves to gain the better life they both desire. They continue complaining - Steven about being black in a white dominated world, and Cecil grieving to live among black people, but both of them retain their passive attitude to life. The theme of passivity is also expressed in the novel The Late Bourgeois World. Liz, who has been politically engaged to a great extent, becomes politically more passive after her divorce from Max. She is no longer involved in any political organization, although she still witnesses the injustices of the apartheid system in her country. Her conscience is clear because both she and her present partner Graham have jobs where they don`t exploit black workers. She works in a laboratory at the Institute for Medical Research and Graham earns his money as a lawyer. “And so we keep our hands clean. So far as work in concerned, at least. Neither of us makes money out of cheap labour or performs a service confined to people of a particular colour” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 37). Graham Mills is a lawyer and acts like one. He is not in favour of apartheid, but he doesn`t take action against it. His resistance to apartheid is more or less passive. He is inexorable in court, but he differs much from Max. As a civil rights attorney, he defends people in court who are accused of fighting against apartheid. There are only a few white attorneys who are prepared to do so, and therefore he

28 is willing to face the consequences. “Graham defends many people on political charges and is one of a handful of advocates who ignore the consequences of getting a reputation for being willing to take such cases” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 37). He turns out to be the right man for Max`s case, and while Max is in prison, he helps Liz to make applications for Max without asking any questions. Despite his willingness to defend political prisoners, Graham acts within the system. He is not a revolutionary like Max, who risks his life in his eagerness to help the victims of apartheid. Graham`s moves are always well weighed. Liz notices that “He lives white, but what`s the point of the gesture of living any other way? He will survive his own convictions, he will do what he sets out to do, he will keep whatever promises he makes. When I talk about him about history or politics I am aware of the magnetic pull of his mind to the truth” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 37). Graham is the one Liz can always rely on; he is the one who gets things right. Liz is a named person and cannot get a passport because of her past political involvement, but with Graham`s help she gets it and even visits Europe with him. Because of Graham`s passive resistance towards apartheid Liz cannot be totally honest with him. What she mainly hides from him are her connections with blacks. She keeps a visit of her black acquaitance Luke Fokase a secret, and when she is confronted with the possibility of providing her grandmother`s bank account to Luke, she has doubts. She has no knowledge of how to make an income tax declaration in case she uses the account, and she knows Graham would know exactly what to do. She is deeply aware that “ this one thing I could never asks Graham; this is the end of asking Graham” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 93). The novel also presents other, minor white characters who remain passive observers although they are conscious of the racial segregation in their country and the inferior status of black people. They regret that blacks use protests, riots and marches instead of using the only way there is to effect change.

They can`t stand the sight of blood; and again gave, to those who have no vote, the humane advice that the decent way to bring about the change is by constitutional means. The liberal-minded whites whose protests, petitions and outspokeness have achieved nothing remarked the inefficiency of the terrorists and the wasteful senselessness of their attempts (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 55).

The theme of passivity and ignorance is one of the major themes in Burger`s Daughter, through which Gordimer presents her anti-apartheid point of view. Throughout the book she presents characters who are passive and indifferent to the world around them. People close to Lionel Burger are aware of the huge social implications, of the brutal reality they live in. For Lionel and his wife, their need to help the blacks is personal. Both of them care for black people, but many people don`t see or simply don`t want to see the reality. They don`t see the enormous imbalance in South Africa and are not prepared to raise social questions of any kind. They don`t oppose the exploitation of black South Africans, because they find their personal life more important than their social responsibility. They spend their lives in plain ignorance of the facts that they are exposed to in everyday life. Lionel`s sister Velma Nel is one of those passive characters. With her husband she owns a farm where Rosa and her brother Tony are sent while their parents are detained. The Nels provide shelter for children, but want to remain ignorant of Lionel`s political involvement. Bassie is sent elsewhere because on Nel`s farm black children are kept outside the house. The Nels lack the determination and courage to confront the established social norms and contribute their part in defeating the regime which would enable the indigenous black majority in South Africa to free themselves and lead a decent life. Conrad is another passive character in the novel. He is an apolitical character and often asks himself what it is like to live the way Lionel did, but Rosa is convinced that everybody chooses his way and goes on living however one has to. Conrad observes others at a distance and is not willing to commit himself to anything. Rosa believes that sort of live is quite useless, but for Conrad only he

30 matters. “I don`t give a fuck about what`s ‘useful’. The will is my own. The emotion`s my own. The right to be incosolable. When I feel, there`s no ‘we’ only ‘I’” (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 52). The difference between Conrad`s passivity and individualism and Rosa`s commitment to black liberation has been evident since their childhood. She is very mature for her age. Rosa, born in May 1948, and Conrad are about twelve years old when Sharpeville happens. Conrad only reads about the event and doesn`t pay any attention to it. Political events don`t exist for Conrad at that time, he is preoccupied with his own life and the life of his parents. “Political events couldn`t ever have existed for me at that age. What shooting could compare with discovering for myself that my mother had another man? If your father had secceeded in a conspiracy to rouse the whole population of blacks to revolution, I wouldn`t have known what hit me” (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 44). At that time Rosa attends the private school for white, English-speaking girls, who like Conrad, aren`t interested in politics, in other people`s lives in any way. Conrad believes that Rosa will sooner or later be imprisoned herself, because she has inherited her father`s legacy and will continue his work because she has been used to that since her childhood. “ But the Lionel Burgers of this world - personal horrors and political ones are the same to you. You live through them all. On the same level. And whatever happens – no matter what happens -” (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 42). Lionel`s first wife Collete Swan also ignores the outside world. She divorces Lionel because she wants to experience an easier life. She isn`t prepared to live in fear of her husband being detained and imprisoned for life. She used to be a member of Communist Party but was too passive, and although she doesn`t support racial segregation, she isn`t prepared to sacrifice her private bourgeois life to fight against the existing regime. Even some black people in Burger`s Daughter are presented as passive characters. Blacks are used to doing what the white man says, what the white man wants: “But everywhere in this country the blacks will still be black. Whatever else he does he`ll still get black jobs, black education, black houseˮ (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 152). Uneducated blacks are used to being exploited by the

31 whites because they know no other way. They are still used to begging and asking for old, second-hand things: “They had come through the front door but the logic was still at the back door. They didn`t believe they`d get anything but what was cast-off ˮ (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 203). These black people are easy to control because whites have absolute power over them. They often oppress themselves by stoically accepting subordinate status in the apartheid society. “They`d have a black if it was allowed to have blacks living in, because you can control a black, he`s got to listen to you” (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 21).

White supremacy and black subservience

A significant theme in The World of Strangers that Gordimer uses to show the evils of the existing legal system of apartheid is the disparity between whites and blacks. Apartheid enforced a racial hierarchy privileging white South Africans who followed these conservative rules where humiliation of blacks was simply accepted. To be white meant automatically belong to the ruling class. Whites had privileges that didn`t apply to blacks, because the blacks were the wrong colour (Gordimer, “The Culture of Corruption”). Black and white South Africans seemed to live in two different worlds and each had its own particular rules and conditions and the boundaries between them were not to be broken. Whites adopted superior living conditions while blacks were considered inferior and have retained their subordinate role in the society. Toby Hood, the protagonist of The World of Strangers, which is set in South Africa during the early days of apartheid, witnesses the effects of racial segregation soon after his arrival in Johannesburg. He sees a queue of people waiting for the bus. They are waiting in another row, because they are black. He notices

tired, unimpatient faces of those who wait in the same place at the same time every day /…/ These faces in the Johannesburg bus queue bore all the marks of initiation into western civilization; they were tired by city noise,

distasteful jobs, worries about money, desires for things they couldn`t afford, their feet ached from standing and their heads ached from drinking of the night before (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 43).

The tragic end of Toby`s best black friend Steven is also due to the subordinate role blacks have in apartheid society. Steven`s life would turn out much differently if he was white. “The way that he died! A man like him! Running away in a car with a bunch of gangsters! D`you think if he`d been a white man that`s all there would have been for him” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 256)? Another novel`s example of white superiority is shown through the character of Stella Turgel. Her husband owns a farm in Northern Rhodesia, although Stella, who is the sort of woman who prefers luxury, doesn`t like Africa. She is “a spoilt woman who got ill from the idea that she had put her foot back in Africa again” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 26). Toby, who is not particularly fond of blacks either, is unpleasantly surprised by her attitude and he starts to wonder “Were these the sort of people Africa gets? Christ, poor continent” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 27). Stella is convinced that:

You must have an active and contemplative nature, to take Africa. My husband adores it. He rushes about the farm, completely absorbed from morning till night. The people are quite terrible. I shall never forget them. Their awful dinner parties. Awful food. Same people, same food, year after year, simply at this one`s house this week, someone else`s house the next. Nothing to talk of but crops, female complaints, servants. Ugly, ugly. Nothing but ugliness (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 16).

Given her superior lifestyle, Stella would fit perfectly into Marion and Hamish Alexander˙s circle of acquaintances. All of them are representatives of rich white people who spend their days having fun while they let others do all the work. Hamish Alexander is a gold-mining millionaire who also owns a huge horse farm and their luxuriously equipped house is always crowded with people. Toby, who belongs to the upper class, is drawn to that circle of people and frequently appears

33 at their place, where he keeps company with a wide variety of people. He spends his time in the white man`s world hanging out with wealthy friends. At The High House he spends his days drinking round the pool, surrounded by beautiful women. Here in Johannesburg he becomes directly confronted by the contrast of the two worlds and he begins to question his own role within this culture. Despite the established order he breaks the boundaries between the two worlds by having contacts with whites as well as black people in Johannesburg. His relationship with Cecil Rowe is in progresses at the time when he becomes more bound to Steven and his friends; therefore, Cecil`s selfishness and the emptiness of the wealthy white people don`t remain unnoticed by him. He is deeply aware of the difference between the white city with its suburban streets, high buildings, walls, gardens and fences that separate people from one another, and the black townships with the mass of crowded houses and shacks. In the white city the emphasis is on high buildings, but the thing that fascinates him in black locations is the humanity of people. Steven becomes his best friend but Toby tries to keep his friends physically apart. He never mentions Steven to his white friends, who are completely oblivious to that world, and he also keeps his white life a secret from his black friends and acquaintaces who come from different layers. If Cecil knew that his closest friends were blacks with whom he shares lunch and spends nights in their houses, he would lose her. Cecil is convinced he is connected to natives because of his work. She belongs to that sort of people who assume that white people who have anything to do with natives are only concerned with charity or their uplift. Toby is clever enough to carefully separate these two worlds, although he constantly moves between wealthy white suburbs and the poor black townships. He passes from one world to another, but neither seems real to him. The thing that drives him to townships is his friendship with Steven, but he is also attached to the priviliged life, where he gets involved in an intimate relationship with Cecil. He feels pleasant in the prensence of white people at The High House, but in the black locations, in the places of segregation he feels free, although he realizes he doesn`t have any right to be there at all. He has double standards when he picks the best from the two worlds and can`t decide which is more suitable for him. He

34 isn`t brave enough to break from the superior life style of whites, although he disdains many aspects of that life; at the same time he is unable to cope with the poverty and violence of the black townships where the police are always on the move. The distinction between the upper white class and the exploited black people is a powerful theme in The Late Bourgeois World. In South Africa the injustices are based on class and race prejudice. The main point of the novel “is opposition to the established order in South Africa /…/ The phrase ‘bourgeois world’ in the title reffered to ‘a middle-class order founded on a glorification of the white skin, white “respectability” and scandalous white capitalist domination’ and the word ‘late’ meant ‘doomed to destruction’” (McDonald 228). The novel`s protagonists are representatives of a “normal”, priviliged white middle class, labelled as “the late bourgeois world”, although living in this morally ambivalent country could hardly be categorized as “normal”. Max Van Den Sandt comes from a wealthy family of mixed descent. His mother belonged to an old Dutch family from Cape Town. She married a member of an English family that migrated to South Africa when the gold mines were discovered. Max`s father built a strong political career and became a member of the parliament. They own a country estate outside the city where they hold big receptions. Mrs. Van Den Sandt takes great care of their house and believes she treats her servants respectfully, she tells stories about being brought up among the natives who regularly visited her mother. Theo Van Den Sandt prepares speeches about a united South Africa, promising progress and prosperity for all, but he never takes into consideration the millions of natives who are only suitable as a necessary labour force. The things that matter for white people of their kind are “Grow big, have a job, be married, pray to the blond Christ in the white people`s church, give the nanny your old clothes” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 68). Max betrays his parents and their lifestyle by choosing one of his own which is completelly different. Public reputation is all that matters to them; they are preoccupied with their “bourgeois” life in their neat white suburb. “Max took that dirt upon himself, tarred and feathered himself with it, and she complained of her

35 martyred respectability” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 25). For his parents, Max doesn`t die at the bottom of the sea. For them, he dies the day he is arrested on a charge of sabotage for bomb making. His father provides money for the defence, but he never appears in court and he gives up his seat in the parliament. Mrs Van Den Sandt comes to court several times during Max`s trial, but is full of self-pity. Liz is more and more irritated by the way some white middle or upper-middle class people live, because they are mainly concerned about material things and are obviously blind to the social injustices that occur around them.

It was almost closing time for the shops and the place was crowded with young women in expensive trousers and boots, older women in elegant suits and furs newly taken out of storage, men in the rugged weekend outfit of company directors, and demanding children shaping icecream with their tongues. A woman at the table I was sharing was saying, ‘I`ve made a little list…he hasn`t got a silver cigarette case, you know, for one thing…I mean, when he goes out in the evening, to parties, he really needs one’ (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 23).

Gordimer stresses that the poverty and misery of people living around them do not affect their way of life. Such people are unable to see the other side; they don`t see beyond their clean suburbs for whites only. They don`t care about black people who can hardly survive on their wages, because these privileged whites are preoccupied with their social or household concerns. The characters in July`s People also fit into two categories: the wealthy whites who have the right to live in prosperity and the downtrodden blacks. Maureen and Bamford Smales are representatives of the educated, liberal, priviliged white people, who are convinced that they are beyond racial discrimination. They deplore the apartheid system, believe in civilized reforms, and join contact groups to meet blacks. In the light of growing unrest since the pass-burnings, Sharpeville, Soweto and other boycotts, they talk about leaving the country and moving somewhere else. But every time the riots are held back and things go back to

36 normal, they change their mind, because they feel “that this and nowhere else was home, while knowing, as time left went by, the reason had become they couldn`t get their money out” (Gordimer, July`s People 8). They don`t believe in white superiority and throughout scorn the police because of their brutality. They see their relationship with blacks as almost one of friendship among equals and never consider their relationship with July as a typical master and servant relationship. July was their servant for fifteen years and they believe they treated him well. He was paid for his service, he had Wednesdays and alternate Sundays off, they arranged his living quarters in their yard, sent presents to his family, started a special bank account with a small deposit for him and never questioned his involvement with his town woman Ellen. They also talked about

converting the garage into a small room where July could sit with his friends, putting an old sofa there, but both knew that since he would be the only servant in the suburb with such a privilege, there would be too many friends in and out the backyard, too much noise. (Gordimer, July`s People 148)

However, the Smales turn out not to be as liberated as they think they are, because they embody the preconceived notion of what the appropriate roles of blacks in their relation to whites should be. Maureen represents an authority to July, because she is the one who signs his pass every month. Maureen`s relationship with Lydia, the black family servant, who often accompanied her on her way from school and sometimes carried Maureen`s school case on her head, was a master servant relationship, although as a child Maureen considered that part of their childish games. The Smales are not aware of their double standards, but July`s inferiority to whites is also seen in Maureen`s orders and in his complete obedience to her instructions, and in their cast-off things, which were given to July. July feels they don`t treat him with the dignity he deserves, but he is aware of the limitations of his place; therefore, he submitts to the authority of his white employers. He keeps addressing Bam as “master”, although they tried many

37 times to make his understand they don`t like this term, but he still uses it. For July, whose English is too poor to speak his mind, the term seems appropriate to express the way he experiences his relationship with whites. Maureen is aware of the language barrier between them, because “his was the English learned in kitchens, factories and mines. It was based on orders and responses, not the exchange of ideas and feelings” (Gordimer, July`s People 96). July, who spent more than twenty years working in town, is similar to other black people who are entirely dependant on the people they work for and the legal authorities. He believes that black violence against the whites would end the racial oppression of apartheid, and he believes that the days of carrying a pass book are finished. Nevertheless, he keeps it and still feels he needs someone to tell him what to do and how to behave: “he had not actually destroyed it. He needed someone – he didn`t yet know who – to tell him; burn it, let it swell in the river, their signitures washing away” (Gordimer, July`s People 137). The period of great government oppression affected black people, who are forced to divide their lives between the urban white areas where they work and the rural black areas where their families are forced to live. Like the majority of black people, July divides his life between the town life of Johannesburg and the remote black village where his family resides. He spent twenty years living and working in town because his family needed him to. Martha is used to living without her husband, having him around on his home-leave every two years, like most other black men with families. Their children were born in his absence which was an expected part of black women's lives. Under the new circumstances, the Smales become dependant on their former servant. He becomes their protector and provider. July realizes that the power of their former masters based on their economic and racial privileges is gone, but he never betrays them and remains obedient, respecting the established social differences between them. He does not join the people from Soweto but offers shelter to “his white peopleˮ. He could get in serious trouble because of their presence. “He always did what the whites told him. The pass office. The police. Us. How will he not do what blacks tell him, even if he has to kill his cows to feed the freedom fighters” (Gordimer, July`s People 128). He retains his subservient

38 role as their servant. He brings them supplies from the shop, makes tea, takes care of the wood to keep them warm, and appears at their door with water, food and petrol. His behaviour remains the same as in the past, the only difference is that here he wears no uniform. They are alive thanks to him, and they feel they owe him everything. They are terrified hearing the news about killing whites and burning their properties, but July assures them that everything will work out fine:

– My, my, my. What can we do. Is terrible, everybody coming very bad, killing, burning…Only God can help us. We can only hope everything will come back all right.– –Back?– /…/ –“I don`t want to hear about killing. This one is killing or that one. No killing.– –But you don`t mean the way it was, you don`t mean that. Do you? You don`t mean that.– (Gordimer, July`s People 95)

Although July is not among those who rose in arms and retains his subordinate role, his family is not pleased that the whites found shelter in their village. July considers the Smales their employers, strangers and guests at the same time, but his family questions him about their presence in the village. His wife Martha contradicts the Smales` settlement in their village, believing that whites should seek help from other whites. “–They will bring trouble. I don`t mind those people – what do they matter to me? But white people bring trouble–” (Gordimer, July`s People 82). July tries to explain about the violence in the country addressed towards white people, but they find it hard to believe on account of their previous negative experience with white dominance. July`s mother is convinced that blacks are totally incapable of fighting against the white people and is scared of what the presence of whites in their village might do to them:

–What will the white people do to us now, God must save us.– /…/ –The can`t do anything. Nothing to us any more.–

–White people. They are very powerful, my son. They are very clever. You will never come to the end of the things they can do.– (Gordimer, July`s People 20).

July is used to submitting to authority. Back in town he submitted to his white employers, and in his village he has to submit to his rural chief, who summons the Smales to his place. The chief finds it hard to believe that the whites are powerless against blacks. In his opinion, black revolutionaries are not a part of his nation and he is prepared to join the struggle against the black oppressors to defend his land. He gives them the permission to stay in July`s village and asks Bam to teach him how to use the gun. July is convinced that chief won`t fight blacks. There is a great resemblance between the two of them; neither is a rebel:

He is our chief, but he doesn`t fight when the white people tell him he must do what they want – they want. Now how can he fight when the black soldiers come, they say do this or this. How can he fight? He is poor man. He is chief but poor man, he hasn`t got money. If they come over here, those what-you-call-it, the people from Soweto they bring them, they eat his mealies, they hungry, kill a cow – what he`s going to do? Can`t do nothing. Talking, talking (Gordimer, July`s People 122).

Maureen believes that July is talking about himself, that he won`t fight for anyone and is risking his life by having them there. July “used to come and ask for everything. An aspirin. Can I use a telephone. Nothing in that house was his ” (Gordimer, July`s People 155). Maureen asks Bam to leave, because they both know their presence can harm July. “What will the freedom fighters think? /…/ He`s been mixed up with us for fifteen years. No one will ever be able to disentangle that, so long as he`s alive; is that it? A fine answer to give the blacks who are getting killed to set him free” (Gordimer, July`s People 128). Despite the anticipated gap between the superior living conditions of whites and neglected blacks, there are individuals who disdain this distinction made by the government and try to overcome the racial prejudice of their country.

Search for identity

People who live in oppressive regimes are forced to make choices concerning their personal and social life. Gordimer presents characters who find themselves in situations where they struggle for personal as well as political freedom. The political system in which they live thus plays a significant role in their personal development; their identities are shaped and changed by racial division and its external forces. The consequences of apartheid are often so intense that people begin to lose the sense of their own identity or are even forced to create new identities. Toby Hood is one of the characters whose identity completelly changes. He is satisfied with his upper middle class life, intensely rejecting political action of any kind. However, his perception of political and social relationships in South Africa is deeply changed when he is introduced to a young black man Steven Sitole, who takes him into the black township of Sophiatown where Toby starts to realize there is a whole different world out there compared to the prosperous, white Johannesburg, and he becomes charmed by it. Toby used to believe the system has nothing to do with him, but now he comes to the point of realization that he is deeply involved in the system. His social ignorance changes completely when he makes friends with people of different races and confronts the injustices and inhumanity in South African society; he reaches his moral awakening, beginning to realize that black people are deprived of the rights that automatically apply to white people. Toby spends days and months moving freely between both worlds, but when he gets the news about Steven`s death, he is directly confronted with the disaster caused by apartheid. This realization is personal to him, and this time he can`t just ignore it and walk away from it. He is forced to question his moral beliefs and his personal feelings and becomes involved in the struggle against the whites. After Steven`s death he becomes aware that they were soul mates; they fulfilled their lives through each other. “How could it be true, that which both of us knew – that he was me, and I was him? He was in the bond of his skin, and I was free; the world was open to me and closed for him; how could I recognize my situation in his” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 252)? Experiencing a

41 different kind of life in black townships, Toby creates a new identity, realizing that divisions between races are meaningless. He is only a visitor in South Africa; he is a stranger, but he doesn`t feel like one among black people. Life in the townships releases and fills him: “ I found in these places and among these people something I had never found at home. /…/ The life of the townships, at such moments, seemed to feed a side of my nature that had been starved; /…/ it released me and made me more myself” (Gordimer, The World of Strangers 162). His integration with black friends becomes so tight that before his return to England, he promises his black friend Sam that he will return and help black people to struggle for equality of races beyond apartheid. Liz Van Den Sandt is another example of an individual who is in search of her own personal and political identity. After Max`s death she starts to see things from a different perspective and questions her role in this ambiguous society. She becomes more and more aware that there is something terribly wrong with the priorities in the country they live in. She can`t stop thinking about her former husband and what he dedicated his life for. She observes everyday things, but her perception is different from what it was before she got the news of Max`s death. Max did so much, but all his effort remained unnoticed. People around her don`t care about an individual who wanted to make his country better, who wanted to free his own people; the world is fascinated with the news about a man entering the space. She feels her passive opposition to apartheid isn`t enough and starts to examine the potencial for involvement in the black movement. Her identity starts to change from the passive observer to an active participant in the black liberation. She feels the need to fight apartheid, but she is afraid of the possible consequences. Luke Fokase, a black Pan African Congress activist, reveals to her his co-worker`s plans about building houses for black people. She is asked to provide a bank account where they will deposit some money from abroad which is used for sending people out of the country for military training. Her decision is hard to make because the political security police in the 1960s uses brutal force against suspicious people and they regularly detain them. If discovered she could be arrested and imprisoned for her involvement in the black liberation movement. “I

42 ought to stick to my microscope and my lawyer and consider myself lucky I hadn`t the guts to risk ending up the way Max did” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 71). Liz questions her identity, not knowing if she is brave enough to be involved in anti-apartheid work, providing her grandmother`s account for money passing through into the hands of black African revolutionaries. She is afraid, but she is more and more attracted by the idea. She questions her identity having two possibilities; she can be afraid or alive. She can either stand aside and complain over the social injustice or do something to bring the injustices to the end. She uses the words of Franz Kafka: “There are possibilities for me, but under what stone do they lie?” (Gordimer, The Late Bourgeois World 45). Another person who struggles with her personal identity is Rosa Burger, a well-educated white South African girl. Gordimer knew many activist families: “ if you were the child of such families, … you were brought up in an atmosphere where the struggle came first, and you as a child … you came second. And indeed you were groomed … politically groomed into the struggle”(“ Nadine Gordimer Interview”). Rosa`s parents are passionate supporters of the black liberation movement and firmly believe in what they are doing and follow the path they have chosen. Since childhood, Rosa has accepted their convictions and has stoically followed them. She has been recognized as Burger`s daughter her entire life; she doesn`t have an identity of her own, because her family`s legacy suppresses all her needs and desires. Rosa identifies with her parents` commitment and the lives of others brought into her life by her parents. After her father`s death she remains alone, the last member of her family, and she is anticipated to continue her father`s legacy. Nevertheless, Rosa feels that after Lionel`s death she is free for the first time, without responsibility for anyone but herself, but at the same time she is afraid of it. She knows no other way of living; she has submitted all her life to that of her parents. She has responsibilities to her father, and when she tries to fulfill these expectations, she denies herself an identity of her own. Having many doubts about her political engagement looking for self-confirmation, she strives to find her role as a white individual in anti- apartheid liberation movement. Although Rosa doesn`t want to be directly

43 involved in the work of her father`s associates, she can`t tear the connections with these people, “the faithfulˮ (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 195) ones. She is in search for her personal identity; she experiences the intimate conflict between her eagerness to live a normal life and her social responsibility addressed towards the oppresive regime that is experienced by black people in South Africa. She has the right to live in Africa because her father has earned the right to belong here, but she wants to distance herself from her past. Her participation in the talk of black Soweto students about whites` role in the black liberation movement and especially Conrad`s individualism make her reexamine the conflict between her commitment to the others and her need to lead a private life. She is not sure how to live in Lionel`s country anymore, so she flees to Europe. However, after experiencing a different life in France and confronting Baasie`s opinion about her father and other whites, Rosa gains a new respect for her father`s work and returns to South Africa where she becomes active in the resistance, but this time on her own terms. Rosa faces many obstacles in her personal life, but at the end she manages to find the right balance having a life of her own and remaining politically active. With the collapse of white dominance and the overturn of traditional social and racial roles of black servants and white masters, the Smales are forced to examine their roles on the intimate level. The Smales leave their comfortable suburban life and seek shelter in wilderness. When they remain without their social and economic status, they slowly begin to lose the sense of their own identities. They are used to economic security and are lost without it, while their children soon adapt to their new situation. Gina hangs out with her new best friend, a black girl Nyiko, but Victor, their eldest son has already inherited some white superiority. When Bam installs the water tank, Victor objects to letting the blacks use it: “Everybody`s taking water! They`ve found it comes out the tap! Everybody`s taking it! I told them they`re going to get hell, but they don`t understand. /…/ It`s ours, it`s ours!” (Gordimer, July`s People 62). Race is defined in terms of blackness and whiteness, where whiteness represents privilege, power and wealth, and blackness reflects poverty, subservience and inferiority. The Smales who owned a seven-room house and a

44 swimming pool in a comfortable residental area of Johannesburg were used to possessing things for pleasure. Bam`s “bakkie”, a sporting vehicle, was not bought out of necessity. It was used for Bam`s hunting trips, and killing animals was an act of pride. In contrast, blacks have to live with what they possess and don`t see any practial use in having things besides the necessities. The Smales are economically and culturally dispossessed, so the van represents the only remaining belonging to mantain their identity. It becomes a symbol of power. In the village they remain without the usual convenience of their former existence, and their previous life becomes meaningless to them. Maureen is so stressed about their changed living conditions, that she believes:

She was in another time, place, consciousness; it pressed in upon her and filled her as someone`s breath fills a balloon`s shape. She was already not what she was. No fiction could compete with what she was finding she did not know, could not have imagined or discovered through imagination (Gordimer, July`s People 29).

Maureen suffers because she is unable to find a meaningful role in either her family or the community of black women. Her children don`t need her assistance in adapting to village life, and July disapproves when she joins the village women working in the fields. She believes she can overcome racial differences, but for the black women she is an incompetent white woman who can`t perform even simple work. July`s wife envisions this rich white woman differently, but July ensures her that “ They looked different there – you should have seen the clothes in their cupboard. And the glasses – for visitors, when they drink wine. Here they haven`t got anything – just like us” (Gordimer, July`s People 22). Bam, who also used to possess social authority, remains robbed of it. Through her own experience of isolation and worthlessness Maureen starts to realize more about July`s life in Johannesburg. She begins to see how her treatment was often humiliating for July, although it seemed acceptable from her perspective. Life in the rural settlement opens her eyes, but she still isn`t willing to admit this recognition to herself. On the outside she is sensitive towards the

45 black South Africans and politically aware, but now she begins to understand how July must have felt. Instead of apologizing to him for the things she did in the past she addresses him with hostility and she starts to sense fear towards him. Maureen finds it hard to live in this situation in which she is losing control of her life, but they both know that they have nowhere to go and no means by which to get there. “They had fled the fighting in the streets, the danger for their children, the necessity to defend their lives in the name of ideals they didn`t share in a destroyed white society they didn`t believe in. Go back? At once?” (Gordimer, July`s People 51) At the point of her internal crisis Maureen sees a helicopter flying over the village. She starts running after the helicopter, not knowing “ what colour it was, what markings it had, whether it holds saviours or murderers” (Gordimer, July`s People 158). She feels the helicopter will end this unbearable position one way or another:

She runs: trusting herself with all suppressed trust of a lifetime, alert, like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take care of young, existing only for their lone survival, the enemy of all that would make claims of responsbility. She can still hear the beat, beyond those trees and those, and she runs towards it. She runs (Gordimer, July`s People 160).

Racial role reversal

In Gordimer`s novels white families are presented is contrast to black families in order to show racial inequalities in South Africa during the apartheid system, which was discussed in the previous chapter. However, the traditional roles of white dominance and black submission are reversed in the black environment. In July`s People the liberal white South African family is placed in an environment dominated by blacks, in contrast to their domination in Johannesburg. In July`s village the Smales are given the subordinate role; here July is “in charge”, which they find difficult to accept.

With the growth of Smales` complete reliance and dependance upon July in his home environment and July`s growing independance from their dominance, July becomes less subservient and polite. He takes control of his life as well as the lives of the Smales family. Back in town, July was always following their orders silently, but here among his own people he finds the courage to tell Maureen about the things he found undignifying back there. He believes he was a good servant and the Smales were good to him, but he felt her distrust towards him:

She speak nice always, she pay fine for me when I`m getting arrested, when I`m sick one time she call the doctor. /…/ When you go away I`m leave look after your dog, your cat, your car you leave in the garage. I mustn`t forget water your plants. Always you are telling me even last minute when I`m carry your suitcase, isn`t it? Look after everything, July. And you bringing nice present when you come back. You looking everywhere, see if everything it`s still all right. Myself, I`m not say you`re not a good madam – but you don`t say you trust for me. (Gordimer, July`s People 70).

Despite the language barrier between them, Maureen can now understand his message: “what he had had to be, how she had covered up to herself for him, in order for him to be her idea of him. But for himself – to be intelligent, honest, dignified for her was nothing; his measure as a man was taken elsewhere and by others. She was not his mother, his wife, his sister, his friend, his people” (Gordimer, July`s People 152). His self-esteem grows among his own people.

July shows his domination over his former employers by keeping the keys of the car and learning to drive. The Smales aren`t comfortable in their subordinate position; they feel they are losing the last thing that links them to their previous life style, and at the same time July possesses their only means of escape. When the car goes missing for the first time and they find out that July was the one who took it, Bam questions him about it with the inappropriate authority of their former relationship. “I would never thought he would do something like that. He`s always been so correct” (Gordimer, July`s People 58).

While facing July, Maureen sees on Bam`s face his “old, sardonic, controlled challenge of the patron” (Gordimer, July`s People 53). When Bam asks July what will happen if someone sees him driving the car, July`s answer reveals that his authority over the black man is gone. July acts beyond his expected social norms by having the control over the keys.

– If they catch you, without a licence…– He laughed. – Who`s going to catch me? The white policeman is run away when the black soldiers come that time. /…/ No one there can ask me, where is my licence. Even my pass, no one can ask any more. It`s finished. – (Gordimer, July`s People 59)

July feels that neither Bam nor Maureen wants him to keep the car keys:

You don`t like I must keep the keys. Isn`t it. I can see all the time, you don`t like that. /…/ But I`m work for you. Me, I`m your boy, always I`m have the keys of your house.– /…/ Your boy who work for you. There in town you are trusting your boy for fifteen years (Gordimer, July`s People 69).

Maureen struggles with her subservience to July, a feeling which is new to her. She feels powerless at losing her privileged white power over him, and she reproaches him for some things he once did. She was surprised when she noticed that July took some small objects from their house. She never even knew they were missing because she never needed them. July spent many years in town which separated him from the blacks who remained in their rural environment. Maureen believes that the small items he took from their house “separated him from the way other people lived around him” (Gordimer, July`s People 66). July became half a city man and at the same time retained his rural nature. July is convinced his family will be able to go and live in the city after the fighting is over. But Martha who has never been to the city, prefers July to stay in the village where he could run a shop of his own with the skills he acquired in town.

Flight

The personal destinies of people living in South Africa under apartheid were to a great extent marked and shaped by the political situation, which sometimes drove people away from their country. In her anxiety to experience freedom, Rosa Burger wants to flee the country and leave to Europe. She showed extreme bravery by supporting the black people of her country and openly confronted the injustice, repression and terror in South Africa, but after her father`s death she wants to experience a different kind of life, which she cannot realize unless she leaves the country, because her father`s associates assume she will carry on her father`s struggle. She feels her family gave everything to blacks, and she wants to flee that sort of life, because she is convinced she deserves a new life. Living in Europe, she hopes to distance herself from her past. There are people outside South Africa who chose the easier way and turned their back on the country and its people, and there are people living outside South Africa who contribute a great deal to the black cause but don`t get into such troubles as her parents did. Flora Donaldson`s friend lives in Tanzania where she leads an easy life working in a black socialist country. Rosa doesn`t mention her great desire to leave to Europe to anybody, because she feels that this isn`t just a journey to another country but an escape from her past and the burden of being Lionel Burger`s daughter. As a named person, she doesn`t have a passport, which she finally receives with the help of Brand Vermeulen, who works at the Ministry of the Interior, but has to make clear not to seek any contact with her half-brother David outside the country. The passport is valid for only one year and is only for visiting the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy; it is of no use in Tanzania, where her half- brother works as a doctor. She is forbidden to go to Holland and Scandinavian countries, where anti-apartheid movement and freedom fighter groups are the strongest and most active. She is also forbidden to enter the United States because of her Communist background, which could be used by black Americans in their support for economic boycotts. The Department of the Interior and the Bureau of State Security who gave her the passport want to show that these days the regime

49 in the country is changing in a positive way, and they are more open minded towards people like Rosa. Nevertheless the Special Branch agents institute surveillance when she departs for Europe. Rosa finds life in Europe much easier than back home. She spends several months with Katya, Lionel Burger` s first wife, in Nice and finds herself a lover. For the first time in her life, she does not think about others. For a while she is completelly unburdened by the commitment to her family`s ideological heritage and plans to stay in France in exile and get help from the Anti-Apartheid Committee in Paris, which would get her temporary or even permanent residence and a work permit. She spends time in London in Flora Donaldson`s flat where she is recognised as Burger`s daughter; therefore, she cannot flee her past. She visits many political events and the attention of the media is drawn to her. On such an occasion she meets Baasie, her childhood friend, who reproaches her for enjoying people`s attention because of her father, who was in his opinion nothing special, not different from all the others. Baasie`s remarks are painful for Rosa, who decides not to go to France in exile as she and Bernard have planned and returns home. She realizes that she doesn`t fit into this kind of life and she decides to return to South Africa. Through her experience she learns that this notion of freedom isn`t suitable for her. She has been defined by birth to live a different life; she has been destined for such life by her parents, from whom she inherited her political education. She wasn`t taught about politics; she learnt by observation. Despite her momentary desire to leave the horrors of her country behind, the responsibility she feels for the people of her country and her father`s ideology prevail. Flight, in Gordimer`s novels, is seldom a solution for her characters.

Guilt

During apartheid many whites were conscious of the immorality of the established order; therefore, some of them felt pity and guilt. One such character

50 who was aware of the injustices native South Africans endured because whites considered themselves to be a superior race is Rosa Burger. Rosa is presented as a woman who is deeply concerned about the political situation in South Africa and is very knowledgeable about it. She participates many injustices black people have to endure, which fills her with guilt. She is aware that whites are responsible for the suffering and hatred of blacks, and she feels the need to take responsibility for their suffering. She wants to help the blacks, but soon realizes she is often powerless and doesn`t have enough means to fight the authorities. Sometimes it would be easier to just turn around and ignore such scenes, but she isn`t that sort of person. She feels the need to contribute something to make the necessary changes, but there are moments when she isn`t strong enough to face the sufferring anymore, and her feeling of guilt towards black people becomes overwhelming. Her feeling of guilt is shown in a passage which drives her out out her country. The thing that makes her leave the country is seeing the suffering of an animal, of a donkey. On her way home from a black township she comes across a donkey- cart. The donkey is being brutally beaten by a black man. She feels the suffering of the donkey; she sees the pain, the agony. When the cart is already past her, she sees the whip in the man`s hands. She could stop that man; she could report him to the police and stop the animal`s suffering. She turns her head away because the man beating the donkey is a poor, brutalized black man. She has witnessed so much agony, so much suffering of black people that she can`t bear to be one to care more for animals than for people. The donkey`s agony represents the agony of black people in her country. She turns her head away simply because the man is black, and she feels guilty because of the way blacks are treated in their own country. They are often mistreated by powerful whites and there is nobody to stop them. She experiences a similar situation and feeling of guilt in Paris when she finds herself in a crowd of people. Suddenly she feels a hand grabbing her bag, and when she looks at the man`s face she sees he is black. She holds him tight, but doesn`t have the strength to do anything, so she lets him go; she lets the black

51 man go free. In doing so she wants partially to repay for all the injustices black South Africans have faced from white people. Rosa`s life in France represents a real test for her. She is aware of her country`s political situation and the need to help the blacks and can`t shake off the feeling of guilt. She can`t ignore the suffering of black people back home, black people for whom her father died in prison. In France she meets many people, including Didier, a man from from Mauritius who feels nothing for his country. For him his country is filthy and poor. He appreciates living in France where he can live the way he wants. In contrast to Didier, Rosa is much more knowlegdeable about the world around her. She is aware that South Africa is a country where people die trying to gain ordinary civil rights, but it is still her country and she feels she has turned her back on her people, so she returns home and puts the needs of the others before her own just as her parents did.

It`s about suffering. How to end suffering. And it ends in suffering. Yes, it`s strange to live in a country where there are still heroes. Like anyone else, I do what I can (Gordimer, Burger`s Daughter 323).

6 CONCLUSION

Analysis of Gordimer`s novels clearly shows her anti-apartheid point of view. The protagonists of her novels The World of Strangers, The Late Bourgeois World, Burger`s Daughter and July`s People find themselves in a middle of a frightening decision, whether to become politically involved in the anti-apartheid movement and risk being imprisoned for disrespecting the existing legal system, or simply to stand aside and participate in maintaining racial inequality. Gordimer uses various themes, through which her protagonists reflect her anti- apartheid point of view. The novels Burger`s Daughter and The Late Bourgeois World are centered around the theme of political engagement. Many liberated white people join various political organizations who fight against apartheid. The main characters in Burger`s Daughter are members of liberated white family, who show their political engagement by participating the underground South African Commnunist Party, whose main goal is the overthrow of the apartheid government. Politically engaged people are constantly under surveillence and are at risk of being imprisoned. They give up their own personal freedom to fight against repression in their home country. Gordimer presents strong political characters in The Late Bourgeois World. Max Van Den Sandt is involved in the Liberal Party and both he and his wife are members of Congress of Democrats, a radical white organization, which performs some work for the African National Congress which resists the discriminatory laws of apartheid and is willing to offer help in the black liberation movement. Another of Gordimer`s powerful themes is collaboration between members of different races. Although contacts between blacks and whites, except master- servant relations, are strictly prohibited by law, there are inviduals who associate and work with blacks to help them gain their rights. The Burgers help wounded demonstators and provide shelter for black revolutionaries. Rosa collaborates with blacks as a mail carrier and a visitor in jail, enabling prisoners to be in touch with the underground Communist movement. She even smuggles false papers for black activists, illegally passing in and out of the country. Toby and Steven break the

53 social rules by hanging out together, Toby inviting blacks in white builings and spending time in black townships without a government pass. The theme of rebellion appears in The Late Bourgeois World, Burger`s Daughter and July`s People. Rebellion rises among people who realize that peaceful opposition to apartheid won`t bring it to an end. Max is deeply involved in the white liberal revolt, visiting prohibited areas for whites, protesting against segregation and colour bar laws. Furthermore he is imprisoned for sabotage of making a bomb. In Burger`s Daughter Gordimer presents the rise of Black Consciousness Movement in 1970s, resulting in black demontrations against inferior education. In July`s People fictional rebellion against white authorities becomes widespread. A mass black revolt in South Africa results in the overthrow of the apartheid system. Although many liberated white people endanger themselves by being involved in the black liberation, Gordimer presents characters who are indifferent to the outside world. In The World of Strangers and Burger`s Daughter, such characters are presented as apolitical individuals who don`t want to be bothered with political tensions and show no sense of social responsibility, but live lives marked by political passivity. Another significant theme in Gordimer`s novels is white supremacy. Whites living in South Africa created superior living conditions for themselves. The period of great government oppression affected black people, giving them a subordinate role in the society. The majority of blacks are accustomed to submmiting to white authority, suffering in poverty and misery. However, Toby and Max are depicted as individuals who don`t believe in white superiority and consider these divisions meaningless. In July`s People Gordimer illustrates a delicate theme of racial role reversal, presenting a white family robbed of their dominant social and economic position. They become subservient to their former black servant, which makes them feel powerless and useless. Experiencing the subordinate position in a black environment, they start to question their own identities. Rosa Burger is expected to carry on her parents` legacy and identifies herself with her parents` commitment, suppressing all her needs and desires. However, through her

54 experience of guilt and flight to Europe, where she finds life meaningless, she reaches a right balance, remaining loyal to herself as well as her family`s ideological heritage. Toby Hood and Liz Van Den Sandt are forced to examine their personal roles facing the terrors and humiliation of black members of South African apartheid society. Both of them decide to play a part in the apartheid struggle. The themes that highlight the horrors of the apartheid, are used by Gordimer to convey a common, simple message: the oppression of blacks must end.

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