The Representation of Women in the Media and Novels of Post-1994 South Africa
p. 129-160
Résumé
Despite women’s more prominent social position in the new dispensation in South Africa, there has been no abatement in sexual abuse and violence, especially with regard to women in the poor communities and outlying country areas. In 2003, Nonhlanhla Nkabinde, a Member of Parliament in South Africa, warned that the abuse of women and children would need to be addressed if progress were to be made in the establishment and propagation of women’s rights. It would seem that the violence in South Africa at present could not be wholly attributed to political discrimination, because years of apartheid suppression has erupted in a type of unconscious rage with women as easy targets.
This article claims that the healing of South African wounds incurred during the apartheid years entails much more than political equality, because gender equality still lags far behind. It is suggested that the core issues to be addressed for the attainment of female equality remain vested in economic and social empowerment which will be illustrated by means of media reports and female representation in the novels discussed (by female authors and male authors alike). In all of these social and literary texts the question of choice features prominently. Choice is also a core theme that the reader has to address in order to function as a responsible member of a particular society. In conclusion, social and literary media serve to create a forum for discussion which alerts readers to the female predicament in South African society and creates an awareness of different perspectives on these issues.
Texte intégral
1This article attempts to trace and evaluate the aftermath of apartheid and its legacies with regard to the representation of black and white women in the media and novels published over the last decade in South Africa. The focus is placed on traditional stereotypes of women and their perceived roles in public and private lives that have been perpetuated by gender abuse and racial discrimination. It is suggested that the most important sources of public and personal opinion reside in the media and, in this case, the press and literature of a democratic country that represent the prevalent and relevant discourses and forums of debate, or constitute the ‘perspective and register’ mentioned by Klopper below1, that need to be scrutinised. Furthermore, as Mineke Schipper points out:
Cultural references in and about literary works contain a wealth of information on cultural identities as expressed by authors, readers and researchers. Such data generate significant cultural meaning about selves and identities.2
2It is then assumed that an overview of recent public opinion and literary expression will not only provide some relevant material on the position of women, but also present a balanced picture of and insight into the perceptions and portrayal of women in contemporary South African society, by writers from different genders and cultures. Such an overview would reveal certain correlations between the different participants; demonstrate how successful or ineffective reporters and writers have been in confronting the past; show progress in the bridging of racial and gender gaps and finally, expose and redress injustices committed in the name of ideological differences and power structures.
3The questions to be asked are then, what and how have the media and literature contributed towards ‘healing the wounds of apartheid’ with specific reference to women?
4On examining and expressing the plight of women and their progress towards social equality and recognition in South Africa, the issues of personal abuse and sexual violence outweigh the benefits of a democracy. It would seem that the ‘wounds’ ascribed to apartheid run even deeper than race; that the origins of the present violence rife in South African society have to be traced further back. It is argued that the main obstacles many (South) African women encounter in their struggle to attain social equality can be identified as a lack of financial resources, which make them dependent on men and incapable of escaping from traditional stereotypes that render them vulnerable as individuals. For example, in a letter written to Business Day, Percy Ngonyama3 complains that women’s rights are ignored in the traditional ‘virginity testing’ of young Zulu maidens. He also points out that, ironically, the response from King Goodwill Zwelithini and other male proponents of the custom was to infer that such criticism smacked of ‘anti-Zulu’ and ‘anti-African’ sentiments. This serves as a good example of the impregnable male traditionalist enclave that dictates women’s opinions.
5The fact that rape has become a ruthless tool to control and humiliate women is corroborated by several women critics in the 2002 publication of the journal Kunapipi. In this journal, Lucy Valery Graham points out that South Africa has the ‘highest reported incidence of rape in the world’4, but, in the same volume, Meg Samuelson5 qualifies this ‘distinction’ by noting that the focus in the novels of transition falls ‘almost exclusively on interracial rape’, while she discerns a significant and ‘overwhelmingly intraracial’ aspect of rape present in the South African reality that indicates ‘an ascendant violence against women’. The concern with women and violence in South Africa was also voiced in a call for papers for a Special Edition of African Studies (2007) in which the convener, Ronit Frenkel, points out that although ‘South Africa has the largest percentage of women in parliament in the world, it also has the highest levels of rape’.
6Since 1994, when the African National Congress Party came into power, South Africa has witnessed many political and social changes. The new dispensation, mindful of the power structures that informed the apartheid regime and concerned with basic human rights in the new democratic South Africa, has attempted to redress the balance in many areas such as government, education, racial and gender relations. However, this undertaking has proven to be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Changing a society involves an ongoing process of revising existing laws and promulgating new ones, questioning social preconceptions, exposing ideologies and stereotypes and especially, re-defining women’s role in society.
7Contemporary South Africa, like most of the African continent, is burdened by three important factors that impede social and cultural progress: poverty, an underlying tension between tradition and progress, and illiteracy that, to a great extent, can be attributed to the segregation policy implemented by the educational system under the apartheid government. These conditions are especially noticeable in the lives of black women who have been doubly marginalised by racial as well as gender discrimination in the past. Despite the changes instituted by the present dispensation, the majority of black women who live in isolated rural areas still endure poverty and isolation which also implies a lack of educational facilities as Wisker also clearly acknowledges6. In addition, this article argues that tribal and/or traditional stereotypes also inhibit rural women from attaining the personal independence and social equality concomitant with economic independence.
8Economic independence was also high on the agenda of the European and American women’s emancipation that took shape in the 1960s. In her book entitled, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, the feminist activist Susan Faludi not only blames the media, film and fashion industries for propagating and profiting from false images of womanhood (stereotypes), but also identifies economic independence as a high priority for most women, because it enables them to exercise choices7. This emphasis on choice is significant, because it is made possible with education to achieve economic independence for all women. As Faludi states:
It asks that women not be forced to ‘choose’ between public justice and private happiness. It asks that women be free to define themselves–instead of having their identity defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men. (Faludi 1991: xvi)
9Jennifer Breen also identifies two major issues in women’s lives when she says that ‘ [w]omen’s problems, especially if they belong to a minority class or culture, are not only sexual, but also economic’.8
10In present-day South Africa, this scenario also includes white women who, despite their former privileged position as ‘colonisers’, are subject to the same abuse and violence present in our society. In terms of comparison, Vron Ware draws an interesting correlation between black and white female experience with regard to race and gender when she asserts that ‘ [t]he recognition that the lives of women of colour are inescapably prescribed by definitions of “race” as well as gender can also be applied to women who fall in the category “white”’9. In a similar vein, Wisker also cautions that, in view of South Africa’s multi-racial society, it is important to include the whole range of women’s writing (Redefining an African Sky, 141). In this review of women’s lives in South Africa, the initial distinctions between the experiences of black and white women are still pertinent, but the emphasis on race would seem to have shifted somewhat to focus on gender issues and personal abuse.
11It is evident that the South African society is a complex conglomeration of cultures and traditions that cannot simply be described in terms of binaries. This fact is also stressed by Klopper in his editorial preface to The English Academy Review when he claims that the ‘question of voice’ is a central concern in academic discussions because of the ‘dialogical nature of discursive contexts, the plurality of voices and their relative authority, and the complexities of perspective and register’. Consequently, context is a crucial aspect to be considered when cultural and racial issues are discussed, as several academics and critics also point out, including Wasserman on the subject of Afrikaans texts10, Wisker on women’s writing (Redefining an African Sky, 145) and Attwell on J.M. Coetzee’s writing as a form of ‘literary self-consciousness’11.
12In a discussion of the contemporary South African postcolonial novel, the Afrikaans novel represents one of the ‘voices’ in the country which, on account of its colonial heritage, often occupies a ‘peculiar double position in the history of colonial and postcolonial discourse in South Africa’ (‘Postcolonial Cultural Identity’, 91). This double bind is also reflected in white women’s writing as Gina Wisker acknowledges when she mentions that ‘a range of commonalities are shared by South African women who are united against apartheid and its tainted legacy’ (Redefining an African Sky, 141). This ambivalent position is clearly reflected in the work of many Afrikaans writers like André Brink and Elsa Joubert who have infused their novels with a counterdiscourse to the hegemony of apartheid. An English novelist like J. M. Coetzee is often criticised for his refusal to take a definite stance on the South African historical reality, but Attwell defends his position by pointing out that the critics of Disgrace, for example, ‘treat it as a documentary, as providing access to a social truth without any acknowledgement that the truth it reveals is instantiated, contextualised, and frequently ironised, within forms of discourse which are being held up for scrutiny’ (‘JM Coetzee and South Africa’, 107). Indeed, he refuses to assume a definite stance.
13 Wasserman attempts to resolve this duality, or impasse, signified by South African novels, when he refers to Mishra and Hodge’s proposal12 that two distinctive ‘frameworks for reading postcolonial texts’ should be used and points out that the co-existence of such types of reading can be referred to as ‘fused postcolonial’ (‘Postcolonial Cultural Identity’, 92). Wasserman interprets these two approaches and their implications in the following way:
Whereas the identities of coloniser and colonised are constructed as separate and distinct in an oppositional postcolonial, a complicit postcolonial instead foregrounds the instability of attempts made in the colonial discourse to oppose coloniser and colonised in a binary pair. (‘Postcolonial Cultural Identity’, 93)
14Furthermore, Wasserman argues that Hall’s13 perception of the dynamic nature of cultural identity defies and rejects a unilateral perspective on the past and encourages a cultural interaction that must inevitably influence both coloniser and colonised to ’entwine’ their identities into a hybridization of ‘the colonial binary’ (‘Postcolonial Cultural Identity’, 97).
15This article endorses the idea of a ‘complicit postcolonial’ discourse, because the South African writer finds him/herself in the unenviable and compromising position of playing devil’s advocate as explained above. Postcolonial South African novels are usually characterised by the dialectics between fiction and history in an attempt to recapture and scrutinize the past and to confront social issues that need to be digested and resolved, if not forgotten. Yet, as several critics like Burger14 and Coullie15 remark, recent South African novels in both Afrikaans and English seem to have acquired a distinct propensity for a conscious fusion of fact and fiction, or a mixture of register, reminiscent of the style favoured in the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, although Ashleigh Harris questions the ethics involved in such a mixture of genres and registers, because it tends to erase the original text.16 This aspect of fiction is obvious in André Brink’s novels, for example, Devil’s Valley and is most obvious in Antje Krog’s rendition of the above-mentioned Truth and Reconciliation hearings, as Judith Coullie points out:
The authorial narrator scrutinises her own assumptions, her own identity, throughout, achieving narrative distancing by means of changes of register (journalistic reportage, interview, autobiographical narrative, prose poetry) and person shifts from the predominant first-person authorial narrator to third person authorial protagonist.
(‘Translating Narrative’, 3)
16This style of writing also suggests the role of the media in contemporary novel writing.
17As channels of communication, the press and novels play an important role in our lives as cultural barometers that represent two different perspectives on reality, that is, factual and imaginative reportage. Whereas the public media (newspapers and television) are intended to disseminate information, they are also sensationoriented and confront events head-on by openly challenging, persuading or distorting public opinions. Novels, in spite of or, on account of their ideological baggage explore the social and psychological implications of change on societies and personalities; they encourage a process of contemplation in contrast to the immediate and impetuous reaction often elicited by media coverage. Engagement with the imagination allows for a transitional space17 where various ideas and influences interact to evoke a change in perspective, or it creates the possibility to understand and accommodate other opinions.
18The media perform an important function in contemporary society with regard to shaping public opinion. Unlike the novel that only caters to the literate and educated section of society, the media, and in particular television, infiltrate every level of society. Newspapers and television can create or destroy personalities (as Faludi clearly indicates above), they can establish stereotypes and exaggerate reports to raise the sensational value of news. Yet, like the novel (and literature in general), public expression reflects the mind-set of a particular society and individuals, as well as the political trends and dominant ideological forces at work in the diverse cultural society of South Africa.
19Consequently, what are the apparent ‘wounds’ of apartheid that need healing in South Africa and how should this process be addressed? Firstly, it would seem that the political equality presupposed by a democracy is only skin deep: that the issues of basic human rights for all, and considerations of human dignity have assumed a peripheral position in our society. Secondly, and ironically, power and materialism (greed) often reflect negatively on the plight of women, instead of providing them with opportunities to obtain education and well-paid jobs which would make them independent and responsible citizens (subjects instead of objects).
20 The emphasis is placed here on ‘responsibility’. It cannot be denied that apartheid has played a large role in creating political instability that reflected negatively on black cultures and conventional family structures. White superiority and black oppression affected the family life and authority of the father figure in African cultures as Lewis also remarks.18 As migrant workers, men from the neighbouring Bantustans and countries in Africa were employed in the mines, but were forbidden to bring their families with them. The separation of mine workers from their families encouraged prostitution and adultery; it caused men to assume the dual roles of being figures of authority in their households, while they occupied subservient positions under white men as miners and farm labourers. If the men did not send money home to their families, the women left behind in the homelands were themselves forced to find jobs in cities where they were unable to house their children as they often stayed in rooms in the backyards of white families–thereby causing further disruption of family life.
21Apart from colonisation, we should perhaps also question how the postmodernist refutation of ‘boundaries’, binaries and fixed interpretations has affected social perceptions. Has the lack, or excessive expansion, of boundaries caused society to relapse into a limitless void where the individual seems to be absolved from public as well as personal responsibility? Yet, South African society shows signs of positive change in strange and unexpected places. For instance, in recognition of female abuse in townships, a group of men led by Ozee Phiri, ‘a self-confessed woman abuser’, joined forces to form ‘Men for Change, an advocacy group based in Wynberg, Johannesburg, which focuses on behavioural change among African men living in townships.’19 This group has assumed male responsibility by presenting seminars on anger management and gender issues. A report by Danél Blaauw20 focuses on another medium that provides a platform for male consciousness-raising, namely, an art exhibition initiated by Jacki McInnes entitled, A Legacy of Men. This exhibit enabled male artists to present a visual platform of resistance against the abuse of women and children. The fact that responsibility also involves a conscious choice is represented in many postcolonial novels written by black and white authors alike.
22As a result of the concerted efforts made by the ANC ruling party to redress the balance between male and female representation over the last decade, black women in South Africa have assumed prominent roles in government. The Deputy President of South Africa, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, is a black woman and many black women also occupy ministerial positions in the country’s government. It was also recently reported in the press21 that black women are now claiming the right to assume tribal positions as well. The dispute about the successor to the Valoyi tribe in Limpopo is a controversial issue that has now been referred to the Constitutional Court, because in strict order of succession, the daughter of the previous ruler should have been appointed at his death. Instead, the former king’s brother was elected king.
23Following the example of the ANC government, the opposition party has recently appointed a white woman, Helen Zille, as leader of the Democratic Alliance and has, furthermore, elected a woman, Sandra Botha, as the main speaker for that party in Parliament in May 2007. In an interview, Sandra Botha states in no uncertain terms that she is ‘nobody’s clone’22–a statement that inadvertently denies any kind of stereotyping and highlights the ironical twist in the theme of The Stepford Wives mentioned below.
24In spite of the foothold gained by educated and independent women in the social, economic and academic circles of contemporary South African society, perceptions of their traditional roles in the past have persisted in several instances. Many women in the rural areas of South Africa, both white and black, are still subject to male domination that clearly foregrounds the tension between tradition and progress. This fact is corroborated by Naomi Nkealah who claims that African women should take concerted action to ‘rise above the murky waters of patriarchal dominance’23 and furthermore, uproot ‘deep-seated misconceptions about the female sex’ (135). Yet, she also cautions that such measures should not defy ‘the traditional values that form part of [her] cultural identity’ (138). Within the African cultures, some women still have to contend with the traditional perception that they are part of the man’s possessions associated with land and property. that includes women. In traditional circles, female insubordination is often punished with a beating, because it is perceived by the community to be a denial of motherhood and tradition. This inherent tension between the old and the new is especially evident in the media that feature reports on successful women leaders in parliament as well as reports on the abuse of women in the same paper.
25Tradition is also evident in the Afrikaner community in which the image of the ideal Afrikaner woman was recently questioned in two consecutive supplements of the Die Beeld newspaper by reporter Loraine Maritz. She firstly addresses the concept of the traditional ‘volksmoeder’ or ‘mother of the nation’24 that was the typical role formerly ascribed to Afrikaner women settlers who supported their fathers and husbands unconditionally, often in hostile and perilous situations. Like the African perception of a good mother, these women were regarded as the backbone of the Afrikaner nation who had to persevere and suffer for the common good. Maritz questions the lack of political commitment displayed by the Afrikaner women–and this parallel could also be drawn to the peripheral position allocated to black women in the Struggle in South Africa. The subtitle of this first discussion of the Afrikaner woman stereotype clearly intimates male influence in the construction of this image, as it asks an additional question reading ‘Male Manipulation or Female Initiated’? This question is quite apposite when we take into consideration that only two years ago, Jackie Grobler25 wrote an article on the protest marches undertaken by white women to the Union Buildings (the administrative section of the South African Parliament situated in Pretoria) in 1915 and 1940 to protest against the incarceration of rebel Boers and to object to South Africa’s participation in the second World War respectively. These protests were generally regarded as the ‘awakening of South Africa’s daughters’. Consequently, white women of the past should not be seen as mere puppets of their male counterparts.
26In the following supplement Maritz draws an interesting parallel between the traditional Afrikaner stereotype of the wife and mother and Ira Levin’s representation of such a paragon in his thought-provoking novel, The Stepford Wives published in 197226. Levin presents the reader with the monotony and doll-like personality of an ideal woman that leaves a frightening impression of the impersonal massification of feminine attributes.
27 Apart from traditional stereotypes, the other common denominator between media representation and literary expression in this article refers to the legacy of female abuse. Four years ago, on the event of the annual Women’s Day celebrated on the 9th of August in South Africa, the violence at large in our society was pertinently raised in a letter to The Sunday Times by Nonhlanhla Nkabinde, a Member of Parliament in South Africa. The letter highlights women’s poor living conditions and their vulnerability to violence and sexually transmitted diseases. Nkabinde stresses that the traumatic conditions prevailing in our young democracy counteract any progress in the establishment and propagation of women’s rights and describes the violence committed against women as a ‘silent and unspoken evil that walks blatantly in our neighbourhoods and communities’.27
28If one were to judge from the daily newspapers, the popular male perception of women as possessions or objects of lust does not seem to have abated in the daily lives of many women in contemporary society. Discrimination is still alive and well in private lives and lurks beneath the surface of social discourse in the form of jokes that are made at the cost of women and mothers-in law. In 2004 a news clip on Cable News Network28 reported on the so-called Sugar Daddies in Uganda who, as rich older men, offer to pay for teenage girls’ tuition fees and other necessities or luxuries, in exchange for sex. Such a situation is not only immoral and degrading but also propagates AIDS. In November 2007 another news clip on the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on the statistics of rape perpetrated by soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo29. It was estimated that 36 rapes had been reported in October 2007 alone. As recently as December 9 of this year (2007), a rape incident that involved a white family was reported in the Sunday Times30. It was a typical house robbery, but the robbers displayed a callous and shocking disregard for their victims. A young girl of seventeen was raped and then told by the rapist that he is HIV-positive. On the same page of the newspaper, the reporter refers to an attack in April 2007 in which a two-year-old toddler, Tshahai Okiekwe, was shot in the head and killed because she started crying during a robbery at her home. Lauren Cohen reports on another incident that raises alarm about the safety of our children when a judge ‘sentenced a builder to life in prison for raping a seven-year-old girl–herself born of a rape’.31
29It would then seem as if in the aftermath of apartheid oppression and during the transition to a new dispensation, a type of unconscious rage with woman as an easy target, has erupted in South Africa. Psychologists and crime experts detect a ‘culture of violence’ in the country and ascribe these incidents mainly to socioeconomic factors32. Ironically, women of all ages and cultures are at risk and, according to reports in daily newspapers, the victims range from toddlers (as mentioned above) to grandmothers of seventy years of age or even older.
30Dries Liebenberg33 reports on a new tendency, that has rocked the people and police force of KwaZulu-Natal, namely, a series of murders on ten women, whose bodies were found in sugarcane plantations. The police suspect that this could be connected to women who do not conform to the ‘normal’ or traditional image of women, such as lesbians, or that they are perhaps resented because they represent other dissident forms of resistance to traditional images of women. Another disturbing fact is mentioned by Mamphela Ramphele in an article on sexism in society, specifically directed against white women. She warns that ‘In attempting to build a new nation without racial barriers to advancement, we should be wary about backsliding when it comes to society’s ingrained sexism’34. Could these issues be ascribed to a general impotence to face reality; a conditioned reflex to find a scapegoat for a sick (white) society that Coetzee already addressed in Age of Iron?35
31The stereotypical roles imposed on women of all races and their concomitant economic dependence, have prevented women from planning meaningful lives for themselves. Consequently, social changes have merely skimmed the surface of women’s rights in South Africa, so that the spectre of apartheid seems to have been replaced by more insidious forms of social fragmentation and corruption.
32Since the inception of a democratic political system in South Africa in 1994, several reporters, writers and academics such as Brink, Krog and Mda have engaged with the South African past in their work in an attempt to confront it and to foster understanding and reconciliation in a nation traumatised by discrimination and burdened with psychological and physical scars. In this regard, Burger refers to Ricoeur’s book on Memory, history, forgetting in which he interprets memory as an ability to identify with the experiences of others in order to make sense of one’s own experience, rather than to forget as such36 . Goodman also points out that ‘Forgiveness and reconciliation are seen as dependent on an awareness of the complex circumstances and the humanity of those who are labelled as offenders’37 .
33Many novelists such as Bessie Head, Buchi Emecheta, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o contrast the old and the new in order to illustrate the advantages of equality and economic empowerment for women. Desiree Lewis particularly comments on these aspects in her discussion of Ellen Kuzwayo and Buchi Emecheta respectively (‘Myths of Motherhood’, 38 and 46), yet Chris Dunton questions whether the counteractions against patriarchy in the novels of male and female African novelists are ‘genuinely, structurally, effective’38. This question seems relevant to the argument posited here about contemporary gender relations in South Africa where an examination of preconceptions of women plays an important part in the creation of awareness and in the healing process of the South African society.
34South African novels, in particular female novelists like Anne Landsman in The Devil’s Chimney,39 Rayda Jacobs in The Slave Book40 and Farida Karodia in Boundaries,41 as well as their male counterparts, André Brink in The Rights of Desire,42 J. M. Coetzee in Disgrace43 and Zakes Mda in The Madonna of Excelsior,44 depict women’s plight in various situations and in interesting ways that capture the past and confront it, but also anticipate a place for all in South Africa. Yet, the question remains: Is there a difference between perceptions relayed by female and male authors and could their perceptions be representative of contemporary female and male perceptions about women, and South African women in particular?
35The main theme in the novels mentioned above, relates to the pivotal role of female sexuality in power relations between genders in literary representation that also links with women’s struggle for equality with economic independence. It is significant that the last decade has seen the publication of several books and novels on slavery at the Cape because, as I pointed out elsewhere45, slavery as a topic has been neglected in South African literature except for novelists such as Wilma Stockenström in her novel Die Kremetartekspedisie (1981) that was translated by J. M. Coetzee into English as The Expedition to the Baobab Tree, and André Brink’s forays into the social life at the Cape in the seventeenth century in, for example, An Instant in the Wind (1979). However, apart from Jacobs’s Slave Book that will be briefly discussed here, mention should also be made of Yvette Christiansë’s novel, Unconfessed, that has received numerous reviews to date and has been compared to Toni Morrison’s Beloved.46 The novel has been well received in a year that marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade and is especially valuable in that it seems to fill a void in slave literature in South Africa.
36In the novels mentioned here, the fate of the female protagonist is always contingent on her economic dependence as slave/servant or browbeaten wife. Despite the assumption that wives are assumed to be privileged with legitimate status and certain social rights, they are often represented in literature as possessions or as sexual objects. It is only when this mould is broken that women can aspire to attain their true potential as partners and equals–when they realise that they have choices.
37 Although written by a woman, it is significant that the narrator in The Slave Book is Sangora, the slave girl Somiela’s stepfather. Situated in the Cape during the nineteenth century, before and after the final emancipation of slaves in 1834, The Slave Book recounts the story of Somiela, her battle for identity and the right to choose her own destiny. She is sold into slavery together with her stepfather Sangora whose narration is written in italics and whose account correlates with excerpts from historical slave documentation and the conditions of slavery sketched by Watson.47 Somiela’s plight illustrates the hopelessness of female slaves and their sole value as commodities of labour and sexual gratification, a condition that Kari Winter describes as being kept ‘in a perpetual state of subjection to physical, emotional, and economic exploitation’ when she refers to the plight of women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.48 Yet Somiela does not suffer the same fate as most slave women, because her marriage to Harman, a half-caste free-born man from the interior, prevents abuse at the hands of her masters and other male slaves. Somiela then finally achieves personal and emotional emancipation because of Harman’s defiance of the hypocritical social taboos with regard to race.
38Although she ‘enjoys’ the privilege and protection of marriage in The Devil’s Chimney, Connie is a poor and neglected wife whose plight seems similar to that of slavery, because she is kept in a perpetual state of nervous anticipation of her husband’s next move. As Warnes indicates, Connie is ‘herself a victim of ongoing domestic violence and child loss’49. This situation induces her to resort to alcohol for comfort and she manages to escape her life of drudgery through flights of the imagination. Her husband Jack refuses to see her as a person with rights and denigrates her flights of fancy about an imaginary forbear, Miss Beatrice. By imagining Miss Beatrice as a character, Connie attempts to reconstruct and understand the past history of women, like Brink does in his novel, Imaginings of Sand, when he re-creates a register of female ancestors from the past. Ironically, Connie is only able to function as a person when she resorts to alcohol or when she uses her imagination as an escape mechanism which, as Gaylard cautions, is an unhealthy situation because such measures can only result in social and imaginative alienation50. Consequently, when he compares Connie’s situation with that of her ‘imaginary feminist forbear’ from the previous century, he has to admit that female subservience has not changed and ‘that women in both time periods have to struggle with being reduced to reproduction and appearance’ but that it ‘is not as institutionalised as it was a century before’ (191). Whereas Somiela is ‘saved’ by Harman, Connie resorts to other measures of ‘independence’.
39In contrast to the above novels, Karodia’s novel, Boundaries, depicts the social ‘boundaries’ of a small town, Vlenterhoek. Rebecca Fortuin, a former coloured resident of Vlenterhoek, has done well for herself and has become ‘the opposition member of parliament’ (5). She has not returned home for a long time, because of her fraught relationship with her father and her reluctance to confront the racial and social barriers still evident in the small town (2). However, circumstances in the form of the arrival of a film company and the presence of Hemelslaagte Springs that provides the town with a bounteous water supply, bring unexpected changes– tradition has to make way for progress. As a result of her political importance and position, Rebecca is then called in to help with the improvement of the town by the town clerk, Danie Venter. Rebecca’s visit proves cathartic to herself and the town inhabitants, as they are all confronted with the new dispensation and the changes it has wrought. Former relationships are examined, tested and reestablished in some cases, and rejected in others. The most important aspect of Rebecca’s visit and re-vision of “boundaries” is that it foregrounds the importance of personal relationships that last despite colour, social status and political affiliation. Rebecca is also able to make peace with herself and her future. Consequently, Karodia stages a personal confrontation with the past which causes Rebecca’s dark memories of the past to recede and assume new meanings in the present. The important factor is that Rebecca has been able to make her own choices.
40On reading some recent novels published by famous South African male writers, one would be inclined to ask what women have actually achieved over the last thirty years with their agitation for equal social rights? Judging from the fates of female protagonists in novels such as André Brink’s The Rights of Desire and The Other Side of Silence51, John Coetzee’s Disgrace and Zakes Mda’s The Madonna of Excelsior, it would seem that women might not have gained much ground in postcolonial South African society, but that literary awareness of their plight is alive and well.
41Perceptions of positive change in women’s representation became visible 1995 when Elsa Joubert published her novel Die Reise van Isobelle [Isobelle’s Journey]52 which describes the evolution of political consciousness in three consecutive generations of women from an Afrikaner family, the Van Veldens. The main thread linking all these personal histories is concerned with identity and political accountability. This trend of independence in female representation is also noticeable in the novels by male authors.
42In André Brink’s The Rights of Desire and The Other Side of Silence, the female protagonists realise that they have a choice even if it only implies a personal victory like the revenge-driven Hanna in The Other Side of Silence who realises that she can refuse to remain a victim of male abuse all her life, because she has a choice. In The Rights of Desire, Tessa, Ruben’s boarder, refuses to concede to his sexual overtures (allusive to the mediaeval droit du seigneur) as a mere sexual object, because she insists that she has a choice about her own body (her own private space) in contrast to the former slave girl, Antje of Bengal, whose ghost roams the house. Ruben comes to realise his selfishness when he asks himself:
If I claim desire as my right and its nature lies in motion, its motion towards the other, does not my right to desire invoke the right of the other to refuse me?... If there are rights, yes, then I suppose desire has a right to be. But that does not give me the right to demand rights for desire. (90)
43This idea also sparks the realization that his perceptions of the women in his life (from Magrieta his servant, to his wife and mistresses) have all been coloured by male prejudice that saw them as objects of his will and desires. The ghost of Antje of Bengal, represents the spectre of the past as a reminder of the injustices committed on women and the fact that they also have rights.
44The question of choice is also a core theme in J. M. Coetzee’s novel, Disgrace, which provides an anti-pastoral impression of the conventional South African farm novel. In Disgrace, the protagonist’s daughter, Lucy, decides to keep her baby conceived in a rape incident perpetrated by farm workers. Yet, this incident recalls Lurie’s seduction of the student Melanie which allows the reader to recognize similarities in male attitude, an aspect that Meg Samuelson also points out (‘The Rainbow Womb’, 90). Lucy represents the new type of frontier/coloniser/white woman who consciously, despite her despoilment and invasion of privacy, makes a choice to accept her destiny; thus substituting grace for disgrace. She realises that life contains choices and if she wishes to live in her country (South Africa) she has to accept a different future. Her decision should be seen as acceptance of responsibility for her actions (even if the past was unavoidable, she can decide on the future). Lucy exercises her right of choice (like Tess of the D’Urbervilles when she murders Alec), the right to her own story (like Susan Barton in Foe) despite the consequences, and I believe that it is this aspect that Samuelson highlights; an aspect that also correlates with Coetzee’s stance on and interpretation of history.
45Coetzee challenges the reader to scrutinize his own reflection in the mirror of history. I would therefore contend that the ending of Disgrace does not necessarily imply a dismal fate for women in South Africa as Gillian Gane seems to suggest,53 but that it spells a scenario of possible conclusions unless women (and men such as David Lurie and Brink’s Ruben, who prefer to camouflage rape as seduction) assume responsibility for their actions; unless women take positive action instead of remaining the victims of an unequal social dispensation and make an active attempt to transcend their situations. To quote Winter on the topic of choice:
History has shown continually that no amount of physical force or ideological mystification can permanently deprive a human being of his or her will. The power to choose–in fact, the inevitability of choice–is an inalienable part of being human.
(Subjects of Slavery, 112)
46The final writer to conclude this review of women represented in South African novels, Zakes Mda, creates a striking example of ‘complicit’ reading in his novel, The Madonna of Excelsior. As a black South African male writer, Mda shows a touching awareness of black women and their lives, but he also attempts to place history into a more comprehensible perspective by using visual and verbal art to create a space of transition; a means of transcending reality and opening up new ways of ‘seeing’. Or, as Miki Flockemann perceives it: ‘the ecstatic artistic or sensuous experience is presented as a catalyst for psychic transformation, for enabling alternative ways of seeing and of being’54. To Mda, art induces self-knowledge that enables understanding, if not forgiveness for the ‘wounds’ of apartheid. In other words, Mda envisions an alternative perspective that serves to complement historical documentation.
47In The Madonna of Excelsior, Mda recounts and re-presents a historical event referred to as the ‘Excelsior 19’ trial that rocked the foundations of Afrikaner nationalism and South Africa at large in 1970s. In contravention of the Immorality Act that prohibited black and white intercourse, thirteen black women were accused of prostitution committed with 5 white farmers at the time; they were put on trial, but not the farmers. To illustrate the harsh conditions of apartheid and sketch the repercussions of this trial, Mda depicts the lives of Niki and her daughter Popi. Their fate replicates the fate of many black women under apartheid, who not only suffered domestic abuse (from both fathers and husbands) but also discrimination as black women under apartheid laws. Her destitute circumstances and lack of family protection force Niki into a relationship with the white Afrikaner farmer, Cronje. To compound this unfortunate liaison, Niki’s daughter is born a coloured who has to face social discrimination by both black and white people. Ironically, the women are blamed for this scandal and Popi grows up with rage in her heart against her fate. Later she becomes a political activist like her brother Viliki.
48Mda subtly satirizes the South African community at large, as he criticises the existence of greed and desire for power and affluence in both the black and white communities. He shows how the actions of white people contradict their professed religious beliefs and how rarely Christian compassion is demonstrated in South African society. As the title, The Madonna of Excelsior, indicates, Mda represents the fate of black women under apartheid in terms of Christian iconography. To Mda, art and religion inform life and provide frames of reference for living but, he also cautions that they should not be perceived as life. Falck explains this relationship as follows: ‘Art and religion do not solve our practical problems: they only enable us to see the world truly. The poets have only interpreted the world. The point remains: to change it’.55
49Mda interprets his Christian philosophy by using the paintings of Father Frans Claerhout, a Catholic priest from the small town of Tweespruit in the Free State. Claerhout, both artist and priest, personifies a Christian perspective on the situations and lives of indigenous people under apartheid; his models are ordinary black women whom he paints larger than life to feature in his Madonna (the icon of all women) paintings–his is the prerogative of artistic interpretation that can ignore racial and social differences.
50Consequently, Mda implies that Claerhout’s representation of Niki and Popi and other black women in his paintings displays the ‘connection’ between reality and religion, the physical and the spiritual aspects of life as well as the connection between the individual and society. These paintings can be seen as an important example of how ordinary women can be transformed into icons through art and the imagination. He ironically inverts the biblical pronouncement of ‘the sins of the fathers’ to apply to the women, and then proceeds to disprove this perception by calling to mind the immaculate conception and the Madonna’s role as a representative of all women.
51Yet, apart from the emphasis on basic Christian principles–that the white people professed to obey–Mda also questions the inferior role ascribed to women in South African and African society. Mda’s satire is the most scathing in the exposition of his novel where he ironically attributes the sins of the fathers to the mothers instead: ‘All these things flow from the sins of our mothers. The Land that lies flat on its back for kilometre after relentless kilometre’ (1). Here the land is conflated with the women to imply their position and fate, but this image is also implicitly contrasted with the real state of events in the trial mentioned above. This twisted perception is then further developed through the metaphor of (ideological) blindness that prevents the people, black and white, from ‘seeing’ and understanding the composite picture of South African society:
These sins of our mothers happened in front of our eyes. Hence some of us became blind. And have remained so to this day. Those sins that we did not see with our own eyes, or that we did not hear about in places where we gathered to celebrate our lives, we read about in The Friend newspaper. (89)
52Through fiction and imagery, Mda not only exposes the ironies of the apartheid era, but also touches on political inconsistencies and personal prejudice. Yet, the harsh reality of South African intransigence during apartheid is mitigated by his imaginative representation and thereby providing a much needed liminal space to create and suggest a possible balance, a possibility of choice which Larsen points out is the basic element in the construction of any identity or representation56. By implication, choice is also proposed as an option for the reader and the conclusions of postmodern novels should be seen as implicit directives to spur on action and introspection because they represent the onset of reality once again.
53This article addresses the pivotal role of female sexuality in power relations between genders in the media and literary representation, and stresses the significance of economic independence and social equality in women’s struggle for personal freedom. It is both an exposure of conventional stereotypical perceptions of women and an illustration of how these images have been manipulated and subverted by both women and male writers against the South African backdrop. Furthermore, it is also an acknowledgement of the disparate perspectives on South African reality that personifies the problematic of a society in flux. Within the context of a multicultural society and a new democratic dispensation, fiction (novels) and newspaper reports, as cultural artefacts, serve as frames of reference.
54It is argued that the imaginative representation of experience in novels creates a ‘liminal’ space for contemplation that allows a re-visioning of events and an adjustment of fixed perceptions. Although both channels of communication are tainted by ideological prejudice, novels represent a historical account of interpreted reality, while newspapers provide an immediate and ‘factual’ description of recent events in a reporter style that has not yet fully contextualised and absorbed their meanings and implications.
55The novels chosen in illustration of female development all share similar socio-political backgrounds of colonization, the depiction of power relations, an ironic portrayal of female assertion and highlight a decided change in male perspective. Although both male and female novelists attempt to construct and represent female independence, female assertion emphasizes personal choice and individual freedom through economic means, while male writers seem to associate female independence with political equality and survival based on a political agenda of choice and responsibility.
56A conscious awareness, by South African society, of women and their problems, represents an important step in redressing economic and social imbalances between the sexes. Perhaps, Wasserman’s perception of signs of renewal and the ‘renegotiation of cultural boundaries’ that could shape ‘a new, hybrid cultural identity’ in Afrikaans literature (‘Posctolonial Cultural Identity, 105), could also be extended to include most of South African literature in general?
57To conclude, it would seem that the majority of women might not have gained much ground in postcolonial South African society, but that they have finally become subjects of discourse so that, as Patricia Waugh contends, ‘they can begin to problematize and to deconstruct the socially constructed subject positions available to them’.57
Bibliographie
Des DOI sont automatiquement ajoutés aux références bibliographiques par Bilbo, l’outil d’annotation bibliographique d’OpenEdition. Ces références bibliographiques peuvent être téléchargées dans les formats APA, Chicago et MLA.
Format
- APA
- Chicago
- MLA
Works Cited
Attwell, David. ‘J. M. Coetzee and South Africa: Thoughts on the Social Life of Fiction’, The English Academy Review 21 (December 2004): 105- 117.
Blaauw, Danél. ‘Mans praat met kuns teen mishandeling’ [Men talk through art about abuse], Beeld Friday November 30, 2007: 10.
Burger, Willie. ‘Om te versoen deur te onthou’ [To Reconcile by Remembering], Die Beeld: By Saturday July 14, 2007: 9.
Burger, Willie. ‘Review of Asbesmiddag by Etienne Le Roux’. Boeke-Beeld Monday November 26, 2007: 15.
10.1007/978-1-349-20965-1 :Breen, Jennifer. In Her Own Write: Twentieth-Century Women’s Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1990.
Brink, André. The Rights of Desire: A Novel. London: Secker & Warburg, 2000.
Brink, André. The Other Side of Silence. London: Secker & Warburg, 2002.
Coetzee, J. M. Age of Iron. London: Penguin, 1990.
Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. London: Secker & Warburg, 1999.
Cohen, Lauren. ‘The Evil Our Children Live With: Judge Sounds Alarm as he Convicts a Man of Child Rape’. Sunday Times November 4, 2007: 13.
10.1080/10131750485310031 :Coullie, Judith Lütge. ‘Translating Narrative in the New South Africa: Transition and Transformation in A change of Tongue.’ The English Academy Review 22: 1-21.
De Bruin, Philip. ‘Vroue het ook die reg om stam te lei, hoor hof’ [Women Also Have the Right to Lead a Tribe, the Court is Told] Beeld Wednesday November 28, 2007: 12.
Dunton, Chris. ‘This Rape is Political: The Siting of Women’s Experience in Novels by Aidoo, Ngugi, Farah and El Saadawi’. English in Africa, 27 (2000): 1-35.
Falck, Colin. Myth, Truth and Literature: Towards a True Post-Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Doubleday, 1991.
10.1080/02564710408530356 :Flockemann, Miki. ‘Traumas and Transformations: Fictions which Play with what “They Say”, by Zakes Mda and Lindsey Collen’. Journal of Literary Studies, 20 (2004): 248-264.
Gane, Gillian. ‘Unspeakable Injuries in Disgrace and David’s Story’. Kunapipi: Journal of Post-Colonial Writing 24 (2002): 101-113.
Gaylard, Gerald. After Colonialism: African Postmodernism and Magical Realism. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2005.
Geldenhuys, Henriëtte. ‘ “I saw the Worst of Humanity,”’ The Sunday Times December 9, 2007: 13.
Geldenhuys, Henriëtte. ‘ “There is a Culture of Violence in the Country,”’ The Sunday Times, December 9 2007: 13.
Goodman, Ralph. ‘History, Memory and Reconciliation: Njabulo Ndebele’s The Cry of Winnie Mandela and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s A Human Being died that Night.’ Literator 27 (Aug.2006): 1-20.
Graham, Lucy Valerie.‘ “A Hidden Side to the Story”: Reading Rape in Recent South African Literature.’ Kunapipi: Journal of Post-Colonial Writing 24 (2002): 9-24.
Grobler, Jackie. ‘Volksmoeders se goue verset’ [The Golden Resistance of Mothers of the Nation] Beeld Tuesday August 9, 2005: 9.
10.4324/9781003320609 :Hall, Stuart. ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora.’ Williams, Patrick & Chrisman, Laura, eds. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial theory: A Reader. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994: 276-290.
Harris, Ashleigh. ‘Accountability, Acknowledgement and the Ethics of “Quilting” in Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull’. Journal of Literary Studies 22 (June 2006): 27-53.
Jacobs, Rayda. The Slave Book. Cape Town: Kwela Books, 1998.
Joubert Elsa. Die Reise van Isobelle [Isobelle’s Journey]. Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1995.
Karodia, Farida. Against an African Sky. Johannesburg: David Philip, 1995.
Karodia, Farida. Boundaries. London: Penguin, 2003.
10.1080/10131750485310021 :Klopper, Dirk. ‘Editorial: Fact Bordering Fiction.’ The English Academy Review 22 (December 2005): no page number.
Krog, Antjie. A Change of Tongue. Johannesburg: Random House, 2003.
Landsman, Anne. The Devil’s Chimney. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1997.
10.1080/02564719708530173 :Larsen, Svend Erik. ‘Landscape, identity and literature’. Journal of Literary Studies 13 (1997): 284-302.
Lewis, Desiree. ‘Myths of Motherhood and Power: The Construction of “Black Woman” in Literature.’ English in Africa 19 (1992): 35-51.
Liebenberg, Dries. ‘Nuwe tendens bespeur in geweld teen vroue in KZN, ’ [New Tendency Discerned in Abuse Against Women in KZN] Naweek-Beeld Saturday November 10, 2007: 11.
Maritz, Loraine. ‘Die Afrikanervrou as volksmoeder’ [The Afrikaner Woman as Mother of the Nation] Beeld: By (Weekend Supplement) Saturday January 27, 2007: 5.
Maritz, Loraine. ‘Die Afrikanervrou ‘n “Stepford Wife?”’ [The Afrikaner Woman a “Stepford Wife?”] Beeld: By (Weekend Supplement) Saturday February 10, 2007: 10.
Mda, Zakes. The Madonna of Excelsior. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Mlangeni, Bongiwe. ‘ “I once was a beast.”’ Sunday Times November 3, 2003: 15.
Mishra, Vijay & Hodge, Bob. ‘What is Post (-) colonialism?’ Williams, Patrick & Chrisman, Laura, eds. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial theory: A Reader. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994: 276-290.
Nel, Ronel. ‘Klim in ’n slaaf se kop en beleef die onmenslike.’ [Get into a Slave’s Head and Experience the Inhuman] Beeld Monday October 29, 2007: 17.
Ngonyama, Percy. ‘ “Culture” Trumps Women’s Rights, ’ Business Day Thursday September 13, 2007: 10.
Nkabinde, Nonhlanhla. Letter. Sunday Times, August 10, 2003: 15.
Nkealah, Naomi N. ‘Conceptualizing Feminism(s) in Africa: The Challenges Facing African Women Writers and Critics.’ The English Academy Review 23 (2006): 133-141.
Ramphele, Mamphela. ‘Targeting White Women Would Send a Terrible Message.’ Sunday Times September 9, 2007: 25.
Samuelson, Meg. ‘The Rainbow Womb: Rape and Race in South African Fiction of the Transition.’ Kunapipi: Journal of Post-Colonial Writing 24, (2002): 88-100.
Schipper, Mineke. ‘Narratives, Identities, Selves: Intercultural Perspectives on Autobiography and First-Person Narrative’. Journal of Literary Studies 16 (2000): 42-57.
Smith, Anesca. ‘Sandra is niemand se kloon’ [Sandra is Nobody’s Clone], Naweek-Beeld Saturday June 2, 2007: 11.
Van Niekerk, Annemarié. ‘Slavin Sila se stem hier om te bly.’ [The Slave Sila’s Voice Here to Stay] Perspektief October 14, 2007: 4.
Ware, Vron. ‘Defining Forces: “Race”, Gender and Memories of Empire’. Chambers, Iain and Curti, Lidia, eds. The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons. London: Routledge, 1996: 142-156.
Warnes, Christopher. ‘Engendering the Post-apartheid Farm Novel: Anne Landsman’s The Devil’s Chimney’. English Academy Review 21 (2004): 51-62.
10.1080/02564710008530267 :Wasserman, Herman. ‘Postcolonial Cultural Identity in Recent Afrikaans Literary Texts.’ Journal of Literary Studies, 16 (2000): 90-114.
Watson, R. L. The Slave Question: Liberty and Property in South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1990.
10.4324/9780203120439 :Waugh, Patricia. Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern. London: Routledge, 1989.
Wenzel, Marita. ‘Re-writing the “Slave Narrative”: Rayda Jacobs’s The Slave Book and André Brink’s The Rights of Desire’, English in Africa 31 (2004): 91-103.
10.4102/lit.v27i1.180 :Wenzel, Marita. ‘Liminal Spaces and Imaginary Places in The Bone People by Keri Hulme and The Folly by Ivan Vladislavic.’ Viljoen, Hein & Chris N. van der Merwe, eds. Beyond the Threshold: Explorations of Liminality in Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 2007): 45-60.
Winter, Kari J. Subjects of Slavery, Agents of Change: Women and Power in Gothic Novels and Slave Narratives, 1790-1865. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1996.
Wisker, Gina. ‘Redefining an African Sky: South African Women’s Writing Post-Apartheid, ’ Kunapipi: Journal of Post-Colonial Writing 24 (2002): 140-154.
Notes de bas de page
1 Klopper, Dirk, ‘Editorial: Fact Bordering Fiction’, The English Academy Review 22 (December 2005): no page number.
2 Schipper, Mineke, ‘Narratives, Identities, Selves: Intercultural Perspectives on Autobiography and First-Person Narrative, ’ Journal of Literary Studies 16 (2000): 42-57; 52.
3 Ngonyama, Percy, ‘ “Culture” Trumps Women’s Rights, ’ Business Day Thursday September 13, 2007: 10.
4 Graham, Lucy Valery, ‘ “A Hidden Side to the Story”: Reading Rape in recent South African Literature’, Kunapipi: Journal of Post-Colonial Writing 24 (2002): 9-24; 10.
5 Samuelson, Meg, ‘The Rainbow Womb: Rape and Race in South African Fiction of the Transition’, Kunapipi: Journal of Post-colonial Writing 24 (2002): 88-100; 88.
6 Wisker, Gina, ‘Redefining an African Sky: South African Women’s Writing Post-Apartheid’, Kunapipi: Journal of Post-Colonial Writing 24 (2002): 140-154; 146.
7 Faludi, Susan, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
8 Breen, Jennifer, In Her Own Write: Twentieth-Century Women’s Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1990): 120.
9 Ware, Vron, ‘Defining Forces: “Race”, Gender and Memories of Empire’. Chambers, Iain and Curti, Lidia, eds. The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons. (London: Routledge, 1996): 142-156; 145.
10 Wasserman, Herman, ‘Postcolonial Cultural Identity in Recent Afrikaans Literary Texts, ’ Journal of Literary Studies 16 (December 2000): 90-114.
11 Attwell, David, ‘JM Coetzee and South Africa: Thoughts on the Social Life of Fiction’, The English Academy Review 21 (December 2004): 105-117; 111.
12 Mishra, Vijay & Hodge, Bob, ‘What is Post (-) colonialism?’ Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader. Frow, John and Meaghan Morris, eds. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993): 30-46.
13 Hall, Stuart, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora.’ Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial theory: A Reader. Williams, Patrick & Chrisman, Laura, eds. (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994): 276-290.
14 Burger, Willie, ‘A Newspaper Review of Asbesmiddag by Etienne Le Roux’. Boeke-Beeld, 2007: 15.
15 Coullie, Judith Lütge, ‘Translating Narrative in the New South Africa: Transition and Transformation in A Change of Tongue’, The English Academy Review 22 (2005): 1-21; 3.
16 Harris, Ashleigh, ‘Accountability, Acknowledgement and the Ethics of ‘Quilting’ in Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull, ’ Journal of Literary Studies 22 (June 2006): 27-53.
17 Wenzel, Marita, ‘Liminal Spaces and Imaginary Places in The Bone People by Keri Hulme and The Folly by Ivan Vladislavic’. Viljoen, Hein & Van der Merwe Chris N., eds. Beyond the Threshold: Explorations of Liminality in Literature. (New York: Peter Lang, 2007): 45-60.
18 Lewis, Desiree, ‘Myths of Motherhood and Power: The Construction of ‘Black Woman’ in Literature, ’ English in Africa 19 (1992): 35-51.
19 Mlangeni, Bongiwe, ‘I once was a beast’, Sunday Times November 3, 2003: 15.
20 Blaauw, Danél, ‘Mans praat met kuns teen mishandeling [Men talk through art about abuse], ’ Beeld Friday November 30 2007: 10.
21 De Bruin, Philip, ‘Vroue het ook die reg om stam te lei, hoor hof’ [Women Also Have the Right to Lead a Tribe, the Court is Told] Die Beeld Wednesday 28 November, 2007: 12.
22 Smith, Anesca, ‘Sandra is niemand se kloon’ [Sandra is Nobody’s Clone], Naweek-Beeld, Saturday June 2, 2007: 11.
23 Nkealah, Naomi N., ‘Conceptualizing Feminism(s) in Africa: The Challenges Facing African Women Writers and Critics, ’ The English Academy Review 23 (2006): 133-141; 134.
24 Maritz, Loraine, ‘Die Afrikanervrou as volksmoeder’ [The Afrikaner Woman as Mother of the Nation] Die Beeld: By (Weekend Supplement) Saturday January 27, 2007: 5.
25 Grobler, Jackie, ‘Volksmoeders se goue verset’ [The Golden Resistance of Mothers of the Nation] Die Beeld Tuesday August 9, 2005: 9.
26 Maritz, Loraine, ‘Die Afrikanervrou ‘n “Stepford Wife?”’ [The Afrikaner Woman, a ‘Stepford Wife?’] Die Beeld: By (Weekend Supplement) Saturday February 10 (2007): 10.
27 Nkabinde, Nonhlanhla, ‘Women Have Little to Celebrate, ’ Sunday Times August 10, 2003: 15.
28 Cable News Network, January 7, 2004 (6: 20 evening news).
29 South African Broadcasting Corporation, November 19, 2007.
30 Geldenhuys, Henriëtte, ‘ “I saw the Worst of Humanity,”’ The Sunday Times December 9 2007: 13.
31 Cohen, Lauren, ‘The Evil Our Children Live With: Judge Sounds Alarm as he Convicts a Man of Child Rape, ’ Sunday Times November 4 2007: 13.
32 Geldenhuys, Henriëtte, ‘ “There is a Culture of Violence in the Country”’, The Sunday Times December 9 2007: 13.
33 Liebenberg, Dries, ‘Nuwe tendens bespeur in geweld teen vroue in KZN, ’ [New Tendency Discerned in Abuse Against Women in KZN] Naweek-Beeld Saturday November 10 2007: 11.
34 Ramphele, Mamphela, ‘Targeting White Women Would Send a Terrible Message, ’ Sunday Times September 9 2007: 25.
35 Coetzee, J. M., Age of Iron (London: Penguin, 1990).
36 Burger, Willie, ‘Om te versoen deur te onthou’ [To Reconcile by Remembering], Die Beeld: By (Weekend Supplement) Saturday 14 July 2007: 9.
37 Goodman, Ralph, ‘History, Memory and Reconciliation: Njabulo Ndebele’s The Cry of Winnie Mandela and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s A Human Being died that Night, ’ Literator 27 (Aug. 2006): 1-20.
38 Dunton, Chris, ‘This Rape is Political: The Siting of Women’s Experience in Novels by Aidoo, Ngugi, Farah and El Saadawi’, English in Africa 27 (2000): 27.
39 Landsman, Anne, The Devils’s Chimney (Johannesburg,: Jonathan Ball, 1997).
40 Jacobs, Rayda, The Slave Book (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 1998).
41 Karodia, Farida, Boundaries (London: Penguin, 2003).
42 Brink, André, The Rights of Desire (London: Secker & Warburg, 2000).
43 Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace (London: Vintage, 2000).
44 Mda, Zakes, The Madonna of Excelsior (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
45 Wenzel, Marita, ‘Re-writing the “Slave Narrative”: Rayda Jacobs’s The Slave Book and André Brink’s The Rights of Desire’, English in Africa 31 (2004): 91-103.
46 Van Niekerk, Annemarié, ‘Slavin Sila se stem hier om te bly, ’ [The Slave Sila’s Voice Here to Stay] Perspektief October 14, 2007: 4.
47 Watson, R. L.,The Slave Question: Liberty and Property in South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1990): 10.
48 Winter, Kari, Subjects of Slavery, Agents of Change: Women and Power in Gothic Novels and Slave Narratives, 1790-1865 (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1996): 5.
49 Warnes, Christopher, ‘Engendering the Post-apartheid Farm Novel: Anne Landsman’s The Devil’s Chimney’, English Academy Review 21 (2004): 51-62.
50 Gaylard, Gerald, After Colonialism: African Postmodernism and Magical Realism, (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2005): 194.
51 Brink, André, The Other Side of Silence (London: Secker & Warburg, 2002).
52 Joubert, Elsa, Die Reise van Isobelle [Isobelle’s Journey] (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1995).
53 Gane, Gillian, ‘Unspeakble Injuries in Disgrace and David’s Story’, Kunapipi: Journal of Post-Colonial Writing 24 (2002): 101-113.
54 Flockemann, Miki, ‘Traumas and Transformations: Fictions which Play with what “They Say”, by Zakes Mda and Lindsey Collen’. Journal of Literary Studies, 20 (3/4): 248-264; 250.
55 Falck, Colin, Myth, Truth and Literature: Towards a True Post-Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989): 170.
56 Larsen, Svend Erik, ‘Landscape, identity and literature, ’ Journal of Literary Studies 13 (1997): 284 -302; 292.
57 Waugh, Patricia, Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern (London: Routledge, 1989): 25.
Auteur
-
Marita Wenzel
North-West University, Potchefstroom (South Africa)
Is Associate Professor of English at North-West University (formerly Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education) in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Her main fields of interest relate to comparative literature in Postcolonial, Feminist and Translation studies. She has published several articles on postcolonial topics with particular focus on Latin American and South African novels. She is also an accredited translator (from Afrikaans, German and Spanish into English) for the South African Translator’s Institute.
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
À la rencontre de la différence
Traces diasporiques et espaces de créolisation
Robin Cohen et Olivia Sheringham Elise Trogrlic (trad.)
2020
L’androgyne dans la littérature britannique contemporaine
Métamorphose d’une figure
Justine Gonneaud
2020
Borders and Ecotones in the Indian Ocean
Cultural and Literary Perspectives
Markus Arnold, Corinne Duboin et Judith Misrahi-Barak (dir.)
2020
Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 1
Diasporas and Cultures of Migrations
Judith Misrahi-Barak et Claudine Raynaud (dir.)
2014
Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 2
Diaspora, Memory and Intimacy
Sarah Barbour, David Howard, Thomas Lacroix et al. (dir.)
2015
Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 3
African Americans and the Black Diaspora
Corinne Duboin et Claudine Raynaud (dir.)
2016
Ethics of Alterity, Confrontation and Responsibility in 19th- to 21st-Century British literature
Jean-Michel Ganteau et Christine Reynier (dir.)
2013
