1 Briault-Manus Vicki: ‘The Season of Whispers is over’: Now the Stories can be Safely Told

2In his article ‘Post-apartheid Literature Beyond Race’, S.S. Ibinga makes several bold–and perhaps premature–claims for what he nevertheless calls the literature of transition, as present-day South African society gradually adapts to new social and cultural structures. He talks of ‘an abrupt shift away from racial focus’ in writing, following the eradication of legalised racial segregation. This paper considers two very different narrative approaches to the healing process in post-apartheid literature, equally powerful, but both emanating from the deep wounds resulting from centuries of racial inequality and violence. The first approach is represented by Sindiwe Magona’s novel Mother to Mother (1998), which purports to be a letter from the mother of a township thug to the mother of the young American aid-worker he murdered; and the second by Zakes Mda’s own brand of magical realism in The Madonna of Excelsior (2002). Magona’s work is based on a true story, which she endeavours to tell in such a way that the reader feels as much understanding and compassion for the aggressor as for the victim, and a cathartic release of grief. Mda’s novel, if it bears any resemblance at all to mourning, then it must be as the most carnivalesque of wakes. He tells the commonplace yet wretched life story of Niki, a young African girl born in apartheid South Africa in the early ‘50s. Niki is the mortar where all the multiple forms of abuse of apartheid are pounded. Yet the story, told with a twinkle in the author’s eye, and seen through the prism of Niki’s buoyant, loving nature, gleams with hope and ends with healing. The paper compares the narrative strategies of the two works, each revealing a new aesthetics, free of the ideological determinism that apartheid literature was accused of, and thus themselves symptomatic of the healing process.

3 Collingwood-Whittick Sheila: Autopsy of an Afrikaner Childhood: J. M. Coetzee’s Ethical and Psychological Stock-Taking in Post-Apartheid South Africa

4When Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life was first published in 1997, critics’ responses to it betrayed a certain perplexity as to how exactly the text should be treated. Coetzee’s own characteristic evasiveness when asked whether his book should be regarded as a genuine autobiographical account of his early life, or simply his latest work of fiction, did nothing to dispel the ambiguity surrounding the precise nature of the document he had produced. Starting from the premise that–critical uncertainty and the author’s own enigmatic pronouncements notwithstanding–Boyhood is indeed a bona fide memoir, the article scrutinises this text for the evidence it yields of what has motivated Coetzee’s surprising decision to write the story of his childhood self.

5As Charlotte Heinritz reminds us ‘The author of an autobiography never just “tells stories about his life,”’ and Coetzee is no exception. Written in the climate of profound psychic upheaval, emotional turbulence and moral stock-taking that characterised the first years of post-Apartheid South Africa, Boyhood is, I argue, driven by a desire on the author’s part to set the record straight about the kind of white South African that he is.

6Hitherto known for his refusal to make explicit political statements about his position on the situation in South Africa, Coetzee is at pains, throughout this record of his early life, to portray both his complex and conflictual relationship with his own caste, the Afrikaners, and the intense moral discomfort that racial segregation caused him from his earliest years. The ‘intention of self-presentation’ that, Heinritz suggests, almost always lies behind the particular memories that the autobiographical author selects, is, in Coetzee’s case, an intention to show that he is the product of what Albert Memmi refers to in his Portrait du Colonisateur as an ‘historically impossible situation’, someone whose life was de-formed by the implacable ideological system under which he grew up.

7 Deb Basuli: Turning a Deaf Ear: Women’s Wounds in Truth and Reconciliation

8Though there is no identifiable field of African Subaltern Studies, such a scholarship can be gleaned from the accumulating critique of the very basis of post-apartheid South African national unity, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Recognizing texts as sites which generate discursive resistance, this paper attempts to extricate the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from the political grip of the post-apartheid state to question its premises from the perspective of a supranational struggle against both raced and gendered segregation.

9Positioning Zoe Wicomb’s novel David’s Story in the genre of struggle literature–a discourse of opposition that contests the heavily censored archival documentation of South African history, this paper ventures to understand the role of discursive violence against women in post-apartheid South Africa. It argues how David’s Story questions the very notion of truth in the truth and reconciliation hearings through which the anti-apartheid nationalism of the revolutionary African National Congress (ANC) strived to construct a new South Africa. It highlights how the TRC silenced the testimonials of pain of female ANC activists who were betrayed and tortured by their male peers within the revolution itself. Resonating the TRC testimony of Rita Mazibuko–the only ANC woman to testify about sexual torture on women comrades within the ANC itself, David’s Story brings in a biographical subtext to the notion of amnesty with regard to revolutionary (in)justice. It reflects on how rhetorical and discursive violations simulate the material aggression in apartheid South Africa. As violence interrupted South African lives during the apartheid era, similarly silence disrupts the representation of the memories of those lives in the post-apartheid nation. In the process, this paper forges a link between tortured South African women from the colonial era like Saartje Baartman (the Hottentot Venus) and ANC activists like Dulcie and Sally. However, through the transnational figure of the writer, this paper underscores how these stories of torture are resuscitated. The supranational discursive militancy of writers of South African heritage like Zoe Wicomb, writing from the metropoles of the globe, remap these tongue-tied stories of national shame confiscated by the nation onto the audible platform of a transnational feminist politics, thereby defining the new challenges and roles of South African literature.

10 Dube Siphiwe Ignatius: The TRC, Democratic Ethos, and the New Culture of Critique in South Africa

11On the basis of an analysis of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa’s concept of democracy, this essay argues that in order to balance the seeming tension between the new democratic ethos, which allows its citizens to voice dissent without the fear of being crushed, and the demand to foster cohesion/solidarity so as to stabilize the newly formed volatile body politic, the government opted for the TRC. The Commission was an institution which, during its tenure, functioned as the new prohibitive body concerning issues of truth and reconciliation that was, however, open to criticism, albeit in a very limited form. This limitation is best illustrated by the performative nature of the TRC–as seen through the Human Rights Violations hearings–which, through its invocation, has allowed certain acts and prohibited others; as well as by the insistence on a pragmatic approach to truth and the conflation of the varied concepts of reconciliation for mostly national interests. This performance tension–between Truth and truths, national and individual reconciliation, the personal and the public, goal and process, positivism and dialecticism–has, in turn, created a performative contradiction within the TRC’s own structural reason, thus necessitating different forms of critique in dealing with it. In other words, this essay argues that there is a need to extrapolate the Commission’s reasoning from its practices in order to be able to grant it its deserved place in the continuum of post-apartheid South African discourse on amnesty, democracy, justice, memory, truth, reconciliation and whatever else the TRC saw in its purview to engage.

12 Gish Steven: From Admiration to Anger: Reactions to Amnesty in the Case of Amy Biehl

13Two of the most widely-read popular accounts of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) are Desmond Tutu’s No Future Without Forgiveness (1999) and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s A Human Being Died That Night (2003). In their books, both Archbishop Tutu and Dr. Gobodo-Madikizela use the Amy Biehl amnesty case to illustrate the positive impact of the truth commission, because the perpetrators (Biehl’s killers) expressed remorse and the victim’s parents (Linda and Peter Biehl) offered forgiveness, thus laying the foundation for racial reconciliation in South Africa. An examination of the evidence, however, suggests a more complex reality. Some South Africans welcomed the amnesty granted to Biehl’s killers, while others expressed deep dismay. Because public opinion was so divided on the amnesty decision, the Biehl amnesty case symbolizes the mixed legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, rather than its purely positive contribution. This article begins with a brief description of Amy Biehl, the white American Fulbright scholar killed in South Africa’s racial violence in 1993. After reviewing the circumstances surrounding her death, the article summarizes the truth commission’s hearings concerning her murder and the ultimate decision to grant amnesty to four of her attackers. Next the article discusses how Desmond Tutu and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela–two key members of the commission–have used the Amy Biehl amnesty decision to highlight the success of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Then the article offers a detailed look at how South African citizens reacted to the amnesty decision, based on letters, articles, and columns from the South African press. The article concludes by discussing how the Amy Biehl amnesty case reflected the continued divisions in South African society, despite its use as a symbol for healing.

14 Jenkins Elwyn: Attitudes Towards Geographical Renaming in South Africa

15Changes to place names comprise a relatively small proportion of geographical names approved every year. This can be ascribed to lack of leadership and guidance, a lack of political sophistication, ignorance and conservatism. Three kinds of name changes have been made since 1994: changing of historical and recent personal names; changing of non-personal names in European languages and Afrikaans; and changes to spelling. The names that have been substituted are, in turn, names of historical or more recent persons; old, non-personal names or more recent, inventive, names; or translations into African languages. Most of the controversies over changing names concern history: should one version of history be wiped out by another, and how accurate are arguments based on versions of history? Whether or not to change the spelling of names to make them conform to current orthographies is debatable. United Nations guidelines advise against it, but concede that offensive names should be changed, and black people see older spellings as offensive, whatever the reason for them. Some spellings have been changed, and more are to come, but language specialists have not yet settled every aspect of the orthographies of the official languages. Changing names can be divisive, as episodes since 1994 illustrate. Government authorities have at times acted in a triumphalist way and ignored the requirement for consultation, but ANC leaders have acknowledged white sensitivities. Whites concede the right of Africans to their place names, but express reservations that sometimes cloak conservative resistance. Government authorities could do more to allay the fears of whites. Some name changes suggest that generosity of spirit and good humour will prevail.

16 Kennedy-Dubourdieu Elaine: Country of My Skull: A New Genre for Writing South Africa’s History?

17In Country of My Skull Antjie Krog relates the hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as they unfolded. As both a poet and a journalist for the SABC, Krog explores new techniques in historiography which enable her to implicate her readers in ways which more traditional recountings of history are unable to do. She constantly reflects both on the tumultuous and traumatic events themselves and on the methodological difficulties of documenting the TRC.

18 In this article Kennedy-Dubourdieu examines what she believes to be Krog’s ground breaking contribution to the writing of South Africa’s history; it is a work which has reached a large audience both at home and abroad.

19The full transcription of the interview with Antjie Krog is also included.

20 Loimeier Manfred: A Literary Rebirth in South Africa–An Overview

21The official end of the institutionalized apartheid has made possible a literary new-start in the Republic of South-Africa.

22In the Afrikaans literature one can find a lot of historical novels, family sagas–like Etienne van Heerden’s Die Swaye van Mario Salviati or Elsa Joubert’s Die reise van Isobelle – dealing with the past in a way which wasn’t estimated until now: collaboration and cohabitation over racial boundaries. Such historical novels can be found too among anglophone authors like Zakes Mda (The Madonna of Excelsior).

23But mainly among anglophone and young (female) authors one can detect an impressive amount of short-story-publications which fulfil at least two aspects: short-stories allow a soon reaction on changes in society, and they allow the play with style. It is no longer necessary to focus only on how to write under censure, it is possible to play with stylistic possibilities.

24Furthermore a main point in South-African literature is the autobiographical aspect. Like Chris van Wyk (Shirley, Goodness & Mercy. A Childhood Memoir) or Diane Awerbuck (Gardening at Night), authors try to re-assure themselves about their personal past. What might be regarded as personal can be defined as political writing because under apartheid it wasn’t wished to write, for example, about love and sex, dying or human misery. It is no wonder now that authors in South-Africa integrate methods of journalistic research to paint the present picture of the country (Antjie Krog, Country of my skull, A Change of Tongue).

25By welcoming new forms and new themes one might neglect that the burden of history still has its weight. It can be found in the crime fiction of Gillian Slovo (Red Dust) or Deon Meyer (Heart of the Hunter).

26 Martin Lydia: Le cinéma en Afrique du Sud. L’exemple de Tsotsi (Gavin Hood, 2005)

27En remportant l’Oscar du meilleur film étranger, Tsotsi (Gavin Hood, 2005) couronne cette lente éclosion du cinéma sud-africain à laquelle nous assistons depuis quelques années. Ce film souligne par ailleurs, à la faveur du succès qu’il a connu dans son propre pays, la modification du public en Afrique du Sud, avec l’émergence d’une nouvelle classe moyenne noire qui, du temps de l’apartheid, n’aurait jamais été admise dans les salles.

28L’exemple de Tsotsi offre une transition extra-diégétique entre deux mondes, deux sociétés, dans la mesure où le roman de Fugard, écrit pendant l’apartheid, omniprésent dans le fond de l’intrigue, est transposé à l’époque actuelle, celle de la « réconciliation ». Essentiellement pessimiste, le récit de Fugard se voit insuffler à l’écran de l’espoir dont la source réside sans doute dans l’abolition de l’apartheid, notamment par le truchement de modifications subtiles qui tiennent compte de l’évolution de la société. Hood fait appel à de nombreux aspects de la culture contemporaine, notamment celle des ghettos dans ses choix musicaux, tout en décontextualisant le récit qui pourrait se dérouler aussi bien dans un autre pays, d’où une certaine universalité au-delà des tensions et des inégalités qui persistent en Afrique du Sud.

29Perrot Cécile: Great Expectations... and Unintended Outcomes: an Analysis of the Circumvolutions of the South African Higher Education Transformation since 1994

30Either as a silent provider of a service or conscious protestor, the post compulsory institutions responsible for teaching and learning in South Africa have–in the apartheid era–been agents of government control, and as Welsh suggests (Welsh D. 1977) schools, colleges and Universities, were far from being in a position of academic neutrality. It may be argued that, in general, University development mirrored rather than initiated the divisions in South African society. It was nevertheless true that education was a key stakeholder in the apartheid regime just as it remains a key player in the shaping of a new post-apartheid society in South Africa. Post-apartheid developments in education have been a test bed for the modelling of the new South African democracy with the democratisation of education policy and planning, influenced and implemented by a range of stakeholders. This has given rise to a period of rapid transformation accompanied by critical debates on the nature of education in a new nation; not the least of which is how should education contribute to the shaping of a more equal and democratic society and what role it should play in ‘healing the wounds’ of the nation. This paper examines the initial attempts of the South African Department of Education to heal the system and how the unintended consequences of the public policies that were set up led the government to launch a massive restructuring of the higher education system.

31 Samin Richard: Have the ‘Wounds been Healed?’: Divisive Issues in a Democratic South Africa

32‘Healing the wounds of the past’: an apt metaphor used to describe the process which was to lead to a necessary reconciliation between the former enemies (see Alex Boraine: ‘wounds that are still full of poison will inevitably affect the whole body and the body politic in SA has been very sick’). The TRC, as a symbolical locus of reconciliation, was instrumental in bringing about a peaceful transition to democracy and defusing racial antagonism. But thirteen years on into democracy have significantly shifted the focus as to what should be regarded as major social and political divisive issues in South Africa today. If the now familiar formula ‘healing the wounds of the past’ means anything today its semantic range should be broadened beyond its now restrictive racial acception to include the current social and political ‘unhealed wounds’ which to a large extent still constitute a backlog of the apartheid era. There are today outstanding social problems especially in terms of poverty, housing, crime, unemployment, drug addiction, and political sleaze which have created new grounds of contention and conflict. In other words South Africa still remains a divided society but the lines of division have shifted and the long-lasting legacy of the past requires new approaches and solutions. The article seeks to identify what these issues are, why they have persisted, how they have been compounded by new developments, and how people at grass root level or at institutional and political levels seek to address and redress them today.

33 Saayman Sandra: Is a South African Artist an ‘African’ Artist? An Analysis of the Questions Raised by (South) African Art in Ivan Vladislavic’s ‘Curioser’

34S. Majara, the Young Lion of the (South African) Art Scene holds a closing to celebrate the success of his most recent exhibition. The party in itself becomes an improvised show when Simeon Majara, on an impulse, starts making mask lanterns from the left-over African masks that served as the raw material for his exhibition, Curioser (or, Curio-user). The eerie light from the mask lanterns seems to transform the party and Majara’s fashionable, multi-cultural group of friends starts challenging the authenticity of the artist. Contemporary South African issues are raised, such as the question of the origin of the masks: they are curios made in African countries and brought into South Africa through clandestine networks. Majara buys them in bulk and by sawing them to pieces, metamorphoses them into works of ‘Art’. Vladislavic simultaneously challenges the reader with abstract questions such as the identity of South African art in the context of the African Renaissance, and the concrete political reality of mass immigration from other African countries.

35Through the analysis of descriptions of works of South African art, this paper proposes a reflection on South Africa’s attempts to live up to President Thabo Mbeki’s call for an African Renaissance. Mayibuye iAfrica (come back Africa), the rallying cry during apartheid, translated the idea of both a return to Africa and a return by Africa. This paper will examine some of the complexities underlying this return, complexities mediated through fiction.

36 Schmid Jeanette: Seeds of Transformation in South African Child Welfare

37This article attempts to explore how child welfare has shifted since apartheid and how it is (or not) responding to the needs of vulnerable children and their families in South Africa. South Africa introduced an extremely progressive Developmental Social Welfare approach in 1996. Child welfare in particular has struggled to transform itself to this more family-centred, community-based approach. In part this is connected to enormous resource constraints and the crisis of poverty, crime and AIDS. However, the core assumptions of a child protection model, heavily imbued by Anglo-American, ‘first world’ perspectives constrain practice from becoming more relevant to the needs of the majority of South Africans.

38Serrurier-Zucker Carol: Healing Through Education: a South African Perspective

39In the Herculean task of healing the wounds caused by years of segregation and violence, the place of education is primordial. It occupies an interesting position, being not only the object of very necessary reform but also the medium through which a lasting transformation of society will occur. The aim of replacing the apartheid-style Bantu Education system, which was geared to training black pupils for manual labour and stifling their ambitions for advancement in life, with a democratic system offering the same opportunities to all children regardless of ethnic origins, has been implemented to a certain extent. However, numerous obstacles still remain to be overcome before the following objective stated by the Department of Education in 1996 can truly said to be achieved: ‘Our vision is of a South Africa in which all people have equal access to lifelong education and training opportunities which will contribute towards improving the quality of life and build a peaceful, prosperous and democratic society.’ This article examines the education system in South Africa and its evolution over the past 16 or so years (major changes were being made as of the early 1990s) including some of the difficulties still facing reformers and educators, such as taking into consideration the complexities of the country’s 11 official languages. It refers to testimonies from teachers in situ and to some interesting educational innovations to be found within this fledgling nation.

40 Visser Wessel: Afrikaner Responses to Post-Apartheid South Africa: Diaspora and the Re-negotiation of Cultural Identity

41This article explores Afrikaners’ reaction to the challenges posed by post apartheid South Africa since 1994 to the position of Afrikaans as official language and to an Afrikaner cultural identity. Afrikaner reaction to the drastic changes which took place in the South African dispensation essentially manifested in two ways: firstly, there was a propensity towards an inward, but also towards an outward diaspora. Secondly, Afrikaners seeked to redefine Afrikaner identity in a post apartheid South Africa. In dealing with these efforts the article focuses on three specific issues: the position of Afrikaners in a post 1994 liberal democracy, the Afrikaans language debate, as well as Afrikaans popular culture and the so-called ‘De la Rey-phenomenon’. The article concludes that in the long run the maintenance of an Afrikaner identity in diaspora conditions abroad is not sustainable. Even in South Africa itself Afrikaner cultural identity is in a state of flux at present. Its survival will depend on how successful Afrikaners will be in redefining their identity according to a new system of values and also if they will be able to unify all Afrikaans-speakers to lobby a dignified place for Afrikaans as their mother tongue.

42 Wenzel Marita: The Representation of Women in the Media and Novels of Post-1994 South Africa

43Despite 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.

44This 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.