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South Africa’s Apartheid

South Africa’s Apartheid. Consequences and Cultural Responses. Outline. History of Apartheid (e.g. Cry, My Beloved Country ; Cry Freedom ) Consequences & Responses: 1. Long Night’s Journey into the Day & In My Country 2 the poems about physical sufferings;

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South Africa’s Apartheid

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  1. South Africa’s Apartheid Consequences and Cultural Responses

  2. Outline • History of Apartheid (e.g. Cry, My Beloved Country; Cry Freedom) • Consequences & Responses: • 1. Long Night’s Journey into the Day & In My Country • 2 the poems about physical sufferings; • 3. Stories on Race Relations and anti-Apartheid movements--The Music of the Violin" "Six Feet of the Country“"Amnesty" • 4. tradition and individual vs. society; “The Prophetess” • 5. music—crossover style; • 6. art works

  3. South Africa: Past and Present • Past -- Aborigines: San(or Bushmen), Khoikhoi (or Hottentots), driven to Kalahari mountains and the desert areas in the 18th century, when more conflicts arose between Xhosa, Boers and the English. • Population: 479,000（2007），four groups: whites （9.1%）、blacks（79.6 % ）、colored（8.9 % ）and Asians（2.5%, including Indians）-- source

  4. South Africa: Past and Present (2) • Present Problems: • increasing gap between the rich (Blacks) and the poor (Blacks) • social unrest –23% of South Africans worried about corruption problems, and 21% crime rates. • Causes: 1) the blacks venting their anger; 2) conflicts between the capitalists and laborers; 3) abolishment of death penalty, 4) illegal immigrants; 5) police corruption • AIDS (later) source

  5. History: Triangle formed • 1652 --The Dutch East India Company arrived, displacing the Bantu-speaking black Africans; • 1795 --The British seized Cape Town, and the Afrikaaners began the 'Great Trek' to find new bases.  • 1814 –The British displaced the Dutch, who moved inland to Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal; • 1867 -- 1886 Gold and diamond discovered in these areas Boer War (1899-1902) (clip Cry Freedom 45:56)

  6. History –domination of Afrikaans • 1910 -- the four colonies were joined together under the Act of the Union, and the British handed the administration of the country over to the White locals. • 1913/14 -- The Mines and Works Act and the Natives Land Act: a 'color bar' was legalized and blacks were prohibited from owning land anywhere but in 'native reserves'--7 percent of the whole. • 1931-- South Africa gained its independence from Britain • 50,000 white farmers have twelve times as much land for cultivation and grazing as 14 million rural blacks • 1930s the government tried to mechanize agricultural practices in rural South Africa.  Fewer black workers were needed. severe droughts  urban migration

  7. History: Approaching Apartheid • the Urban Areas Act (1923) -- introduced residential segregation and provided cheap labour for white industry • the Colour Bar Act (1926) -- prevented blacks from practicing skilled trades • Separate Representation of Voters Act (1956), -- removed coloureds from the common voters' roll in the Cape, and established a separate voters' roll for them (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_under_apartheid )

  8. Examples: Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) • Novel by Alan Paton • Setting: (written in 1947), post WWII Johannesburg, right before Apartheid was institutionalized. • An aging Zulu pastor goes there to search for his son, as well as his brother and sister, only to find the son guilty of murdering a white man who was devoted to the cause of racial justice.  the relations between the two fathers.

  9. Examples: Cry, the Beloved Country • Issues: Urban migration  the breaking of African tribes; poor living conditions of the blacks in the city  Tsotsi, fear and possibilities of reconciliation.

  10. Examples: Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) • ""There is fear in the land. And fear in the hearts of all who live there. And fear puts an end to understanding and the need to understand. So how shall we fashion such a land when there is fear in the heart? The white man will put more locks on his door and get a fine fierce dog, but the beauty of the trees and of the stars, these things we shall forego. • "Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if his gives too much. Yes cry, cry, the beloved country.".”

  11. Examples: Cry, the Beloved Country • "For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.”

  12. Apartheid --institutionalized • 1948 –Apartheid institutionalized since Afrikaner Nationalists won the election; • a method of “divide and rule” to counteract the so-called "black danger“; Afrikaner rulers saw Africans as threatening to overrun or engulf them by their sheer numbers. • Brutal racism: imprisonment, police killings and murder (e.g. confiscation of property and the forced removal of millions of blacks)

  13. Apartheid -- other examples of the laws • Population Registration Act (1950) -- required that each inhabitant of South Africa be classified and registered in accordance with their racial characteristics • Group Areas Act (1950) -- designed to separate racial groups geographically • The Bantu Authorities Act (or Homeland Act, 1951) -- created separate government structures for blacks • Passes: Black men and women, or even people who appeared to possibly be black, were required by law to carry passes at all times stating who they were and why they belonged in a certain area.

  14. Consequences: Shantytown, Lack of Resources and Tsosti • Black townships: e.g. Sophiatown, Soweto near Johannesburg • In crowded, often unsanitary, and potentially dehumanizing living conditions; • Materials used for the houses-- corrugated tin, newspaper, cardboard boxes, and whatever else could be found to keep out wind and rain. • "Most of the yards had a single lavatory and one tap which were shared by 150 to 200 residents" (Mattera, p. 50). • Education: 1938 -- fewer than one-third of the country's black school-aged children were actually enrolled in schools. • Tsotsi – the many black youths who turned to street hustling (theft or murder). e.g. Cry, the Beloved Country -- Absalom Kumalo.  Tsotsi (黑幫暴徒 2005) (e.g. CF: Squatters –opening; Pass -- clip 57:30

  15. Tsotsi (黑幫暴徒 2005) http://www.starblvd.com/cgi-bin/Movie/MV_Film?file=2006/Tsotsi/Tsotsi.html

  16. Note: U.S. vs. South Africa

  17. Resistance movements (1): • 1943 Nelson Mandela  ANC; PAC; • 1946 – Miners’ strike • 1960 -- The Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents Act ( Sharpville Massacre); a large group of blacks in Sharpeville refused to carry their passes; the government declared a state of emergency. The emergency lasted for 156 days, leaving 69 people dead and 187 people wounded. (source) • 1960’s -- the banning of African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)  armed resistance; International sanctions and sabbotage • state of emergency (1960 – 1989):those who went on demonstration can be sentenced to death, banished or imprisoned.

  18. Sharpville Massacre – anti-pass movement on March 21, 1960, in Sharpeville. 69 people were killed, including 8 women and 10 children, and of the 180 people who were wounded, 31 were women and 19 were children. “Our Sharpville” p. B 10 I was playing hopscotch on the slate When the miners roared past in lorries, Their arms raised, signals at a crossing, Their chanting foreign and familiar Like the call and answer of road gangs Across the veld (大草原), building hot arteries From the heart of the Transvaal Resistance movements (1): example • Oasis • Maulers of children • Shame???

  19. Resistance movements (2): • 1970  Black Consciousness (BMC); In Steven Biko's own words, 'we black people should all the time keep in mind that South Africa is our country and that all of it belongs to us'  e.g. Cry Freedom • -- insists on Black autonomy; formed a community, including a community clinic, Zanempilo • banned during the height of apartheid in March 1973, meaning that he was not allowed to speak to more than one person at a time, was restricted to certain areas, and could not make speeches in public. • Uprisings: • language education ( Soweto uprising 1976, the beginning of the end) • Arrested in 1977

  20. Examples: Cry Freedom (1987) • Plot: South African journalist Donald Woods is forced to flee the country after attempting to investigate the death in custody of his friend the black activist Steve Biko. • Opening – The raid on Crossroads squatter’s camp • Ending –Soweto uprising (2:24:30) • Biko’s ideas – • Black Consciousness • his speech (31:32) • his self defense (naked racism) (38:34) • The community to a visit to a black township (18:30-) • Afrikaner’s version

  21. Resistance movements: Soweto Student Uprising • "It was a picture that got the world‘s attention: A frozen moment in time that showed 13-year-old Hector Peterson dying after being struck down by a policeman's bullet. At his side was his 17-year-old sister. ” (source)

  22. Apartheid: Repeal Efforts • 1980’s: International sanctions + radicalization of resistance movements  • Some minor laws (e.g. interracial marriage) were abolished by 1990; • 1985-1988, the P.W. Botha government’s elimination of black oppositions; • 1991 -- President de Klerk obtained the repeal of the remaining apartheid laws and called for the drafting of a new constitution. • 1993 -- a multiracial, multiparty transitional government was approved, and fully free elections were held in 1994, which gave majority representation to the African National Congress.

  23. Response 1: Long Night’s Journey into the Day South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Purpose: Restorative Justice, rather than retributive justice • Mandated to produce "as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent" of these violations” committed during the apartheid period. They did it with the testimonies of the victims and pepetrators. Reasons: • choseRestorative justice but not retributive justice. The perpetrators …” [had] to confess publicly, in the full glare of television lights, that they did those ghastly things.“-- Desmond Tutu • Since the past cannot be un-lived, we have to face it. • Criticized: justice before reconciliation

  24. Response 1: Long Night’s Journey into the Day Case 1 • Amy Biehl-- Amy Biehl, an American student in South Africa working with the ANC, was killed by four Black youths during political unrest in Guguletu township. • Why they kill -- "Killing someone like her exposed both our anger and the conditions under which we lived. If we had been living reasonably, we would not have killed her."-- Easy Nofemela on the killing of Amy Biehl

  25. Long Night’s Journey into the Day Case 2. "Cradock 4." – Eric Taylor, a white person who had worked (and killed) to uphold the apartheid government and who now had a change of heart and was remorseful for his acts. His way of killing: beat the four persons (who were supposed to be movement leaders, but one was actually unknown to them) to death and then burn them. (clips 1—his belief, 2 –his change ) • The widows refused to agree with amnesty.

  26. Long Night’s Journey into the Day Case 3. Robert McBride-- an ANC activist • "No one has apologized to me yet for either oppressing me directly or indirectly or happily benefitting from my oppression"-- Robert McBride on apology Clip 3 • Is he a terrorist? Clip: MaBride vs. a victim’s family

  27. Long Night’s Journey into the Day Case 4. Guguletu 7--the story of seven young men who were killed in what now appears to have been a set-up designed to make the apartheid police look as if they had killed a group of dangerous terrorists. clips • Mbelo as a black policeman/informant; • the process of reconciliation

  28. Questions to ponder over (1)What is truth? What is justice? • TRC – presents conflicting testimonies; Archbishop Tutu refers the past as a ‘jigsaw puzzle’ of which the TRC report is only a piece, and alludes to a search “for the clues that lead . . . To a truth that will . . . never be fully revealed.” (TRC report 4, qtd in Graham 11). Factual and forensic truths vs. personal and narrative truths • Desmond Tutu on restorative versus retributive justice

  29. Questions to ponder over (1) What is justice? • Cases in Contrast: • The endless hunting for Nazi regime supporters; • Victims? Absalom in Cry, my Beloved Country. • Victims? The US: The Washington Post; June 8, 2000 - "The nation's war on drugs unfairly targets African Americans, who are far more likely to be imprisoned for drug offenses than whites, even though far more whites use illegal drugs than blacks,.... Overall, black men are sent to prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men.... Overall, one in 20(1/20) black men over the age of 18 is in a state or federal prison compared with one in 180 (1/180) white men."

  30. Questions (2): How to resolve large-scale conflicts • law enforcement, & public policy, • non-violent demonstrations, • contracts, treaties • use of force and imposed peace by the victor over the vanquished. • TRC:dialogue and collaborative problem solving, arbitration, mediation, Truth is ‘the Road to Reconciliation’? • A related question: what drive some people to brutal killings? How do we avoid making errors we are induced to make by historic circumstances?

  31. Q (3): How do we face (collective) violence & survive trauma? • To REPRESS it, to seekVENGEANCE, RETRIBUTION, or to UNDERSTAND and FORGIVE? • To face it through a certain ritual and with a group of people, or to face it alone. (Example: the journalist whose father was killed.) Is direct confrontation of the perpetrators’ and victims testimonies productive?Should memory reconstruction be the only means of ‘facing’ the past?

  32. Q (4): Justice, Truth, Forgiveness, or merely Amnesty • Who should be empowered to grant forgiveness when a person is murdered? Can the family members ever forgive on behalf of the lost loved one, or can they only forgive with regard to their own loss? (e.g. Biko’s family) • Is the TRC really engaged in offering forgiveness or only amnesty protection against prosecution? Do the victims’ testimonies get ignored when the perpetrators’ are taken as reasons for amnesty? • Can we forgive were we in the same boat? Do we dare to confess and apologize? • 80% of those who applied for amnesty were black

  33. One Possible Interpretation of TRC • one effect of the TRC has been ‘the restoration of narrative. In few countries in the contemporary world do we have a living example of people reinventing themselves through narrative’ (Ndebele qtd in Graham 12). • E.g. The Story I am about to Tell, Ubu and The Truth Commission, The Country of my Skull ( In my Country), etc.

  34. Responses 2: Poems Related to Physical Suffering • Douglas Reid Skinner “The Body is a Country of Joy and Pain” – prison experienced by 1) mother, 2) imprisoned man, 3) raped woman, 4) self-alienated. • Mongane Serote “Prelude” (soul bursts on the paper and heart oozes into the ink) • Gladys Thomas “Reflections of an Old Worker” –”You” “become were” the Power over my body.

  35. Response 3: Stories re. Anti-Apartheid movements & Race Relations Bessie Head Mbulelo Mzamane “Amnesty” Nadine Gordimer

  36. Nadine Gordimer: treatments of races • earlier fiction: white middle class characters and their relationship to Black characters under the system of apartheid (e.g. “Six Feet of the Country”) • Later: used first-person voice to express position of Black characters • criticized – presumptuous of her to represent an experience which cannot be her own • Her defense: has her right to write about Black characters; acknowledging the need to ensure that their voices must be heard (source: http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~bweber/NadineGordimer.html )

  37. Example of the criticism (1): • “the least convincing. There is something faux-naïf [artfully simple] about the perception and diction; it feels patronising. . . It seems odd that Gordimer even tries to feel black.” (source: Nadine Gordimer 173)

  38. Example of the criticism (2): • July’s People (1981)–banned in Gauteng province • "the subject matter is questionable ... the language that is used is not acceptable, as it does not encourage good grammatical practices ... the reader is bombarded with nuances that do not achieve much ... any condemnation of racism is difficult to discover - so the story comes across as being deeply racist, superior and patronizing.“ (source with an excerpt from the book: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,475098,00.html).

  39. Gordimer’s view (2) • “key areas of both white and black experience are self-contained in South Africa” (Nadine Gordimer 17) • E.g. she would not attempt, for example, to “narrate the experience of the Soweto riots, knowing ‘it would be false.’”

  40. "Amnesty" • published in Jump, a collection of short stories, shortly before Gordimer won the Nobel prize. • Told from the wife of one who joins a Union first and then the “Movement.”

  41. Questions • How much do we know, through the narrator, about her lover’s revolutionary ideas? How is he related to the narrator and their families? • What role does the narrator play in between an activist and her peasant family? How much does she learn from her lover?

  42. The Anti-Apartheid Movements and Ideas • From a Union to full-time participation in the Movement; • well-dressed (no stupid yes-baas black men) p. 26; exercise in their cells 29; • Criticism of his people’s self-content, belief in God, and ignorance p. 26; 28; slow 30. • Criticism of racial inequality: 30; • Work for the future: issues for improvement 31

  43. The lover: distanced from his family Back after 5-year imprisonment: • The first kiss; the child ran away 29; • Different, heavier; hard to communicate with 29 • absent-minded, something in his mind 29-30; • the comrades: confirming “our culture” “mama of Africa” 30 • Have sex like taking a meal 31; • patronizing—wanting her to learn 31

  44. The Narrator’s position Her lover & his comrades The narrator The peasants Squatters • Gender: p. 25 (needs the father’s permission to get married); • Education: standard 8  constrained at home; teach in a farm school; limited knowledge: has not seen the island her lover: learns from newspaper wrapping 25; as a construction worker in a town 25

  45. The Narrator’s Learning and Self-Awareness • The narrator– waiting • happy about his return; 25; • Get well-dressed to go see him p. 27; • has to wait again at the end. • learning e.g. p. 26; about not having a “home” 30; • has her distinct perception: • ABOUT Nature (27; about the land’s belonging to nobody; the view of the earth and the clouds32)

  46. Note: Standard 8 • In South Africa, studies at high school level are called “Standards” and they maintain a high academic level. South African students study five years of high school, Standards 6-10. Standard 10, which is the graduate year, is also called “Matric”. (source) • Standard 8 – about Grade 12 in American system, the third-year in our senior high.

  47. Response 4 : Indirect Treatments • J. M. Coetzee -- Foe: Historical revision or metafiction. Waiting for the Barbarian

  48. Responses 6: Confirmation of traditional culture -- Njabulo S. Ndebele: Pay more attention to individual psychology and the influences of tradition. e.g. “Prophetess” (“The Music of the Violin”) Mazisi Kunene “The Final Supplication”-- Cultural Displacement (back to Africa, but cannot find his village.)

  49. Response 7: Paul Simon’s Graceland (1986) • “an exquisite, multifaceted fusion of his own sophisticated stream-of-consciousness poetry with black South Africa's doo-wop-influenced “township jive” and Zulu choral music” (Britanica.com). • Township Jive (鎮區爵士樂 ): this “very up, very happy music” • acapella (無伴奏和聲 ) group Ladysmith Black Mambazo; • General M.D. Shirinda and The Gaza Sisters; Miriam Mekeba

  50. Response 7: Music --"crossover style" • Enoch Sontonga's beautiful African hymn "Nkosi Sikilel'i Africa" (God Bless Africa; 1897); an anthem and symbol of struggle to generations of Africans -- the influence of the missionary school music training -- the innovative a cappella vocal harmonies of mbube music • Ladysmith Black Mambazo Mbube mellowed into iscathamiya ("to walk on one's toes lightly").

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