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: • 1Long Night’s Journey into the Day (Literary Responses) • 2: the poems about physical sufferings; • 3: Stories on Race Relations and anti-Apartheid movements (The following two weeks) • 4: about Gender Relations; (The following two weeks) • 5: more indirect styles --Foe • 6 tradition and individual vs. society; “The Prophetess” (The Other Cultural Examples) • 7 music—crossover style; 8 art works

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)

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 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

History: The Beginnings of Apartheid • the Native Lands and Trust Act of 1936 --denied the blacks the right to own land; restricting them from purchasing land outside the areas reserved for the various native peoples. • the Native Representation Bill – eliminated any form of black African representation in the House of Assembly.

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 )

Apartheid • Other examples of the laws -- Population Registration Act; Group Areas Act; The Bantu Authorities Act (or Homeland Act) • 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.

Consequences: Shantytown, Lack of Resources and Tsosti • 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.

Examples: Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) • Setting: (written in 1947), post WWII Johannesburg • 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.

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.

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.".”

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.”

Note: U.S. vs. South Africa

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) International sanctions and sabbotage • state of emergency (1960 – 1989):those who went on demonstration can be sentenced to death, banished or imprisoned.

Sharpville Massacre –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, building hot arteries From the heart of the Transvaal Resistance movements (1): example

Resistance movements (2): • 1970  Black Consciousness; 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; • Uprisings: • language education ( Soweto uprising, the beginning of the end)

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 • Biko’s ideas – • Black Consciousness • his speech • his self defense (naked racism) • The visit to a black township • Afrikaner’s version • Last view of landscape

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)

Apartheid: Repeal • 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.

Response 1: Long Night’s Journey into the Day South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Purpose: Restorative Justice, rather than retributive justice • “. . . Restorative justice. And this is the option that we have chosen. But there is justice. the perpetrators don't get off scot free. They have to confess publicly, in the full glare of television lights, that they did those ghastly things. And that's pretty, pretty tough."-- Desmond Tutu • Since the past cannot be un-lived, we have to face it. “To establish as complete as possible the causes and the extent of the gross violation of human rights.” • Two commissions: TRC + HRV (Human Rights Violation) to hear stories of the victims and survivors of traumas.

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

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.

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 • Is he a terrorist? Clip: MaBride vs. a victim’s family

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. • Mbelo as a black policeman/informant; • the process of reconciliation

Questions to ponder (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

Questions to ponder (1) What is justice? • Cases in Contrast: • The endless hunting for Nazi regime supporters; • Absalom in Cry, my Beloved Country. • 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."

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?

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 be the only means of ‘facing’ the past?

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? • 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

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, etc.

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) isolated 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.

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

Responses 4 : Poems Related to Gender Relations • “Love Song. . .” Antjie Krog

Response 5 : Indirect Treatments • J. M. Coetzee Foe: Historical revision or metafiction.

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

Responses 6: Confirmation of traditional culture -- “Prophetess” • On what is the boy’s attention focused when he visits the prophetess? Are they signs of her spirituality? dog; darkness, vine, his own sensations, memory, doek (African headscarf, 11); camphor (12); her coughing; 2. The people on the bus – How do they relate to each other? And to the prophetess? How are they different from each other?

“Prophetess” 3. Compared with the people’s discussion, how does the boy relate to the prophetess? What breaks the spell the prophetess has on him? What does the ending mean? Re: A story of initiation. The boy gains self-confidence. The other issues: Sangoma + Christianity; home vs. danger on the street.

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

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").

Ladysmith Black Mambazo • ISICATHAMIYA (Is-Cot-A-Me-Ya): born in the mines of South Africa. Black workers were taken by rail to work far away from their homes and their families. Poorly housed and paid worse, they would entertain themselves after a six-day week by singing songs into the wee hours every Sunday morning. Cothoza Mfana they called themselves, "tip toe guys", referring to the dance steps choreographed so as to not disturb the camp security guards. When miners returned to the homelands, the tradition returned with them.(source http://www.mambazo.com/bio.html ) • Example 1

HOMELESS(Paul Simon and Joseph Shabalala) Emaweni webaba Silale maweni . . . Homeless, homeless Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake Homeless, homeless Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake . . . Strong wind destroy our home Many dead, tonight it could be you Strong wind, strong wind Many dead, tonight it could be you

Response 8 : Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid movements, Black Identity & Race Relations • Dumile Feni (1939-1991)

Responses 8: Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid movements & Race Relations Ironic ad.—guerilla style, torn down soon

Response 6 : Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid movements & Race Relations I have never tried to make illustrations of apartheid, but the drawings and films are certainly spawned by and feed off the brutalized society left in its wake. I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and certain endings; an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay.(source) William Kentridge

Response 6 : Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid movements & Race Relations • The Conservationists' Ball:Culling, Game-Watching, Taming, 1985 William Kentridge

References • LONG NIGHT'S JOURNEY INTO DAY: STUDY GUIDEhttp://www.newsreel.org/guides/longnight.htm • LADYSMITHBLACKMAMBAZO • “Homeless” lyrics • South African Music http://wus.africaonline.com/AfricaOnline/music/Safrica.html • Graham, Shane. “The Truth Commission and Post-Apartheid Literature in South Africa.” Research in African Literature 34.1 (2003): 11-30.

South Africa’s Apartheid