IWIS

1. IWIS South African Literature: Metaphors and Metamorphosis

2. Aims and objectives • To engage with texts from South Africa, understanding the context of Apartheid in which they were written • To think about ideas of metaphor and metamorphosis in South African literature • To discuss how we can take these texts into a classroom • To discuss how to write a self-reflective journal

3. Apartheid: A brief history • system of racial segregation enforced by National Party governments of SA between 1948 and 1994 • white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule • apartheid as an official policy introduced following general election of 1948 • classified inhabitants into 4 racial groups: native, white, coloured, Asian

4. Apartheid: A brief history • segregation: residential areas, education, medical care, beaches, public services • black people deprived of citizenship, political representation • internal uprisings and violence – met with increasing repression and state-sponsored violence • 1980s – mounting opposition, reforms to apartheid • 1990s President Frederik Wilhem de Kerl began negotiations to end apartheid • multi-racial democratic elections in 1994

5. Nadine Gordimer • b. 1923 • Nobel Prize in Literature – a woman ‘who through her magnificent epic writing has…been of very great benefit to humanity’. • Moral, political, and racial issues, particularly apartheid

6. The Ultimate Safari • From whose perspective is the story written? • What metaphors do you notice running through the story?

7. METAPHORS - Animals p. 7 – ‘but all the same our country is a country of people, not animals’ p. 8 – ‘He said we must move like animals among the animals, away from the roads, away from the white people’s camps’ p. 8 – ‘It was hard to be like the animals’ p. 9 – ‘If they saw us, all they could do was pretend we were not there; they had seen only animals’ p. 10 – ‘even if you lie, like the animals, under the trees’ Lions as the Bandits: p. 9 – ‘Panting, like we do when we run, but it’s a different kind of panting: you can hear they’re not running, they’re waiting, somewhere near’

8. METAPHORS - Safari Watching / Being watched: • p. 7 – ‘the places where white people come to stay and look at the animals’ • p. 9 – ‘We could see the fires where the white people were cooking in the camps and we could smell the smoke and the meat’ • p. 14 – ‘Some white people came to take photographs of our people living in the tent’

9. METAPHORS - SHOES Hope / Future plans • p. 14 – ‘No other children in the tent have real school shoes. When we three look at them it’s as if we are in a real house again, with no war, no away.’ • p. 14 – ‘I want them to learn so that they can get good jobs and money.’

10. Exercise 1: Celebrity Furniture • Think of a celebrity • Think of a piece of furniture: • Complete the sentence: _________ is a _________ because ___________

11. Athol Fugard • b. 1932 • playwright • political plays opposing apartheid • Tsotsi is his only novel, made an Academy Award winning film in 2005

12. What are the tsotsis? • ‘menace…a force of unbridled violence as pitiless and unthinking as the sharks that lay in wait outside the nets off Durban beach.’ [Jonathan Kaplan] • young black men, gangs, turning on those lower down the survival chain • product of the process of Apartheid • death methods – medically accurate

13. Tsotsi • p. 170 ‘Instinctively, but for no other reason than having awoken, he put his hand under his pillow to find his knife. Before he found it, another thought crossed his mind…’ • p. 171 ‘Where’s his front teeth, Tsotsi thought, and then, why the hell am I thinking that.’ • p. 172 ‘A spider spinning a web – but most of all my mother. He had to return to that thought. Everything started there. It was the beginning of himself, and of his memories, spinning like silk thread out of the soft shimmer of her humming on a day long, long forgotten. • p. 172 ‘One word. Finished. What now?’ • p. 173 ‘So we start again, Tsotsi, hey man. It was like this then. So now we find a couple of others and we start again and…’ The baby started crying. • p. 175 ‘He rejoiced in the very things that had disgusted and angered him in the past…’

14. Tsotsi • Some key themes: becoming life / death rebirth past/present/future • The metamorphosis that takes place in Tsotsi is one of reclaiming the past to reshape the present and the future. • Tsotsi is about turning points. • ‘It is when Tsotsi rediscovers his memory that he realises he is alive’ [Jonathan Kaplan]

15. Nelson Mandela • b. 1918 • former President of South Africa (1994- 1999) • anti-apartheid activist • 27 years in prison (sabotage and other charges), Robben Island • 1990 – released, led part to first multi-racial democracy • 1993 Nobel Peace Prize

16. Long Walk To Freedom • autobiography • published 1995 • covers early life, coming of age, education, and prison life

17. Long Walk To Freedom • p. 109 ‘I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle. To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment of one’s birth, whether one acknowledges it or not.’ • p. 109 ‘This was the reality, and one could deal with it in a myriad of ways. I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth…There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.’

18. District 9 • Christy Lemire (Associated Press):“District 9 has the aesthetic trappings of science fiction but it’s really more of a character drama, an examination of how a man responds when he’s forced to confront his identity during extraordinary circumstances” • Clips: Scene 3, 12, 26 • At what point does Wikus become the ‘Other’? • What are the symbols of this metamorphosis? (physical / mental / emotional?) • How is the film presented?

19. How to write a self-reflective journal • ‘The journal should show evidence of a variety of approaches to creative learning, and where possible the use of different literary forms from different cultural contexts in the context of the classroom.’

20. How to write a self-reflective journal: • Use anecdotes about particular placement experience • Critical reflection – what perhaps didn’t work so well but why you think it didn’t work • Analysis – what would you have done differently? • Samples of previous journals are available