Impaired vision. Portraits of black women in the Afrikaans novel 1948-1988

[p. V]

Mmangoana o tshwara thipa ka fa bogaleng (The child's mother grabs the sharp end of the knife - old Setswana proverb)

The word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language ..., but rather it exists in other people's mouths, in other people's contexts, serving other people's intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one's own - mikhail bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’.

Perhaps all one can really hope, all I am entitled to, is no more than this: to write it down. To report what I know. So that it will not be possible for any man ever to say again: ‘I knew nothing about it’ - andré p. brink, A Dry White Season.

One of the major fronts in the war against colonialism is the writing of our own history - dabi nkululeko, ‘The right to self-determination in research’

[p. VII]

Wherever and whenever there are the oppressed and the oppressor, the sombre fact is that the oppressed are often party to their own oppression. In teaching the literature of the Afrikaners as was expected of me by the education authorities, I may have unconsciously collaborated in manipulating the minds of our children in the direction the oppressor demanded. This study is therefore

dedicated to

the thousands of high school pupils and college students who became the victims of another injustice but who nevertheless provided me with so much pleasure while teaching them.