Preface
‘But what is there to say about the black woman as a character in the Afrikaans novel?’ ‘Are there enough black women characters in the Afrikaans novel to warrant a dissertation? If so, are they functional characters?’ These and similar questions were put to me by well-intending (and also not such well-intending) people, black and white, female and male, South African and non-South African. For example, Dr Helize van Vuuren, academic and literary critic, asked such questions and before I could reply, remarked: ‘Thank goodness for Poppie Nongena!’ (informal conversation, Amsterdam 1989); Prof. Dr Jakes Gerwel, Rector of the University of Western Cape and literary critic, asked the same questions in an informal conversation in Amsterdam 1990. It is significant that these South Africans, one white and female, the other black and male, both implied and acknowledged by their questions that the black woman as character in the Afrikaans novel is largely an absent unit, which indeed she is. For a long time she has been a non-entity and non-visible, at best a ‘filler’ with no function other than giving an indication of the socio-political milieu of the South Africa of the Malans, Strijdoms, Verwoerds, Vorsters, Bothas and De Klerks.
Apartheid with its concomitant racism, sexism and class-consciousness is an emotional issue - it cannot be anything else. Apartheid has spread through our physical, mental and spiritual being like a slow-combustion fire, threatening to destroy us in its enveloping flames; the literature of a dominant class created by apartheid policies collaborates in this process of destruction. While I have tried to contain my anger, it may rear its ugly head from time to time in the ensuing pages. To try and look at apartheid and its artistic products in a detached manner would be a denial of our right to predicate our existence and experientiality.
Why have I entitled this dissertation ‘Impaired Vision’? Human vision can be impaired by different factors which may leave one temporarily blinded or which may have a permanent effect upon the afflicted. More often than not, impaired vision is the result of congenital disease. White Afrikaners' vision of blacks has been almost irreparably impaired by the congenital disease of early European prejudice. How does one cure defective genes?
The translation of quotations from the novels is mine, except in the case of André P. Brink's novels Looking on Darkness and A Chain of Voices and Elsa Joubert's Poppie Nongena.
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