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

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Chapter 1
Introduction

This study pertains to a specific and regional field which is determined by a specific set of material and ideological conditions and produced in a specific historical period. The purpose is to examine how black women are portrayed in the Afrikaans novel after 1948, i.e. how they are perceived in an apartheid society by authors who are sometimes the very proponents of the apartheid ideology. This study has been born partly out of a concern about women's oppression and marginalisation which often assume covert forms, one of which is the artistic products of a society. While it is true that several studies have been done about ‘race’ in South African literature and that socio-political research about the black woman has been and is undertaken, it is also true that, to my knowledge, no comprehensive study has been undertaken about the black woman's status in the Afrikaans novel. It therefore becomes imperative to look into this area of the black woman's situation, to examine how her zero status in society is either reflected or abrogated in the Afrikaans novel.

I have already mentioned in the Preface how underexposed the black woman is in the literature of the Afrikaners. As far as selection of novels for this study is concerned, the truth of the matter is that I had very little to choose from - the novels more or less selected themselves. I have tried, however, to include at least one representative novel from each specific historical period, even though the black woman as a character in some of these novels has a peripheral role. The justification of my choice of novels shall be made clear in the chapters dealing with them.

The first forty years of apartheid rule (1948-1988) covered in this study is broadly divided into three historical periods:

1.	1948-1959, i.e. the beginning of institutionalised apartheid to the beginning of the end of the old rural order in the Afrikaans literary tradition;
2.	1960-1975: The period of severe repression by the government, as well as the period of the Sestigers and a new awareness about the greater Africa in the Afrikaans novel.

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3.	1976-1988: The shock and bewilderment caused by the youth revolt of 1976 nationally and internationally and literature's response to that.

I have tried to deal with the novels chronologically. However, the pattern is somewhat disturbed by dealing with Brink's novel A Chain of Voices (1982) in Chapter 5 and Elsa Joubert's novel Poppie Nongena (1978) in Chapter 6. The reasons for this discrepancy are: (i) Since I deal with the Sestigers in Chapter 4 and since Brink is the key-figure of this movement, it is expedient to place a discussion of his work in that particular slot; (ii) I am dealing with male authors first, as they were the first to incorporate into their stories the black woman as a character - women novelists are discussed in a separate chapter and are left for last, mainly because of the intransigence on the part of Afrikaner women authors to portray black women in their works.

A considerable part of this study is devoted to the South African context, for example, I am devoting an entire chapter to the situation of black and white/Afrikaner women and introduce contextual information in the other chapters as well. The South African reality cannot be divorced from its literary products; the socio-political views of a person/group can be related to its/their literary products.

In the biological sciences, it has long been recognised that ‘race’ is a fiction. Gates (1985:5) posits:

Race has become a trope of ultimate, irreducible difference between cultures, linguistic groups, or adherents of specific belief systems which - more often than not - also have fundamentally opposed economic interests. Race is the ultimate trope of difference because it is so arbitrary in its application ... we carelessly use language in such a way as to will this sense of natural difference into our formulations. To do so is to engage in a pernicious act of language, one which exacerbates the complex problem of cultural or ethnic difference, rather than to assuage or redress it (author's emphasis).

Rex (1986:18/19) reiterates this view and explains why the notion that ‘race’ could be used to justify unequal treatment was rejected. It would therefore seem that I am engaging ‘in a pernicious act of language’ by introducing the concept of ‘race’ so frequently in my study. The truth of the matter is that the Afrikaans literature abounds with racial stereotypes and even racist attitudes; racial difference is expressed explicitly, even by some of the progressive authors. In the hierarchical structure of South African society and in the hierarchical descriptions in the literature of most Afrikaners, it is difficult if not impossible to avoid the concept of ‘race’.

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1.1 Literature as discourse

Robert Hodge (1990:viii) defines literature and/as discourse as follows:

[L]iterature is seen as a social construct, sustained at particular times by particular groups to serve particular interests: an ideological machine concerned with legitimation and control, working through a system that excludes or privileges certain kinds of text (literary texts and the ‘canon’) and specific readings and modes of reading (literary criticism and its exemplary works) ... [The concept ‘discourse’] emphasizes literature as a process rather than simply a set of products; a process which is intrinsically social, connected at every point with mechanisms and institutions that mediate and control the flow of knowledge and power in a community.

A few pronouncements in this regard by South Africans about South African literature would not be amiss:

Writing, no matter how mediocre or excellent, becomes a mirror reflecting the tapestry of our fibre as a people (Wally Mongane Serote, in an address read on his behalf to the Oxford Literature Conference, 20.03.90).^1.

Our literature, in all its articulations, mirror the community. Perhaps therefore inevitably it will show us a broken image, a partial vision: historically we are a cracked society (Breyten Breytenbach, paper read at the Victoria Falls Conference, 1989).^2.

The Afrikaans literature as a whole can be read as a political discourse. The main literary trends and the most influential works are directly or indirectly determined by political, social and economic relationships (Ampie Coetzee 1988:1).

The Afrikaans novel reveals an unusually explicit convergence between the political-ideological and literary discourses, and offers a wide range of examples of this kind of ‘embedding’ in literature. If we accept that discourse is both interpretive and pre-interpretive and that the literary work can never have one single central identifiable ‘meaning’, then we must also accept that different readings are possible. In my examination of the selected novels, I shall of necessity assess how they ‘reveal a determinate absence and resort to an eloquent silence’ (Macherey 1978:76) about the black woman but also how they, by means of various manipulative strategies, overemphasise and reinforce myths and stereotypes attached to the black woman by the colonisers.

In view of the fact that a literary work is constantly engaged in a process of communication, it follows that it will have a manipulative influence, which is partly of an ideological nature, on the reader (Bal 1983/4:266). Bal suggests that this influence can be neutralised by criticism of the ideological suppositions in the text. In order to do this, it is important not only to establish who narrates, focalizes and acts but also who does not narrate, focalize and act. As a result, I have focused

1. Published in Rixaka - A Journal of South African Cultural Workers, Issue 1, 1990.

2. Ibid.

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mainly on the narratological devices of narration, focalization and characterisation in the selected novels to establish the level of discourse and the pictures emerging of the black female characters.

1.2 Myth and stereotype

If the Afrikaans literature ‘can be read as a political discourse’, then it becomes necessary to examine how myths and stereotypes about black women have fed the political ideology of the Afrikaner.

The function of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction. According to Barthes (1973:109), myth is ‘a system of communication, that is a message ... a mode of signification, a form whose main function is to give to a historical intention a natural justification’. Myth functions to produce ideological effects, because it is the form taken by ideological interpellations to seek assent to the propositions of ideology. Myth and ideology are then interdependent, for myths provide a moral basis for a social system; they imply that a given system is just and right.

Mieke Bal (1983/4:266) defines myths as ‘fictional representations of unconscious or sub-conscious ideologies for which certain groups of people want to provide a justified origin. A myth attempts to change a historically nurtured and certainly not a universal vision into a valid, even “eternal” one. The myth in fact proves that “it has always been like that”’ (my translation). The concept of myth then becomes theoretically fruitful when it is seen as structurally necessary to the ideology in whose cause it is articulated, for example the colonial settler myth of land previously unoccupied which was necessary to the justification of the settler presence.

Mineke Schipper (1984:23) posits:

Myths are assumed to be true; the dogmas and pronouncements which they contain are not to be questioned within the community to which they belong. In fact, of course, myths have often been modified and manipulated by those in power to serve their own aims. Myths confirm and explain how man created order out of chaos, and how, by means of culture, he succeeded in imposing his will on nature.

It would seem, then, that there is general consensus about the interdependency of myth and ideology, that myths are utilised by the ruling class to justify its ideology.

Similarly, the concept of stereotype is necessary to the ideology in whose cause it is employed. February (1981:vi) states that ‘stereotypes function as a means of

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social control and repression’. He continues by stating that one of the direct consequences of colonialism and racism was that the colonised or the discriminated invariably became the dupe of a series of rationalisations whereby ruling classes justify their dominant position in society. ‘The stereotype facilitates the task of the power-holder and makes it possible to stipulate a code of conduct for the blacks on the basis of characteristics imputed to them by whites. This process is nowhere more apparent than in South Africa, where blacks are allowed upward social mobility only within the institutionalized and ascribed pattern’ (February 1981:vii).

An attempt will be made in this study to show that colonial/Afrikaner myths and stereotypes about the indigenous peoples of South Africa, especially the indigenous woman, shaped not only Afrikaner ideology but also found ready propagation and perpetuation in the novels of the Afrikaners.

I may be criticised for my ambivalence in expressing sympathy with the black women characters on the one hand and harshly condemning the very authors who created them on the other. How am I to justify this ambivalence? My sympathy for those characters is fed by an identification with their situation; my criticism of the authors is generated by their ambivalence in trying on the one hand to paint a sympathetic picture of the black woman while on the other never neglecting to highlight and even emphasise her deviance according to their value systems. It is incumbent upon me to try and expose this colonisation of the black female body and mind by white male (and also more recently, female) power.