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

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Chapter 4
The sestiger period and Jan S. Rabie's ‘brown Afrikaners’

No discussion of the black woman character in the Afrikaans novel can be complete without a discussion of the Sestigers, for it was the Sestigers who paved the way for incorporation of South African peoples other than white Afrikaners and black people other than ‘fillers’ into their narrative, albeit still stereotyped in many cases. The period itself was one of much turbulence on the South African political scene which is perhaps the direct cause of the emergence of a generation of writers who were no longer complacent about their privileged position but tried to use their literary products to conscientise legislators and the white population at large.

In this chapter, I propose to concentrate on but one of the Sestigers, Jan Rabie, who not only is the forerunner of Sestig but became one of the founder members of the Skrywersgilde (Writers' Guild) and outspoken critic of apartheid. Likewise, I shall limit myself to only one of his novels, Die groot anders-maak (1964), the only one of the period in which a black woman is a functional character. The novel's message is one of transition/transformation, the novel itself is an example of transition from exclusively ‘white literature’ (Rabie 1985:32) to a literature which would encompass the entire rich variety of South Africa's population, as well as a product of a transitory phase in the Afrikaans literary history.

This chapter is also intended to illustrate male dominance on the South African literary scene, with these dominant male voices and values finding their way into the narrative of the Sestigers.

4.1 Literary trends

The years 1960-1975 saw more apartheid legislation being adopted and severe repression by the state by means of security laws. African and ‘coloured’ people were completely stripped of their last vestiges of representation in the central government when the white representatives of African voters were removed from

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parliament in 1960 and those of ‘coloured’ voters in 1968, not to say that these representatives had any influence or really represented the interests of the oppressed. In 1961, after a fraudulent referendum among the white electorate, South Africa became a republic and withdrew from the Commonwealth. The Sabotage Act (1962), General Law Amendment Act (1963) and Terrorism Act are a few of the security laws which had as their aim the severe repression of the oppressed.

Once again, the voiceless people courageously made their opposition to these laws felt in the only way they could and were joined by the international community in their opposition. This resulted in the massacres at Sharpeville and Langa in March 1961, the banning of political organisations such as the ANC, PAC and numerous others, including teachers' unions representing black interests. Sabotage trials became the rule rather than the exception; thousands of people, among them some of the best brains, clandestinely or openly left the country and with the state of emergency in force, South Africa became a country of exacerbated fear and distrust because of the countless spies and informers among black people in the regime's employ.

The 1960s saw many acts of sabotage, supported by strike action, culminating in the arrest in 1963 of Nelson Mandela and ten others at Rivonia. Eight of the eleven were sentenced to life imprisonment on 11 June 1964. Torture and death in detention became commonplace during the period under review. In 1973 the United Nations General Assembly formed the International Convention on Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

On the Afrikaans literary scene during this period, many novelists still continued in the literary tradition as shaped by their predecessors. The repressive legislation and horrific events in the country seemed to leave them cold. Instead, someone like F.A. Venter continued in his novels to glorify the Afrikaner past, to reinforce the idea that the Afrikaners tamed the land, that it is rightfully theirs, to entrench the stereotypes about black people as being barbaric, untrustworthy, lazy and deceitful. His saga on the Great Trek in a tetralogy is an excellent example of this: Geknelde Land (Strangled Land - 1960), Offerland (Land of Sacrifice - 1963), Gelofteland (Land of the Covenant - 1966) and Bedoelde Land (Destined Land - 1968), the title of the last novel in the series being an unambiguous reference to South Africa as the promised and destined land of the Afrikaners. The infuriating fact is that novels such as these were prescribed by the education authorities to black school children as a conscious strategy to brainwash and manipulate young minds. In Die Rentmeesters (The Stewards - 1969), Venter continues the theme of the inalienable family farm. Another novelist who continued in this tradition, is W.A. de Klerk who, in Die Laer (The Laager - 1964), another historical novel, portrays the Afrikaner's hardiness, determination and perseverence during the ‘Dorslandtrek’ (Thirstland Trek). During the period under review, the emergence of Afrikaner female novelists is of cardinal importance (see Chapter 6).

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The most significant ‘happening’ on the Afrikaans literary scene during this period was the emergence of the Sestigers, not a literary movement as such, since they were not united as to identity of aim, style, outlook or talent. The Sestiger literature was a literature in exile in its own country, especially in the context of the greater Afrikaans literature. On the one hand, it was in conflict with the ruling power as well as the ruling norms and traditions of Afrikanerdom; on the other hand it was a literature which had not yet come into its own.

The Sestigers were criticised for their failure to ‘develop a theoretical or critical basis by which to balance their work against the realities surrounding them. They launched no sustained analysis of the failure of their predecessors in order to clear the way for their own evolution. Their claim to be a renewal of Afrikaans writing fell short largely because of undeveloped thought. The failure or inability of the writers to think through the vital issues before them was covered over by an intense concentration on form and techniques, with the result that they fell easily into the trap of formalism and an escape into unreality from hard issues like politics, racism, etc. They were more interested in form and literary devices and themes derived from a different environment and applied from the outside. The dangerous presence of Africa was largely ignored in their writing while they concentrated on European themes’ (see Polley: 1973).

Be that as it may, the Sestigers with novelists like Jan Rabie, Etienne Leroux, Dolf van Niekerk, André P. Brink and Chris Barnard forming its vanguard, brought a complete new dimension into the narrative of Afrikaans, albeit a narrative of non-commitment for the most part. This renewal was not limited to literature but its influence was felt in white Afrikaner society by the demolition of many taboos and prejudices of that society and the modification of the literary, moral, religious and political conventions of the Afrikaner. The Sestigers and their successors exercised this influence on society through their creative work but also through repeatedly expressing their views on art and their ideas on the relationship between literature and the authorities in argumentative writing. Though tentatively, some of them, especially Jan Rabie and André Brink, already explored the South African actuality.

True to South African patriarchal society and tradition, the Sestigers comprised mainly of male writers and critics, even though there was no lack of women writers among the Afrikaans literary corps of the time. There may be valid reasons for the exclusion, perhaps self-exclusion, of women writers from this ‘movement’. However, it will suffice to mention a very significant event in the Sestiger saga to illustrate how women writers were either excluded or were not involved: in February 1973 the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at the University of Cape Town hosted a symposium on the Sestigers. Significantly, over the five-day period of the symposium not a single woman presented a paper or participated in the panel discussion.^1.

1. See Jim Polley's account of the Sestiger Symposium in Jim Polley (ed.) 1973.

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4.2 Jan S. Rabie

A leading figure of the Sestigers was undoubtedly Jan Rabie who brought renewal to the Afrikaans prose with his expressionistic, surrealistic and poetic short ‘stories’ in the anthology Een-en-twintig (1956). The publication of this anthology was, as André Brink (1977:3) asserts, ‘the heralding of the entire so-called Movement of Sixty’ and ‘one of the most radical announcements of renewal in the entire framework of our literature’.

The novel, Ons, die afgod (We, the idol - 1958), already mentioned in the previous chapter, is the first novel of ‘commitment’ in the modern Afrikaans literature, generating sharp polemic in which literary and political values became hopelessly entangled. It is especially with these two works that Rabie influenced other writers and heralded a new era in the Afrikaans narrative.

4.2.1 Rabie's commitment to Africa

Over the years Rabie has made several statements and pronouncements in connection with his own writing, censorship, literature and society, the exclusivity of white Afrikaners, literature as a vehicle for political change, in addition to pleas for more of Africa in the literature of Afrikaans.

By his own admission, Rabie became progressively more engrossed in the everdominant colour problem. His erstwhile intention in the ‘apprentice school’ of Paris to write against l'injustice et le malheur had been his life-long aim, so much so that he could write more or less about nothing else than apartheid. The urgent socio-political crisis in his country forced him willy-nilly to write with less style and more message, almost always in the hope that white and brown Afrikaners can become one (Rabie 1987:241-245).

At the symposium on the Sestigers in 1973, Rabie sharply criticised the white establishment in his paper, from legislators to critics to writers and criticised the Sestigers for ‘glowing in stylisms copied from overseas’ and for focussing on racial situations in other countries rather than their own (Rabie 1973:162). For him, Afrikaans and Afrikaner are not synonymous with white and he concludes: ‘Afrikaner for me is much more than white man. I try to write that. In prose’ (Rabie 1973:164).

In an article written in 1975, ‘Is dit ons erns - in Afrika?’ (‘Is it our zeal - in Africa?’), he puts the following questions to Afrikaner authors: To what extent does their literary art reflect the (multicoloured) history of South Africa? Is it solely a white literature? To what extent are Afrikaner authors responsible for their insecurity, fears, indifference or guilt? To what extent do they honour the

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earth from which they and their language have sprouted? Is that how serious they are in Africa, about Africa? (Rabie 1975:32). In the same article he makes a plea for ‘less of that which is labelled “Made in Europe”’ (Rabie 1975:36).

The same plea recurs in an article published in 1987, ‘Minder Europa, meer Afrika’ (‘Less Europe, more Africa’). Apparently, Rabie's ‘Africa’ is confined to the portrayal of the ‘coloureds’ with whom he feels a cultural, religious and language bond, and to the Khoikhoin who are part-ancestors of this group of South Africans. Significantly, the vast majority of South Africa's population, the Africans, do not feature in Rabie's works. He explains this omission as follows:

... the majority of people around me was brown, and not black as elsewhere in the country ... I have consistently restrained myself from speaking on behalf of the black man; my ignorance is too great. Perhaps it is also the result of a suspicious pessimism which has restricted me to people of my own language and background. The basic lack of understanding between Afrikaners and Europeanoriented liberalists (be they Roman or British) who could say: ‘Very well, I'll hand over my estate, on condition that you assume my image’. But from his experience in black Africa the Afrikaner suspects it is impossible. His world is too small and too delicate (Rabie 1987:240, 241).

4.2.2 The Bolandia series

One of Rabie's most important contributions to the Afrikaans narrative is his Bolandia tetralogy, works of prose which deal with, in Rabie's own words, ‘our early history in the Boland, the cradle where Dutch and other Europeans, indigenous Hottentots, imported black slaves and Orientals encountered and transformed each other into two new national groups in South Africa: whiter and browner Afrikaners - even though the word “Afrikaner” for more than a century indicated only bastard children with one Hottentot parent’ (Rabie in his preface to Bolandia). The writing of these novels would also bring him to a better understanding of how the chasms between the peoples of South Africa originated. Despite these claims, Kannemeyer (1983:342) asserts that this is Rabie's epic of Afrikaner nation-building with the accent on the origins of the Afrikaner of today and the elements which constitute him/her.

The four novels in the Bolandia series are briefly: Eiland voor Afrika (Island-gateway to Africa - 1964), situated in the years 1657 - 1658 and based on an event documented in Van Riebeeck's Daghregister (Diary). The events take place on Robben Island where five exiles from different parts of the world have been instructed to mind the V.O.C.'s sheep and to fire signals to oncoming ships. Together they illustrate the diverse variety from which Cape society originated, while at the same time their problems prophetically refer to those which would

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later dominate the mainland. Die groot anders-maak (The great transformation - 1964), situated circa 1730, deals with the disintegration of the Khoi-Khoin with its proud traditions through the influence of the mightier white civilisation (see 4.4.3). Waar jy sterwe (1966) - translated in 1969 by the author himself as A man apart - takes place at the beginning of the 19th century when the destruction of the Khoi-Khoin was an accomplished fact and white nomad farmers accompanied by a few remaining Khoi and ‘bastards’, are threatened by the southward movement of black tribes. The emphasis is on the Khoi-bastard, Douw Prins who, in his fight against domination and enslavement, acquires his own independence and liberty but then finds himself an outcast who does not fit in with either society. With Ark (1977) Rabie turns to the problems of contemporary South Africa. The main character, a writer, must reorientate himself after a spell of amnesia in respect of South African racial tensions and history, a task which results in a search for his own origin and identity and ultimately a new vision of the past.

In his historical research in preparation for the writing of these novels, Rabie relied heavily on archival material found at the Cape. He acknowledges that a one-sided account of the indigenous peoples of the Cape emerges from these archival documents, and the question arises: What does he do about it?

4.2.3 Die groot anders-maak (1964)

4.2.3.1 Introduction

As previously stated, this novel is the second in the Bolandia series and gives ‘an illustration of the disintegration of the Hottentot nation, circa 1730’ (Jan Rabie). On the dust cover of the first edition the following observation appears:

When the first migrant farmers crossed the mountains between the Boland and the Karoo in search of new pastures for their steadily increasing flocks, the death-knell began sounding for the Khoi-Khoin, the proud race who for so long had been the rulers of the outstretched plains. With reference to the experiences of the Hottentot woman Keas, who had learnt and adopted the life-style of the whites but then tries to return to her people only to discover that they are already doomed to destruction, Jan Rabie illustrates the moral and physical decline of a proud race and a peculiar form of life which could not withstand the influences projected by the newcomers.

Rabie himself supplies an explanation for the title of his novel:

In this novel, Dutch and Hottentot or rather Khoi-Khoin encounter each other, and both change into browner and whiter Afrikaners. Already it is about 1730, and the encounter of slave, burgher and indigine has progressed a long way

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towards a new synthesis. The title indicates that the Khoi-Khoin regularly danced by new moon to make themselves ‘different’ or to transform themselves, i.e. to renew like the moon; that the greatest renewal here in fact was the encounter and intermingling of races at the Cape from which browner and whiter Afrikaners were born (Rabie 1987:241).

In spite of this explanation, one has to examine the semantic quality of the second part of the title: ‘anders-maak’ (make different), which not only implies external influences in the process of ‘making different’ but also a forced or an imposed transformation. It does not necessarily imply a voluntary act on the part of the one undergoing the change. Of course, one can transform oneself but more often than not this happens as a result of external pressures brought to bear upon the transforming self. In Rabie's explanation the impression is created that a fusion of cultures took place with influences going out from and received by all involved. What in reality the novel is saying, is that a one-directional influence goes out from the white people, the Khoi are the recipients of this influence but never the donors.

This imposed transformation occurs on different levels in the novel, the first level being the already-stated cultural practice of the Khoi to renew themselves like the moon through dancing when the new moon is sighted. This does not necessarily mean a transformation. The moon is ‘immortal in eternal rebirth like Heitsi Eibib, All-Father of the Khoi-Khoin’ (p. 47). Cf. for example the words of Sigeb, the witchdoctor, in his incantation to T'Kamkhab (the New Moon): ‘“Be welcome, oh Lord of the Night Sky! Give us plenty of forage food and honey! Give us herds of horned wild animals! Give grass to our cattle so that we may have plenty of milk! Give, so that our children may honour you!”’ (p. 53). The women's incantation echoes this: ‘“Oh, Moon, in your previous lives you have been good to us... We hope you shall care better for us”’ (p. 53). It becomes clear that this cultural practice does not imply ‘making different’ but rather renewal by way of an adequate supply of daily needs.

On the second and most important level, the title has a bearing upon Keas in different manifestations (see 4.2.3.3.3). But not only upon Keas. In fact, different members and implicitly all members of her race are ‘made different’, not least the proud Damoeb who has resisted the overtures of the interlopers until he meets Keas. Then, gradually, the entire kraal, with the exception of the proud old sage, Oasib, is lured by white technology and expertise to abandon their traditions and adopt a life-style, albeit the negative sides of it, which is in direct conflict with their own. The question now arises whether, as Rabie submits, the whites were also transformed through their contact with the indigenes. From textual indicators it does not appear to be so, for not only do the white migrant farmers openly express their disgust for the Khoi life-style and backwardness, not only do they regard it as inferior to their own and barbaric (p. 121) but they also insist that intermarriage

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can never take place between Dutch and Khoi (p. 81). Therefore, Rabie's assertion that the intermingling and fusion of cultures at the Cape led to ‘browner and whiter Afrikaners’ is completely refuted in the story, even though it did in fact happen. At best, the white migrant farmers rely heavily upon the Khoi for tracking down villains (in this case the San), for identifying waterholes and the best grazing, for information about climatic conditions and weather patterns in this harsh land and for gaining knowledge about edible plants, wild animal behaviour, etc., etc.

As in Rabie's earlier and later novels, e.g. We, the idol (1958) and Johanna's story (1981), racial and ethnic features are invoked several times, in this novel even to the extent that they become tautological, repetitive and non-functional. Time and again we are reminded of the Khoi's ‘yellowness’ and shades of yellowness (e.g. pp. 5, 6, 10, 11, 17, 90, 93, 101, 108, 109 × 3, 111, 125); their ‘broad cheekbones’ (e.g. pp. 5, 8, 80, 103); their ‘triangular faces’ and ‘pointed chins’ (e.g. pp. 5, 126); their ‘slit eyes’ and ‘flat noses’ (e.g. pp. 9, 63, 109); their ‘hair like peppercorns’ (e.g. pp. 10, 61) and their steatopygia (e.g. p. 20).

Together with the Khoi's and San's ‘yellowness’ which is often associated with the landscape, thus invoking the ability of animals to camouflage themselves when danger lurks [cf. for example: Damoeb is described as ‘just as yellow-brown as the rocks behind him’ (p. 5); the San are described as ‘little people yellow-grey like the rocks around them’ (p. 108)], the Khoi and the San are bestialised several times, à la Hondius (see chapter 2.3.3). A few examples will suffice:

‘(Hakwa's) slit eyes fall shut while he lies down: a yellow dikdei^2. lizard which lies uncaringly basking in the sun’ (p. 10)

‘The Sonkwas can't be far off, and these grey-brown snakes can lie unseen behind the smallest rock to unexpectedly spit their venom’ (p. 63)

‘The wild triangular face lifted up like a ringed cobra ready to strike’ (p. 109).

In one way or another, Rabie weaves into his story the age-old stereotypes applied to these original peoples of Southern Africa by European travellers and explorers of the 16th and 17th centuries and the generations following them. The difference now is that these stereotypes are applied to the Khoi by themselves, since they are now the focalizers who watch alongside the external narrator/focalizer. Admittedly, in some instances Rabie tries to give more balance to these one-sided reports by allowing the Khoi to articulate the reasons for their purported laziness. Cf. for example the words of the captain of the kraal, Oasib, in reply to the Dutch ensign's question as to why they are too lazy to till the soil:

Because we have no wish to become slaves of the soil by labouring and scratching in it all day. Because we have no wish to barricade ourselves in fear in stonehouses and to build barriers around our lands. Because we are satisfied with the

2. ‘Dikdei’: a yellow-brown, fat lizard of the genus Mabuia.

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little we have, free people, who have always shared with others ... Is it not true that White man is so enslaved to White man's hunger for possessions that you have come from across the great waters to look here for even more possessions? Is it not so among you Christian people that the more you have the more you want? (pp. 103, 104).

Added to the stereotype of the Khoi's sloth (pp. 10, 20, 99, 101, 103, 116), are those of the filth and stench surrounding themselves and their living quarters (pp. 29, 30, 71, 73, 74, 89, 101, 102, 120); their dishonesty and backwardness (pp. 79, 85, 102, 103); their lack of pride and ambition (pp. 100-104); their inability to conceive of God and their love of liquor (pp. 102, 121, 128).

The Khoi is further identified as a race apart by several indications of the ‘peculiarity’ of their language, the ‘excited smack-smack of the tongue against the palate’ (p. 6), Ougaa speaks ‘so that his tongue cracks like interminable little whips’ (p. 60) and the whiteman views it as ‘this impossible click-clack language’ (p. 102).

While it can be conceded that Rabie tries to capture and (re)create the sphere of the Khoi by the numerous invocations of their racial and ethnic features, the ‘peculiarity’ of their language and the stereotypes attached to them, it is to be questioned whether, by doing so, he does anything to alleviate and minimise the deep racial divide existing in South Africa. Rather, this strategy can be interpreted as a further entrenchment of the stereotypes attached to a considerable portion of South Africa's population who are said to be direct descendants of the Khoi, in spite of Rabie's intentions as expressed by himself.

4.2.3.2 Khoi women

Although the Khoi women, with the exception of Keas, by no means play a significant role in the story, Rabie nevertheless paints a picture of Khoi society and tribal life in which gender roles are clearly defined, incorporating into this picture the age-old stereotypes attributed to the women of Africa in general and Khoi women in particular.

It is not clear whether Rabie found evidence in the archival material he used or whether he bases his assumptions on present-day South African society or whether it is his own patriarchal upbringing which leads him to conclude that the Khoi was a strong patriarchal society.^3. Nevertheless, from evidence we have of the 18th century, not only pertaining to African peoples but also to peoples of different cultures world-wide, it is possible and even highly probable that a strong patriarchal system did in fact prevail among the Khoi. Several textual indicators point to that fact but not only that - Khoi women are portrayed as simply objects who do

3. In view of oral evidence that African, especially Southern African societies were characterised by matrilineal and matrifocal systems before patriarchy asserted itself (not least through Western influence), it is quite possible that Khoi society was a matriarchal one. However, since the Khoi were practically wiped out by small-pox epidemics and wars of dispossession, not even oral evidence to this effect is available.

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not warrant any consideration from their male counterparts. The following are but a few of the statements made by Khoi male characters in respect of women:

‘“No, one does not think about a woman, one simply takes her”’ (p. 13 - Hakwa is the speaker)

‘Many times already Damoeb had sat and peered southward like this, unaware that his resentful unease is also a kind of weakness, a captivation like that of a woman before a strong man’ (p. 49 - the EN)

‘“A Sonkwa can get at a woman easily from any side”’ (p. 56 - Hakwa)

‘“A woman does what her husband does”’ (p. 125 - Damoeb).

Khoi patriarchy, according to the story, also extended to the right of males to physically assault a woman when, in their perception, she has transgressed. Once again, it is not clear whether archival evidence exists that Khoi men actually employed physical violence against their women, or whether these are figments of an over-fertile imagination which in addition is fed by one-sided oral and written reporting by Afrikaner ancestors, or whether the author once again bases his assumptions on stereotypes applied to present-day South African blacks. Physical abuse of women is not a phenomenon peculiar to one particular race or society, but the impression is created in this novel that it was the ‘normal’ practice for Khoi women to be beaten by all and sundry if they happened to be male (see 4.2.3.3).

Khoi society revealed clearly defined gender roles which may or may not be confused with patriarchy and which in addition gave rise to several stereotypes about the Khoi and their descendants. Most prevalent of these is the sloth, laziness and idleness of Khoi men. It must be remembered that the latter, in a society where gender roles were so clearly demarcated, were solely responsible for the protection of the kraal and for providing venison when the need arose. Therefore, when there was no threat to the safety of the kraal or no need to hunt, they temporarily ceased being warriors and hunters. Khoi women, on the other hand, had the never-ending task of providing in the family's physical needs, i.e. gathering, preparing and serving food and beverages, bearing and rearing children and fulfilling men's sexual needs.

Lascivity is one of the main characteristics ascribed to Khoi women in the story, a characteristic commonly associated with black women, not least in literature. It is rather a contradiction in terms that women who are subjected to such a strict patriarchal structure nevertheless are allowed to dispense their favours freely and uninhibitedly. The external narrator/focalizer, focalizing through other characters, on several occasions describes their appearance which must serve as an external manifestation of their lustful disposition, e.g. ‘... Hottentot women with lustful, loose-lipped faces ... dancing about drunk and groaning ...’ (p. 75); ‘... women giggle lustfully and suggestively ...’ (p. 94); ‘On the dancefloor the

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action becomes progressively wilder ... Kaatjie and Sabina who have learnt their flirting from slave scum on Christian farms are the main ones to entice the men with sensuous giggling and shrieking ...’ (p. 129). The captain of the tribe, Oasib, observes with sadness that the women of his tribe ‘unashamedly quarrel and sleep away from their kraal’ (p. 85) and that they have become ‘lascivious and brazen’ (p. 86).

Apparently it is this lascivity which is responsible for the Khoi women's great breeding capacity and for bringing about a race of bastards, information which is supplied explicitly and unequivocally in the text. We learn of Kiewiet's wife's ‘kasarm’ (ragtag and bobtail) of children (p. 117) and Khoi women's ‘trail of bawling children’ (p. 126). A recurring theme with Rabie is the one of ‘mixed blood’. Oasib observes among the migrant farmers ‘... black, brown, white and yellow from many nations, and several fatherless children of mixed blood’ (p. 11) and he tells Hakwa: ‘“Our women want to carry little Afrikaners^4. on their backs”’ (p. 11). The EN informs us of ‘a bunch of children who bear witness of many kinds of fathers’ (p. 75). Cf. in this respect Johanna's story where Johanna's (‘coloured’) aunt is described: ‘... she has strange silent facial features ... as if she carries traces of all the many kinds of people who trekked through that region ...’ (p. 10).

Khoi women and men form diametric opposites with regard to work in the novel. While the women (and children) are portrayed as being industrious, always gathering food and firewood, building and cleaning huts, tending children, preparing food and beverages, the men sit or lie or doze in the sun all day (cf. pp. 10, 20, 99, 101, 103, 116), dreaming away the time or discussing ‘men's business’ (p. 118). One is left in no doubt about the source of Rabie's information.

4. ‘Afrikaners’: originally people of mixed Khoi and white descent. The word has since undergone ‘ameliorative’ semantic change, referring today only to white people who speak Afrikaans.

4.2.3.3 Keas

The virtually non-speaking, non-focalizing character of Keas, the Khoi woman who returns to her people on the rebound after suffering the rejection and humiliation brought about by her race, can perhaps be described as having the dubious distinction in the Afrikaans literary corpus of being the first black woman character to occupy a position very near to the centre of events and who is not merely a filler character. André Brink has this to say about her: ‘... the sharply presented key-figure of the Hottentot woman Keas, caught between white and brown, already becomes a significant figure in our prose ánd a poignant commentary on present-day relationships’ (Brink 1973:4).

The choice of a black woman (in this case a Khoi - it could also have been one of the imported slave women) to occupy a position between black and white, is not coincidental, for Rabie perhaps ‘unconsciously’ (cf. Oasib's stream of consciousness on p. 100) wants to illustrate in his novel - as did several authors, historians

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and politicians before him - that the black woman is solely responsible for bringing about a race of half-breeds and bastards (‘halfnaatjies’ and ‘basters’ they are called in the novel), thus creating and compounding South Africa's racial problems. The role of the male in bringing about this race of half-breeds, is simply shrugged off (significantly by women) as ‘“a white man only plays with a servant, nothing more”’ (Tom's wife to Keas, p. 81) and ‘“a white man does not marry a Hottentot ... children yes, but not marriage”’ (Tom's mother to Keas, p. 73).

4.2.3.3.1 Central character?

The question arises whether Keas can be termed a ‘central’ figure, whether she is a ‘helper’ or ‘opponent’, ‘subject’ or ‘object’, ‘power’ or ‘receiver’ according to Greimas' and Mieke Bal's models.

Through the title and the beginning of the fabula the impression is created that this is Keas' story, but it is soon subsumed by the story of the white migrant farmers' difficulties to survive in this harsh country and their struggle against the hostile inhabitants, the San. One also soon observes that this is rather the story of the influence projected by whites to transform the Khoi and the latter's easy submission to the foreign culture.

Nevertheless, Keas can be considered as a functional character to the extent that she has a functional part in the structures of the fabula since she undergoes or causes functional events. First of all, she is the subject who aspires to a certain aim/object, i.e. to transform herself in the hope of regaining the attention of the white farmer, Tom Muller. Very soon, however, we become aware that she alone cannot reach her object without the intervention of the power, thus becoming the receiver. The power in this case is seated in another functional actor, Tom Muller, as well as in an abstraction, i.e. white society that condemns Khoi culture and mores. But Keas also becomes the power when Damoeb, the subject who strives to adopt the lifestyle of whites, is supported by Keas in the realisation of his intentions. Likewise, she is the helper of the white migrant farmers whose object it is to ‘tame’ the land and making it more inhabitable (for themselves), because she warns them of imminent danger, and influences Damoeb and others to transform themselves to white values. She herself is the object of Damoeb's desire.

Keas, then, is both subject and object, power and receiver as well as helper. Does this make her a central character? Not necessarily, although much of the action revolves around and is inspired by her. In fact, in this novel it is difficult to identify a strong central character and one may conclude that Keas functions on the same level as Damoeb, Oasib and Tom Muller.

[p. 109]

4.2.3.3.2 Keas' story

There are two parts to Keas' story: her life before she returns to Khoi society, and the part of her life after her return which forms the basis of the fabula. My concern here is Keas' story before her return to the tribe, for this part of her life is the key to her later actions and attitudes.

What emerges from the fabula and can be pieced together about Keas' life before we meet her in the story, is the following. She belonged to Gomarib's tribe. When the smallpox epidemic wreaked havoc among the Khoi, her mother fled with her to safer ground but they were stoned and driven off wherever they tried to find refuge. Then her mother also succumbed to the disease and Keas, as a small child, fled into the veld where she was taken into care by shepherds tending the flocks of white farmers. They took her with them to Roodezand, to Tom Muller's farm, Mooiplaas, where she was reared by whites and where she remained until the time we meet her in the story. It emerges that she soon forgot her Khoi upbringing and adopted the culture of the white people including their Christian faith and was given a ‘white’ name, Lea. Later, on becoming a young woman, Tom ‘came to tame the wild hunger in his body’ against hers (p. 73) and inevitably she found herself pregnant, later giving birth ‘in lonely fear’ (p. 73) to a daughter, Katryntjie.

For both Tom and Keas the outcome of their passion was disastrous: Tom was disinherited by his parents and sent off to the Cape to marry a white woman, after which he trekked into the interior. This forced separation spurred Keas to flee ‘like a mad thing to the mountain and (she) only knew that if her body could no longer receive him at night with pride, then she must be a Hottentot. A filthy, backward Hottentot woman who does not know she is filthy and unloved. That was all that remained for her’ (p. 73). It is at this point of her flight, on the way to the stone grave of Heitsi Eibib, the mythological Khoi ancestor who is reborn again and again, that she encounters Damoeb and the second part of her story begins, fuelled by her experiences during her childhood and young adulthood.

4.2.3.3.3 Keas' transformation

As already explained, the title of the novel, in addition to its other meanings, has a bearing upon Keas' transformation(s).

Her first transformation from Khoi child to one with white values has been explained above and can be regarded as a forced transformation due to the circumstances, viz. an orphan child delivered into the hands of white people and who is susceptible to influence and indoctrination, a child's natural inclination to imitate and someone completely dependent on her benefactors for her survival. Keas' second transformation, however, is voluntary; yet she is also forced by circumstances to subject herself to another ‘anders-maak’. On giving birth to

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Tom's child and being rejected and humiliated by Tom's mother, she is forced to return to being a ‘Hottentot’, with low self-esteem and little self-respect. But once among the Khoi, she cannot simply relinquish the values she learnt from white people and aspires to be transformed once again to someone with white values.

She tells Oasib, headman of the tribe: ‘“Keas feels like a broken thing ... Then Keas came back ... to be ... repaired again”’ (p. 15). For this reason the old man takes her back to his kraal, instructs the women of the tribe to prepare a hut for her, to make a proper Khoi out of her since she had forgotten all ‘the right things’ (p. 18). With the feast of the moon she would be properly ‘made different’ and initiated into tribal life. Everyone in the tribe must assist with the preparations for the transition, because in Khoi society every possession is shared among the rest (pp. 18-19).

The transformation occurs physically as well as spiritually - Keas must relinquish her Duusman (white people's) name Lea; her ‘white people's clothes’ are taken away from her on the express instruction of Oasib; she is dressed in typical Khoi fashion of pointed fur hat, loincloth and karos^5.; she is provided with copper adornments for her ears, strings of beads for arms and ankles and bangles made of bone. After protesting violently, she is allowed to keep the silver chain she received from Tom. Sweet-smelling buchu powder is strewn over her, water fortified with urine is sprinkled over her to keep evil spirits away from the kraal, her face adorned with ajoos powder.^6. She flatly refuses, however, to have the mixture made of animal fat, soot and red clay applied to her body and finds it difficult to hide her disgust at the stench and filth of the mixture.

The transformation also includes learning anew the duties of a Khoi woman: fetching firewood, learning how to identify forage food and how to dig it up with a stick. However, on the day of T'Kamkhab, the New Moon, when Keas' transformation should have been completed and she initiated into tribal life, Damoeb and Hakwa start a fight over Keas and immediately she is declared t'nau (taboo) by the witchdoctor, Sigeb. In essence this means that until the next fullmoon she must remain in her hut, may not communicate with anyone except the old woman Kunibes, and anything she touches will likewise become t'nau. In the strong patriarchal set-up of the Khoi as portrayed in the novel, only women who have strayed from the ancestral path have to undergo the ‘anders-maak’ and only women can be declared t'nau even if, like in Keas' case, she is not responsible for the reason.

Even with the best of intentions and sincerity of purpose to become a Khoi once again, the influence and pull of white culture is too strong and gradually Keas resumes her white people's name, dresses in white people's clothes (how did she get hold of them?) and influences Damoeb to adopt white values and appearance.

5. ‘Karos’: cape made of skin.

6. ‘Ajoos’: powder made from Phellorina delestrei, a field fungus, and used as a brown powder and as snuff.

[p. 111]

Keas' transformation, then, is a zig-zag process from Khoi to white to Khoi to white.

These different transformations are aided and abetted by several factors. Once Keas has tasted life among the white community, she cannot quite fully become a Khoi again and she remains in a state of flux, neither completely Khoi, nor completely white. She is rejected by both Khoi and white and, significantly, this rejection is more apparent on the part of the women: the white women (Tom's mother and his wife) consider her not good enough to come into their laager; the Khoi women view her as a stranger and very severely censure her ‘white people's’ appearance. Keas herself finds Khoi customs disgusting, even though they have welcomed her back into the fold when she felt rejected and abandoned by the very people she idolises.

4.2.3.3.4 Focalization

In respect of the focalized object, Keas, we have in this novel a curious mixture of focalization: an external narrator-focalizer (EF), character-bound focalizers (CFs) with ‘variable internal focalization’ in Genette's terms and interior monologue. The novel's focalization process is seated mainly in the male characters and the picture emerging of Keas is one seen through male eyes, especially those of Damoeb, Oasib and an EF who to all intents and purposes is male. We also have a situation where the EF is not only looking with the CFs but also interjecting and intercepting a CF's focalization time and again, with the result that we are not always sure who the focalizing subject is.

The EF, being a non-participating witness of the events, is expected to be nonpartisan and to shun comment on the events, but this does not prevent it from being subjective. As Mieke Bal (1985:100) points out, perception is a psychological process which is strongly dependent on the position of the perceiving body, which makes it extremely difficult for the EF to remain objective. Added to this, is the focalizer's ideological position towards the focalized object, which can be extrapolated from verbal indicators and which may betray the focalizer's attitude. Rimmon-Kenan (1983:82,83) states: ‘The overall language of a text is that of the narrator, but focalization can “colour” it in a way which makes it appear as a transposition of the perceptions of a separate agent’. The bestialisation of Khoi women and their ‘breeding’ capacity are implied in verbal indicators such as the ‘cackling’ of the women ‘like a flock of sparrows which have become mad’ (p. 18) and reference to Khoi women's children as ‘kasarm’ (p. 117) and ‘'n sleepsel joelende kinders’ (p. 126).

When the EF focalizes Keas, he seems to set her apart from the rank and file of Khoi women and reveals a certain compassion towards her and her acquiescence (pp. 17, 30), her passivity (pp. 30, 32) and her intermediate position. One is

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reminded of the sympathetic treatment of the ‘almost white’ Petro by the EF in Mikro's The Copper Urn - is it possible that Keas too is treated differently because of her affinity to white culture?

The object of focalization may in some cases be visible only inside the head of a character and only those who have access to it can perceive anything. The EF is in the best position to have access to these non-perceptible objects and to interpret them. The EF can therefore describe extensively the thoughts of the focalized object, while other characters are unaware of them. It is therefore effective by means of an EF to manipulate the thoughts of the object and to manipulate the reader in taking a position for or against the focalized. The EF has the advantage of penetrating the consciousness of the focalized and consequently has the privilege of manipulating that consciousness to conform to its own ideology. Keas is a virtual non-speaking, non-focalizing character but her thoughts are extensively described by the EF under the guise of the stream of consciousness technique.

It is also true that the EF seems to ‘yield’ focalization to a CF in some cases. What is really happening is that the vision of the CF is being given within the all-encompassing vision of the EF, according to Mieke Bal. In fact, the EF always keeps the focalization in which the focalization of a CF may be embedded as object. The EF can also watch along with a person, without leaving focalization entirely to a CF. This gives rise to double or ambiguous focalization, which makes it difficult to determine who actually focalizes: the EF on the first level or the CF on the second level.

As far as character-bound focalization is concerned, we have here what Genette (1980:190) terms ‘variable internal focalization’ where varying ‘visions’ from varying characters are presented. This is especially true of Damoeb, the proud young Khoi, and the headman of the tribe, Oasib, who fights a losing battle until his death to maintain the traditions and culture of his people. Both, in addition to other minor male characters like Hakwa, focalize Keas and, as we shall see presently, this kind of focalization yields ‘subjective’ focalization with considerable bias and limitation. However, since the focalization varies and shifts from one character to another, this ‘subjectivity’ is somewhat tempered and a picture of neutrality may emerge. The CFs' images of Keas also say something about themselves. In the following paragraphs we shall consider the images emerging of Keas as determined by the different focalizers.

4.2.3.3.5 Images of Keas

(a) Race and ethnicity

When Damoeb sees a woman approaching (p. 5), it is quite natural for him to try and establish the stranger's identity. His first observation is that this woman is

[p. 113]

‘odd’ (‘snaaks’), she walks in a curious manner and she looks strange in a spotted karos ‘like a guinea-fowl’ (p. 5). He also notices her ‘white people's clothes’, her bleeding feet and the fact that she is in a hurry although it appears as if she does not quite know where she is going. But when she turns her head in his direction, he immediately notices her ‘triangular face with the pointed chin and the broad cheekbones’ (p. 5) and owns her as Khoi, like himself.

Several times in the narrative Keas' ethnic features are invoked, especially her ‘broad cheekbones’ (e.g. pp. 5, 8, 80, 103) and her ‘yellowness’ (e.g. pp. 6, 7, 90, 101). She is the focalized object of especially the young Khoi male, Damoeb who, besides being proud about his Khoi heritage and initially fiercely tries to defend it against foreign influences and would therefore welcome Keas' return to her people, also has a vested interest in her as a woman. For this reason, Damoeb's perception of Keas may be biased. If he or any other Khoi figure focalizes Keas, it is highly unlikely that they would be struck by her ethnic features everytime they look at her. She is being portrayed as typically Khoi as far as physiognomy is concerned and for that reason we may safely assume that it is no different from that of the other members of Khoi society and therefore not worth mentioning as often as it is. The only conclusion one can draw from this repetitive invocation of ethnicity is that the EF focalizes with the CFs and is moreover identifiable as someone from a different race and culture.

Keas' external appearance, viz. unmistakable Khoi features but dressed in ‘white people's clothes’, as well as her ‘strange skin, as naked as raw meat and yellow-white like smoothly scrubbed mountain cypress wood with no fat and colouring or buchu powder on it’ (p. 6), intensified by her double names of Keas and Lea, immediately evokes a duality or ambivalence which foreshadows the conflict within her. In her case, the most common strategy of characterisation is employed: external appearance being an indication of a character-trait. Here, however, it is not so much a trait which is being illustrated by the description of her external appearance, but rather her intermediate and even outsider position which results in her inner conflict. In fact, Keas becomes the prototype of the ‘groot andersmaak’ (great transformation) of the Khoi-Khoin to a people who have ultimately adopted western culture but who are nevertheless not reckoned to western society.

(b) Patriarchy

‘Patriarchy’ can by no means be described as one of the ‘images’ of Keas but it is included here for the reason that a patriarchal set-up would also determine the images projected of women. We have already established that Khoi society is characterised by a strong patriarchal system, according to the narrative. Once Keas returns to her people, she is subjected to the same rules that govern Khoi society but especially women. Since she is the only Khoi woman in the novel who can be defined as a ‘functional character’, the manifestation of patriarchy is especially prevalent in her case.

[p. 114]

In addition to what already has been said about patriarchy and women in section 4.2.3.2, an image of Keas as being the epitome of female subjugation is projected. She not only ‘obeys (Oasib and Damoeb) unprotestingly’ (p. 17), but she also with quiet acquiescence allows these two men to physically assault her. The old man, Oasib, does not understand her ‘quietness and obtuseness’ (p. 16) and misconstrues it as signs of disobedience. He then proceeds by beating her with his stick, scolding her for consorting with ‘Duusmanne’. All Oasib's wrath and bitterness at the defection of his people to the ‘white side’ finds expression in this act, supplemented by his words to Keas:

Do you perhaps think Heitsi Eibib can help yóu? Heitsi Eibib no longer speaks in our trees, Heitsi Eibib wears white man's clothes these days, Heitsi Eibib speaks white man's language from white man's Great Book! (p. 16)

After becoming Damoeb's wife but still torn by doubt and indecision about her true identity, Keas becomes intoxicated with liquor and the music at a Khoi feast. Blindly she delivers herself to the rhythm of the dance and, apparently unconscious of the circumstances, allows Ougaa and Hakwa certain liberties. This infuriates her husband who vents his fury first on Hakwa and then on Keas:

Damoeb beats Keas until he has no more strength left in his arms. She does not resist, does not even utter a groan, again and again rolls back to his chastising hand (p. 132).

Not only women's traditional ‘acceptance’ of male authority is contained in the above extract, but also their purported ‘masochism’.^7. Even after Damoeb has stopped his assault on her, Keas comes back for more.

The tragedy in real life for the South African black woman which is also reflected in this novel, is the double patriarchy to which she is subjected: that of her own society and that of the white man. Rosemary Ruether defines patriarchy as follows:

By patriarchy we mean not only the subordination of females to males but the whole structure of Father-ruled society: aristocracy over serfs, masters over slaves, king over subjects, racial overlords over colonized people (Ruether 1983:61 - my emphasis).

Already Keas had been used by Tom Muller to ‘tame the wild hunger in his body’, already she had given birth to his child, already she had been rejected as a possible wife for him and has to abide by decisions made for her. Whenever she finds herself in Tom's presence, her attitude is one of humility, subordination and slavish admiration. Cf. for example the following:

7. See for example Caplan, Paula J. 1985: The Myth of Women's Masochism, pp. 10-14.

[p. 115]

When she saw the migrant farmer (Tom), she swung her body in such a way that the child was behind her, and fell to her knees. Her eyes were fixed on the floor ... The two men could notice how her face trembled (p. 120)

Damoeb again lifted his eyes, to Keas who assiduously kept her eyes fixed to the ground (in Tom's presence - p. 122)

(Again in Tom's presence): Damoeb looks up at Keas who kneels so close to him, her hands tightly clasped together on her lap, her head submissively bowed ... (p. 123)

Inadvertently Keas overhears a group of deserters under the leadership of fugitive slaves and mutineers, with Hakwa as the interpreter, plotting an attack on the migrant farmers. Her only fear is for Tom's safety and hurriedly she runs to warn him of the imminent danger, even at the risk of being declared t'nau for a second time since she is now breaking her state of taboo:

... she tells (Tom) of the threatening danger as if it is a message of great joy. Only her lips move, her whole body is óne surrender to the joy which beams from her face and eyes. She looks only at Tom Muller's face, she tells it to hím only, she actually says only one word: You, you, you (p. 80)

After thanking her for warning them, he dismisses her unceremoniously with the words: ‘“Lea, thank you, but now you must go”’ (p. 82) and when she hesitates, he even becomes angry and impatient. Even worse is the reaction of Tom's wife:

‘“We are grateful that you have come to warn us, but now you must leave and never come again, do you hear! Take away your child of sin, do you hear! Why do you come here to humiliate my husband like this! Go! Why are you still waiting? Do you want me to summon my husband to drive you away? Do you think he wouldn't?”’ (p. 81)

And dutifully Keas leaves when told by Tom to do so.

(c) Sex object

It is inevitable that Keas, both as a woman and as a black, would be portrayed as a sex object by a real author/narrator/focalizer who has been indoctrinated by persistent stereotypes about black women in addition to a very strong patriarchal background.

As stated in 4.2.3.2, women in Khoi society, according to the novel, are no more than objects to be used and abused at will by their male counterparts. Keas does not escape this fate, in fact, her fate is compounded by the fact that she is an ‘outsider’ and considered a harlot since she has consorted with a white man and to all intents and purposes acquired dubious morals among the white community.

[p. 116]

We are also told that she is beautiful, especially as focalized by Damoeb, thus making her an object of desire. Her desirability is further enhanced by the fact that some members of her tribe, exclusively men, admire her adoption of white culture. Then, of course, the fact that she has brought into the world an ‘illegitimate’ child could be interpreted as an indication of lax morals.

Already having become the object of Tom's lust, Keas finds herself in the unenviable position - engendered by herself - of being in his and his wife's immediate proximity, making a meeting between them inevitable. On the two occasions when Keas appears in Tom's presence, he avoids her eyes (p. 123), gives no indication of knowing her, nor acknowledges the child he has sired. The only way out of this precarious position for Tom is to try and pass Keas off to someone of her own race. He therefore presents Damoeb with a horse, a rifle and ammunition with the words: ‘“I hear you now have Lea to care for ... A man must be able to defend his wife properly, is that not so?”’ (p. 123). Neither Keas nor Damoeb is fooled, for they both have the same thoughts: ‘Is the Whiteman so self-assured and unfeeling that he wants to redeem his debt with these gifts and at the same time bribe Damoeb to come and work for him?’ (p. 123). Nelly Furman (1985:61) states: ‘In a world defined by man, the trouble with woman is that she is at once an object of desire and an object of exchange’. Indeed, then as now the Keases of this world become the ‘relational sign’ between men.

It is significant that Keas' interlude with Tom belongs to the past and does not form part of the fabula. The only information we have about it, is supplied through Keas' thoughts which the EN penetrates. To a certain extent, this very fact helps to mitigate Tom's behaviour, especially when his treatment of Keas is compared to that of Khoi males. In these thoughts described by the EN, the reader is manipulated into choosing sides. It would appear that, even though Tom used Keas' body to satisfy his sexual needs and even though there is no evidence to suggest that Keas enticed or solicited him - the gift of a silver chain implies that rather he was the initiator - Keas' situation is entirely due to her own doing. It is suggested that white men have the right to ‘play’ with a servant; in contrast and according to her Khoi background, Keas expected much more from the relationship, and when these expectations were not fulfilled, she became a ‘broken’ person. She compounds the problem for herself by going in search of Tom under the pretext of returning to her people, thus prolonging her agony and exacerbating her abandonment. Indeed, as Mbye B. Cham (1987) asserts: ‘abandonment ... is predominantly a female condition’.

The more immediate objectification of Keas comes in the persons of the Gonakwa, Hakwa, and the Sonkwa, Ougaa. Khoi society, according to the story, severely censures a relationship between a Khoi woman and a Sonkwa (San/‘Bushman’). This becomes clear when Oasib shouts at Keas:

[p. 117]

Do you want to remain here so that wild animals devour you? Or so that a Sonkwa comes to take you as a wife? Do you want to bring this shame upon yourself? (p. 16)

At a feast where Keas' heartache and conflict drive her to drink too much, Oasib focalizes her and Ougaa's actions:

Keas dances with closed eyes and a gyrating body when she stumbles and falls. Ougaa so keenly helps her to get back on her feet that her dress tears. Keas laughs shrilly; shamelessly she humiliates herself with this Bushman by trampling on her self-respect as a married woman with stumbling feet. His lips thickly curled with anticipated pleasure, Ougaa begins to drag her away to the darkness (p. 130).

But it is especially for Hakwa that Keas is an object of desire. She dreads his ‘lecherous, imperious eyes on her body’ (p. 30). His marital status does not prevent him from making advances to her and openly expressing the wish to kwekwa (sleep) with her. He flirts with her and flatters her, calling her ‘a two-legged heaven’ (p. 129) and presenting her with a nerina with the words: ‘a nerina for a nerina’ (p. 56). When it appears that all his overtures come to nothing, he becomes sarcastic, insulting and threatening. She rejects his gift, ‘staring at the flower as if it is a snake’ and this infuriates him so much that he retorts: ‘“If my beard is not red enough for you, then you'll have to take Ougaa. A Sonkwa can get at a woman simply from any side... Widow Keas, Hakwa says you must become his concubine”’ (p. 56). He obviously refers to Tom's red beard. Once again, Oasib is the focalizer.

Twice Hakwa's advances to Keas lead to a fight between him and Damoeb and twice Keas is victimised - first by being declared t'nau and thus isolated from society and then being beaten almost to death by Damoeb.

Not only the men view Keas as a sex object - she herself sees her only functions as being those of procreation and copulation, no doubt reinforced by the double patriarchy she is subjected to and by the way women generally are socialized in a patriarchal structure. Very early in the story, in her incantation to Heitsi Eibib, she prays to be made happy and whole again and to be given milk in her breasts (p. 14). Alone in her hut at Oasib's kraal, she lets the karos slip from her shoulders and breasts, ‘soft curves, so willing, so willing’ (p. 30). Here in this flea- and lice-infested hut (p. 71), she often escapes in her imagination to her little room on the farm Mooiplaas where she kept her bed clean and warm, ‘her bed in which she had learnt to groan like the springs of her bed, had learnt that the whole world could assume the divine form and weight of one man’ (p. 73). All this information is supplied by the external narrator/focalizer.

[p. 118]

(d) Passive resignation

In addition to the fact that Keas is an almost non-speaking character, she is also described or focalized as ‘the quiet, yellow woman’ (p. 90) who seldom communicates with the other characters, even before her enforced isolation by being declared taboo.

Her ‘quietness’ is misconstrued by several characters, including Damoeb and Oasib, as haughtiness or obtuseness (cf. for example Kunibes' complaint to Oasib that Keas ‘pulls up her haughty nose at everything’ - p. 56), even though Damoeb detects at their very first meeting a great sadness in her eyes and wonders: ‘What could be the cause of her great pain?’ and he also notices ‘a kind of terrified cunning coming over her face’ when he grabs hold of her arm (p. 6).

After suffering the pain of rejection, it appears as if Keas has lost the will to live, accepting the treatment meted out to her, however humiliating, without resistance. In reply to Damoeb's enquiry about the purpose of her visit to the stone grave of Heitsi Eibib, she tells him: ‘“I have to get medicine from our ancestor...”’ and at the grave, in humble submission, she pleads for happiness, restoration and fertility. A further indication of her ‘brokenness’ is when she tells Oasib that she feels like a broken thing and has come back to be made whole again (p. 15).

Added to her great sadness is the subjection to patriarchy which together make her a robot-like thing and a martyr. For her, despite her obvious preference for white culture, sleeping with a man is tantamount to marriage in Khoi custom. It is therefore difficult for her to comprehend white attitude to such a serious matter. She insists that Tom is her husband (p. 31) and now that he has deserted her, she feels like and considers herself a kind of widow (cf. in this regard Hakwa addressing her as ‘widow Keas’ - p. 56) and is consequently prepared to undergo the physical suffering a Khoi widow has to submit to. The EN penetrates her thoughts on this issue and again her resignation is emphasised:

She is a kind of widow. Resignedly she thinks that if a Hottentot widow wants to take a man again, she has to give away all her possessions, have her little finger chopped off, have incisions made into her thighs until the blood flows and must allow the headman to urinate over her. Apparently it rinses away her past. She does not feel any disgust anymore, only a sad resignation (p. 72).

The gift of a tortoise from Damoeb to ease her enforced isolation, becomes an important symbol of her silence and resignation, but also of her indecision, lack of direction and ill-fortune which is the story of her life. Often she stares at the animal and equates its movements with her own: ‘For hours she can sit and watch how the animal struggles to get somewhere which is nowhere ... she feels she herself is such an old, old tortoise who can while away its days, or can crawl

[p. 119]

forward without making any real progress, so stupid and stubborn, and oh, so slowly ... so slowly ...’ (p 32).

The thirteen shields which together form the tortoise's shell is an indication of ill-fatedness: ‘The Christians had taught her the number thirteen is a bad omen’ (p. 71) and, like the tortoise who pulls its head into its shell when it senses danger, she decides to also withdraw into her shell as a defence against humiliation and hurt (p. 74). Having neither the courage nor the inclination to do so, she transposes her own impulse to break loose on to the tortoise by setting it free.

(e) The stranger/outsider

One of the main causes of Keas' silence and resignation and closely linked to her conflict, is the fact that she is a stranger even among her own people and an outsider in both Khoi and white society. Rabie's theme of the outsider-figure, here in embryonic form, is later repeated and expanded in the third novel of the Bolandia series, A man apart, but then the central figure, Douw Prins, is the outsider because of his mixed race.

Keas is by no means a product of miscegenation - in fact, she is a full-blooded Khoi like the rest of her race - so what causes her ‘strangeness’ and outsider status? To what extent is she herself responsible for her situation and to what extent does she become the victim of circumstances?

Admittedly, Keas' ‘strange’ appearance and “otherness” (e.g. her skin without traditional Khoi make-up, her ‘white people's clothes’, the fact that she speaks ‘white people's language’, etc.) already set her apart from other Khoi women. For this reason she has to undergo the ceremony of ‘making different’ since she had forgotten ‘all the right things’. But it is not exactly these things that cause her outsider position. She has transgressed the most fundamental of Khoi laws by consorting with someone of another race and bringing a half-caste into the world. It is this child which causes her ostracism. Khamab wants to know from Oasib: ‘“If you call Hakwa a stranger, then what about Keas and her white-mouse child you yourself brought back to the kraal?”’ (p. 23 - my emphasis). Much later, when Damoeb informs Oasib that he wants to marry Keas, Eigaab, son and successor to Oasib, retorts: ‘“Must the bastard-child of a castaway wench be allowed to come into the captain's family?”’ (p. 94 - my emphasis).

This severe censure of Keas and her child by Khoi society becomes apparent on different occasions and from different characters. When Damoeb sees the child for the first time and notices her ‘hair which is more smooth than frizzy, and the little face which is almost as naked-meat white as that of the Smooth-haired ones’ (p. 7), he does not openly comment but his reaction by uttering the expletive ‘Igoge soreb!’ (literally ‘the sun dies!’) says much about his attitude to and

[p. 120]

condemnation of miscegenation. Oasib is more explicit in his condemnation when he scolds and beats Keas for getting involved with white men (p. 16).

Both Damoeb and Oasib are the main focalizers of Keas and her plight, both are the severest censors of her cohabitation with a white man but strangely enough, both are the most compassionate, if not the only compassionate ones, towards her. It is through Damoeb's focalization that we learn about Keas' acute awareness of the kraal's women's disapproval of her child, so much so that she covers the child's long brown hair with a pointed cap and leaves her hut only to work, never to engage in conversation with them (p. 33). Despite Damoeb's compassion, he cannot prevent himself from brutally calling the child a ‘halfnaatjie’ (half-breed - p. 117).

Of the character-bound focalizers, it is especially Oasib who focalizes Keas and who is aware of her great sadness and outsider-position. As captain of the kraal he welcomes her back into the fold but it nevertheless takes a long time before he fully accepts her and her child as members of his tribe. Realising that he has come to the end of his life and would be succeeded by his son, Eigaab, and ultimately by his grandson, Damoeb, Oasib is fully aware of the tribe's rejection of Keas and her ‘white’ child and would therefore not sanction Damoeb's succession if he marries Keas (p. 56).

Oasib's deep compassion for Keas surfaces time and again in his thoughts which the EN penetrates. He thinks: ‘Poor Keas. Even if she can one day feel at home again among the Khoi-Khoin, what about her long-haired child? How many bastards have come into the country in his lifetime? How many different kinds of bastards?’ (p. 86) and with a sense of despondency he remembers that Keas' child is an Afrikaner too, one of the ‘backward, mangy-dirty caboodle of half-breeds ... neither fish nor flesh’ (p. 100). His condemnation of Keas and her child sprouts mainly from his concern about the direction his people is taking, including his beloved grandson, Damoeb, who is prepared to relinquish Khoi values and tradition in his pursuit of Keas and in exchange for white culture.

Yet it is Oasib who acknowledges that an inevitable mixture of blood has taken/is taking place and is the first to accept Keas' child as one of the new ‘race’ emerging at the Cape. He is also the first to suggest that the issue of their status has to be addressed. Khoi and white migrant farmers have been discussing various issues affecting both sectors without discussing the ‘status’ of the emergent Afrikaners. He articulates his thoughts, addressing the child: ‘“To think we have not said anything about you, eh, little Afrikaner? You who are neither Khoi, nor Honkhoikwa, and yet a little of both?”’ and then instructs Keas to leave the child in his hut (p. 125).

Much later, Oasib notices the child's marginalized position, how she is mocked and bullied by Khoi children in the same manner she is treated by white children.

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He tries to alleviate her loneliness by telling her traditional Khoi folktales and it is during such a story-telling session that Oasib, fierce protector of Khoi custom and tradition, dies, signifying the all too obvious symbolic death of the Khoi-Khoin.

(f) Keas' conflict

Conflict, be it an inner conflict or conflict between two individuals, an individual and society, an individual and forces beyond its control, etc., provides important indicators to certain characteristics or traits inherent in a character.

Keas' external appearance which is time and again described or focalized, together with her double names of Keas and Lea, her bilingualism, etc., are only external manifestations of a duality or ambivalence within and imposed upon her by external factors. This duality/ambivalence finds expression in her conflict with Khoi and white society, resulting in her outsider position and ultimately her becoming the ‘quiet yellow woman’ who is in conflict with herself and whose only meaningful communication is with herself.

She has been brought up by white people and adopted white values in respect of dress, language, religion and culture. As an orphaned child she had no choice in the matter, while her benefactors took no cognisance of her Khoi background. Their only objective, it would appear, was to ‘civilise’ her. The irony of it all is that when she gives birth to a child fathered by a white man, this ‘civilising mission’ comes to an abrupt end when she is made aware of the fact that she is a ‘Hottentot’ who can never be assimilated into white society. In the final analysis, it is this rejection of her as a person but more especially as a mother who has to bring up her child in its ancestral culture that leads to her conflict which in essence is a conflict of identity.

Yet this conflict of identity comes about not only because of Keas' ambivalence, but is rooted in the deep-seated, historical and ‘traditional’ dichotomy of centre and periphery which encompasses several other binary oppositions such as male and female, black and white, culture and nature, civilisation and barbarism, etc. Mineke Schipper (1989:12) points out that

Western culture as a power centre appears to be even more unassailable, despite the forces which try to penetrate that centre from the periphery. He who controls information, also controls culture.

This centre-periphery dichotomy can be translated in a narrow sense to Keas' situation and in a broader sense to the situation of women in general and the black woman in particular. While Keas is by no means a peripheral character in the novel, the fact remains that in both Khoi and white society she is pushed to the very periphery of human existence, although in varying degrees. She finds white

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society an impenetrable fortress, in spite of the fact that she aspired in different forms to acquire white culture, even at the risk of being ostracised by her own community. For her, it is not a question of attaining parity with the white male - at best her quest is for acceptance into the white community, a quest which is confounded by statements forcibly made by several white characters, including Tom when he tells Oasib:

I regard captain Oasib as my friend ... But our experiences of the majority of Hottentots have led us to believe that they are not our equals in Christian virtue and probity, but ignorant children of nature. Only when they are in our service and under our discipline, can we try to civilise and christianise them ... (p. 121).

Keas' exclusion from and marginalization by white society illustrate in a microcosmic way women's situation in general, despite all the hard work they put into progressing to the centre.

Right at the beginning of the narrative, one is already bemused by Keas' reaction to her rejection: on the one hand she wishes to return to Heitsi Eibib and her people to ‘be made whole again’ (this is what she tells Oasib); on the other hand she flees to the mountains in pursuit of Tom after learning that he had trekked into the interior of the country (this emerges from her interior monologue as well as from words expressed by Tom's wife: ‘“Why do you run after Tom into the wilderness? Do you think he'll look at a Hottentot wench again?”’). This behaviour is only the forerunner of a whole series of paradoxical, bordering on the schizophrenic, actions on the part of Keas. A few examples will suffice:

While she is being portrayed as one who displays ‘quiet resignation’ to her fate, she also becomes determined and defiant when the situation demands it; despite her continued humiliation and subjugation, she has a proud disposition; she is prepared to stand up to Tom's wife and even gets the better of her, yet she is reduced to a cringing, submissive creature when Tom scolds her; she vehemently refuses to have the mixture of sheepfat, soot and red clay applied to her body, yet she herself covers her face with the same mixture to convince Tom of her Khoi background; while she cannot hide her disgust for Khoi traditions and tries to maintain the values acquired from whites, she is nevertheless prepared to endure whatever is expected of her from Khoi society; her love for Tom excludes all other men from her life, yet she takes Damoeb as her husband; while she aspires to raise her child in white Christian culture, she leaves the child behind in Oasib's kraal so that her ‘smooth-haired child can acquire her people's language and customs’ (p. 137) as well; while she subjects herself completely to Khoi patriarchy, she defies Khoi laws when danger lurks for the white migrant farmers, etc.

These are undoubtedly the actions of a confused, erratic mind, brought about by the conflict within her. In an interior monologue Keas acknowledges the fact that

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‘they (the Khoi) have received her with more cordial hospitality than a white person would ever receive a different kind of person’ (p. 30). Since she was not good enough for Tom, she returned to the filth and stench of Khoi living, but then her return is ‘provisional, uncertain and perhaps unimportant’ (p. 30). This perhaps is the key to Keas' final choice, which in any case is predictable from the very start.

Initially, and for a long time after returning to her people, Keas finds it almost impossible to adapt to Khoi lifestyle. Her plight is exacerbated by heartache, isolation, rejection, humiliation, fear and mockery, and it is no wonder that she assiduously clings to the culture she has adopted from whites and to memories of happier times at Mooiplaas. For instance, she insists on being called by her white people's name, Lea; twice she discards the traditional Khoi attire in favour of white people's clothes and she speaks to her child in white people's language. Likewise, her thoughts are often occupied by her past experiences which she invariably compares to her present situation.

Despite her ‘anders-maak’, Keas gradually but unmistakably moves in the direction of white culture once again. She tells Damoeb:

I have been made different according to the laws of the Khoi-Khoin, but I shall never be able to live like a true Khoi woman ... Once one has become accustomed to white people's habits ... then one can no longer tolerate dirty skin-clothes and sheepfat and soot on one's body ... I shall never be able to become a good Khoi woman again ... (p. 95).

In a stream of consciousness ‘she knows undeniably: a good Hottentot I can never become again; for too long I've been accustomed to better things, even though they were tin mugs and discarded bedclothes’ (p. 115). In her heart Keas has resolved her conflict, but how to resolve it in society remains the problem. It is in this respect that Damoeb becomes the helper in realising her objective.

Already deeply impressed by white culture and openly expressing his admiration for their expertise, as well as being deeply in love with Keas, Damoeb becomes an easy prey when Keas tries to convince him of the ‘superiority’ of white culture. Gradually and none too subtly she instructs him in the ways of white people, also intending to teach him how to till the soil and cultivate vegetables: ‘She must convince Damoeb that one can in an instant harvest more delicious food in a vegetable garden than by gathering forage food the whole day in the veld’ (p. 116).

Damoeb's decision to leave the kraal and become an indentured labourer in the employ of white migrant farmers has been initiated partly by Tom Muller but more importantly by Keas. He promises Keas: ‘“I shall wear white man's clothes if you become my wife. I shall easily learn white man's language because you speak it so

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beautifully ... I shall do everything you require of me. I shall become like you if you become my wife ...”’ (p. 96).

Oasib is already aware of the fact that his energetic young grandson, previously full of pride and zest for life, is degenerating due to Keas' influence. When Damoeb informs him that he and Keas have already become husband and wife and adds: ‘“We shall have a feast as soon as I return from commando ... Keas does not want a feast accompanied by all the old things... Later we shall marry like the whites. I want to become a Christian like Keas”’ (p. 101), Oasib cannot hide his deep shock, resentment and disappointment (‘he looks as if his grandson had slapped him across the face’). He nevertheless recognises Damoeb's deep love for Keas and the fact that ‘Damoeb wants to become like a white man’ (p. 105), and therefore grudgingly gives his blessing to the young man's decisions, recognising that ‘... this is the great transformation in our nation's history’ (p. 124).

In this manner, Damoeb facilitates Keas' ultimate choice and when both of them leave the kraal to go to the white people, they look back to see Keas' hut in flames - once again a very obvious symbol of Keas' final choice but also of the destruction of the Khoi nation.

But this is not simply a matter of re-adopting white lifestyle and values in the case of Keas. Her return to Khoi society has left its mark upon her and in the end she does not reject Khoi culture out of hand. Marrying Damoeb, albeit on the rebound, already indicates her part-acceptance of Khoi culture. However, the most important indication of her recognition of her true background, culture and tradition, is when she returns her child, Katryntjie, to Oasib's kraal to be initiated into the culture and language of her own people. In yet another obvious symbolic gesture, a further indication of this emerges: the silver chain necklace^8. given to her by Tom and to which she clings with so much fervour that nobody could persuade her to take it off. When she takes it off and hangs it around Damoeb's neck with the words: ‘“You must always wear it”’ (p. 95), she symbolically unshackles herself, not only from her obsession with Tom, but also from the bonds imposed upon her by two widely divergent cultures and, in a sense, establishing her freedom both as a person and as a woman.

A salient feature which can be extracted from Keas' conflict, is her low self-esteem which, to a certain extent is as ambivalent as her actions. By means of interior monologue, verbal articulation and action she indicates that she is a ‘bad Hottentot’ (cf. Toiings in Mikro's novels), ‘a dirty, backward Hottentot-woman who does not know she is dirty and unloved’ (p. 73). Ignorance, naïveté and the utter rejection of herself as a worthy human being are encapsulated in these thoughts. It appears that she has reached such a nadir in her existence that she no longer cares what happens to her or what treatment is meted out to her, as becomes

8. From documented reports by the first visitors to and the first settlers at the Cape, we learn that the ‘customary’ form of trade was by exchanging trinkets, tobacco and liquor for the indigenes' land, herds and flocks. This practice was extended to the indigenous young woman especially, as a strategy of dispossessing her of her virginity, of enslaving her and of subjugating her to a double patriarchy.

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clear in the same interior monologue: she does not mind being t'nau or undergoing the bitter suffering in her attempt to adapt to Khoi lifestyle or being beaten by Damoeb.

Even after becoming Damoeb's wife she is still torn so much by conflict (NB: at this occasion she once again wears ‘white people's clothes’) that she becomes inebriated with ‘white man's liquor’ at a Khoi feast, ‘gulping down the entire bowl of wine with one convulsive swig’ (p. 128),^9. with the result that she has to steady herself against the wagon and several of the men try to abuse her. The other women are shocked by her behaviour, she shouts at Hakwa: ‘“Let go of me. This wench wants to dance!”’ and when another woman attempts to speak to her, she hits at her with a tortoise-shell and with a voice trembling with grief, cries: ‘“Leave me alone ... I am just dirt!”’ (p. 130). It is only after receiving a thorough beating from Damoeb that Keas calms down and fully accepts who and what she is, creating the impression that women, especially black women, need the chastising hand and even physical force of males to coerce them into submission.

Although the main cause of Keas' low self-esteem is the rejection and humiliation by the very people who raised her, other contributory factors can be identified. In fact, this rejection is simply the culmination of all the factors which socialized Keas (and women in general) into the belief that she is dirty, sinful and not worthy to be the equal of man. Perhaps Rabie subscribes to the Augustinian view that woman is prone to sin and disorder and particularly responsible for the sin and disorder which govern our planet (see Ruether 1983:chapter 4), which brings us to yet another of the several contradictions in the novel: the Khoi are portrayed as a people who cannot conceive of God, yet they, especially the women, are evaluated according to Christian values. Admittedly Keas has adopted the Christian faith and should therefore be aware of its laws and regulations, but in typically Afrikaner tradition the author goes about selectively in the application of those laws to blacks. Keas has been taught to ‘believe that the Lord loves all His creatures and that she must never doubt that love shall ultimately conquer all ... she must remain cheerful ...’ (p. 116) and that ‘lightning shall strike her down if she blasphemes the name of the Lord’ (p. 73). No matter how great her suffering, she must sit back passively and remain cheerful, for the Lord knows best - that is Christian the message to the suffering masses!

The Keas at the end of the fabula is still the ambivalent character we meet at its beginning, but now her conflict has been resolved, or so it appears. What is not articulated but what can undeniably be extracted from the text, is that the descendants of the Keases and Damoebs will remain in a vacuum somewhere between two worlds and can only gain some recognition by subjecting themselves to white supervision, discipline and hegemony, as is illustrated by the previously cited words of Tom Muller and by Keas' and Damoeb's choice at the end to indenture themselves to the white migrant farmers. Rabie's novel, then, is merely

9. One of the several invocations in the novel of the persistent stereotype of the Khoi's love of and easy succumbing to ‘white man's liquor’.

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a reinforcement of the purported ‘ek-het-maar-net-saam-met-die-baas-gekom’-syndrome (literally: ‘I have but only accompanied my boss’, i.e. image of the ‘coloureds’ as eternal children), popular in the Afrikaans narrative before 1948 and so forcibly challenged by Jakes Gerwel in his study Literatuur en Apartheid (1988).

4.3 Concluding remarks

In the above chapter the main purpose was to examine the images of the black woman, Keas, but also to illustrate that the images of black women projected by a progressive author such as Jan Rabie do not differ markedly from those projected by his predecessors, although one has to concede that the blatancy of the images now become somewhat more subtle and a more balanced view is given by allowing the black characters to be the focalizers. Yet this strategy once again becomes questionable, since the views expressed (by blacks) reflect the very same stereotypes attached to them by whites. The perceptions of the Keas of the 1730s and the perceptions of her sisters near the end of the second millennium remain basically the same.

What particularly emerges from the novel is that women must carry the blame for their situation. In particular, black women in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society are solely responsible for their marginalization. In fact, they bear a double burden of blame, being subjected to a double patriarchy, having the audacity to try and penetrate the centre of a double society and aspiring to have double values. The aspects of genuine love and desire, of sincerity of purpose, are not brought into play. It would seem, as in Keas' case, that black women go about in a very irresponsible manner in the creation of a race of ‘half-breeds’ and by so doing, subject their descendants to an outsider status which causes a myriad of psychological and emotional problems and which in turn make it impossible for them to assert themselves as whole and worthy human beings.

I have also attempted to show that, despite Rabie's claim of the novel being an illustration of the emergence of ‘browner and whiter Afrikaners’ and of influences going out from both black and white, the novel actually is an illustration of what Edward W. Said states:

... cultures have always been inclined to impose complete transformations on other cultures, receiving these other cultures not as they are but as, for the benefit of the receiver, they ought to be (Said 1978:67 - my emphasis).