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

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Chapter 7
Conclusion

This study does not pretend to be the last word on the subject of the portrayal of the black woman in the Afrikaans novel or South African literature generally during the first forty years of apartheid rule. Much remains to be looked into. It has, thus, been selectively representative rather than exhaustive. There are still many other avenues through which the subject can be explored, for example how the black woman is perceived by white writers in English, by black male authors and especially by black female writers.

In a society where black women are oppressed on three levels, it is to be expected that these oppressions would be continued and reinforced by other covert means, a ‘hidden’ form of oppression but nevertheless real and effective. It has often been asserted by Afrikaans novelists themselves that they write for a white audience. For example, André P. Brink stated in an interview: ‘When I write I have in mind the Afrikaner ... who is secluded from reality’ (sapem, March 1989). While it may be argued that their intention is to make Afrikaners aware of what is happening in the country, having wilfully shut their eyes and ears to that reality, it may also be argued that this literature is read by predominantly Afrikaners and therefore a powerful tool of indoctrination and propagation of the ideas of the dominant class.

During the time of slavery it was not uncommon practice for a female slave to be stripped of her clothing, tied hand and foot to incapacitate her, to prevent her from retaliating or defending herself, and beaten all over the body but especially across the breasts for the most trivial offence. In one of the most popular slave narratives of the period, Moses Grandy related the miserable predicament of slave mothers:

On the estate I am speaking of, those women who had sucking children suffered much from their breasts becoming full of milk, the infants being left at home. They therefore could not keep up with the other hands: I have seen the overseer beat them with raw hide, so that the blood and milk flew mingled from their breasts (quoted in Davis 1982:9).

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The punishment for slaves in South Africa was no less brutal when one takes into account the findings of different researchers, for example, Frederickson (1981:92) concludes:

The laws of Holland [in the eighteenth century] ... still permitted torture and medieval methods of execution, making it possible to turn public punishment of slaves into sadistic spectacles designed to strike terror into the heart of the slave population in general.

A fictionalised account of the punishment meted out to slave women is provided by none other than André P. Brink in his novel A Chain of Voices, as we have seen in Chapter 5. Today, centuries later, the black woman seems to be as incapacitated and punished. Education for blacks has never been a priority of the South African government and education for the black woman even less of a priority, aided and abetted by a strong patriarchal structure. Her hands are therefore tied, she is attacked in a language which in most cases is not her own; she cannot retaliate by articulating - by means of the written word - her displeasure at the way she is being portrayed or by painting her own portrait in literature. Like the abused slave woman Lydia whose clothes are torn from her body, the black woman is stripped of her dignity and humanity in literature.

When considering the Afrikaans novel during the period under review, it emerges that the portrayal of the black woman has not remained static. From an extremely peripheral role, from a one-dimensional figure, she has developed towards a central figure during the last ten years of the period under review. From manipulating her presence in the Afrikaans novel to propagate certain ideas (Venter and Mikro), from trying to show that her outsider position - especially that of the ‘coloured’ - has been brought about by her own doing through miscegenation (Rabie, Mikro), the Afrikaans novel has progressed to the stage where the black woman's invidious position in an apartheid society is clearly illuminated (Joubert and Brink). However, I have shown that unconsciously, like a mental heritage, the ingrained attitudes of whites about black women somehow filter through in spite of this sympathetic approach to her.

All those early stereotypes and myths about the black woman's ‘excessive’ sexuality are further exacerbated by a number of other images. It is implied and sometimes explicitly expressed that the rural black woman is a more ideal icon of womanhood than her urban counterpart, that staying in the reserves - a word implying a safe haven like for example ‘wild-life reserve’ - is ultimately more preferable for the black woman from an Afrikaner perspective. Furthermore, it is suggested that the quiet, unprotesting black woman is a more ideal partner for the black male.

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In four out of the five novels I have discussed, the Christian faith is invoked to subjugate the black woman. It is suggested that she must accept her fate unprotestingly, for her position in society is the will of God. While it is widely accepted among Christians that this same God provides humans with the intellect and skills to determine their own destiny, somehow this very reasoning has not been applied to the black woman in the Afrikaans novel. While it is argued that the ‘black savages’ cannot conceive of God, they are nevertheless evaluated according to Christian values, or rather, the way these values are interpreted by white Afrikaners.

As evidence and reflection of the black woman's devalued status in South African society, but also as evidence of the power of the oppressed's resistance to apartheid, one can mention the few novels in which the black woman features as a meaningful character: the five novels discussed in the foregoing chapters plus those by Wilma Stockenström and Dalene Matthee, as well as Brink's The Wall of the Plague. Significantly, five out the eight appeared only after 1976 - the black woman in all of them being the central or near-central character - proving that Afrikaner authors have largely been oblivious to the situation of black women before the children's revolt of 1976 shocked them out of their complacency.

It cannot be disputed that an extremely grim picture of the black woman is painted in the Afrikaans novel. While these pictures persist or are continued to be painted, one's first impulse is to conclude that liberation for the black woman shall remain an unattainable myth. Yet, throughout their long and bitter struggles against oppression in all its revolting forms, black women in South Africa have displayed and still display singular strengths and fortitude which their white sisters should try to emulate. With Langston Hughes (1926/1976:309) and without fear of contradiction, black women can truly say today

We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.