South%20Africa

1
South Africas Apartheid

• Consequences and
• Cultural Responses

2
Outline

• History of Apartheid (e.g. Cry, My Beloved
  Country Cry Freedom)
• Consequences Responses
• 1 Long Nights Journey into the Day
• (Literary Responses)
• 2 the poems about physical sufferings
• 3 Stories on Race Relations and anti-Apartheid
  movements (The following two weeks)
• 4 about Gender Relations (The following two
  weeks)
• 5 more indirect styles --Foe
• 6 tradition and individual vs. society The
  Prophetess
• (The Other Cultural Examples)
• 7 musiccrossover style 8 art works

3
History Triangle formed

• 1652 --The Dutch East India Company arrived,
  displacing the Bantu-speaking black Africans
• 1795 -- The British seized Cape Town, and the
  Afrikaaners began the 'Great Trek' to find new
  bases. 
• 1814 The British displaced the Dutch, who moved
  inland to Natal, the Orange Free State, and the
  Transvaal
• 1867 -- 1886 Gold and diamond discovered in these
  areas ? Boer War (1899-1902)

The Dutch (Boer, Afrikaans) The Dutch (Boer, Afrikaans) The Dutch (Boer, Afrikaans)
The British Xhosa (the blacks)
4
History domination of Afrikaans

• 1910 -- the four colonies were joined together
  under the Act of the Union, and the British
  handed the administration of the country over to
  the White locals.
• 1913/14 -- The Mines and Works Act and the Land
  act a 'color bar' was legalized and blacks were
  prohibited from owning land anywhere but in
  'native reserves'--7 percent of the whole.
• 1931-- South Africa gained its independence from
  Britain
• 50,000 white farmers have twelve times as much
  land for cultivation and grazing as 14 million
  rural blacks
• 1930s the government tried to mechanize
  agricultural practices in rural South Africa. ?
  Fewer black workers were needed. severe droughts
  ? urban migration

5
History The Beginnings of Apartheid

• the Native Lands and Trust Act of 1936 --denied
  the blacks the right to own land restricting
  them from purchasing land outside the areas
  reserved for the various native peoples.
• the Native Representation Bill
• eliminated any form of black African
  representation in the House of Assembly.

6
Apartheid --institutionalized

• 1948 Apartheid institutionalized since Afrikaner
  Nationalists won the election
• a method of divide and rule to counteract the
  so-called "black danger" Afrikaner rulers saw
  Africans as threatening to overrun or engulf them
  by their sheer numbers.
• Brutal racism imprisonment, police killings and
  murder (e.g. confiscation of property and the
  forced removal of millions of blacks )

7
Apartheid

• Other examples of the laws -- Population
  Registration Act Group Areas Act The Bantu
  Authorities Act (or Homeland Act)
• Passes Black men and women, or even people who
  appeared to possibly be black, were required by
  law to carry passes at all times stating who they
  were and why they belonged in a certain area.

8
Consequences Shantytown, Lack of Resources and
Tsosti

• E. g. Sophiatown, Soweto near Johannesburg
• In crowded, often unsanitary, and potentially
  dehumanizing living conditions
• Materials used for the houses-- corrugated tin,
  newspaper, cardboard boxes, and whatever else
  could be found to keep out wind and rain.
• "Most of the yards had a single lavatory and one
  tap which were shared by 150 to 200 residents"
  (Mattera, p. 50).
• Education 1938 -- fewer than one-third of the
  country's black school-aged children were
  actually enrolled in schools.
• Tsotsi the many black youths who turned to
  street hustling (theft or murder). E.g. Cry, the
  Beloved Country -- Absalom Kumalo.

9
Examples Cry, the Beloved Country (1995)

• Setting (written in 1947), post WWII
  Johannesburg
• An aging Zulu pastor goes there to search for his
  son, as well as his brother and sister, only to
  find the son guilty of murdering a white man who
  was devoted to the cause of racial justice. ?
  the relations between the two fathers.

10
Examples Cry, the Beloved Country

• Issues Urban migration ? the breaking of African
  tribes poor living conditions of the blacks in
  the city ? Tsotsi, fear and possibilities of
  reconciliation.

11
Examples Cry, the Beloved Country (1995)

• ""There is fear in the land. And fear in the
  hearts of all who live there. And fear puts an
  end to understanding and the need to understand.
  So how shall we fashion such a land when there is
  fear in the heart? The white man will put more
  locks on his door and get a fine fierce dog, but
  the beauty of the trees and of the stars, these
  things we shall forego.
• "Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child
  that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not
  love the earth too deeply.

Let him not be too moved when the birds of his
land are singing, nor give too much of his heart
to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him
of all if his gives too much. Yes cry, cry, the
beloved country.".
12
Examples Cry, the Beloved Country

• "For it is the dawn that has come,
• as it has come for a thousand centuries, never
  failing. But when that dawn will come, of our
  emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the
  bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.

13
Note U.S. vs. South Africa
U.S. S.A.
modern, industrialized Western democracy with an oppressed but culturally assimilated black minority an African, third-world country with a white minority enjoying a first-world living standard
separate schools, transportation, and eating facilities native reserves and locations
50-60s resistance movements 50-60s resistance movements
1964 the Civil Rights Act 1965 the Voting Rights Act. 1960s -- apartheid reached its zenith.
14
Resistance movements (1)

• 1943 Nelson Mandela ? ANC PAC
• 1946 Miners strike
• 1960 -- The Abolition of Passes and Coordination
  of Documents Act (? Sharpville Massacre) a large
  group of blacks in Sharpeville refused to carry
  their passes the government declared a state of
  emergency. The emergency lasted for 156 days,
  leaving 69 people dead and 187 people wounded.
  (source)
• 1960s -- the banning of African National
  Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress
  (PAC) ? International sanctions and sabbotage
• state of emergency (1960 1989) those who went
  on demonstration can be sentenced to death,
  banished or imprisoned.

15
Resistance movements (1) example

• Sharpville Massacre on March 21, 1960, in
  Sharpeville. 69 people were killed, including 8
  women and 10 children, and of the 180 people who
  were wounded, 31 were women and 19 were children.
  

• Our Sharpville p. B 10
• I was playing hopscotch on the slate
• When the miners roared past in lorries,
• Their arms raised, signals at a crossing,
• Their chanting foreign and familiar
• Like the call and answer of road gangs
• Across the veld, building hot arteries
• From the heart of the Transvaal

16
Resistance movements (2)

• 1970 ? Black Consciousness In Steven Biko's own
  words, 'we black people should all the time keep
  in mind that South Africa is our country and that
  all of it belongs to us' ? e.g. Cry Freedom
• -- insists on Black autonomy
• Uprisings
• language education (? Soweto uprising, the
  beginning of the end)

17
Examples Cry Freedom (1987)

• Plot South African journalist Donald Woods is
  forced to flee the country after attempting to
  investigate the death in custody of his friend
  the black activist Steve Biko.
• Opening The raid on Crossroads squatters camp
• Ending Soweto uprising
• Bikos ideas
• Black Consciousness
• his speech
• his self defense (naked racism)
• The visit to a black township
• Afrikaners version
• Last view of landscape

18
Resistance movements Soweto Student Uprising

• "It was a picture that got the worlds attention
  A frozen moment in time that showed 13-year-old
  Hector Peterson dying after being struck down by
  a policeman's bullet.  At his side was his
  17-year-old sister.  (source)

19
Apartheid Repeal

• 1980s International sanctions radicalization
  of resistance movements ?
• Some minor laws (e.g. interracial marriage) were
  abolished by 1990
• 1985-1988, the P.W. Botha governments
  elimination of black oppositions
• 1991 -- President de Klerk obtained the repeal of
  the remaining apartheid laws and called for the
  drafting of a new constitution.
• 1993 -- a multiracial, multiparty transitional
  government was approved, and fully free elections
  were held in 1994, which gave majority
  representation to the African National Congress.

20
Response 1 Long Nights Journey into the Day

• South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation
  Commission (TRC)
• Purpose Restorative Justice, rather than
  retributive justice
• . . . Restorative justice. And this is the
  option that we have chosen. But there is justice.
  the perpetrators don't get off scot free. They
  have to confess publicly, in the full glare of
  television lights, that they did those ghastly
  things. And that's pretty, pretty tough."--
  Desmond Tutu
• Since the past cannot be un-lived, we have to
  face it.? To establish as complete as possible
  the causes and the extent of the gross violation
  of human rights.
• Two commissions TRC HRV (Human Rights
  Violation) to hear stories of the victims and
  survivors of traumas.

21
Response 1 Long Nights Journey into the Day

• Case 1
• Amy Biehl-- Amy Biehl, an American student in
  South Africa working with the ANC, was killed by
  four Black youths during political unrest in
  Guguletu township.
• Why they kill -- "Killing someone like her
  exposed both our anger and the conditions under
  which we lived. If we had been living reasonably,
  we would not have killed her."-- Easy Nofemela
  on the killing of Amy Biehl

22
Long Nights Journey into the Day

• Case 2. "Cradock 4." Eric Taylor, a white
  person who had worked (and killed) to uphold the
  apartheid government and who now had a change of
  heart and was remorseful for his acts.
• His way of killing beat the four persons (who
  were supposed to be movement leaders, but one was
  actually unknown to them) to death and then burn
  them.
• (clips 1his belief, 2 his change )
• The widows refused to agree with amnesty.

23
Long Nights Journey into the Day

• Case 3. Robert McBride-- an ANC activist
• "No one has apologized to me yet for either
  oppressing me directly or indirectly or happily
  benefitting from my oppression"-- Robert McBride
  on apology
• Is he a terrorist? Clip MaBride vs. a victims
  family

24
Long Nights Journey into the Day

• Case 4. Guguletu 7--the story of seven young men
  who were killed in what now appears to have been
  a set-up designed to make the apartheid police
  look as if they had killed a group of dangerous
  terrorists.
• Mbelo as a black policeman/informant
• the process of reconciliation

25
Questions to ponder (1) What is truth? What is
justice?

• TRC presents conflicting testimonies
• Archbishop Tutu refers the past as a jigsaw
  puzzle of which the TRC report is only a piece,
  and alludes to a search for the clues that lead
  . . . To a truth that will . . . never be fully
  revealed. (TRC report 4, qtd in Graham 11).
• Factual and forensic truths vs. personal and
  narrative truths
• Desmond Tutu on restorative versus retributive
  justice

26
Questions to ponder (1) What is justice?

• Cases in Contrast
• The endless hunting for Nazi regime supporters
  
• Absalom in Cry, my Beloved Country.
• The US The Washington Post June 8, 2000 - "The
  nation's war on drugs unfairly targets African
  Americans, who are far more likely to be
  imprisoned for drug offenses than whites, even
  though far more whites use illegal drugs than
  blacks,.... Overall, black men are sent to
  prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of
  white men.... Overall, one in 20(1/20) black men
  over the age of 18 is in a state or federal
  prison compared with one in 180 (1/180) white
  men."

27
Questions (2) How to resolve large-scale
conflicts

• law enforcement, public policy,
• non-violent demonstrations,
• contracts, treaties
• use of force and imposed peace by the victor over
  the vanquished.
• TRC dialogue and collaborative problem solving,
  arbitration, mediation,? Truth is the Road to
  Reconciliation?
• A related question what drive some people to
  brutal killings? How do we avoid making errors
  we are induced to make by historic circumstances?
  

28
Q (3) How do we face (collective) violence
survive trauma?

• To REPRESS it, to seek VENGEANCE, RETRIBUTION,
  or to UNDERSTAND and FORGIVE?
• To face it through a certain ritual and with a
  group of people, or to face it alone. (Example
  the journalist whose father was killed.) Is
  direct confrontation of the perpetrators and
  victims testimonies productive? Should memory be
  the only means of facing the past?

29
Q (4) Justice, Truth, Forgiveness, or merely
Amnesty

• Who should be empowered to grant forgiveness
  when a person is murdered? Can the family members
  ever forgive on behalf of the lost loved one, or
  can they only forgive with regard to their own
  loss?
• Is the TRC really engaged in offering forgiveness
  or only amnesty protection against prosecution?
  Do the victims testimonies get ignored when the
  perpetrators are taken as reasons for amnesty?
• Can we forgive were we in the same boat? Do we
  dare to confess and apologize?
• 80 of those who applied for amnesty were black

30
One Possible Interpretation of TRC

• one effect of the TRC has been the restoration
  of narrative. In few countries in the
  contemporary world do we have a living example of
  people reinventing themselves through narrative
  (Ndebele qtd in Graham 12).
• E.g. The Story I am about to Tell, Ubu and The
  Truth Commission, The Country of my Skull, etc.

31
Responses 2 Poems Related to Physical Suffering

• Douglas Reid Skinner
• The Body is a Country of Joy and Pain
• prison experienced by
• 1) mother, 2) isolated man, 3) raped woman, 4)
  self-alienated.
• Mongane Serote Prelude (soul bursts on the
  paper and heart oozes into the ink)
• Gladys Thomas Reflections of an Old Worker
  You become? were the Power over my body.

32
Response 3 Stories re. Anti-Apartheid movements
Race Relations

Bessie Head
Mbulelo Mzamane
Nadine Gordimer
33
Responses 4 Poems Related to Gender Relations

• Love Song. . .

Antjie Krog
34
Response 5 Indirect Treatments

• J. M. Coetzee Foe Historical revision or
  metafiction.

35
Responses 6 Confirmation of traditional culture
--

• Njabulo S. Ndebele Pay more attention to
  individual psychology and the influences of
  tradition.
• e.g. Prophetess

Mazisi Kunene The Final Supplication --
Cultural Displacement (back to Africa, but cannot
find his village.)
36
Responses 6 Confirmation of traditional culture
-- Prophetess

• On what is the boys attention focused when he
  visits the prophetess? Are they signs of her
  spirituality?
• dog darkness, vine, his own sensations, memory,
  doek (African headscarf, 11) camphor (12) her
  coughing
• 2. The people on the bus How do they relate to
  each other? And to the prophetess? How are they
  different from each other?

the other women the big woman
the man with a balaclava (Woollen hat) the young man at the back the young man with immaculate dress
37
Prophetess

• 3. Compared with the peoples discussion, how
  does the boy relate to the prophetess? What
  breaks the spell the prophetess has on him? What
  does the ending mean?
• Re A story of initiation. The boy gains
  self-confidence.
• The other issues Sangoma Christianity home
  vs. danger on the street.

38
Response 7 Paul Simons Graceland (1986)

• an exquisite, multifaceted fusion of his own
  sophisticated
• stream-of-consciousness poetry with black South
  Africa's
• doo-wop-influenced township jive and Zulu
  choral music (Britanica.com).
• Township Jive(????? ) this very up, very happy
  music

• acapella (????? ) group Ladysmith Black Mambazo
• General M.D. Shirinda and The Gaza Sisters
  Miriam Mekeba

39
Response 7 Music --"crossover style"

• Enoch Sontonga's beautiful African hymn "Nkosi
  Sikilel'i Africa" (God Bless Africa 1897) an
  anthem and symbol of struggle to generations of
  Africans
• -- the influence of the missionary school music
  training
• -- the innovative a cappella vocal harmonies of
  mbube music
• Ladysmith Black Mambazo
• Mbube mellowed into iscathamiya ("to walk on
  one's toes lightly").

40
Ladysmith Black Mambazo

• ISICATHAMIYA (Is-Cot-A-Me-Ya) born in the mines
  of South Africa. Black workers were taken by rail
  to work far away from their homes and their
  families. Poorly housed and paid worse, they
  would entertain themselves after a six-day week
  by singing songs into the wee hours every Sunday
  morning. Cothoza Mfana they called themselves,
  "tip toe guys", referring to the dance steps
  choreographed so as to not disturb the camp
  security guards. When miners returned to the
  homelands, the tradition returned with them.
  (source http//www.mambazo.com/bio.html )
• Example 1

41
HOMELESS (Paul Simon and Joseph Shabalala)

• Emaweni webaba Silale maweni . . . Homeless,
  homeless Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
  Homeless, homeless Moonlight sleeping on a
  midnight lake . . .
• Strong wind destroy our home Many dead, tonight
  it could be you Strong wind, strong wind Many
  dead, tonight it could be you

42
Response 8 Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid
movements, Black Identity Race Relations

• Dumile Feni (1939-1991)

43
Responses 8 Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid movements
Race Relations

• Ironic ad.guerilla style, torn down soon

44
Response 6 Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid movements
Race Relations

• I have never tried to make illustrations of
  apartheid, but the drawings and films are
  certainly spawned by and feed off the brutalized
  society left in its wake. I am interested in a
  political art, that is to say an art of
  ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures,
  and certain endings an art (and a politics) in
  which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at
  bay.(source)

William Kentridge 
45
Response 6 Artwork re. Anti-Apartheid movements
Race Relations

• The Conservationists' BallCulling,
  Game-Watching, Taming, 1985

William Kentridge 
46
References

• LONG NIGHT'S JOURNEY INTO DAY STUDY GUIDE
  http//www.newsreel.org/guides/longnight.htm
• LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO
• Homeless lyrics
• South African Music http//wus.africaonline.com/Af
  ricaOnline/music/Safrica.html
• Graham, Shane. The Truth Commission and
  Post-Apartheid Literature in South Africa.
  Research in African Literature 34.1 (2003)
  11-30.