Transcript Document 7220918

South Africa’s Apartheid
Consequences and
Cultural Responses
Outline
 History of Apartheid (e.g. Cry, My Beloved
Country; Cry Freedom)
 Consequences & Responses:
– 1 Long Night’s 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 music—crossover style; 8 art works
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 (18991902)
The Dutch
(Boer, Afrikaans)
The
British
Xhosa
(the
blacks)
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
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.
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 )
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.".”
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.”
Note: U.S. vs. South Africa
U.S.
S.A.
modern, industrialized
an African, third-world
Western democracy with country with a white
an oppressed but
minority enjoying a
culturally assimilated
first-world living
black minority;
standard
separate schools,
native reserves and
transportation, and
locations
eating facilities
50’-60’s resistance movements
1964 the Civil Rights
1960s -- apartheid
Act; 1965 the Voting
reached its zenith.
Rights Act.
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)
 1960’s -- 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.
Resistance movements (1): example
 Sharpville Massacre – “Our Sharpville” p. B 10
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.
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
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)
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 squatter’s camp
 Ending –Soweto uprising
 Biko’s ideas –
– Black Consciousness
– his speech
– his self defense (naked racism)
 The visit to a black township
 Afrikaner’s version
 Last view of landscape
Resistance movements:
Soweto Student Uprising
 "It was a picture that got
the world‘s 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)
Apartheid: Repeal
 1980’s: International sanctions + radicalization of
resistance movements 
1. Some minor laws (e.g. interracial marriage) were
abolished by 1990;
2. 1985-1988, the P.W. Botha government’s 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.
Response 1: Long Night’s
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.
Response 1: Long Night’s
Journey into the Day
Case 1
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
Long Night’s 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 1—his belief, 2 –his change )
 The widows refused to agree with amnesty.
Long Night’s 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
victim’s family
Long Night’s 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
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
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."
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?
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?
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
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.
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) selfalienated.
• 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.
Response 3: Stories re. AntiApartheid movements & Race
Relations
Bessie Head
Mbulelo Mzamane
Nadine Gordimer
Responses 4 : Poems Related to Gender
Relations
 “Love Song. . .”
Antjie Krog
Response 5 : Indirect Treatments
 J. M. Coetzee Foe: Historical revision or
metafiction.
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.)
Responses 6: Confirmation of traditional
culture -- “Prophetess”
On what is the boy’s 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?
1.
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
“Prophetess”
3. Compared with the people’s 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 selfconfidence.
The other issues: Sangoma + Christianity; home vs.
danger on the street.
Response 7: Paul Simon’s
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(鎮區爵士樂 ): this “very up, very happy music”
 acapella (無伴奏和聲 )
group Ladysmith Black
Mambazo;
 General M.D. Shirinda
and The Gaza Sisters;
Miriam Mekeba
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").
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
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
Response 8 : Artwork re. AntiApartheid movements, Black Identity &
Race Relations
 Dumile Feni (1939-
1991)
Responses 8: Artwork re. AntiApartheid movements & Race Relations
Ironic ad.—guerilla style, torn down soon
Response 6 : Artwork re. AntiApartheid 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
William
Kentridge 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)
Response 6 : Artwork re. AntiApartheid movements & Race Relations
 The Conservationists' Ball:Culling, Game-Watching, Taming, 1985
William
Kentridge
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/AfricaOnline/music/Sa
frica.html
 Graham, Shane. “The Truth Commission and PostApartheid Literature in South Africa.” Research in
African Literature 34.1 (2003): 11-30.