Chapter 3

SOCIAL REALITY IN CORDIMER'S SOUTH AFRICA

The creation of Africa as the dark r~ncinent in t h e

colonial ideology had L d n the pious vocation of European

missionaries and the economic forces that promoted t h e

systematic suppression of a people f o r no less than t h r e e

centuries. From this distorted and diminutive s ta tus

given to the black races, a nation w a s being built.

Political independence was only an incidental aspiration

of a black slave -- he aspired f o r moral economic

rejuvenation -- and wanted above all nothing more to do

with t h e Whites. Most writers were aware of their

inability to reach to the masses, because a majority of

them were illiterate. Gordimer maintains that through

her writings, on the social injustice embedded in t h e . . - . -. -.

Mvth. Literature and the African World, 6 3 .

e-.-ery-day l i f e of South A f r i c a , she could educa t e the

English -speaking white section of the society:

With f o r t u n a t e i r o n y , however, it is a

responsibility which the white writer already

has taken on, f o r himself, if t he other

responsibility -- to his creat ive integrity -- keeps him scrupulous i n writing about what he

knows to be true whether whites like to hear it

or not: for the majority of h i s readers are

w h i t e . He brings some influence to bear on

whites . . . those individuals who are coming -- to bewilderedly out of the trip of power, and

those who gain courage from reading the open

expression of their own suppressed rebellion

(EG, 2 9 4 ) .

By t h e microscopic quality of her narrative and the

careful choice of politically saturated s i t u a t i o n s

Gordimer influences her contemporaries, mostly whites.

Gordimer's political ideology is reflected in her

writings through her historicising of t h e events

happening in the presentf and in the projected 'future'.

This shift in the 'time' often gives a sense of

timelessness to h e r narratives.

In creating a history of t h e society involved in

political struggle , Gordimer authenticates her political

ideology. Janmohammed in his comment emphasizes this

connection between the social reality and political

ideology in Gordimer:

She attempts in her fiction, to demythologize

the European of the liberal consciousness that

is trapped between its own humanistic values and

the highly antagonistic manicheanism of

apartheid (Manichean Aesuetics , 9).

Janmohammed had condensed the very essence of

Gardimer's writ ing career a s a political a c t i v i s t and has

focused on her \dualt commitment towards art and t ru th .

In the political programme of historicising the major

discordance in the South African society, which was in

the first place only a natural outcome of the white-

man's economic exploitation and the legalization of the

a c t , h o w could Gordimer -- a white woman -- be an

activist? South Africa is a place of irony and

disemblence -- a society totally shattered by the

onslaught of an aggressive alien culture for more than

three centuries. And t h e very fragmentary nature of the

society made it imperative that both the black and the

white intellectuals should jointly rebuild their n a t i o n

into an organic whole and reinstate i t s progress in the

natural path of history.

Gordimer can be seen as a human liberalist with a

clear idea about her vocation in l i f e :

There are two absolutes in my life. O n e is t h a t

racism is evil -- human damnation in the o l d

testament sense and no compromises, as well as,

sacrifices should be too great in the fight

against it. T h e other is that a writer is a

being in whose sensibility is fused what LukacFs

calls 'the duality of inwardness and outside

world' and he must never be asked to sunder this

union (s, 277).

Gordimer's e n t i r e writing career was her attempt a t

reconciling t h e s e t w o aspects of her being. This

manifested in her writings as her attempt at

historicising the social reality from t h e possibilities

of her own consciousness. Gordimer's stories are o f t e n

without much action -- nothing generally happens to t h e

subjects -- while the conditions, the moral choices, and

the environment are well brought out. ~ordimer never

wrote a historic novel, with real life subjects and

situations. But the historical consciousness in her

stories facilitates a study of her fiction as history. It

is t h e writer's familiarity with the cultural s t r u c t u r e

and beliefs of the South African society that stands out

in t h e narrative.

The presentation of this environment, promoted the

social awareness of the whites. Her accurate

observations, sometimes elucidated the truth to the

blacks as well. M o s t of a l l Gordimer analyzes the inter-

personal relations among the several sections of the

society. As the society was compartmentalized in

accordance with the color of t h e skin, each section was

given an unauthorized position in the social hierarchy.

The relationship between the native and t h e East European

Immigrant, and the relation between the East European

Immigrant and the English, can be discerned in the s t o r y

"The Defeated." The callous nature of Mr. John

Saiyetovitz in "The Defeated" towards the blacks was

cruder than the attitude of the English-men towards the

n a t i v e . In the \subjectt of Mr. Saiyetovitz, Gordimer

brought out the inferiority of the East European

immigrants, who were lower than the whites in the social

power structure. A small time shopkeeper, he, w a s anxious

to educate his daughter and raise their social as well as

economic standards. But he had no patience with t h e poor

Blacks who spent hours to choose a blanket from h i s shop:

Mr. Saiyetovitz treated t h e natives honestly,

but with bad grace. He forced them to feel their

ignorance, their inadequacy and their submission

to the white man's world of money. He

spiritually maltreated them and bitterly drove

h i s nail into the coffin of their confidence

(WHYW, 15).

Spoken from the consciousness of a little white

girl, t h e diction had the naive assurance of t h e

innocent. yet t h e tone implies the cruelty and the

finality of t h e seemingly simple acts of Mr* Saiyetovitz.

Words like *bad grace,' 'coffin,' and bitterly depict the

sordid pattern of inter-racial behaviors i n t h e society.

As the narrator moves on to the next level of interaction

namely herself and the concession store people the status

qua remains the same:

My mother did not want me to go near the

concession stores because they smelled and were

dirty, and the natives spat tuberculosis germs

i n t o the dust (m, 9 ) .

The derogatory attitude of the 'mother' which has been

influxed into the little girl would be the basis on which

she would receive all verbal and physical transactions

with t h e colored sections as she grows. Yet it is

interesting to note the relationship between the two

girls -- the narra tor and the daughter of t h e

Saiyetovitz. They seem to have an admiration f o r each

other. The black g i r l , Miriam, and the narrator had a

special relationship:

Our relationship had continued unchanged, just

as before; she had her friends and I had mine,

but outside of school there was the curious

plane of intimacy on which we had, as it were,

surprised one another wandering, and so which we

shared peculiarly by us (WHYW, 16).

Even though they shared this fqpeculiar intimacy," they

never dared to display it in public. Friendship between

t h e Blacks and the Whites, was something of a taboo, that

the children instinctively guessed the gulf that

separated their lives. The description of the narrator's

birthday party brings out the aloof character of

Miriam -- "all afternoon she looked out of the window

indifferentlyw (16). She must have been too awed or

shocked to see the ways of a white household; just as the

narrator was surprised by the wcoolnesstu inside the

store-keeper's home (JMYY, 14). Gordimer dramatically

highlights the intensity of the segregation in the

society, and how it creeps into a simple friendship

between two girls studying in the same class.

When the narrator visits the concession store after

the war, she comes across the Saiyetovitzs, in a totally

defeated state. Their daughter had left without any

remorse for a better world and she had expelled her

parents from her new life. "It doesn't come o u t as you

think, he said, it doesn't come out as you think, " was

a l l that Mr. Saiyetovitz could say at the end (WRYW, 221,

Y e t he seems to take out all h i s failure on the section

of society below him. As t h e story ends the girl "heard

his voice strike like a snake . . . . angry and

browbeating, sullen and final, lashing weakness at the

weak" ( 2 2 ) . She was referring to Mr. Saiyetovitz and the

native w h o had come to his shop. The terms of bitterness

presented by 'snake' and 'lash bring out the negative

tone of t h e situation. Although there is not much ac t ion

the tone and reaction of the 'subject,' in a segregated

society, is presented with microscopic detalls. Each

short story picks on a particular aspect of t h e society

that had a dig at the multifarious attitude of the

dominated/dominator relations.

These varying shades in South African kaleidoscope,

present interesting patterns of human behavior. And t h e

writers who shared the era f e l t the need to recapture

reality i n t o the 'unkillable wordt(%, 2 4 3 ) . Black

writers like Achebe, Ngugi, have used their fiction to

immortalize the truth of an event or a person for the

f u t u r e generation, as different from the authoritiesr

version of it. Some of the early writings were, a sort of

\catharsisr f o r the black writers to purge themselves of

the self-pity and humiliation of a shameful social setup.

It would be interesting to note that, i n i t i a l l y t h e

writers merely aimed at earning the empathy of the

readers, while later on the writings had a revolutionary

call for action in their words.

The evolution of t h i s nature could be discerned in

Gordimer also . The social reality in Gordimer, gradually

develops i n t o t h e mainstream of national and

revolutionary perspective. The girl in "Is There Nowhere

else We can Meet?" ( S , 17) matures into the girl in

"Smell Of Death and Flowers" ( S , 122). In Gordimer's

own comment a b o u t the issue in her introduction to

Selected Stories, she explains the inevitable evolution

in 'subjectsf and 'dictionr that has to follow the

changes in the soc ia l s e t u p . "The nativeff becomes first

'African* and then 'Blackt, because these usages have

been adopted over three decades, by South Africans" (S,

14). These changes in the society are simultaneously

emulated i n t o the narrative. Gordimer's t e x t is simmering

with the historical consciousness of an evolving nation.

In portraying t h e inter-racial dialogue, Gordimer has

made use of devices like irony, effective forceful

diction and carefully chosen 'subjects.' In her own

words" a catharsis of white guilt f o r the writer and t h e

reader'' was t h e anticipated result , 273). H e r

'subjects' were often riddled with irony. T h e 'good

mastersf and t h e 'good slavesf of t h e colonial ideology

were satirically presented by ~ordimer. The interesting

aspect is that, ~ordimer's \subjectsf provide varying

combinations and degrees of 'good' and 'bad, ' so

realistically that some critics like Dennis Brutus have

accused her of b e i n g journalistic and 'cold' i n her

writings (Bfrica md t h e Novel, 132). The variety in the

degree of 'evilt among the whites c a n be studied from two

separate stories. She 'coldlyf observes the lady in

"Good Climate Friendly Neighbors," which makes her

narrative more forceful and sublime , 21). When

compared with another white lady in "Happy Event, " ( S S ,

107) the subtle shades of criminality becomes evident.

B o t h the characters are white and both are corrupted

versions of racial prejudice. While the lady of the

petrol pump, was simply a v i c t i m of apartheid laws t h a t

lady in ''Happy Event," appears to be a mean and

disgustingly cruel woman. The point to be noted is t h a t

'here is life's plenty,' in all the vivid combinations of

good, bad and ugly; across the color borders. Gordimer

understands her characters without loving them (or h a t i n g

them), and labors to present them as realistically as

possible. To her depiction of social reaJity was the key

that would raise the consciousness, which in t u r n would

be the dynamism behind a revolutionary change in the

socie ty .

The fragmentary nature of the sho r t story format,

enabled Gordimer to present an assortment of images of

her society. Her collection of stories, can be sorted on

t h e basis of t h e c o n t e n t s : occupations, social cus toms,

and even a way of life. Thus s h e presents a cross-section

of the soc ie ty with all its ingredients such as Blacks,

Indians, East European Immigrants, Jews, Boers and the

English. Gordimer herself has commented that every writer

writes only one story: \*that story, in which everything,

novels, stories, the f a l s e starts, the half-completed,

t h e abandoned, has its meaningful place" ( S S , lo). I n

that sense, Gordimer has written t h e story of South

A f r i c a , w i t h a l l its weaknesses and s t rengths , during a

vital period of its history, to give a fragmentary view

of t h e corpus of its cultural influx, distorted and

disrupted by colonialism.

In the society of disrupted legal system where t h e

\justicer was phony and superficially manipulated by

minor i ty , non-hegernonic literature sometimes had to take

up the function of reportage. In such a compartmentalized

society 'cultureJ may be the only manifestation of t h e

social reality and the legitimacy of t h e historical

d i r e c t i o n . The writers* role in this context then becomes

primarily that of a disseminator of information and an

interpreter. Gordimer, in her interview with Riis

comments on t h e deep vision and perception of one of her

contemporary writers, Paul Theroux:

He is one of those writers who 'hear' [s ic] what

people are thinking about themselves and he

gives expression to what goes unrealized in

their society in a way they can't do

(-, 2 , 1, 2 6 ) .

This can be s a f e l y attributed to Gordimer herself. She

has captured the fears and prejudices in t h e society and

concretized the reality with her imagination. Gordimer

explores the dilemma of a liberal consciousness.

A detailed analysis of the Christian propaganda that

w a s prevalent in the colonial society should be the

framework on which the 'manicheanism' was to be studied,

in Gordimer's t e x t . The early European travellers,

explorers, and entrepreneurs had to face staunch

resistance from highly organized and civilized Muslim and

Hindu states in Africa. Their cultural practices, which

w e r e alien to the Christian doctrines were uniformly

abhorred as 'pagan.' And naturally, eradication of the

non-Christian f o r m of worship w a s the prime enthusiasm

of the missionaries. Missionaries had created several

myths towards the l e g i t i r n a t i z a t i o n of their actions. They

had taken upon themselves t h e 'task of civilizing' the

native. In this context it would be useful to gather a

more specific picture of their vision and thought on the

'native problem. ' The two aspects of t h e native

personality is summed up in the book Ern~ire S t r i k e s Back:

the image of the 'noble savage1 close to nature

and free of the cares and responsibilities

thrust upon one by \civilization. ' This image of

innocence coexisted with its opposite the

'violent savagef ungodly, deprived, subhuman,

almost like a wild animal -- a being who is t h e

antithesis of 'civilization.' Indeed within

Christian cosmology this being was transformed

i n t o a \devilr whose black skin on the outside

was merely a visible sign of a greater darkness

within" (61).

The myth of African primitivism was so wide-spread that

whole generations of young Africans were brought up in

the belief that Africa had no past, Generations of

slavery and illegal oppression had destroyed the most

valuable asset of a people . . . . their honor. Only when the slave internalizes his servitude, does the process of

colonization get completed:

The key term here is acculturation which refers

to the culture stripping or ' C u l t u r e castration'

which African s lave underwent during slavery

. . . . this process entailed the loss, by the

slaves of their languages, religions and family

kinship systems, leaving them with no

alternative but to learn his master's language

and to ape his values and institutions . . . . They had internalized a culture which is

fundamentally at odds with the Negro [sic]-

African elements in t h e i r backgrounds (-

Emaire Strfies Back, 100).

The depth of cruelty inflicted upon the black race

can be understood only when analyzed in this perspective.

And all the while, the whites believed they were 'saving'

the pagans. The deep incongruity between t h e false

consciousness of the whites and the reality, then becomes

a racial issue rather then a political one. Gordimer has

captured this 'righteous indignation' felt by the whites

at the "ungrateful behaviorsf' of the black slave, in

several of her stories. In the s t o r y " N o t For

Publicationr*, when the black boy Praise, bolts before

the matriculation, t h e priest and Ms Griggs, feel

cheated. They had given him everything possible, to

educate himself and refine himself, to develop i n t o the

leader they thought the blacks needed. But ' \ t h e woman's

kindness, t h e man's attention, got h i m in t h e eyes like

the sun striking off t h e pan, where the cattle had been

taken to drink" (s, 80).

Later, as t h e boy was f a l t e r i n g under the pressure

of the impending exams, Father Audry had a shocking

experience from him. When " the boy seemed sluggish,

almost deaf . . . . t h e Father p u t out his fine hand, in

question or compassion. But the boy leapt up, dodging a

blow1' (86). And the narrative voice explains the a c t

from a psychological perspective. "It was some

frightening retrogression, a reversion to the

subconscious, a place of symbols and collective memory"

(86). The unfathomable ridge between the collective

consciousness of the black/white races, was the most

evident fact of the society. Gordimer was aware of this

as a major stumbling block in the multifarious future of

South Africa. The story can be interpreted as the

rejection of overseas benevolence, by the African .

In y e t another story, "Another Part Of the Sky,"

Collins "the man who pulled down prison walls and grew

geraniums in their place, " was anguished when the ' \bay

with t h e neat, small head of the lizard8' escaped from

the prison (m, 78). Collins was unable to understand t h e occasional flight of one of his inmates. And each

time "with this same twinge of peculiar pain to the

principal f 8 ( W H Y W , 80). The narrative oscillates from t h e

perspective of Collinsls inner-dialogue to t h a t of an

omnipresent narrator. The shift is so deft that sometimes

the voice changes within the same sentence. The structure

of the sentence becomes loose and dis-oriented in the

fury of emotional outburst.

Saw desire melt into violence . . . wanting into having. Sat in the cave of hunched faces painted

with cozy fear by the light of a paraffin-tin

fire, flickered w i t h the torn filth newspapers

stuffed in corners (newspapers that said

stupidly, the crime wave . . . robbery . . . old man knifed in the street): and was free. That

was t h e boy's freedom, that was what he run away

to a week ago (79).

Collins could never understand t h e black boys desire

to be 'freef of t h e white man -- his charity included.

The colonial edifice was thriving on the attempt to

rehabilitate the Blacks in a Eurocentric pattern. But t h e

reality of the Black world was t h a t , they had their own

collective consciousness, as different from the white

man. In the subjects of 'Praise' and the 'runaway boy , '

Gordimer explores this false ideology of t h e colonizer.

South Africa, required the whites t o stop leading t he

na t ion . The whites should learn to listen, if they were

to fit in any where in the post independent South Africa.

In her essay "Where Do Whites Fit In?," Gordirner has

urged the white man '\to forget the old impulse to

leadership, and the temptation to g ive advice, backed by

experience and culture of the western civilization" (FJ,

3 5 ) .

The theory of separate development, was another of

the fictions created by the Afrikaner, which Gordimer

recomposes in the social realism of her stories. The

government brought the policy of determining the 'realt

South Africans according to their tribal origins. As a

consequence about eight million blacks were stripped of

their South African citizenship, to become in the South

African Legal System, foreigners in their own land. Even

though economic e~ploitation was the ulterior motive in

t h e whole exercise, the political authority was

accomplished at a deeper -- racial level -- of

unconscious. M.J Daymond in her essay on "Gender and

History, ' * positions Gordimer in the context of \enforced

division and modernity' as a historian of its processes1

(u, 2 7 , 1, 198). According to her , Gordimer's \ \grand

subject is the effect of racial domination on those who

i m p o s e and those who suffer it" ( 1 9 9 ) . Gordimer in her

writings presented both the destroyer and t h e destroyed

in political environment with stark naked realism. This

affinity towards 'everyday realityf and her scientific

presentation of it had earned her the criticism of being

cold. Gordimer criticizes the \ homelandsf in several of

her stories.

In "What Were You Dreaming?" (JAOS, 2121, and

"Which Era T h a t Would Be?" (s, 81), there are cutting

remarks on t h e cruelty of this brutalized segregation. In

t h e former s t o r y , the black man w h o gets a free ride with

t h e white couple, relates t h e p i t i a b l e conditions of h i s

home -- cape flats. He does n o t omit to indicate that h i s

family was repacked into this slum by t h e government.

Later as the black man sleeps in t h e back seat, h i s

'story' is verified by the white foreigner. In this

context the white female protagonist, who foreshadows,

Gordimer's own position as a white liberalist, lashes out

at the system of 'segregation':

We are not talking about slum clearance, my

dear; we're talking about destroying communities

because they are black, and white people want to

build houses or factories for t h e whites where

blacks live, I told you. We're talking amut

loading up trucks and cart ing people out of

sight of whites (JOAS, 221).

T h e s tark reality of t h e shame named apartheid,

valorizes in the voice of t h e white liberal. In another

story, "Which Era would That Be?", there is reference to

same 'cape Flats.' The white woman Jennifer, was working

at the slum as Assistant Director of a rehabilitation

program. And the segregated area is explained by t h e

third person narrative voice as \ \ a desolate colored slum

in t h e bush outside Cape Town" (z, 86). Further, the

cape Flats are referred to as '\ghastlyrt and the white

girl confesses to the black gathering that she couldn't

last f o r "more than . . . few month^,'^ if she did not

have t h e option to escape "to her flat in Cape Town on

Sundayst* (86). The inhuman conditions to which the

blacks were reduced, by t h e law of segregation, throws

light on the corrupt social system in South African

society.

In the s to ry "The Smell Of Death And Flo~ers'~ ( S ,

1221, there is a description of t h e 'location' as ' \ a

square mile of dreary little dwellings to which the

African population of t h e nearby t o m came home to sleep

at nightfJ(141). The disparity with the white township,

where the blacks spend their daytime engaged in di f ferent

forms of labor, denotes t h e economic dissimilitude, in

the society. The narrative becomes descriptive and

elaborate in its reference to the "ghastly sight," of

"the mean houses and squalid tin shelters. " Even in t h e

pitiable condition of the slum there was favoritism as

well as c o n t r o l .

The '\decent cottages which had been built by

the white housing authorities 'experimentally'

and never duplicated: they were occupied by t h e

favorite African clerks of the white location --

superintendent'' (141).

The locations were never allowed more than a few shops,

because they take away the business from the white

stores, The narrative tone is that of an enraged white

liberalist, appalled at t h e u n j u s t system of apartheid.

From her 'marginalr position of n o t really belonging

to both the worlds [colonizer or the colonized], Gordimer

had the distinct advantage of remaining "detached, to

view her characters and the situations in which they are

involved from more than one point of view" (v onwealth -at.ure, 8 , 1, 4 4 ) . Hence Gordimer's

analytical narrative, had the approximation to the way

things actuaSly were. Neither an advocate of t h e

colonizer's race [by way of her commitment towards the

cause of her n a t i o n ] , nor that of the colonized race

[being a white] Gordimer thus became an arbiter of human

liberalism and justice, in the issues of manichean

valencies, in the society. Gordimer promoted a theory of

national integration as opposed to assimilation, where,

equal opportunity was provided for the people of cultural

diversity in an atmosphere of mutual to lerance , The

inequalities in the society made communication difficult,

thus hindering the organic growth of the society. And in

this context it would be relevant to analyze meaning of

the 'common culture' that Gordimer arbitrates.

Raymond ~illiams has asserted that \\a common

culture can place no absolute restrictions on e n t r y to

a n y of its activities: this is in reality a claim to

equal opportunityf' (Culture And Society, 317 1. Gordimer

realized the vital role of the indigenous sections in the

growth of a nation, and depicts each of them in hex short

stories. The truth a b u t a l l sections had equal weightaqe

in her t ex t , and the consolidation of which gives a

comprehensive history of South Africa. Petrus in ' \ s i x

Feet Of the Country, '* and Thamasi, in \ 'A Happy E v e n t , "

are typical servants in the biblical sense. These 'ideal

slaves' accept their role as servants and internalize the

colonial ideology of white superiority. The systematic

conquest of t h e land and minds of African people, which

the white men, managed through the propaganda of their

religion, language and scientif i'c knowledge, created a

society of slaves and masters. Each depended on the other

for their identity. And it was the c u l t u r e of legalized

brutality, a ruling class culture of fear -- as Ngugi

explains, "the culture of an oppressing minority

desperately trying to impose total silence on a restive

oppressed majorityf' {Detained, 3 4 ) .

T h e whites had to rationalize their brutality, to

themselves and to the world. This required them to create

the myth af 'the uncivilized' dark man in the depth of a

dark continent. Janmohammed has maintained that the

"colonizerfs efforts towards absolute economic and

spiritual domination create in them a feudal s p i r i t f f

{ m c h e a n Aesthetics, 3 ) . And the Whites created several

trends or theories that gave an illegitimate authority to

maintain the ir feudal authority:

The colonizers ' efforts toward absolute

political, economic and spiritual domination

created i n them a feudal s p i r i t , supported by a

series of familiar rationalizations: the

superiority of White race, their mission to

civilize the rest of the world, the inability of

natives to govern themselves and to develop

their own resources, the blacks tendency towards

despotism, their ease in reverting to atavistic

barbarism, their lack of intelligence their

hyperemotional and uncontrollable personalities

and so f o r t h ( 3 ) .

But the truth was f a r from t h e false assumptions of

t h e conquerors. Gordimer has attempted to project the

reality of her society as opposed to the white lies.

Hence her narratives focused on t h e accultural aspect of

t h e black man and tried to understand the political

reasons that lead to the calcification of the cultural

progress in t h e society.

There is a tendency to think of colonialism as

though it w e r e a black experience. But, Gordimer

understood it as a 'reversible inter-reaction'.

Colonialism has been as much a white experience as a

black one, and only a few writers like Gordimer, were

able to convince the white world the "nature of that

enterprise" (Comp-terature, 91). Colonialism

had affected the white collective consciousness also in a

very negative manner. The white undergoes a kind of

regression in the cultural terms and acts in the most

inhuman manner in the colonial environment.

Within t h e s e contradictions of myth and reality in

the society, the gap between the masses and t h e

intellectuals, was too wide to be ignored. In t h e fight

for freedom, the intellectuals take advantage of the

backing of t h e masses in their negotiations with t h e

authority. Y e t , on actually attaining 'power,' they run

the machinery of government much the same way as their

predecessors. The neocolonialism deceives t h e general

public by continuing the government machinery without any

significant change in their social or economic situation.

But the intellectuals f e l t the need to illuminate the

deception practiced by the Blacks who came into power:

African writers and artists, however, are the

major exceptions to the callausness of t h e

elite; they provide one of the few links between

educated Africans and the rest of t h e people

(Manichean Aesthetics, 12).

Janmohammed, here refers to the crucial role played

by the writers like Gordimer, in the post independent

state. In her fictions the social reality was vehicled

through her selective \subjectsr and situations. The

characters in her s h o r t stories, range from native blacks

to burgeois whites, including in the course, a wide

cross-section of Indians ( A Chip Of Glass Ruby). Jews

(The Watcher Of The Dead), East European Emigrants {The

Defeated), and the coloreds. Gordimer's ideology of

social integration, in a healthy and just environment was

promoted in the narratives. The contributions of each

sector towards the organic growth of the society, made

Gordimer convinced of the impregnably tangled n a t u r e of

the South African Kaleidoscope; that was magnificent with

all its 'colors.' Unlike many of the black writers like

Chiweizi , who promoted a rad ica l rejection of all the

'Eurocentric literary academics, in and outside Africa

who have long been prejudiced against - - . . works in

African languaqes'(Voices from 9Nentiet .h Centu ry Africa

riots and Town-criers, xvii), or Nguqi, w h o tried to

'de-colonize the African mind' by rejecting the

colonizer's language, and authority, Gordimer takes a

practical path of peace and development as opposed to

violence and destruction. Gordirer's proposal of

decolonisation had its origin in reinstating honor to the

black consciousness, and raising the white awareness of

the unreality of the ' m y t h s of colonial ideology.'

Franz Fanon had referred to the native

intellectual's search far his identity in the customs

rituals and archetypes of the era before the white man's

advent. The native intellectuals' search their past f o r a

respite from the devastation that the White culture has

imposed on them:

Perhaps unconsciously, the native intellectuals,

since they could not stand wonder-struck before

the history of today's barbarity, decided to go

back further and to delve deeper dawn; and . . . it was w i t h greatest delight that they

discovered t h a t there was nothing to be ashamed

of in t h e past, but rather dignity, glory, and

solemnity. The c la im to a national culture in

t h e past does not only rehabilitate that nation

and serve as a justification for the hope of a

f u t u r e national c u l t u r e , in the sphere of

psycho-affective equilibrium it is responsible

f o r an important change in t h e native (m

Wretched nf tbe E m , 169).

In ~ardimer, t h e narrative tends to portray this

' d i q n i t y , glory, and solemnity' in the tribal chieftains,

Generals, and even beggars, of the black community, thus

developing a stable cultural backdrop far the African way

of life. Thus the work of devaluing the pre-colonial

history takes on a dialectical significance'(l69) in

Gordimer's 'subjectivity.'

And the responsibility of the native intellectual

was to reinstate once again, the cultural identity of the

nation on the path of progressive growth. The character

of 'the grandmother, ' in the story "Ultimate Safari," is

a moral boost fo r the African cultural reality. The

grandmother, takes crucial decisions right from the

moment she takes responsibility of the children. Her

s trength , both physical and mental, is accentuated in t h e

narrative. The old grandmother sells her churchgoing

dress, and even her only pair of shoes to provide food

and protection for the children. The strong family

bondage in African community is focused and t h e black

race is shown as inherent of several positive qualities.

Even when the tribe was forced to leave behind the sick

grandfather to die i n the grass, the tone of the

narrative is filled with pathos -- a kind of brave

pathos -- and not accusation. For the s a k e of t h e

children and the others in the tribe, they had to move

on. The sacrifice and suffering of t h e grandmother adds

depth and authenticity to the little girl's confidence

and love for t h i s old wornan. The significance, of t h e

journey attains its ideological inference through the

presentation of this subject -- grandmother. Shown from a little qirlFs view, her grandmother looms into a

larger-than-life figure. Rich in personality and human

values, the grandmother becomes t h e torch bearer of honor

of the black culture. She is a concentration of a l l that

is 'goodf and 'right' in the strong families of the black

community .

And the lack of progressive thought in the native is

then used to propagate the image of 'docile,' 'lazy,#

slave who indulged in petty stealing. This image of the

'samba slaver (-re Str-s Rack, 103), was only part

of the reality. The 'samba slavef had a psychological

explanation against the racist backdrop:

E l k i n s argued that there was a reality behind

the common sense racist image of the 'samba

slavef personality . . . . Where Elkins differed

from the racists was in arguing t h a t t h e s e were

not t h e innate characteristics of African people

but rather the inevitable consequences of t h e

institution of slavery (Slavery: A ~roblern

115-139).

Before the period of European domination, the

African societies had solid systems for distribution of

power within their groups, traces of which could be seen

in the leadership of one black slave in every plantation.

This \illegal1 leader is o f t e n said to have tremendous

authority in the slave quarters. The essential leadership

oriented nature of slave communities was conveniently

forgotten by the White community, because it contradicts

their 'mythf about the 'lazy, uncivilized black slave.'

Each community of slaves contained one or two members

whom t h e others looked up for leadership. The influence

of such a Negro, often, a preacher, on a quarter was

incalculable.

Gordimer's text deconstructs the myth of docile

attitudes in slaves. They do have leaders like any other

community, and t h e y are organized. Petrus, in "Six Feet

Of The Country, " seems to be the leader in that quarters

(m, 7). Jack, the sales h y in the petrol pump is

depicted as a much better specimen of good sense than t h e

white l a d y , in ''Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants''

( 21). Gordimer captures the Social milieu through

three stages: the historical p a s t , the living present and

an ideal future. She tries to rebuild the A f r i c a n past

and reinstate honor into the Black heritage. She then

relocates the varied sections of society -- the Jews, the Indians, and others -- so as to illuminate their

political purpose and social status. F u r t h e r , she

visualizes the f u t u r e , in which the South Africans t r y

to undo the colonial edifice and move towards a state of

cultural plurality and national progress. Gordirnerts

historical consciousness, thus , authenticates the social

reality of South Africa.

The African tribes with its traditional value-system

is presented in Gordimer's *%Oral History" ( S E I ; , 90). The

t e x t in portraying the plight of an honest chief w h o was

manipulated i n t o betraying his awn people deserved

respect and admiration for the trusting simplicity of t h e

blacks. Gordimer here challenges the lie of 'samba

slave, ' who had no moral commitment to his society. In

the text, the narrator never enters the cansciousness of

the black chief but, rather suggests his thoughts from a

sympathetic view-point. Even though the omnipresent

nar ra tor does n o t identify hi s /her color, it is

pro- b l a c k s and vehemently against the white brutality.

The chief of Dilolo was a simple man who appears to have

betrayed h i s tribe to the white man and unleashed

genocide among his people. Yet as the narrator, p r e s e n t s

the thoughts and the fears of t h e chief, a totally

different story emerges in our understanding that

sympathizes with the straight forward African who was

snared by t h e guile of the w h i t e soldier. This

contradiction between the reality and the illusion, which

was an integral part of South A f r i c a , and t h e colonial

government machinery that made \foolsJ of honest men, is

the ambiance, in "Oral History."

The Chief in the beginning tries desperately not to

incur the wrath of the white man upon h i s people. But he

unwittingly betrays h i s villagers' political activities

to the White Police. T h e chief in all earnestness wants

to keep away the police raids from his village and tries

to s t o p the political activists from hiding in his

village. He was submissive and frightened into passivity

by the military might of the White man. But h i s villagers

were not willing to give up without a resistance. And the

poor chief could not understand his people and their

motives. Several young men in t h e tribe were taking part

in the political military training with t h e tacit

approval of the tribe. The chief's mother, a very old

woman tries to awaken h i m from h i s blind submission to

the supremacy of the colonizer. She suggests that the

chief continue his pretense that there was no politics in

his Dilolo. She was in fact, hinting at t h e public

opinion that demanded a political revolution: whether t h e

chief approved of it or not. She also reminds h i m of the

old tribal ways, when ''it used to be that all children

were our own children. All sons our sons'' (96). There

was a time when the chiefs ruled their tribes, respecting

the wishes and opinions of the entire tribe. Gordimer

hints that t h e African tribal system, was democratic in

character. She draws attention to the peaceful

settlements of villagers in the African past. Although

the narrative is quite ambiguous the chief's mother's

advice c a n be deciphered as a warning to t h e chief not to

believe t h e white man's word and cooperate in his program

of domination.

Y e t this pathetic 'chieff who '\wore shoes and socks

in s p i t e of the heat;" to imitate the white ruler even

though "those drinking nearest him could smell t h e

suffering of h i s feet" (s, 97), never heeded h i s wise

mother's advice. He was being defied by his tribe: or at

l e a s t that was the way he saw their open acceptance and

celebration of t h e rebels. An oxen was slaughtered fo r

t h e men who came from across the river, and they dared to

look h i m in the eye . Gordimer pretends to be sympathetic

to the inner rnonologue/thoughts of the chief, while all

the time she was characterizing t h e absurdities of the #

chief's misconceptions about his role in t h e white man's

pat tern of life, He was hoping to retain h i s importance

through allegiance with the white man. And he could no t

accept the bold diffidence of the rebels in appearing

before him even during daytime.

When the chief allowed himself, at least to meet

the eyes of a stranger, the whites that had been

showing in an oblique angle disappeared and he

took rather than saw t h e full gaze of t h e s e e i n g

eye ; the pupil w i t h their defiance their belief,

their claim, hold on him (z, 97).

This was more than he could take! The petty chief of

Dilolo never was a cruel traitor to h i s people, rather he

retains our sympathies for being a tool in t h e colonial

rnachiavellism. With his silly notions of imitating the

colonizer's culture, he is treated with mild irony a l l

through o u t . His house which was 'like a white man's

house,' (s, 90) his ability to read, h i s reverence for

the arrival of t h e Land -- Rover, h i s childish habi t of

wearing shoes and socks at the beer drinking, everything

suggests his attempt to follow the footsteps of t h e White

man, blindly. Y e t he never could have dreamt that t h e

whites would brutally destroy his village. And the final

realization of his error of judgment led to h i s suicide.

In the i n t e r n a l monologue of the chief, Gordimer

constantly shifts from authorial voice to 'ironic

impersonationr and t h e narration sometimes swiftly hides

t h e shift. This feature adds to the neutrality. In t h e

character of the chief Gordimer presents an accultured

black man. By allowing an insight i n t o the chief's way of

thinking, h i s reasoning and h i s justifications without

identifying with the authorial 'voice,' we are able to

get a dual graph of what the c h i e f saw in himself and

what he was shown as, by the author.

Apart from the main character of the story the

pattern in its entirety takes a shift after the chief

enters the army post where "he had to wait like a beggar

rather than a chief to be allowed to approach and be

searchedt\ , 98). The lack of respect in the alien

territory was unnerving to the chief. Latex, when the

white soldier was questioning him, "he had the feeling

it was not coming out as he had meant, n o t being

understocd as he had expectedJ0 (m, 99) . As in

gramophone gone haywire, the world of the poor chief was

crashing in. The next day when he enters h i s village, the

tension was mounting. \*Then he saw that the smoke, the

black particles spindling at h i s face, were not from

cooking fires" { 100). The ominous nature of the

narrative gathers momentum, and the scene of total

destruction of his clan unravels before him. Even though

he was instrumental i n t h e air-raid, he discerns our \I\ k\

empathy as he "bellowed and stumbled from but to but, " -,f

and "nothing answered frenzy n o t even a chicken answered

from under h i s feet" (101).

T h e a i r - r a i d which was a common e v e n t of s o u t h

A f r i c a suddenly acquires i n the t e x t a dialectical

significance that was totally different from the

'authorities' justification of such political acts. For

Gardimer, the fiction can present history as no historian

can. She declares:

If you want to read the facts of t h e retreat

from Moscow in 1812, you may read a history

book: if you want to know what w a r is really

like and how people of a certain time and back-

-ground dealt with it . . . . you must read 'War

and Peace' (The Black interpreters - N o t e s on

African writinq, 7 )

Thus in her writings the reality, with a l l its past

ambiance emerges. The power of t h i s awareness of the need

to remain within t h e Black cultural context-she hoped,

would be the momentum, behind the political struggle in

South Africa. This reinstating of honor and legitimacy

i n t o the Black man's philosophy and tr iba l way of life

that was prevalent, before the advent of the a l i e n race,

was Gordimerts method of reconstructing her nation from

the ashes of colonialism. clingman has described

Gordimerts symbolism as "invoking a concept of the

unconscious i n a classic psychoanalytical sense . . - I I

(History From the I n s i d e , 209) . The s t o r y "Oral History"

illustrates this phenomenon. The fears of t h e Blacks and

their f u t u r e , in the White man's p a t t e r n of life cauld be

visualized in t h e narrative. The disaster that happened

in the village of Dilolo can be traced to the attempt of

the chief to abide by an alien cultural corpus . By

concretizing the unconscious fears, Gordimer evokes a

sense of 'catharsist in t h e Black minds. H e r narrative

develops into a warning to those blacks who conveniently

forget their identity in exchange for petty carrots from

the colonial regime.

It would be important to note the mild colors t h a t

Gordimer uses to portray the chief's foolishness and the

aggressive diction to denote the army petrol's

activities. The author appeals to our logic and acquits

the chief on the basis that he was but a target of t h e

corrupt colonial system. A t t h e same time, Gordimer gives

a serene picture of the tribe with its wise judicial

system and mutual t r u s t and love. This was direct

detonation of t h e colonial 'lie' that the Blacks lived in

utter disharmony before the advent of the white man. The

missionaries and the authorities tried to highlight

polygamy and ritualism as the evidence of 'backwardness'

in the Blacks. They saw themselves as the torch bearers

of civilization in the 'dark continent.' In ''Empire

Writes Back, '' it has been explained, that, in

post-colonial writings [ a s a part of de-colonization],

there appeared a simultaneous need to reconstruct a

'pre-colonial' reality (195).

The process of literary de-colonization, has

involved a radical dismantling of the European

codes and a post colonial subversion and

appropriation of the dominant European

discourse. This dismantling has been frequently

accompanied by the demand f o r an entirely new or

wholly recovered pre-colonial reality (w W-, 195) -

Gordimer in her narrative has presented this aspect of

t h e ~ f r i c a n past in ''Oral History. '' The story gives an

interpretation of events from a black perspective.

The myth of a 'good Christian' was- impregnated into

the colonial ideology to subvert the rational tendencies

of the blacks. Africans who were estranged from their own

rituals and customs, remodeled their Christianity with an

African coloring. The popularity of Methodist churches

amonq the blacks were largely attributed to the local

autonomy granted to t h e slave congregation, They added

elements of \song and story-tellingf which had its o r i g i n

in the oral traditions of African cultural heritage. This

adaptation enabled the whites to impose themselves on the

blacks and render them more submissive. Obedience and

respect for authority w a s quoted from the Bible to ensure

an autocratic power-relation within the farmlands.

Christianity was built on faith and obedience rather than

logic, Hence in molding an African into a Christian, the

whites were creating a subservient working force, who

submitted to authority. Sarah in ''Ah Woe Is Me!" ( S S ,

27) is a Christian black subject. "Her own Mission

school education with its t a c t f u l emphasis on the next

world rather than this, had not made her dangerous

enough, or brave enough, or free enough or even educated

enough to think . . . '* ( 2 7 ) . Sarah worked a lifetime for

the white family. She never bore a grudge against the

white masters in spite of the low wages, poor health or,

their final dismissal. All she could say was "ah woe is

me. ''

Christianity, was a weapon to further the p o l i t i c a l

ambitions of the white masters. But when t h e black man

chose the white man's religion, he could no longer be

dismissed as a pagan. This created a problem in the

social hierarchy, and the white man solves it by his

condescending attitude to the blacks. The relation of the

white race and t h e blacks was something like the

relationship between a parent and child. B u t the image

was not that of a loving mother but t h a t of a s t e r n

mentor, who had to be on constant vigil to prevent the

perverted 'child' from returning to its bad ways.

Janmohammed, in his study on "The economy of Manichaen

Allegory," establishes that this image of African as a

child ''allows him to feel secure once again because it

restores the moral balance in favor of the (adult)

- Christian conqueror ' ' ((5, 21 ) . The

terms like 'boy,' 'baas,' emphasize this aspect of the

colonial myth. But the blacks were further judged by the

whites, for their tendency to steal from the white

masters. "Thou Shall Not Stealr1 says the Bible. The

theft committed by the blacks was not as simple as that.

They had their own interpretations for the religious

commands they adopted from their colonizers, Certain

peculiarities in the behavior of the blacks can be

explained on the basis of this newly derived 'slave-code'

as opposed to the 8master-code.' one very common element

was, "the constant 'acts of stealing' which many writers

on slavery have commented upon. Many writers tend to look

upon this \stealingf as childish, amoral acts which took

place with the amused acknowledgment of the 'mastert"

( w e S t r i k e s Rack, 105).

Gordimer in the story of 'Blinder,' referred to this

in an absolutely realistic manner. The maid of the house

Rosa, is representative of a typical house-maid. She

leads a miserable life in the backyard of a white family.

Taken to drinking, Rosa had the reputation of being a

'blinder. ' The narrative "Blindert' presents a slice-of

Rosa's life, when her lover dies in an accident (m,

82). With mild satire Gordimer portrays Rosa w i t h h e r

petty theft, hard labor and pathetic f a t e . Gordimer

retains a uniform level of pathos through out the s t o r y

in the \subject1 -- Rosa, even though some of her actions

are presented w i t h mild irony:

Rosa sits on an upturned bucket and the water

from her eyes and n o s e makes papier mache heads,

in her fists, out of the Floral Bouquet paper

handkerchiefs, she helps herself to (after such

a long service, one can't call it stealing) in

t h e lady of t h e housefs bathroom (SOT, 82).

In the context of 'slave-code,' it would be

interesting to note that whatever was taken from the

'master,' was only \takingr not 'stealing,' which t h e

slaves often did to supplement the meager allowance

allowed to them. B u t to them embezzling another blacks

possession was 'stealing0 which they usually never did.

Hence t h e colonial ideology that made all the blacks

'immune' to a 'civilized' way of communal living, was

only because they never evaluated t h e blacks' responses

within their own value -- systems and behavior codes.

Gordimer , in her narrative brought out t h i s

mis-appropriation of the colonialism that interpreted

everyone and everything from their \superiort position,

as the representatives of the great western civilization,

t h u s rendering anything that was new or different as

'wrong'. The revelation of the truth and reality, of the

black/white relationship, which was propagated f r o m the

thresho ld of manipulated colonial ideology, was

Gordirner's contribution to her society. A c c u l t u r a l i s r n in

the blacks , general distrust across the black/white

borders, guilt awareness in the whites, and the need for

an integration of cultural plurality by which all sectors

of t h e class-ridden society joined towards a common

future broadly condensed the social history appearing in

Gordirner's pages. As the writer, probes for the political

reasons that arbitrate ordinary people into dishonorable

behavioral pat terns , the sub-text valorizes into the

relationship between, t h e victims and the victimizers,

which in t u r n propagates her political ideology.

Gordimer saw her contemporaries all alike, no matter

whether they are White or Black as reported in her story

"The Soldier's Embracef': \ \ A n accolade, one side a white

cheek, the other a black. The white one she kissed on the

left cheek, the black one on t h e right cheek, as if these

were two sides of one face*' (a, lo). Here both t h e

soldiers had the same significance to the nar ra to r , a

liberal white woman. A l l the difference that made these

soldiers fight on opposite sides suddenly melts away, in

the eyes of the author.

In Gordimer's vision of an independent South Africa,

she knew that there would be a major displacement in t h e

positioning of Whites. In her essay "Where Do Whites F i t

in?," Gordimer discusses the 'new place' of Whites in

South Africa. The Blacks \'have had so much of us

[whites]-let's not go through t h e whole list again, from

tear-gas and taxes to brotherly advice-that a l l they

crave is to have no part of us '' , 32). Gordimer, y e t

wanted the whites '\to be ordinary members of a

multicoloured society, any colored society, freed both of

the privileges and t h e guilt of the white sins of our

fathersf'(=, 3 2 ) . This was her ideological picture of a

\new Africa.' All the same, she feared the worse. The

story 'A soldier's Embrace,' realized this deep anxiety

which was also incidentally, an integral part of South

A f r i c a n social reality. Even the white lawyer and his

wife who had actively taken part in the liberation

movement, who were proud of the Blacksf independence

struggle, had no \placef in the new set-up. Gordimer has

expressed her thoughts in London Magazine on t h e dual

meanings that emerge from her dialogues:

I was looking for what people meant but did not

say only about sex, but also about politics and

their relationship with the black people among

whom we lived as people lived in a forest among

trees("Leaving School--11" No. 2[1964], 5 9 - 6 4 ) .

The story is riddled w i t h ironic dialogue. Gordimer

attempts to reveal the hidden reality in the inter-

racial dichotomy. Even the lawyer's family friend

Chipande who had s p e n t so much of time with them and

shared their hospitality, couldn't find time to v i s i t

them. Finally when he did come, he was in a hurry to

leave:

Chipande couldn't stay, Chipande couldn't stay

for supper: his beautiful long velvety black

hands with their pale lining . - hung

impatiently between h i s knees while he sat

forward in his chair, explaining, adamant

against persuasion (m, 15).

This reversal of roles in the wake of independence

was the theme in several of Gordimer's tales. In South

Africa, distrust, was another major element which

Gordimer had studied at length, in i ts variant forms, By

searching for t h e root cause of distrust in society,

Gordimer attacks the corrupt social system that was to be

recomposed. In "A City of the Dead, A City of the

Living, 'I the gardener's wife Naneki , turned an inf oxmer

and betrayed t h e political refugee that her husband

sheltered in her house. In the narrative Naneki , even

though she betrayed the African cause, still retained our

sympathy, because of our awareness of the system that

persecuted the freedom fighters. Naneki, in betraying t h e

refugee was, simply safeguarding her husband and children

from getting caught in t h e heat of a political struggle.

The ambivalence i n the political commitment of female

subjects, had a deep relevance f o r t h e colonial world.

Naneki is oscillating in her stance a g a i n s t t h e rebel.

Alternating attraction and repulsion mark Naneki's

response to political revolution. The young man with a

gold ring in h i s ear has plenty of girl friends to get

babies with him", was quite disturbing to Naneki (m, 18). The close proximity of the tiny apartment made their

stay more intimate fo r Naneki who was the one to stay at

home all the time, To an average woman t h e entire process

of rebellion was a catastrophe The gardener's w i f e ,

unable to grasp the essence of t h e process t u r n s

desperate and attacks the political refugee, who happens

to be the manifestation of real change. Social

revolutions aimed at change in the existing environment

often cause a clash of interest in the public and

personal lives of the people. Haneki is representative of

the guilt and trauma of those who are unable to decide

what was really best far their safety. The f r e n z y of a

strugqlinq nation presents several difficult choices to

the society, and Gordimer has eternalized the pain of the

gardener, h i s w i f e and the political refugee, i n the

story "A C i t y Of The Dead, A City Of The Living."

Under the stern muscle power and the systematic

disintegration which was arbitrated into t h e tribal way

of l i f e , devoid of a common leader, economic resources or

even an understanding b e t w e e n the different tribes, how

could Africa rise from its fall from normality t h a t

lasted fo r a period of three hundred and odd years? The

answer to this problem of seehingly unanswerable

situation can be traced in Gordimer's own words:

We writers in South Africa are so close to the

hot breath of our problems w e seldom take t i m e

to stand back a little and note t h e movement of

ideas in the outside world - Psychoanalysts in France, structuralists in

United States and France, conservative, liberal

and left-wing thinkers in contemporary schools

of linguistics philosophy agree about one thing;

man became man not by the tool but by t h e word

(E1 2 4 9 )

Towards t h e super human task of rehabilitating a nation

Gordimer has done precisely this. She had taken upon

herself t h e problem of the b e w i l d e r e d nat ion and w i t h the

a i d of her powerful pen she had striven to make of South

Africans' \'menr' w i t h reason and justice.

A study of social reality in the text of Nadine

Gordimer would bring to the surface certain repeated

patterns of behavior in her 'subjects' that had their

origin in the racial awareness of either races. The

environment was deeply unhealthy in that it was infected

with several major v iruses ; dishonesty, distrust, illegal

authority, legalized terrorism, and injustice to the

weak. On a detailed analyses of the pathetic conditions

of the people in general it was felt t h a t , t h e 'real'

reasons that corrupted t h e people i n t o ugly

manifestations of 'everything repulsive in men,' was the

colonizers illegal rule of domination and cruel

suppression.

In 'Africa Emergent' and 'Open House,' the emotion

of distrust t h a t stripped people of humanity and

elementary goodness, are portrayed. T h e antagonists

are in both cases sympathetically treated, so as to

trace the deeper reasons that made monsters of men. In

the s t o r y 'Africa Emergent' the nar ra to r brought out the

unbearable cynicism in the society when he said: ". . . if you lived here . friends know that shows

of loyalty are all right for children hold ing hands in

t h e school playground" (s, 4 3 4 ) . Both t h e Blacks and

t h e whites had the need to pretend friendship,

and commitment. The entire narrative had the tone

of a solitary rambling in t h e inner monologue of a

white sympathizer who w a s justifying h i s guilt of having

suspected h i s friend of being a police s p y . The c o r r u p t

society cultivated several negative emotions and

behaviors that shamed the 'good1 and the consc.ientious.

So much was a mystery where trust becomes a

commodity on sale to the police . . . . There's only one way for a man like that to prove

himself, so far as we are concerned: he must be

in prison (s, 4 4 6 ) .

In the narrative there seems to be no fixed points;

rather it does not drive home a specific view-point.

~ordimer herself voices her disapproval of the structure

of t h e s t o r y "Africa Emergent," in her interview with

Johannes Riis in October 1979. Even though she was

skeptic about the construct of the narrative, she asserts

that the style was intensely emotional, and that conveys

a special meaning to the narrative. Gordimer confesses

that "it was intended as a story about one of the m o s t

terrible products of South African life, the distrust

that has arisen, and has had to rise, i n a state like

South Africa. It was written in a state of fiery emotion.

The writer and her situation did not meet, because she

wasn't equal to itf*(- 2,1,1980, 2 3 ) .

But the very structural incoherence, had a

signification i n presenting the fragmentary nature of

inter-racial dialogues in t h e society. T h e narrative has

t w o major stories in it that do n o t really merge, but

remain contiguous to t h e end. The faint analogy seems to

be the element of distrust that invaded a l l walks of life

in South Africa. Gordimer was obsessed, with the truth of

t h e society, and she makes an attempt to study the

reality beneath the distrust in t h e society. In her

interview she has explained a real life situation when

one of their 'blackf friends was taken into custody right

after a secret political meeting. When everyone was

"shocked, I f and "agitated c ' as to "who is the informer?

Who is the police spy?,'' t h e black members, reasoned

that "the informer is a victim of a system of

repression, just like his victimsr' ( 2 4 ) . This

rationalizing is well captured in the story "Africa

Emergent, '' even though the narrative defies the

conventional pattern of story-telling.

Gordimer is recomposing the narrative to develop a

sub-text of social reality, while on the surface it

continues on a different level. T h e narrat ive plunges

into t h e marginal area of the Black/White friendship, and

strays into the details of such peripheral interactions.

The narratorts confusion and extreme agitation gets

reflected in the laborious sentences . The words are

spoken at random, at times disjointed:

We hardly know by now what we can do, and what

we can't do; its difficult to say goaded in on

oneself by laws and doubts and rebellion and

caution and -- not least -- self-disgust, what

is or is not friendship (s, 4 3 4 ) .

The extreme sense of inadequacy, and the pain of havinq

to endure such a corrupt society, finds expression in the

narrative.

Gordimer in the course of her narrative, thus,

developed an authentic history of her people. The emotive

status of the society was also supplemented by the actual

ingredients that made up the canvas of South African

p o l i t i c s . The society of South Africa had two major

colors: Black and White. Y e t , it incorporated within its

wafts and wefts, several other threads too. Gordimer

analyzed the contribution of these sectors to the

political purpose of her land. Within the dichotomy of

the victim/victimizer, these people had a slight but

distinct role to play. In the narrative these \actorsf

brought out several crucial aspects of the 'great South

African L i e . ' In demythologizing the f a l s e consciousness

of the colonizer's ideology, Gordimer had made use of the

leverage of this segment in t h e society that were n e i t h e r

blacks nor whites.

The inter-racial dialogue thus became a major

political statement in Gordirnerfs t e x t . The simple

classification of these people on the basis of

occupation, religion and their 'power' in connection with

the black and white relationship, had created the avenue

fo r several photographic situations. Here often, the t e x t

simply made a presentation of itself without actually

concluding into a didactic summary. 'Inkalamuls Placef

(WHYW, 156). 'A Chip Or Glass Rubyf ( S S , 2 6 4 1 , 'A Watcher

of the Dead' OJHYW, 2 4 ) , 'The Defeated' (WIIYW, 9 ) and

such other stories were representative of t h e variant

colors of the social fabric.

Mrs. Bamjee, was no accident in the collection of

political *subjectsf i n Gordimerls parade. Mrs. Bamjee

was the courageous personality who brought o u t the

powerful role played by the Gandhian way of political

struggle, within the main fight f o r South African

independence. The Indians of South A f r i c a had the

experience of organizing a political upheaval among t h e

millions. Thus united against the common enemy -- the

white man -- Indians had been an accepted accomplice of

t h e black struggle. Even though the theme was political

and t h e characters were evidently pro-political, Gordimer

never failed to portray the human interest in the

situation. Mr. Bamjee an ordinary fruit-seller, could

never understand his wife's interest in politics. "When

the duplicating machine was brought into the house.

~ a m j e e s a i d , 'Isn't it enough t h a t you've got the

Indians' trouble on your back?" ( S S , 264). Obviously

Mrs. ~amjee thought differently. To her, 'all had the

same troublesF (264). Unlike most of the stories in

Gardimer, the narrative w a s from the perspective of an

omnipresent authorial voice, t h a t swiftly penetrated the

thoughts and minds of the participants. Hrs. Bamjee was

outwardly a typical Moslem woman who 'was up until long

after midnight, turning out leaflets . . . as if she

might have been pounding chillies'(SS, 2 6 5 ) . Political

struggle gathers momentum on ly when it penetrates the

primary unit of human existence; the family. Mrs.

Bamjee's involvement showed the power of the masses that

had the fury of a hurricane. Zanip Bamjee, a mother of

nine children, five by her first marriage and four by the

second, is one of the favored characters. Her care for

the community and her inclusion in its personnel of the

black women, marks her off as one 'who remembers

everything -- people without somewhere to live, hungry

kids boys who can't get educatedF (s, 273). The care an

her part for the 'wretched of the earthf gives her a

status in the narrative. Gordimer was educating her

fellow whites in the matter of social reality. No

government could withstand the power of the masses

awakening to freedom.

Gordirner had portrayed an assortment o f situations

and subjects t h a t when taken together had the

comprehensiveness of a historical chronicle. Towards this

end, the 'subjectsf were chosen, representative of their

occupation, their lifestyles and even their cultural

significance. To conclude, as Ngugi asserts in

e Mind:

Economic and political control can never be

complete or effective without mental control. To

control a people's culture is to control their

tools of self-definition in relationship to

others (16).

Gordimer in presenting the African canvas at its

most inconspicuous moments, conveys a clear and

purposeful picture of the inter-racial dialogue in the

society. Amidst t h e turbulent times of political

struggle, her cool observation and detached attitude

towards politics, gives her narrative a greater degree of

authenticity, than in the t e x t of one of her less

'marginal* contemporaries. And she has taken full

advantage of this marginal pos i t ion to focus on the

political issues from her *privilegedF angle. Clingman

rightly observes:

In her view the novel can present history as

historians cannot. Moreover, the presentation is

not fictional in the sense of being 'untrue.'

Rather, fiction deals with an area of activity

usually inaccessible to the sciences of greater

externally: the area in which historical process

is registered as the subjective experience of

individuals in society; fiction gives us

'history from the inside,[Historv From the

Inside, 1).

Gordimer's situations and the positioning of her

'subjects' in it, arbitrate the conclusions. Thus social

reality is the very tool that realizes her political

purpose. As Clingman puts it "Gordimer * s novels are

engaged in truth-telling; hers is a realism of naming and

showing of being witness to the times she has lived

through; and a corollary of her realism is that it has

undermined many of t h e 'lies' of apartheid" (221).

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