This nostalgia for good old days – the colonial
era, is what makes the book remarkable and relevant to the topic
at hand. It is not only nostalgia for colonialism that makes
the book relevant to the topic. Even the language used to talk
about the formerly colonized and the African way of life is
no different from the language once used by writers like Rudyard
Kipling.
“He [David Lurie] has been
away less than three months, yet in that time the shanty settlements
have crossed the highway and spread east of the airport. The
stream of cars has to slow down while a child with a stick herds
a stray cow off the road. Inexorably, he thinks, the country
is coming to the city. Soon there will be cattle again on Rondebosch
Common; soon history will have come full circle.”
It is impossible
to divorce Disgrace from a global social climate – a
climate that is informed and shaped by the notion that postcolonial
states fail as soon as whites relinquish power to the natives.
Only a former colonizer can write something that reads as follows
“…the country is coming to the city. … soon history will have
come full circle.” Coetzee stops just short of saying that now
that the civilizing whites are no longer in power, what one
should expect is violence and chaos. That is the standard representation
of postcolonial Africa in the mainstream media. The global perception
of Africa is a place where darkness, as it were, never turns
into light.
Disgrace fails to chart new frontiers of
ideoscapes, which would challenge and subvert the present representation
of postcolonial blacks and Africa in the media, The Novel must
be described as being trapped in history, and history as being
trapped in the book.
Depending on from which standpoint you view it,
the novel reaches its highest peak or descends into its darkest
abyss in its cultural production of postcolonial blacks and
Africa, when a white woman is raped by three blackmen. If there
is one thing the colonizers always feared losing it is their
sexual possession of white women’s bodies. Corpus of literature
exist that depict black males as castrated, without phallic
power; and as a result of this, black men, in general, are portrayed
as having a constant need to overly assert a phallic misogynist
masculinity, one that is rooted in contempt for the female,
to paraphrase bell hooks. Needless to point out, the rationale
that underpins this pathology is the obsession with an idealized,
fetishized vision of femininity that is white.
This is how Coetzee psychoanalyzes the sexual stereotype
of a black man as a rapist, in a postcolonial context:
“Halfway home, Lucy [David
Lurie’s daughter], to his surprise, speaks. ‘It was so personal,’
she says. ‘It was done with such personal hatred. That was what
stunned me more than anything. The rest was…expected. But why
did they hate me so? I had never set eyes on them.’ He waits
for more, but there is no more, for the moment. ‘It was history
speaking through them,’ he offers at last. ‘A history of wrong.
Think of it that way…. It may seem personal, but it wasn’t.
It came down from the ancestors.’”
Further on, David Lurie says to his daughter, “Take
a break for six months or a year, until things have improved
in this country. Go overseas. Go to Holland. Holland may not
be the most exciting of places to live, but at least it doesn’t
breed nightmares.” What Coetzee is at pains to paint in this
novel is that there is no place for whites in the postcolony.
The postcolony breeds nightmares for whites (i.e. violence,
chaos and raping of white women). Hence, whites should rather
pack up and go back to Europe from whence they came.
The characters that
represent the natives in the book are inarticulate, cannot voice
their emotions, and fail to explain their present circumstances
through history. Petrus, the black male character in the book,
is portrayed as being shiftless, cunning, and untrustworthy.
Black women are portrayed as dull, obedient and sexless. Women
of Asian descent are shown as mere sex objects. When
David Lurie telephones a brothel, he is told that there are
“…lots of exotics to choose from – Malaysian, Thai, Chinese,
you name it.”
After forcing himself sexually onto one of these
“exotics” at a university where he teaches, Lurie explains his
misconduct in taking advantage of an innocent student as follows:
“It could have turned out
differently, I believe, between the two of us, despite our ages.
But there was something I failed to supply, something’ – he
hunts for the word – ‘lyrical. I lack the lyrical. I manage
love too well. Even when I burn I don’t sing, if you understand
me. For which I am sorry. I am sorry for what I took your daughter
through. You have a wonderful family. I apologize for the grief
I have caused you…. I ask for your pardon.’”
Contrast this to what David Lurie says to his daughter
after being raped. He says leave this country, this land breeds
nightmares, go to Holland. Notice the racist logic that when
it is black men who are doing wrong, the whole country is charged.
But when a white man transgresses, the white population is not
charged, the land does not breed nightmares for people of color.
It is simply a failure to “supply the lyrical." Furthermore,
the white man has only to apologize to the family of the young
woman, and all is forgotten. Or if there is punishment, the
white man is punished on his own terms. Let me allow David Lurie
to speak for himself.
“In my own terms, I am
being punished for what happened between myself and your daughter.
I am sunk into a state of disgrace from which it will not be
easy to lift myself. It is not a punishment I have refused.
I do not murmur against it. On the contrary, I am living it
out from day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of
being.”
The reason that Coetzee can be so bold as to portray
David Lurie in a positive light – as being sensitive and ready
to repent for his transgression, while the men who raped his
daughters are portrayed as vindictive and insensitive natives
who go around raping women – is because he knows he is subscribing
to white supremacist notions of how black and white subjectivities
are constructed in this white supremacist world. For its credibility,
the novel depends on racist thinking “which perpetuates the
fantasy that the Other who is subjugated, who is subhuman, lacks
the ability to comprehend, to understand, to see the working
of the powerful.”(hooks, 1992:168)
Academic
Writing
For my
review of academic writing, I have chosen “From
Racial to Class Apartheid: South Africa’s Frustrating Decade
of Freedom” by Patrick Bond. This article appeared in the Monthly
Review, volume 55, Number 10, March 2004.
To begin with, the title: “From Racial to Class
Apartheid,” echoes sentiments of most white activists on the
left in South Africa. It is not always malicious intent that
drives this thinking, sometimes it is the case of ideological
dogmatism, and sometimes this kind of thinking hides a deeper
psychological problem – white guilt, or the immobilizing fear
of being implicated in the structural oppression of black people.
Sometimes it is simply a matter of white activists refusing
to account for white privilege. bell hooks has a profound way
of explaining how some white activists come to overlook issues
of race.
“….White critics who passively
absorb white supremacist thinking, and therefore never notice
or look at black people on the streets, at their jobs, who render
us invisible with their gaze in all areas of daily life, are
not likely to produce liberatory theory that will challenge
racist domination, or to promote a breakdown in traditional
ways of seeing and thinking about reality.” (hooks, 1990: www.africa.upenn.edu)
Bond opens his essay by saying: “…Nelson Mandela
as the new president – did not alter the enormous structural
gap in wealth between the majority black and minority white
populations. Indeed, it set in motion neoliberal policies that
exacerbated class, race, and gender inequality.” This is a good
start and from here the essay promises a broad intellectual
framework that touches on class, gender and race. However, as
one reads further and looks at the essay closely and critically,
one finds that the essay is really about class and some gender
issues. The race factor that the author promised to explore
is ignored and the reader is instead met with a deafening silence
around this issue.
What underpins the logic of the essay is the following:
“The reality is that South
Africa has witnessed the replacement of racial apartheid with
what is increasingly referred to as class apartheid – systemic
underdevelopment and segregation of the oppressed majority through
structured economic, political, legal, and cultural practices.
“…The deal represented
simply this: black nationalists got the state, while white people
and corporations could remove their capital from the country,
although continuing to reside in South Africa to enjoy even
greater privileges through economic liberalization.”
At best this argument
is the reduction of reality into economics, and at worst, this
argument does not provide enough evidence to persuade reasonable
readers that, as things stand, South Africa can be described
as moving away from race to class. The term “Class Apartheid”
is obscure and utterly useless, but the author, make no mistake,
used that term to signify to the reader where to put emphasis
when looking at South African politics.
First of all, the
logic that went into the ideology of apartheid South Africa
was based on class, as well as, race oppression. These two factors
were always present. Interestingly enough, we find that these
two factors still exist in post-apartheid South Africa, although
it must be pointed out that the race factor is not the determining
factor in the equation as it used to be in the past. However,
that on its own does not mean South Africa is moving away from
race to class oppression. If that was the case, there would
not be the need to for affirmative action programs, which are
designed to counter institutionalized racism. Research has shown
that 12 years after liberation white males still dominate management
and other empowering positions in the work place.
“What is reflected here
is the concentration of whites at skilled level in skill-intensive
sectors. Highly skilled Africans are mostly in the community
service sector, which is mainly government and parastatals in
transport, storage and communication and electricity, gas and
water supply. It is only in the community service sector and
the electricity, gas and water supply sectors that the proportion
of Africans in skilled categories exceeds that of whites. The
electricity, gas and water supply sector also shows a relatively
high proportion of Africans in skilled-level categories, although
that of whites is still higher. On the other hand, the proportion
of Africans is higher within the semi-skilled and low-skilled
categories. The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that
the government has made better progress as an employer in terms
of advancing Africans into high-level occupations, while the
private sector seems to be lagging behind.” (Buhlungu, Daniel,
Southhall & Lutchman, 2006:205)
But of course, Bond does not even come close to
talking about institutionalized racism like this. The following
quote is an epitome of how far Bond is prepared to go when talking
about matters relating to race.
“As a result, according
to even the government’s statistics, average black African household
income fell 19 percent from 1995–2000 (to $3,714 per year),
while white household income rose 15 percent (to $22,600 per
year). Not just relative but absolute poverty intensified, as
the proportion of households earning less than $90 of real income
increased from 20 percent of the population in 1995, to 28 percent
in 2000. Across the racial divide, the poorest half of all South
Africans earned just 9.7 percent of national income in 2000,
down from 11.4 percent in 1995. The richest 20 percent earned
65 percent of all income. It is fair to assume that inequality
continued to worsen after 2000.”
The above describes what Bond calls “Class Apartheid.”
His description of this “Class Apartheid” is revealing because
of where he chooses to place emphasis in his historical account
of the status quo in South Africa. His whole analysis is about
how the economy functions without really connecting that understanding
to social relations, racial hierarchy and institutionalized
racism.
Also, the essay talks about gender issues (without
making any distinction between rich and educated white women
and impoverished women of color), as well as environmental issues.
Bond writes: “Gender relations show some improvements, especially
in reproductive rights, albeit with extremely uneven access.
But contemporary South Africa retains apartheid’s patriarchal
modes of surplus extraction….” From the above, we are to assume
that the “extremely uneven access” to reproductive rights actually
refers to the unequal bargaining position occupied by white
and black women in this society. However, for Bond this part
of the argument is not important and so he does not explore
it in depth, but rather drops it and moves on.
“Moving to the environment,
it is fair to assess South African ecology today as in worse
condition, in many crucial respects – water and soil resources
mismanagement, South Africa’s contribution to global warming,
fisheries, industrial toxics, and genetic modification – than
during apartheid.”
Needless to say, this is supposed to be further
evidence to prove that South Africa is moving from “Race to
Class Apartheid.” What seems to clinch the argument for Bond,
however, is the study done by the Institute for Democracy in
South Africa. Bond quotes the study as follows: “As a result
of this consistent failure to deliver, alienation and discontent
are obviously increasing. According to a late-2002 survey conducted
by the liberal Institute for Democracy in South Africa, the
number of black people who believe life was better under the
apartheid regime is growing. Tragically, more than 60 percent
of all South Africans polled said the country was better run
during white minority rule….”
Conclusions like these leave so much to be desired.
Of course Bond does not disappoint – he neither explains how
the research questions were phrased, nor does he seem to question
the goal achieved by this research study – meaning a case of
reliability achieved at the expense of validity. So, how are
reasonable readers expected to accept this as serious evidence
to prove the validity of Bond’s argument?
Conclusion
What I have attempted to do in this essay is to
explore new ways of introducing the subject of race in the new
South Africa. What I am demanding in this essay is a new vocabulary
to describe reality and the kind of oppression we are up against.
I have looked at two different styles of writing, fictional
and academic writing, to delineate what the problem is and to
explain how the race discourse is systematically ignored and
illegitimized in intellectual circles. By looking at these two
different kinds of writing, my aim was to investigate ways in
which black intellectuals and black activists could effectively
intervene and demand a new vocabulary and new voices to tell
our stories of social struggle.
Mandisi Majavu is a cultural critic based in
Cape Town, South Africa. Contact him at [email protected].