South African Foundations
Ξ October 29th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Old School Papers |
Written in February of 2001, some sort of book review I believe…
Growing up in South Africa lends an interesting insight in reading literary works concerning my former homeland, such as Nadine Gordimer’s “Once Upon a Time”. In a what first appears to be a seemingly arbitrary introduction, Gordimer tells the story of her waking one night to fears of an intruder, only to realize that the noises she hears are from the creaking as her house, being built on top of the Johannesburg gold mines, begins to buckle under the stress. What is less apparent is that she is trying to show that South Africa is a country that is founded on the principles of exploiting black people for cheap labor to mine the richest gold and diamond fields in the world.
When Gordimer writes that the “passages of gold mines have hollowed the rock” (75), she is saying that the “house’s foundations” (75), the system of apartheid, is responsible for the fear that white people live in, waiting “already a victim” (75) of the next knifing by a “casual labourer…dismissed without pay” (75), or some other such “tsotsis” (77). She then proceeds to tell herself “a bed-time story” (76) about a family living in a very South African city. (more…)