Representation of Social Formation in Post-Apartheid South Africa Literature

Abstract

Post-apartheid African literature is turning its attention away from an exclusive preoccupation with race, to ponder the vaster socio-political and cultural terrain that has been in the making since the end of apartheid. The study sought to investigate the ways in which post-apartheid South African literature engages with the increasingly complex social formation of the “New" South Africa. It outlined the South African post-apartheid reality in a historical and social context; demonstrated the representation of the unfolding of the process of building the Rainbow nation; and accounted for the paradoxes in the pursuit of the Rainbow dream. The study operated on the assumptions that South African literature grows out of a culturally, economically, psychologically, politically and ideologically complex social reality; that the building of the Rainbow nation has been a slow process marked by inconsistency; and that South Africa today is a site of paradoxes inherited from the from the unresolved cultural, economic and political contradictions of the apartheid era. The study focused on four novels: K. Sello Duiker's The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001), Phaswane Mpe•s Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001), Zakes Mda's The Madonna of Excelsior (2002) and J, M Coetzee's Disgrace (2000). The study used the postcolonial theory. Postcolonial strategies assisted in the analysis of economic inequalities, political and cultural imperialist effects of apartheid/colonisation. Achille Mbembe's critique of the postcolony was used to explain post-apartheid South Africa's post-colonial status. Homi Bhabha's theorising on national culture explained the borderlines of South Africa's changing nation-space in the light of emerging identities. Constructivist research methodology was used in the study. The novels provided the primary data. A range of scholarly work and other secondary material augmented the primary data. Data was analysed interpretively. The findings of the research led to the conclusion that the four texts exhibit that the inequalities inherited from apartheid entangled the nation's transition to the "New" South Africa; that these inequalities structureda society that is not only limiting but also inconsistent with the Rainbow dream; that the persistence of social, economic and political problems, and the re-emergence of cultural, racial and class tensions reveal a fractured post-apartheid present; that South African literature, in its transformative vision, has represented South Africans' endeavour to live with each other, and to create a responsible future, intimating hope. This study helps to re-examine the South African nation after apartheid, and speculates the Rainbow nation's future prospects and opportunities for social cohesion and multicultural harmony. It also contributes to the appreciation of cultural diversity in an increasingly transnational and migrant world.