July's People South Africa's Interregnum

“JULY’S PEOPLE” (1981):

SOUTH AFRICA’S INTERREGNUM

Miguel Ángel Benítez Castro Textos y Contextos en Inglés

MIVCI

July’s People (1981): South Africa’s Interregnum

Miguel Ángel Benítez Castro MIVCI 2

TABLE OF COTETS

1. Introduction ..............................................................................................3 2. Historical background (1948-1994) .........................................................3 3. Nadine Gordimer (1923-).........................................................................7 4. July’s People (1981)...............................................................................10 5. List of References...................................................................................14




1. ITRODUCTIO

This essay intends to explore the way in which the relationship between literature and historical context appears reflected in July’s People (1981), a novel by one of South Africa’s most world-renowned writers: Nadine Gordimer. In order to fulfil this purpose, we shall first of all present the historical backdrop against which Gordimer’s literary career has developed for so many years. The racial segregationist movement of apartheid led many South African intellectuals to use their writings as powerful weapons against a system they did not believe in. Nadine Gordimer’s strong commitment to this intellectual struggle has permeated most of her novels, short stories and critical essays, to such a degree that some of her works were banned during the apartheid regime. It should be noted, however, that despite her social realism in depicting the plight of black people under this unfair system, Nadine Gordimer has always kept a strong sense of artistic individuality, which, as we shall see, shines through both her language and literary images. Once the historical and biographical background is set, we will then draw our attention to the nightmarish “interregnum” found in July’s People. In the light of the uprisings of the 1970s, the novel’s fictitious revolution leaves the (white) reader with a disturbing feeling about what might happen in South Africa, if the country’s black population overthrew the system of apartheid. Gordimer’s futuristic novel is the writer’s attempt to make South Africa’s white liberals aware of the fact that, despite their opposition to the system of apartheid, deep down they share with apartheid supporters the same racial prejudices and lack of communication with black people.

2. HISTORICAL BACKGROUD (1948-1994)

Apartheid (Afrikaans word for apartness) was a system of legalized racial segregation enforced by the National Party (NP) South African government between 1948 and 1994. With the foundation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 (first as a British dominion), racial segregation began to be officially implemented through The !ative’s Land Act of 1913. This first piece of segregationist legislation was intended to restrict the ownership and acquisition of land by blacks throughout the four provinces of the Union of South Africa.

When the Afrikaner Nationalists (the National Party) came to power in 1948, the system of apartheid was systematized and institutionalized under extensive legislation. The implementation of the policy was made possible by The Population Registration

Act of 1950, which put all South Africans into three racial categories: Bantu (black African), White, or Coloured (of mixed race). A fourth category, Asian (Indians and Pakistanis), was added later. Having legalized racial segregation through the previous Act, the Afrikaner government further enforced the system of apartheid by a series of laws passed in the 1950s.

With the passing of The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and The

Immorality Act (1950), any kind of union (marital in the first law, and sexual in the second one) between people of different races was outlawed. The Group Areas Act (1950) further separated people by assigning racial groups to different residential and business sections in urban areas. An effect of the law was to exclude non-Whites from living in the most developed areas, which were restricted to Whites. Consequently, thousands of Coloureds, Blacks and Indians were removed from areas classified for



white occupation. This law, nevertheless, did not deprive Non-whites of the right to work in White areas, but in order to be allowed to commute to one of these privileged areas, all black South-Africans over the age of sixteen had to carry a pass book at all times (Pass Laws Act, 1952). This document contained details on the bearer, such as his/her fingerprints, photograph, the name of his/her employer, and how long the bearer had been employed. It should be noted that passes were issued for just one district, confining the holder only to that area. Being without a valid pass made a person subject to arrest and trial

Non-whites saw their social condition get even worse with the passing of The Bantu

Authorities Act (1951) and The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act (1959). These laws furthered the divisions between the races by creating ten African homelands, administered by what were supposed to be reestablished tribal organizations. Tribal Authorities were set up and positions given to traditional Chiefs and Headmen, who became accountable for both the distribution of land and the well-being of their people. These two Acts implied that these separate territorial governments would eventually become independent, thus attempting to turn South Africa into a country split into a white centre and a cluster of black states along its borders.

A turning point in the government’s Bantustan strategy was a new piece of legislation passed in 1970: The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act. This Act made every black South African a citizen of one of the homelands, effectively stripping the black population of their South African citizenship. The aim was to ensure whites became the demographic majority within South Africa, by having all ten bantustans (homelands) choose independence. From that moment, the citizens of the new independent states needed passports (not pass books) to work in White South Africa. However, eligibility requirements for a passport were extremely difficult for blacks to meet.

Racial discrimination in apartheid South Africa involved not only geographical separation (Grand apartheid), but also social inequity and intolerance (Petty apartheid). Paramount in this process of social discrimination was The Reservation of Separate

Amenities Act (1953), which enforced segregation of all public facilities, including buildings, and transport. To provide some examples of such a terrible situation, buses, trains, hospitals, ambulances, public beaches, public swimming pools, public toilets, some pedestrian bridges and graveyards (among other facilities) were segregated. Striking as it may seem, race prejudice did not leave education unscathed, for only-

black schools and universities were created in the homelands. The terrible ordeal black people went through under apartheid was twice as

appalling for women as for men. Indeed, African women had very little or no legal rights, no access to education and no right to own property. Since jobs were so hard to find, many black women worked as agricultural workers in rural areas. The Pass Laws

Act (1952) and The Group Areas Act (1950) highly contributed to a worsening of the condition of black women, as wives and children had to be left behind in the black homelands, while men stayed in (white) urban areas, working very hard to send their monthly wages to their families: “Most of the women of childbearing age had husbands who spent their lives in those cities the women had never seen” (Gordimer 1981: 83). This situation is deftly portrayed by Nadine Gordimer in July’s People, where we find July, one of those black men who were employed by a white household as domestic workers. Due to his economic dependence on the Smales, July could visit his family only once a year for a short period of time. Martha, July’s wife, refers to this situation as follows: “Across the seasons was laid the diuturnal one of being without a man...The sun rises, the moon sets; the money must come, the man must go” (Gordimer 1981: 83).



In this passage, Martha resigns herself to her role as a husbandless woman entangled in a cycle in which her husband’s long awaited visit is simply a part of nature’s eternal course: time goes by, her husband comes back for a short period of time, and then he goes away. Hence, it is obvious that the system of apartheid separated and destroyed many black families, who were forced to face up to the fact that they would no longer be together.

The implementation and enforcement of apartheid, which has already been commented on, did not go unopposed. A number of black political groups, often supported by sympathetic whites (one of them being Nadine Gordimer), opposed apartheid by using a variety of tactics, including violence, srikes, demonstrations, and sabotage. Among the most notable resistance movements were the ANC (African

!ational Congress) and the PAC (Pan Africanist Congres of Azania). In the 1950s, the ANC began to advocate a policy of open defiance and resistance to the system of apartheid. With The Defiance Campaign of June 1952, the ANC (led by Nelson Mandela) encouraged black people to defy the segregationist laws through strikes, boycotts and civil disobedience. This defying fervour soon spread throughout the country, giving rise to mass arrests by the segregationist government. Once things had calmed down, the government took several supreme measures, among which we could mention the Suppression of Communism Act and the Public Safety Act. This new legislation empowered the government to declare states of emergency and increased penalties (life sentences, whippings...) for protesting against or supporting the repeal of a law.

In 1959, a group of disenchanted ANC members broke away from the ANC and formed the Pan Africanist Congress (led by Robert Sobukwe). The first thing in their agenda was a series of nationwide demonstrations against the Pass Laws. The PAC called for blacks to demonstrate against pass books on 21 March 1960. One of these mass demonstrations took place at Sharpeville, where a crowd of black people refused to carry their passes. Immediately, the government declared a state of emergency which lasted for 156 days, leaving 69 people dead and 187 wounded. In the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, the government banned both the ANC and the PAC. After this terrible carnage, South Africa’s policies were subject to international scrutiny, eventually leading to the country’s exclusion from the British Commonwealth of nations in 1961, and its subsequent change of status (from the Union of South Africa to the Republic of South Africa).

Sharpeville’s dreadful incident prompted both the ANC and PAC to run campaigns of sabotage and terrorism through their armed wings. However, their campaign would soon come to an end, with the arrest in 1963 of 19 ANC leaders, who had been hiding at a farm in Rivonia. In the subsequent trial, ten leaders of the African !ational Congress were tried for 221 acts of sabotage designed to overthrow the apartheid system. Nelson Mandela, one of the defendants in that trial, was sentenced to jail, where he remained until 1990. The trial was condemned by the United Nations Security Council, and was a major force in the introduction of new international sanctions against the South African government.

After the banning of the ANC and PAC, and the Rivonia Trial, the struggle within South Africa suffered a major setback. Nevertheless, in the mid-1970s, a new devotion came from the latest, youngest generation. In the 1970s, Steve Biko (a black student leader) founded the Black Consciousness Movement, which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population. This movement drew most of its support from high schools and higher education institutions. The BCM, together with The South



African Students’ Organisation (SASO), played a major role in the mobilization of students that led to the Soweto uprisings (1976).

The Soweto uprising lit the fuse of a nationwide protest that greatly endangered the survival of the segregationist regime. The mechanism which most directly set the uprising in motion was the Afrikaans Medium Decree (1974), which forced all black schools to use Afrikaans and English in a 50-50% ratio as languages of instruction. The policy was deeply unpopular, since Afrikaans was regarded by some as the language of the oppressor (by contrast, English was favoured as an important global lingua franca). The resentment was such that, in April 1976, the children attending one of the schools in Soweto went on strike. Their rebellion then spread to many other schools in Soweto, spurring some students’ associations to organize a mass rally for June 16, 1976. On the morning of June 16, 1976, thousands of black students walked from their schools to Orlando Stadium for a rally to protest against having to learn through Afrikaans at school. The protest was intended to be peaceful, but when the crowd was confronted by the police, panic and chaos broke out. Surrounded by a mob of students (most of them, children), the police began to fire shots into the crowd, killing 23 people only on the first day. Riots in Soweto lasted for three more days, with a final death toll that varies from 200 to 700.

The revolutionary spirit ignited in Soweto led to mass protests all over South Africa. In this atmosphere of revolutionary awareness, students became more conscious of the major role they could play in overthrowing the white rule of apartheid. For this reason, many young people left South Africa, most of them to Tanzania, to be educated in militant struggle. Outraged at the violence displayed by the apartheid government in Soweto, the ANC and PAC began to recruit emigrant students to join the armed struggle. In the meantime, the white segregationist government was so afraid of the tide of hostility that was sweeping across the country that it urged police to raid all the black townships in search of ringleaders. One of the arrested leaders was Steve Biko, who died while he was in police custody.

Little by little, South Africa’s National Party government became more and more isolated, both internationally and domestically. With the independence of the neighbouring nations of Angola and Mozambique, the apartheid system of South Africa lost two important allies. The victory of liberation leftist movements in these two countries showed that white colonialists could be beaten by military force. The fact that most of these liberation movements had a leftist or communist perspective can be explained by reference to the global power balance between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War. This power struggle is illustrated in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s

People. In the light of the uprisings of the 1970s, Nadine Gordimer provides the reader with a fictional account of the power reversal that could come about in South Africa, if black revolutionaries were successful in their overthrow of the system of apartheid. The following quotation from the novel makes it clear that if blacks succeeded in their revolt, this would be thanks to the military and economic aid provided by both other neighbouring nations and Cuba:

It’s a war. It’s not like that, any more...The blacks have also got guns. Bombs (miming the throwing of a hand grenade). All kinds of things...People have come back from Botswana and Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia, from Moçambique, with guns...The blacks have Cubans flying from Moçambique and Namibia. (Gordimer 1981: 116-117)



This passage is taken from the section dealing with the Smales’ visit to July’s tribal chief. In their conversation with the chief, the reader finds out that Nadine Gordimer’s vision of a future South Africa is rather pessimistic, in the sense that in a hypothetical demise of apartheid, it is quite unlikely that all blacks will be eager to change the established order. Contrary to Bam Smales’ belief that all black South Africans are members of “Mandela’s people and Sobubkwe’s people” (Gordimer 1981: 120), the chief fears that the black rebels (“Those people from Soweto” Gordimer 1981: 119) and those supported by both Russians and Cubans will “take this country of my nation” (Gordimer 1981: 119). Shortly afterwards, the chief makes explicit mention of the fact that South Africa is not the homogeneous “black nation” (Gordimer 1981: 119) white liberals pride themselves on upholding, but a kind of melting pot of many different black tribes: “They not our nation. AmaZulu, amaXhosa, baSotho...I don’t know” (Gordimer 1981: 119). Therefore, Nadine Gordimer is calling the reader’s attention to the fact that in a future overthrow of the apartheid regime, tribal chiefs will do anything they can to defend their own people (their own tribe), and not “Mandela’s and Sobubkwe’s people”; if that defence implies using weapons, they will learn to shoot their guns against those who may dispossess them of their land. However, at the end of July’s People, Nadine Gordimer implies that, in an eventual liberation of the country, not all black people will be willing to fight for the defence of their own tribes. This may be found in Daniel’s failure to comply with his allegiance to his tribal chief, for he takes sides with the revolutionary cause rather than with his own people (tribe):

Daniel’s raised fist in greeting had seemed a matter of being fashionable... ‘Cubas’: it was he who had supplied the identification when the chief could not name the foreigners he feared – So he’s gone to fight. Little bastard. He only took what he had a right to (Gordimer 1981: 153)

In this excerpt, Maureen shows July the deep resentment she feels at Daniel’s stealing of Bam’s gun.

3. ADIE GORDIMER (1923-)

Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 in Springs, a small mining town near Johannesburg. Her parents were both Jewish immigrants, her father a watchmaker from Lithuania, and her mother from London. Gordimer attended a Catholic convent school for some time, but was largely home-bound as a child because of her mother’s fears that she had a weak heart. Being so isolated led her to read all that fell into her hands; thus, she became interested in literature from an early age. Nadine began to write at the age of nine, and her first short story was published in a South African magazine when she was only fifteen. Gordimer studied for a year at Witwaterstrand University, where she got to know some important professionals across the colour bar. While taking classes in Johannesburg, Gordimer continued to write, publishing mostly in local South African magazines. She collected many of these early stories in Face to Face, published in 1949. Her first novel, The Lying Days, appeared in 1953. Over half a century, Gordimer has written thirteen novels, over two hundred short stories, and several volumes of essays.

Gordimer endured the bleak Apartheid decades, refusing to move abroad as so many others did. Her decision to remain in the country through the years of political repression has reflected her commitment to her racially divided society, and to her vision of a postapartheid future. In that sense, we may well say that Nadine Gordimer became the voice for all the silenced, black South African writers. In the early 1960s,



and particularly after the Sharpeville massacre, Nadine Gordimer became actively involved in South African politics. In the Rivonia Trial (1963), Gordimer became a close friend of Nelson Mandela and his defence lawyers. Some years later, she joined the African National Congress, when it was still listed as an illegal organization by the South African government. Throughout these years, she also regularly took part in anti-apartheid demonstrations in South Africa, and travelled internationally criticizing South Africa’s segregationist regime.

Gordimer’s outspoken perspective led to the banning of several of her works, two for lengthy periods of time. The Late Bourgeois World was banned for almost a decade, and A World of Strangers was censored for twelve years. Other works were forbidden for lesser amounts of time: Burger’s Daugher was censored for six months, and July’s

People was also banned for some time. Surprisingly enough, censorship has not yet disappeared from South Africa’s post-apartheid era; for instance, July’s People (among many other works) was removed in 2001 from school reading lists, on the grounds that the novel was highly racist. Despite her country’s reluctance to her works, Gordimer’s literary output has achieved international recognition, culminating with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

Once some biographical facts have been considered, it is important that we confine our attention to the literary development that this writer has experienced over the years. First of all, it should be pointed out that Nadine Gordimer’s literary style is based upon the occidental literary tradition. However, with the passing of years, Gordimer has been able to gear her occidental literary background towards a more personal South African perspective. This South African viewpoint has permeated most of her liteary output, providing the reader with a very clear picture of how distressing and appalling life can be under the yoke of a segregationist regime. In spite of Gordimer’s socio-political commitment, she has been able to keep her social engagement apart from her artistic individuality. In Nadine Gordimer’s words, what really makes a writer is the tension arising “between standing apart [artistic individuality] and being fully involved” (Conversations 34-35, cited in Baena 1998: 32)

Nadine Gordimer’s first works are characterized by the humanistic liberal ideology that prevailed in the 1950s. Humanistic liberalism advocates that racial differences may disappear, simply by ignoring them and by interacting and communicating with black people. At that time, Nadine Gordimer became acquainted with many African intellectuals, among whom we could mention Lewis Nkosi, Ezekiel Mphahlele or Lionel Abrahams. In addition to the humanistic perspective typical of her first works, from the outset of her literary career, Gordimer endowed her fiction with an intense narrative realism. Gordimer’s realism has its origins in the Hungarian philosopher and critic Georg Lukacks. Her concern, as shown in her highly acclaimed novels of the 1970s (The Conservationist and Burger’s Daughter), is to evoke by means of the individual character a broader political and historical totality.

The initial humanistic optimism of the 1950s was gradually undermined by a series of historical and political events. For example, the multiracial and multicultural stance upheld by the ANC in the early fifties was soon endangered by the africanist position proposed by the PAC. According to the Pan Africanist Congres, apartheid could not be overthrown simply by promoting intercultural communication. This segregationist regime was “an oppression of the black indigenous majority by a white settler minority” (Clingman 1986: 73, cited in Baena 1998: 34), and as such, it involved a war in which all the African (black) nation should stand up in arms against all the white population (without exceptions). July’s People is a perfect example of what might happen in South



Africa if the black nation (as a whole) revolted against the white minority. This Africanist utopia did not last too long, for two terrible historical events shattered the nationalist hopes of the black population: the Sharpeville massacre, and the subsequent banning of both the ANC and the PAC.

As one might expect, Nadine Gordimer’s literary art was not immune to the course of events already mentioned. A Guest of Honour (1971) marks a watershed in Nadine Gordimer’s artistic development, in respect of her growing engagement with an exclusively African perspective. From that moment onwards, Gordimer’s novels begin to depict the entire South-African society, which means that Gordimer no longer provides only a white standpoint in her works, but tries to offer a general overview of the South-African society as a whole, including both urban environments and black rural areas. Bearing this in mind, it is no wonder that some of the novels coming after A

Guest of Honour contain rural areas to reflect an African tradition which has nothing to do with the white colonial urban areas. The stark contrast between white urban areas and black rural villages is wonderfully portrayed in July’s People.

The ideologogical evolution found in A Guest of Honour was immediately followed by a formal evolution, coinciding with the publication of The Conservationist (1974). This novel marks the starting point for Gordimer’s experimentation with postmodern and metafictional techniques. From then on, Nadine Gordimer makes use of a fragmented and multiple perspective, whereby she expresses a reality which is gradually becoming more twisted and complex. Gordimer’s postmodernism brings the reader closer to the African conflict, as it offers a wide range of attitudes and opinions coming from the innermost psychology of her protagonists. Furthermore, Gordimer’s novels from the seventies and eighties offer a pessimistic perspective of the white humanistic liberalism typical of the fifties. Bruce King explains Gordimer’s shift in her literary perspective as follows: “The Conservationist [brought] a foreshadowing of the many voices, the confusion of facts with fantasies, the unreliable or dislocated narration, found in such works as Burger’s Daughter or July’s People” (Bruce King 1993: 3-4, cited in Baena 1998: 40).

July’s People is one of the best instances of a postmodern reality which is gradually falling apart. In this novel, Nadine Gordimer prophesies that South Africa’s future liberation might lead to “an explosion of roles” (Nadine Gordimer 1981:117), as a result of which blacks will take over the privileged position formerly occupied by the whites. Gordimer thinks that this situation will result in “a great diversity of morbid symptoms” (Nadine Gordimer 1981: epigraph). In the novel, the character who most suffers the consequences of such “interregnum” is Maureen Smales. Unable to come to terms with a new reality which she cannot understand, Maureen finally decides to flee from her old life (her family, her privileged position) in search of an unknown fate, represented by the helicopter. Maureen’s despair becomes apparent to the reader in the first pages of the novel: “Maureen was aware, among them in the hut, of not knowing where she was, in time, in the order of a day as she had always known it” (Nadine Gordimer 1981: 17)

Nadine Gordimer was not the only South African writer depicting a revolutionary future in one of her novels. Besides July’s People, the early eighties also saw the publication of two other novels similar in nature to Gordimer’s: Promised Land by Karel Schoeman, and Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee. These South-African works are important, not only due to their futuristic nature, but also to their presentation of the possible consequences that could arise from a future contact between colonizer and colonized. In July’s People, the material deprivation that Bam and Maureen Smales experience in rural South Africa, and the difficulty of adjusting to dependency on their



former servant cause them to lose their self-image as independent, gracious, liberal citizens. This loss of personal identity is one of the possible effects that could be brought to light by a future contact between blacks (colonized) and whites (colonizers). Gordimer draws our attention to the fact that white liberals would discover the hypocrisy underlying their ideals, if they were forced to live with black people under equal conditions.

To sum up, Nadine Gordimer’s literary career until the publication of July’s People (1981) proceeded as follows: from optimism to pessimism, and from humanistic liberalism to a fragmentary reality. With the new revolutionary fervour of the 1980s, South Africa was getting closer to its eventual liberation. The apartheid government, however, was not yet ready to hand over its power to the black population. Consequently, we may assert that South Africa at that time was in the throes of the revolutionary transformation that ten years later led to the final overthrow of the apartheid regime. Taking this idea into account, the following section will be devoted to a commentary on the “interregnum” Nadine Gordimer presents in July’s People.

4. JULY’S PEOPLE (1981)

Nadine Gordimer wrote July’s People at a time of widespread uncertainty about the future of South Africa. The resurgence of a revolutionary consciousness in the eighties, coupled with the gruesome repression by the apartheid system after the Soweto riots, brought the final liberation of the country closer to becoming a reality, but a reality whose achievement was not going to be plain sailing. Thus, it becomes clear that July’s

People was written against a backdrop of socio-political tension between “the old” system of racial segregation, which was about to die, and the future system of racial equality, which was struggling to be born. The interval between these two events is what Antonio Gramsci’s epigraph refers to as “interregnum”. The metaphorical nobody’s land resulting from such a situation gives rise to a “great diversity of morbid symptoms”. It is precisely this “diversity of morbid symptoms” what July’s People is all about.

In the middle of a widespread black revolt in South Africa, the privileged position formerly occupied by the whites (‘colonizers’) is about to be taken over by the blacks (‘colonized’). This situation leads many white families to flee their homes in their comfortable residential districts. One of these families, the Smales, find themselves forced to accept the help of their black servant, July, who offers them refuge at his mud and thatched hut village. July’s protection, together with Bam’s yellow bakkie (a little truck), “turn out to be vital” (Gordimer 1981: 6) in the Smales’ successful escape.

The Smales are white liberals who have always been against the segregationist regime of apartheid. Being liberal, however, will not spare them the ordeal of having to suffer the consequences of such a terrible situation. To provide an example of the uselessness of the Smales’ liberal ideals in the novel’s “interregnum”, Bam and Maureen Smales were so confident about the immunity they thought they would be granted as white liberals, that they were extremely baffled when they were advised to withdraw all their money from the bank (“Bam, in a state of detached disbelief at his action ... withdrew five thousand rands in notes” Gordimer 1981: 7). By introducing the reader to this family, Nadine Gordimer attempts to highlight the difficult position many white liberal families found themselves in at that time: “they might find they had lived out their whole lives as they were, born white pariah dogs in a black continent” (Gordimer 1981: 8). The previous quotation may be taken as an illustration of the wide disjunction between the ideals associated with white liberalism and reality; no matter



how hard they tried to “slough their privilege” (Gordimer 1981: 8), blacks would always regard white liberals as “masters” (‘colonizers’).

Referring to the notion of “masters” doubtlessly involves the existence of slaves. In the South-African segregationist context, it is not at all hard to identify to whom each label is assigned: masters (whites) vs. slaves (blacks). However, the “interregnum” the reader is confronted with in July’s People makes it difficult to maintain such division. July’s People is, more than anything else, the fictional account of a power reversal, whereby former masters become slaves and former slaves become masters. This power reversal is closely related to the Smales’ growing dependence on their former servant, July. Since July was the only person they could turn to for survival, “there was nothing else to do but the impossible” (Gordimer 1981: 11); this was the starting point for July’s rise to power.

Throughout the novel, July starts to take control of every possible aspect of the life of the Smales. From the very beginning, the reader becomes aware that July does not want the Smales to act on their own, thus depriving their everyday lives of ‘meaning’: “If the children need eggs, I bring you more eggs...He smiled at the pretensions of a child, hindering in its helpfulness – That’s not your work” (Gordimer 1981: 96). Not being allowed to cater for themselves leads the Smales to become less independent and more subservient to July’s goodwill.

The only thing that helps the Smales make some sense of their pointless lives is the radio. Desperate for outside news, the adults practically worship their radio. Bam constantly listens to the radio, frantically searching for stations broadcasting any updates on the current situation of the war. The Smales are so obsessed with this device, because it is the only link they have to the outside world from which they fled. Nevertheless, little by little, radio stations are attacked and broadcasts are made vague and less informative, if they are made at all. By the end of the novel, the only information they can get from the radio is “the sounds of chaos, roaring, rending, crackling out of which the order that is the world has been won” (Gordimer 1981: 124). Gordimer’s depiction of a reality that is gradually falling apart is clearly reflected in the previous quotation.

The fragmented reality their life comes down to by the end of the novel does not come about all of a sudden. It is a gradual process that is inextricably linked to the Smales’ gradual loss of power. The former masters begin to lose their privilege at the very moment when they are forced to flee from their comfortable home to July’s village. This event is in turn followed by July’s learning to drive the bakkie, without the Smales’ consent. July is so enthusiastic about his new skill that he is very reluctant to give the keys of the car back to the Smales. Despite being so annoyed at July’s use of their car, they do not dare to ask him for the keys of the vehicle, for they know that they are now at the mercy of their former servant. At one point in the novel, July realizes that the Smales are not at all happy about him keeping their car: “You don’t like I must keep the keys” (Gordimer 1981: 69). In the argument about the keys of the bakkie, July points out correctly that Maureen has never really trusted him to take care of the things he was asked to, while the family was on holidays. It is precisely at that moment that Maureen begins to realize that her white liberal ideology is nothing but a show. If the communication between master and servant had been better, she would have found out that July felt as any other black did under the yoke of the apartheid regime. By using the word “boy” and “master” in this exchange, July emphasizes Maureen’s hypocritical liberal ideals: “you tell everybody you trust your good boy” (Gordimer 1981: 70).



Despite having been against the use of such words as “boy” and “master” for so long, this “interregnum” unveils the Smales’ real ideology.

If losing their bakkie speeded up the Smales’ growing subservience to July, the stealing of Bam’s gun by Daniel brings about the final and complete reversal of roles (master-servant). Having been stripped of the only objects reminding them of their former white power (the bakkie and the gun), the Smales (particularly, Maureen) have to face up to the fact that they will never recover their former life. Maureen’s resentment about this reversal of roles may be shown in the way she refers to July at the beginning of the novel: “a good man” (Gordimer, 1981: 32), as opposed to the way she calls him towards the middle of the novel: “a moody bastard” (Gordimer, 1981: 57).

Maureen and July’s final row over the disappearance of the gun is of critical importance, in the sense that this passage may be regarded as the novel’s climax. In this passage, July, no longer willing to appear as the “good” loyal servant, voices all his feelings about his relationship with the Smales. The curious thing of this exchange is that July speaks to Maureen in his own native language, not in English. Surprisingly enough, Maureen “understood although she knew no word. Understood everything” (Gordimer 1981: 152). After so many years with July, it is only when he starts speaking in his native language that Maureen eventually becomes aware of all that he has gone through: “She was not his mother, his wife, his sister, his friend, his people” (Gordimer 1981: 152). In short, what July is trying to tell us is that Maureen was not the kind and benevolent white liberal who would treat her servant as a relative or a friend. Hence, it becomes clear that July feels himself as a member of hiw own black tribe, and not as part of the group of privileged white liberals, who, to a greater or a lesser extent, had also benefited from the apartheid regime. This scene ends with Maureen posing herself provocatively against the hood of the bakkie, like a model in an advertisment. Nonetheless, her physical appearance is not that of a model, but a kind of caricature of an attractive middle-aged white woman: “She lurched over and posed herself, a grotesque..sweat coarsened forehead...neglected hair standing out wispy and rough” (Gordimer 1981: 153). In that attitude, Maureen gathers all the irony, hurt and bafflement of someone whose former role (master) has been exploded.

From what we have said so far, surely the role played by language in July’s People has not gone unnoticed. Power is related not only to political and economic superiority, but also to speech. As one might expect, those in power are always those who find themselves entitled to modulate and understand language according to their socio-political loyalties. The following excerpts will serve as an instance of linguistic power:

“They could assume comprehension between them only if she kept away from even the most commonplace of abstractions; his was the English learned in kitchens, factories and mines. It was based on orders and responses, not the exchange of ideas and feelings (Gordimer 1981: 96)

“When she didn’t understand him, it was her practice to give some noncommittal sign or sound...Bam did not have this skill and often irritated him by a quick answer that made it clear...the black man’s English was too poor to speak his mind” (Gordimer 1981: 97)

As may be remembered from the second section of this paper, those who had a high command of English were the white masters. Black South-African schools based most of their instruction either on Afrikaans or on tribal languages, consigning English to a secondary position (Afrikaans Medium Decree, 1974). While white education was



aimed at obtaining white professionals (doctors, lawyers...), bantu education only intended to supply future labourers with some little instruction. Hence, it is no wonder that Gordimer refers to July’s English as that language variety “learned in kitchens, factories and mines”. More often than not, the immediate consequence of such lack of linguistic competence was an uncomfortable miscommunication between masters and servants (“Bam did not have this skill”). It is precisely this lack of communication that challenges all the preconceptions Bam and Maureen Smales had about July.

Last but not least, of paramount importance in July’s People is the role played by children. In comparison with the great pains taken by Bam and Maureen to adapt to the new situation, Roy, Gina and Victor quickly get used to July’s village. The reason for such successful adaptation on the part of the children lies in the fact that children play, while adults do not. What I mean is that the only thing children are concerned with is playing and having fun; they have not yet been contaminated with the (racial, social...) prejudices typical of adults. Their adaptation is so great that they even begin to acquire the language of the other black children. Nadine Gordimer uses the children’s relationships to cast some light on those of the adults. Bam and Maureen, as adults, are contaminated with all the values and ideas associated with white urban life in South Africa (privilege, discrimination...), whereas the children are too young to have been completely contaminated or influenced by adulthood. This dichotomy highly contributes to explaining why Bam and Maureen, unlike their children, find it so hard to become independent: “her children had survived in their own ability to ignore the precautions it was impossible for her to maintain for them.” (Gordimer 1981: 123)

5. COCLUSIO

July’s People inhabits a world where traditionally assumed roles and rules have been overturned, where relationships have become undefined, where everything, even vocabulary and language, has been called into question. In this novel, past and present, and us (whites) and them (‘the others’: the blacks) are magnificently combined by Nadine Gordimer. This award-winning writer introduces us to a future South Africa where a lack of communication between races will continue to be a major problem. She also calls our attention to the hypocrisy underlying white liberal ideals. It seems that white South African liberals are criticized for their passivity in the anti-apartheid movement, and for failing to recognize that their material well-being owes a great deal to the discriminatory policies of apartheid. The only ray of hope in Nadine Gordimer’s apocalyptic prophesy of a future South Africa rests on the new generations of South African children. Gordimer probably thinks that all the children born after the overthrow of the apartheid regime will not be contaminated with the racial and social prejudices of their parents.



6. LIST OF REFERECES

BAENA MOLINA, R. 1998. !adine Gordimer: Perspectiva, Imaginación, Identidad. Salamanca: Ediciones Colegio de España.

ENOTES. 2008. July’s People. Available from: http://www.enotes.com/julys-people/ [accessed 10 January 2008]

GARCÍA RAMIREZ, P. 1999. Introducción al Estudio de la Literatura Africana en

Lengua Inglesa. Jaén: Universidad de Jaén.

GORDIMER, N. 1981. July’s People. London: Penguin Books.

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE. 2008. !adine Gordimer. Available from: http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/post/sa/gordimer/gordimerbio.html [accessed 10 January 2008]

WIKIPEDIA, THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA. 2008. !adine Gordimer. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadine_Gordimer [accessed 10 January 2008]

WIKIPEDIA, THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA. 2008. South Africa under Apartheid. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid [accessed 10 January 2008]

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