Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile: Identity and Alienation in Southern African Fiction 9780367710286, 9780367723293, 9781003154402

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Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile

This book investigates themes of exile and oppression in Southern Africa across Bessie Head’s novels and short fiction. An exile herself, arriving in Botswana as a South African refugee, Bessie Head’s fiction serves as an important example of African exile literature. This book argues that Head’s characters are driven to exile as a result of their socio-​political ambivalence while still in South Africa, and that this sense of discomfort follows them to their new lives. Investigating themes of trauma and identity politics across colonial and post-​colonial contexts, this book also addresses the important theme of black-​on-​black prejudice and hostility which is often overlooked in studies of Head’s work. Covering Head’s shorter fiction as well as her major novels When Rain Clouds Gather (1969), Maru (1971), A Question of Power (1973), Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981), and A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga (1984), this book will be of interest to researchers of African literature and post-​ colonial history. Joshua Agbo received his Ph.D. in African Literature from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, in 2018. He taught the undergraduate, MPhil, and Ph.D. students of Sociology at the University of Cambridge before returning to Nigeria to continue with his teaching career as a Lecturer at the Benue State University, Makurdi. His Ph.D. research was shortlisted for the “Barbara Harlow Prize for Research Excellence,” by the University of Texas, Austin, USA, in 2017. Also, his book, How Africans Underdeveloped Africa: A Forgotten Truth in History, was on the StandTall Africa Initiative shortlist for the 2019 Readers’ Award. He is a member of Modern Language Association (MLA), African Literature Association (ALA), Post-​ Colonial Studies Association, etc. Dr. Joshua Agbo is a Manuscript Assessor/​Reviewer for the Pan-​African University Press, Austin, Texas, USA and also for Bloomsbury Press, London, United Kingdom. He has published several academic research works, nationally and internationally, including his play, Dead Wood.

Global Africa Series Editors: Toyin Falola and Roy Doron

Emotions in Muslim Hausa Women’s Fiction Umma Aliyu Musa Yoruba Oral Tradition in Islamic Nigeria A History of DÀDÀKÚÀDÁ Abdul-​Rasheed Na’allah Development in Modern Africa Past and Present Perspectives Edited by Martin S. Shanguhyia and Toyin Falola Borders, Sociocultural Encounters and Contestations Southern African experiences in Global view Edited by Christopher Changwe Nshimbi, Inocent Moyo & Jussi Laine Governance and Leadership Institutions in Nigeria Edited by Ernest Toochie Aniche and Toyin Falola African Indigenous Knowledges in a Postcolonial World Essays in Honour of Toyin Falola Edited by Olajumoke Yacob-​Haliso, Ngozi Nwogwugwu and Gift Ntiwunka Nigerian Female Dramatists Expression, Resistance, Agency Edited by Bosede Funke Afolayan Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile Identity and Alienation in Southern African Fiction Joshua Agbo Africa’s Soft Power Philosophies, Political Values, Foreign Policies and Cultural Exports Oluwaseun Tella

Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile Identity and Alienation in Southern African Fiction Joshua Agbo

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Joshua Agbo The right of Joshua Agbo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​71028-​6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​72329-​3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​15440-​2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

For the enduring memories of my late parents: Mr. Isalu Agbo and Mrs. Agnes Agbo, and my only sister Jane who passed on during my first year in the university. Now my life, like Bessie Head’s, has “no frame of reference beyond me.”

Contents

List of figures  Foreword  Preface  Acknowledgements  1 The literature of the oppressed 

viii ix xiii xvii 1

2 Exile, post-​coloniality, trauma: theories and perspectives 

11

3 The ordeals of crossing: from home to exile 

50

4 The black-​on-​black prejudice 

83

5 Black power and trauma in a shut-​in world 

131

6 Fiction through history or history through fiction? 

183

7 Patriarchy and power: women on the edge of the cliff 

202

8 Conclusion: towards the unification of thematic trajectories 

211

Index 

216

Figures

2 .1 A forward–​backward gaze of an exile  2.2 Imaginary paintings to illustrate exile characters in Bessie Head’s fiction  3.1 An artistic/​imaginary painting of Makhaya as an exilic character in When Rain Clouds Gather  4.1 Imaginative images of a walk-​out staged at Dilepe Primary School by the pupils against Margaret Jr. 

41 42 52 107

Foreword

This book claims to open up “new possibilities in the field of African literature.” It is not an idle boast. Agbo’s 2010 book How Africans Underdeveloped Africa: A Forgotten Truth in History, with its provocative rephrasing of Walter Rodney’s famous 1972 title, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, showed that he has moved beyond the “grand anti-​colonial” narratives which marked the first wave of postcolonial criticism. Now, in a world increasingly dominated by reductivist, “woke” identity politics, Agbo remains theoretically eclectic and unprogrammatic. This is an invaluable asset, essential even, for a critic engaging with his chosen subject, Bessie Head, who, as a half-​white South African refugee living in what she calls “the worst tribal country of the world,” evades comfortable ideological categories. Agbo rejects prescriptive narratives of “rootedness” versus rootless exile. For some exile may be “painful;” for others it may be “celebratory.” “Being alienated from one’s country may also enable the writer to contribute to subjects of universal value,” Agbo writes, and quotes the lifelong exile, Nuruddin Farah: “One of the pleasures of living away from home is that you become the master of your destiny, you avoid the constraints and limitations of your past.” Agbo’s own personal experience in Nigeria has given him a less positive notion of African or black “identity” than that of Africans from securely dominant tribal backgrounds or of European or American anti-​racist commentators. Without denying the painful elements of Head’s exile, Agbo rejects Huma Ibrahim’s view that Head shows an “exilic consciousness,” always nostalgic for home. Instead Agbo sees Head’s work as exemplifying “exilic compromise,” the attempt to make a new identity in a country of exile. In When Rain Clouds Gather, Head’s most unambiguously successful and also her most realistic novel, she shows how the exile from South Africa, Makhaya, rejecting the tribalism of the surrounding Tswana culture, builds up a new “modern agricultural state” in Golema Mmidi in cooperation with the white aid-​worker Gilbert. In defiance of politically correct anti-​ colonial pieties, Makhaya accepts European forms of his name in order to evade his tribal identity. “Makhaya’s belonging is not rooted in where he was born but where he hopes to become himself.” Agbo reminds the reader that the white outsider Gilbert is himself an exile. Like his fellow exile, Makhaya, he becomes an intrinsic

x Foreword part of the community, and marries a black woman. Head’s rejection of tribal identity extends to a profound rejection of black-​on-​white racism. Agbo’s theoretical independence serves him well also in treating the theme of black-​on-​black racism which is central to the second of Head’s major novels, Maru. Again the central drive of the novel is towards a Utopian resolution: the Tswana chief Maru marries one of the lowliest of his subjects, Margaret Cadmore, a San or Masarwa (more insultingly “bushman”). Head parallels the tribal black-​on-​black racism of Botswana with the white-​on-​ black apartheid of South Africa. “They had said of the Masarwa what every white man had said of every black man: They can’t think for themselves. They don’t know anything.” Realism is inevitably cast aside in dramatising this unlikely story. As Agbo notes, Head drastically simplifies the tribal realities, focusing exclusively on the Tswana/​Masarwa division and ignoring all the other tribal groups in Botswana. Moreover, Margaret, brought up in a white household and possessing a European name, is a very ambiguous representative of the Masarwa tribe. Her identity “was hardly African or anything, but something new and universal, a type of personality that would be unable to fit into a definition of something as narrow as a tribe or race or nation.” Agbo is illuminating on the contradiction between Maru’s role as an apostle of anti-​racism, and his role as aristocratic slave-​owner. Like the popular romance heroes deriving from Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre, Maru is, as Agbo acutely observes, “both a tyrant and a lover, and the more desirable as a lover because he is a tyrant.” Maru’s tyranny is indeed one of the prime examples of “black-​on-​black tribal prejudice” in the novel. The glamorous, virile Maru, Agbo notes, appeals to “a particular kind of masochistic female psychology.” As one critic, cited by Agbo, comments “Bessie Head depicts love as a magical force from a fairy tale that overcomes insurmountable obstacles and unites people of different cultures and classes.” At the end of the novel Maru and Margaret “depart to where only God knows.” A wide range of theoretical perspectives again informs Agbo’s analysis of Head’s final major work, A Question of Power, “a mad piece of fiction, which is extremely painful to read” written in less than six months during Head’s mental breakdown in a psychiatric hospital. Referencing the eclectic “visitor” theory of Carol Boyce Davies and notions of intersectionality, Agbo offers a pragmatic reading in terms of Head’s/​Elizabeth’s “trauma.” (As Head wrote “Elizabeth and I are one”). This Agbo argues is in part the product of “black power,” a phrase which may confuse some (particularly American) readers. For Agbo the phrase signifies the power of tribal elite within a majority black society, not the black protest movement within a majority white West. Agbo relates the theme of political injustice to that of gender. The story of Head/​Elizabeth dramatizes “the struggle of a marginalised and dispossessed female character in a hostile society.” Head’s “mental health problems,” her “trauma, hysteria and madness” perhaps take the novel into “universal” areas

Foreword  xi of human psychology beyond the racial theme. The passage, where lonely and frustrated, Elizabeth pornographically details the physical qualities of “the seventy-​one nice-​time girls” who serve Dan’s appetites, takes the reader again, as in Maru, but with more troubled personal intensity, into a world of sado-​ masochistic fantasy. As always, Head evades the neat categories of mainline postcolonial criticism. Elizabeth, though victimised by tribal “black power,” receives sympathetic psychiatric treatment in hospital and it is the white Christian Mrs. Jones, always patient under Elizabeth’s insults, who provides her with a glimpse of a way out of her trauma, through “the ordinary, the human, the friendly soft kind glow in her eyes.” Agbo’s book should establish itself as the primary critical treatment of this fascinating novelist. Its notion of “exilic compromise,” whereby Head’s Utopian protagonists reject an identity founded on “where they are born as natives of the land,” in favour of “new dreams and realities” which they create for themselves, is of primary importance. James Booth 6 January 2021 Department of English University of Hull, London

Preface

Bessie Head was one of the few African writers who received critical attention in the Western academy in the 1990s. In 1987, a year after her death, a joint international conference was held in Canada on Head and Alex La Guma, her fellow South African exile, who also died in the same year with her. In Singapore, an international conference, the Indaba, organised by Professor Edwin Thumboo was held on Head alone in 1996. So, too, in Africa, precisely in June 1998, the Department of English, University of Botswana, organised a conference in her honour. In 2007, an international symposium was held on her in Botswana, which was also followed closely by another international colloquium at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and the papers from these events culminated into the publication of the book, The Life and Work of Bessie Head: A Celebration of the Seventieth Anniversary of Her Birth, in 2008, ably edited by Mary S. Lederer, Seatholo M. Tumedi, and Leloba S. Molema. Again, in 1994, eight years after her death, two conference panels were devoted to the critical discourse on Bessie Head by the Modern Language Association (MLA) in San Diego. Several academic dissertations and theses have also been produced on her work all around the world. Therefore, Bessie Head’s work is not idle or forgotten; but when she made a visit to the University of Calabar, Nigeria, in 1982, as the keynote speaker at a conference on “African Literature and the English Language,” she came to the realisation that her work was losing some readers in Africa. Again, when apartheid took a dive into the beginning of its own end (i.e., after the official collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1994), and since after the publication of two major books on Bessie Head by Huma Ibrahim in 1996, and in 2004, and also, after the 2008—​edited book by Lederer, Tumedi, and Molema—​for over a decade, there has been a long break or silence in the production of Head’s scholarship, as if it is now a taboo memory to re-​member Head and her work in contemporary literary criticism. This book, Bessie Head and the Trauma of Exile: Identity and Alienation in Southern African Fiction, is to create a resurgence of interest in the critical study of Bessie

xiv Preface Head, and to make her work unimpeachably inclusive in the canon of world literature—​so as to sustain the enduring value of her work, not to go stale. To achieve this, the book explores a discursive landscape that covers or teases out a deep analysis/​ critique of the psychologising black-​ on-​ black prejudice, as a missing link, as an important, but critically neglected aspect of Head’s fiction. It argues that while there are numerous scholarly studies on feminism, post-​coloniality, and exile in Head’s fiction, there has been a reluctance to address the sensitive issues of relations between different non-​white ethnic groups in the post-​colonial society Bessie Head writes about. Concerned with broad thematic trajectories, but to the exclusion of much else, the book focuses on the theme of literature of the oppressed in relation to Bessie Head’s life in South Africa and Botswana with a detailed profiling of her biography. It discusses theoretical issues that add to our enlarged understanding of the discourse of post-​colonial, exile, trauma, and gender tropes in Head’s fiction. Further, the treatment of the trauma of exile through Head’s characters, their oppression in their place of exile, the allegorisation of exile-​within-​exile through the artistic paintings of her characters, the anomalies of belonging in post-​colonial discourse, the retrieving of a past history for the oppressed Bamangwato people (the dialectics of fiction and history), and the writing out of women from their absence/​subjectivity—​their strength and vulnerability are some of the essential grids that guide my close reading of Head’s novels and short fiction, namely, When Rain Clouds Gather (1969), Maru (1971), A Question of Power (1973), The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales (1977), Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981), and A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga (1984)—​require new forms of analysis and understanding to help us grasp Head’s vision. More, the book treats the nature of identity politics, migration, inter-​ethnic power relations with a view to addressing the questions of: 1. How does Head treat identity politics, power/​gender relations, migration, and exile in relation to the psychologizing black-​on-​black prejudice in post-​colonial Africa? 2. And how do the novels themselves portray the shifting dynamics of home and belonging in both South Africa and Botswana? These questions help me to explore the “post-​colonial” with an integrated frame of reference to South Africa and Botswana—​ Africa—​ by slightly shifting away from the grand anti-​colonial meta-​criticisms/​narratives. Because when one begins to diagnose the pathologies of the minds of the colonisers in relation to racist project, and the minds of the colonised in relation to black-​ on-​black prejudice within an “objective” anti-​colonial spirit, he/​she may end up not seeing any clear difference between the two forms of prejudice, because their aim is rooted in hatred. However, this book does not only illuminate

Preface  xv many of the concerns that have permeated the study of post-​colonial African literature over the past two decades or so, but also points towards new scholarly possibilities in the field of African literature. For example, by theorising exilic compromise, the book analyses the way Makhaya in When Rain Clouds Gather and Elizabeth in A Question of Power are ironically forced to learn to live with a version of what they flee from in South Africa. Margaret in Maru, the victim of black-​on-​black prejudice against the San (Bushmen), is not literally an exile, but makes her own hopeful journey to a world elsewhere at the end of the novel, though we are not shown the kind of compromises she might have to make in the future. To weigh the new against the old, exilic compromise offers an original way of “creative theorizing,” which, I argue, is a fundamental aspect of the project of home and home-​coming. And because Head’s writing constructs a prism of complexities, it embodies and interprets Head’s fiction in a new direction. One sees through the reading of the novels that the experience of the prejudice, and violence in both apartheid South Africa and Botswana is psychologically heavy for most of Head’s characters to handle and, in the case of Elizabeth in A Question of Power, leads to the trauma of her actual mental breakdown. Therefore, Head’s characters are in constant search of a home in a world elsewhere, and never end up where they began. This suggests a heavy sense of loss, particularly the loss of homeland. Head’s projection of a utopian vision as a remedy to the alienation of her characters, may never depend on its supposed relationship with reality. As it is demonstrated in her fiction, “Head’s resolution, her apocalyptic vision, is but ‘a pre-​vision of the failure of [the] process of humanization’ ” (Hartman, 132). For, as Sara Chetin writes, “the myth is like the deep river whose only existence is in the power of our imagination, but it is the only direction we can travel in if we don’t want to remain in exile” (116). Nevertheless, Head’s characters choose to remain in exile, as they are more focused on the possibilities of progress in Botswana (their place of exile) than on the old home they left behind in South Africa, so the trauma of exile is not the end-​point of Head’s novels and the black-​on-​black prejudices, which she courageously documents, are not seen as inevitable and eternal. Head has given us a literature of great power, and it is up to us to make the best use of what she has bequeathed to us. And, hopefully, this book will be useful to all those who are interested in Post-​colonial African Literature, Africana Studies, African-​American Studies, Afro-​Caribbean Studies, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Literary Studies/​Criticism, World Literature, Literature of Exile and Trauma, as well as the Critical Study of Bessie Head. Joshua Agbo (Ph.D.) Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom

xvi Preface

Works cited Chetin, Sara. “Myth, Exile, and the Female Condition: Bessie Head’s The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Tales.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 24.1 1989 114–​137. Hartman, Geoffrey. H. “Nature and the Humanization of the Self in Wordsworth.” English Romantic Poets: Modem Essays in Criticism. (Ed.) M.H. Abrams. London: Oxford University Press, 1975. pp. 123–​132.

Acknowledgements

Writing a book is a personal process, which could not be possible without the support and advice of other people. I have, in the process of writing this book, accumulated debts of gratitude, not all of which I am able to pay in this lifetime. First, I thank the Almighty God for his grace upon me. Also, I like to express my profound gratitude to Professor Guido Rings, Emeritus Professor Rowlie Wymer, and Dr. Jeannette Baxter from whose scholarship I have had the good fortune to benefit; especially for providing the early guidance for this book. Thank you for being a tower of strength. I am deeply thankful to Prof. Toyin Falola, the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, the first awardee of the D. Litt. by the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas, Austin, USA, who accepted to come as my Ph.D. external examiner. He said: “I will pay my bills from Texas to the UK to examine your thesis.” But I lost that uncommon opportunity, as Prof. James Booth was chosen by the University to examine my thesis. Nevertheless, I cannot thank Prof Toyin Falola enough for his kindness, and his generosity of spirit, particularly for always offering himself as a ladder for other human beings to climb up in their careers. You are so deserving of many thanks. Thank you for being so gracious. I am selflessly pleased to thank the entire staff of the Khama III Memorial Museum, Serowe: the curator Scobienorhol Lekhutile, the assistant curator Gasenone Kediseng, Kabo Jone, Kana Tlhaodi, Jedidiah Bolokang, Emma Motele, Thapelo Mokgweng, Ontiretse Matlho, and Mma Botshelo for their immense help, especially for granting me access to the Bessie Head Papers in the museum during my research trip to Botswana in 2017. Again, I am pleased to extend my thanks to my friend Dr. Mary Susan Lederer for taking the trouble twice by going to the Office of the President of Botswana to obtain a research permit which enabled me to travel to Botswana for my archival research. Going to Botswana was, indeed, a fulfilment of an ancient longing. Thanks to my friend and colleague, Jane Boyer who handled all the art illustrations used in this book. Also, a special word of thanks goes to Rosie Anderson and Helena Hurds for their enthusiasm and efficiency with which they addressed the final preparation of the manuscript for production.

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xviii Acknowledgements To Prof. James Booth, I thank you here and continue to thank you for all your efforts, especially for agreeing to write the foreword to this book. I am extremely grateful for your critical comments/​suggestions. I thank Maheswari M., the Production Manager, and the entire Production Team for being a pleasure to work with. And those whose names did not appear here are also equally important, and, in many cases, more so. Finally, within our region of love, I thank you all for making me feel the joy of living.

1  The literature of the oppressed

After my Ph.D. studies had successfully come to an end in early 2018, I began to teach political sociology at the University of Cambridge, in both the postgraduate and undergraduate classes. My friend and colleague, Dr. Thomas Jeffrey Miley, came up with a programme called “The Cambridge Street Sociology Project.” Our core aim, through the “Project,” was to educate the down-​trodden, the prisoners, the poor, the homeless, the drug addicts, and the dregs of humanity. Informed by our engagement with classical literatures, such as the works of two Brazilian educators, Paulo Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, we developed a free-​of-​charge educational programme in form of lecture series to educate them. It was a programme for, and about what Toyin Falola calls “the agency of the poor” (x). It was a spirited effort to draw them in from the margin of their hemmed-​in existence. Therefore, having experimented with this group of people, and having seen oppression through the eyes of the “wretched of the earth”—​combined with my own peasant origin in Africa, I became interested in the discourse of literature of the oppressed. In Africa, when we think of African writers, particularly African women writers, who boldly engage with, or who deliberately articulate the discourse of subjectivity, then, we correctly, or, rather, we logically come to the work of Bessie Head, as her work is crucial to the understanding of oppression and subjectivity. We do not only come to her work, but we also bear witness to her life experience of suffering, her tears, her eye-​watering de-​humanisation, her troubling extension of life in transit from South Africa to Botswana (the old and the new worlds), her restless search for a new life, a new identity in a new space known as Botswana, her melancholia of a ruptured past and the possibility of an unknown future, her permanent reconciliation with her new home in exile, as well as her balanced, but disturbing ideas—​her interest in women’s experiences/​struggles. To treat the subject of oppression, either in fiction or in reality, one needs to find the lexicon of compassion and solidarity; the lexicon—​which—​to use the words of Augusto Boal, “rehumanizes humanity.” Boal’s view is

2  The literature of the oppressed relevant to us in the context of subjectivity and oppression. Their views are capable of healing the broken minds and the shattered souls. In the “Poor Man”, a short story in The Cardinals, Head writes: “I am just thinking tonight of myself and all Africans because of the sorrows we are in” (136). She went on to say, “I live in a country known as the Protectorate. I don’t know what kind of protection that is. I think we are being protected from being able to see” (136). This is a form of psychological oppression and I argue that the worst form of any kind of oppression is the prevention from seeing the evil committed against oneself by others, because it is through seeing that we come to know, to understand, and to interpret what is good and what is evil. Oscar Wilde, in his opening lines of The Soul of Man under Socialism, points out that, “it is [much easier] to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have with thought” (8). So, by the moral code of conscience, we are immediately summoned to act in solidarity with the oppressed. We are immediately challenged to apply our humanity by showing the desire to redeem the oppressed people from their abiding human predicaments. But, then, again, Head warns in The Cardinals, “A Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest”, that: “A basically timid and cowardly person dare not presume to speak for others. He [or she] can only speak for [him or herself]” (125). More, she says: Though my whole life and thoughts are bent towards my country, Africa. I have a precarious existence, never knowing from one day to the next whether I shall be forced into an unwelcome and painful exile, never knowing whom it is I offend, who it is who demands absolute loyalty from me; to all, I can give nothing; to all, especially politicians and those still fighting for liberation, I ask an excuse for taking, prematurely, in advance of the dislocation and confusion around me, the privilege of a steady, normal unfoldment of my own individuality. I ask it. I have taken an advance on what I have not earned in any battlefield—​human dignity. (125) As an instilled minority, a hard-​headed bi-​racial woman, writer, activist, exile, and “the eternal other trapped in an in-​between space that restrains her agency and obstructs her voice” (Gwendolyn Etter-​Lewis, 122), Head still finds her resistance to oppression in the power of her voice, as she always “marks herself with her voice” (Gwendolyn Etter-​Lewis, 125). In her encounter with an artist, she writes: An artist once tried to sketch me and she said she couldn’t come to terms with my mouth. It had not a set pattern—​but she sketched my eyes over and over again. In the end she asked me to put my hand over my mouth to get it out of the way. (Imaginative Trespasser, 167)

The literature of the oppressed  3 By interpretation, Head’s mouth is the symbol of her voice, the instrument of her outspokenness and uncontrollable courage. On the other hand, Etter-​ Lewis observes that, “The artist, not being able to cope with or perhaps accept the mouth, mirrors a kind of conventional reaction to a woman who does not know her ‘place’—​she must be silenced” (125). By extension, the artist’s strange reaction is the representation of the societal attempt to silence her. Head is an embodiment of “how everyday people seek dignity and fight back against power” (Falola x). However, the literature of the oppressed is not just a genre of literature that only evokes pities or documents painful, oppressive experiences/​stories of the oppressed, but also charges them to organise, and mobilise their actions so as to lift themselves up in the collective spirit above all shackles of subjugation and oppression. What some scholars, including myself, call “the literature of the oppressed”—​framed within the definite context of South African experience, particularly under the authoritarian apartheid regime, was ideally written for those whom the South African theologian, Allan Boesak called “God’s little people”—​that is, communities of people who struggle under oppression. Nira Yuval-​Davies calls them the “oppressed collectives”. For the people of oppressed communities to free themselves, they must, first and foremost, be acutely aware of their oppressions and subjectivities. Head brings this awareness to her reader through her fiction. Head’s fiction, despite its multiple themes and interpretations, in my own view, is best described or classed under the literature of the oppressed. To frame her fiction in the context of oppression, and to anyone, who is familiar with the social, the economic and the political struggles, understands that the literature of the oppressed speaks to the experience of the marginalised, the down-​trodden, the poor, the weak, and the powerless. It is about the lives of people, who struggle and continue to struggle under the burden of oppression of any kind. They are provoked to voice or write their resistance to subjugation by taking a step towards the centre to reclaim their being, and their space in order to re-​live their lives. The literature of the oppressed, to Francisco Welffort is, “The awakening of critical consciousness [that] leads the way to the expression of social discontents precisely because these discontents are real components of an oppressive situation” (10). It awakens the consciousness of freedom in the oppressed who were initially afraid, but, now, no longer afraid to speak up. It is a reactionary literature that denounces the “state of oppression that gratifies the oppressors” (Freire, 10). This form of literature orients the oppressed in such a way that: It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; … the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-​consciousness. (Hegel, 233)

4  The literature of the oppressed Hegel speaks to the dialectics of humanisation and dehumanisation, in a way which Paulo Freire frames as, Within history, in concrete, objective contexts, both humanisation and dehumanisation are possibilities for a person as an uncompleted being conscious of [his or her] incompletion. But while both humanisation and dehumanisation are real alternatives, only the first is the people’s vocation. This vocation is constantly negated, yet it is affirmed by that very negation. It is thwarted by injustice, exploitation, oppression, and the violence of the oppressors; it is affirmed by the yearning of the oppressed for freedom and justice, and by their struggle to recover their lost humanity. Dehumanisation, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human. (17–​18) Oppression or dehumanisation could take many forms; it could take the form of subtle pressure to conform to the oppressors’ dictates, and, as a result, the oppressed may lose their freedom’s edge. Head, for example, was a victim of multiple oppressions herself, and that experience shaped the way she lived, viewed, and worked in this world. But Head found her redemption or survival in writing, and Teresa Dovey eloquently sums it up that “Bessie Head’s ability to survive, and to transcend in writing, the suffering she endured [while] growing up in South Africa” was “in some sense made possible by the autobiography she constructed for herself ” (Teresa Dovey cited in Brown Coreen 37). Head, through her writing, skilfully showed her engagement with existential tensions and anxieties embodied in the notions of “self ” and “belonging” in both South Africa and Botswana. Botswana, for Head, was where nothing ever happened. To Head, “There are only people and animals here and starvation, fear, frustration and dog-​eat-​dog” (Head, Letter 1). It was a place where nobody valued anybody except for what he or she could offer, so everything was rather crazy—​something of “survival of the fittest”. In the continuation of this same letter number 1 to her friend Randolph Vigne, Head alarms that: “[She] was just living here like the greatest hermit you can find … Days and days of silence. I can get by like that and I needed it” (Head, Letter 1). And that, Little by little I became aware of the most terrible brutality in this quiet-​ seeming village. Such tremendous pressure has built up against me in this little village and I shall get no help from the police if my life is in danger … (Head, Letter 1) Botswana was a hell for her, as she cried out to Vigne for help: “I also heard about Amnesty. Could they help me? Could you get at them there in London?

The literature of the oppressed  5 Even if they could let me out of here—​out of Africa which is a peculiar hell just now” (Head, Letter 1). Head further claims that: The authorities have made no bones about the fact that they don’t want me here. I have been trying in every way to get out. They’re all engaged from the Republic of South Africa. They’ve never stopped at showing me what they think of me. (Head, Letter 1) The eyes that look away from the suffering humanity signal more dangers. The eyes that deny what they see about the deplorable conditions of human suffering create more sorrows. Because the eyes of persons of abuse or oppressed people of any colour, race, language, tribe, land, nationality, gender, sex, class, and ethnicity are definitely full of agonising pains. But the eyes that weep for the suffering and the oppressed anywhere in the world are the eyes of angels (i.e., the eyes of compassionate people). Randolph Vigne is one of such compassionate people. Head acknowledges this fact in one of her letters to Vigne, “Writing to you puts me in good mood. You are my best friend” (69). Compassion is a medicine. Head, no doubt, was a brave woman, and her bravery was displayed when she ventured into the outside world. Head left South Africa in 1964 when she was 26 years old—​mainly for two reasons: (1) because of her divorce, and (2) for the lack of freedom for her writing. She went into self-​exile in Botswana without knowing what awaited her outside of South Africa, as South Africa of the 1960s and 1970s was largely soaked in racism and political rebellion. She left South Africa and her past life and sought her own community of belonging beyond the borders of the South African apartheid state in Botswana. She went in search of a sense of roots, of historical continuity as an African woman. Botswana was (in her view), a country largely untouched by the disjunctions of colonialism and racism. (Van Wyk Smith 116) It was very African and that was what she wanted. She first arrived in Botswana as a refugee from South Africa—​where she was a stateless person for over a decade—​trying to escape the tyranny of apartheid to find a place where she could live as a normal human being. Head asserted: “I am not exactly by the Batswanas [sic] here” (Head Letter 1). Again, she felt the ravages of racism from her early childhood, and she went to Botswana—​bearing scars of racism in her mind, scars of racism in her soul, which she inherited from the apartheid state of South Africa. To this end, she writes in her letter number 30 to her close friend Paddy Kitchen that, “I suppose when you have a break down [,]‌nothing is coherent. I am so used to them, these long periods of darkness when every effort is painful” (8). At this point, Head was already facing a severe depression.

6  The literature of the oppressed Gillian Eilersen, Head’s friend and biographer writes, “Bessie Head’s spirits were mercurial. Perhaps a naturally exuberant nature had been marred by a traumatic childhood of rejection and isolation, and an adult life marked by intense suffering” (97). Head has two worlds: (1) the world of her realities, and (2) the world of her hopes, dreams, and fantasies. Sometimes, Head was two people: (1) she was that person who lived her realities, who understood her tortures, and (2) she was that person who could stand back—​who could stand outside of her society to look upon her life, upon her soul to produce literature of great power—​of great resistance. In her letter number 21 to Kitchen, she wrote, “I liked such a situation because I have learnt to pull tricks and poverty in my second name. I am at home in a situation where there is nothing and I force something to happen” (Head, Letter 21). Head has all the characteristics that made her the best that she was. Therefore, Head’s fiction is fundamentally about the trauma of exile and the black-​on-​black prejudice as a post-​colonial theme in her fiction. It is about exile and the trauma of it. It is also about the politics of belonging in a post-​colonial society, where oppression is often meted out against the “Other” who is perceived as an alien by the natives.

Biography of Bessie Emery Amelia Head: an African literary tigress By the way, who was Bessie Emery Amelia Head? To answer this question correctly is to journey through her biography, which consists of her life, times, and works. Bessie Head, as she was popularly known, was one of the leading South African women writers, born on July 6, 1937, at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Her mother was a white South African and her father, a black South African—​although the real identity of her father is still unknown. The black-​and-​white union that produced Bessie Head took place when interracial relationships—​that is, the prohibition of interracial marriage act of 1949 was still in full force, and that consequently caused Head’s existence to be a taboo—​which also narrowly placed her in the category of the social rejects or the rejected humanity in South Africa. The apartheid belief of racial purity drove Head to face harsh and bitter realities, as well as stigmas throughout her lifetime. Head felt alone and different because of the apartheid’s terrible rules of discrimination, and stigma. As a child, she was rejected by her foster parents because she was said to be too black. M. J. Daymond, the editor of Everyday Matters, explains that “Nellie Heathcote, Head’s adoptive mother could not afford to keep her after Heathcote’s husband died” (83). More, Daymond writes, “Bessie loved and believed [that Nellie Heathcote] was her birth mother” (83), by this, Daymond shows the closeness between Nellie and Head. Also, the Principal at Saint Monica’s Anglican School where Head attended for six years, would not allow her to see her foster mother during

The literature of the oppressed  7 the holiday season—​because the Principal’s claim was that her foster mother was insane. Daymond describes how the Principal claimed that Head’s “origins were horrible” (83). Head’s Principal was another instance of the shame she faced for being coloured in South Africa. Head was certified after schooling as a teacher in 1957, and taught in Clairwood at Durban until 1958. As a freelance journalist, Head wrote for the Drum Magazine and the Golden City Post for three months in 1956. Also, as a court reporter in the 1950s, she witnessed the political unrest, turmoil, and resistance in her native South Africa. When the harsh apartheid laws were passed in the 1950s, Head became involved in the Pan-​Africanist Congress (PAC) campaign. Daymond writes, “During the Anti-​Pass Laws campaign, in which she was a peripheral participant, Bessie joined the Pan-​ Africanist Congress” (84) —​showing her strong interest in the PAC activists. Vigne claims that, “Bessie was a bright and talkative person, but many found her alarming and feared both her deadly, silent stare of disapproval, and her furious outbursts when her fiercely held Africanist views were offended” (Head, Letter 30). Vigne’s description demonstrates Head’s character, behaviour, and her radical outlook towards life. Nevertheless, Head surrounded herself with political leaders and associates. As Eilersen writes, “her circle of friends was extremely wide. It encompassed established writers, critics, university lecturers, Peace Corps volunteers, admirers from many different walks of life and students” (97). Some of her friends include: Paddy Kitchen, Randolph Vigne, Patrick van Rensburg, Robert Sobukwe, and Naomi Mitchison. Having seen the political resistance often, as well as the trials political activists faced, again, Daymond writes, “While she swiftly withdrew from party politics, she retained a life-​long admiration for the party leader, Robert Sobukwe” (85). This shows how friendship and admiration influenced her initial political interest. Head was said to return to Cape Town after a dramatic involvement in Johannesburg political and journalistic circles in the first half of 1960—​the arrest and conviction of her friend and PAC leader Robert Sobukwe, and so too her arrest, and subsequent dismissal on obscure charges, as well as her failed suicide attempt in April, 1960. In 1961, Bessie Emery Amelia married Harold Head, and they lived in District Six until Harold got a new job, and moved to Port Elizabeth with his family. Their only son, Howard was born in May, 1962, who, Bessie single-​handedly raised by herself after her divorce from Harold Head. Head left South Africa for Botswana on a one-​way exit permit in 1964 with her only son Howard Head. She arrived in Palapye at a train station then got on a bus to Serowe. In Serowe, she got a teaching job at the Tshekedi Khama Memorial Primary School and she stayed in the Sebina ward, near the centre of Serowe. Later, Head resigned from the Tshekedi Khama Memorial Primary School after a humiliating experience with the Headmaster. She found a new

8  The literature of the oppressed job at the Bamangwato Development Association in a small village, south of Palapye, where she worked as a typist, but was later fired—​then, she moved to the refugee settlement in Francistown with her son. From Francistown, she returned to Serowe and before this time, she already had a mental breakdown and was hospitalised. In 1970, Head got another job as an instructor of a Gardening Group in a self-​help scheme, established by Patrick van Rensburg, one of the three personalities she pivoted her novel, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind. While in Serowe, she used the proceeds from the American paperback rights for her first novel, When Rain Clouds Gather, 1968, to build a small house for herself and her only son on the outskirts of the village of Serowe. It is said that she called her house “Rain Clouds”. To Daymond, Her choice of name is personal, regional, and literary, indicating the interwoven needs which she wanted her home to satisfy: a place in which she could write, a location that would give her harmony, a place to which she could feel that she belonged, and a protective space for her and her child. (2) With the many changes that Head hoped to get in Botswana, the idea of “Rain Clouds” granted her less or more the fulfilment she might have expected from having a house of her own in exile. Head in her lifetime was an avid reader of books. In her letters and interviews, she has often referred to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky and T.S. Eliot, and she was also familiar with black American writers such as Alice Walker, Lorraine Hansberry, and Nikki Giovanni. Her reading included Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children, A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Given her access to the college library, and her teachers’ private collections at the time, it is possible for us to assume or guess that she had read the most prominent nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century European and American authors. She was not only influenced by Euro-​American writers, but also a host of African writers. She chronicled such African writers in one of her letters as: “Chinua Achebe, Sembene Ousmane, Camara Laye, Ayi Kwei Armah, Alex la Guma, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Tayib Salih, Bernhard Dadie, Kofi Awonoor, Mongo Beti and Lenrie Peters” (Head, Letter 19). All of these writers, and more, shaped the radical person she was. Head’s works include: When Rain Clouds Gather (1968), Maru (1971), A Question of Power (1973), The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales (1977), Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981), A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga (1984), Tales of Tenderness and Power (1989), A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings (1990), A Gesture of Belonging (1991), and The Cardinals (1993). Head was

The literature of the oppressed  9 clearly a writer of the world, and for the world, even though her work is intricately complex—​yet accessible. In 2003, the South African government posthumously awarded Head the Order of Ikhamanga for her “exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace.” And in 2006, at the Khama Memorial Museum in Serowe, a permanent display of Head’s belongs, the Bessie Head Room, was installed. Also, in 2007, the Bessie Head Heritage Trust was established, along with the Bessie Literature Awards, and the former public library at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, her birth place, was later renamed the Bessie Head Library to embody the memory of her legacy. She lived in Serowe, Botswana. Head died of hepatitis B on 17 April, 1986 in Serowe, at the young age of 49 years, and was buried in the old cemetery on the hillside behind Botalaote ward. Head’s white family, the Birches, only stepped forwards to claim relationship with her after her death, which shows that Head seemed to be singularly alone throughout her lifetime. In A Woman Alone, she writes: “The circumstances of my birth seemed to make it necessary to obliterate all traces of a family history” (19). And more pathetically, she adds, I have not a single known relative on earth, no long and ancient family tree to refer to, no links with heredity or a sense of having inherited a temperament, a certain emotional instability or the shape of a fingernail from a grand-​mother or great-​grandmother. I have always been just me, with no frame of reference to anything beyond myself. (19) Head was agonisingly bruised in her lifetime, but even in death she remains very much alive through her legacy. After Bessie’s death, Howard Rex Head, her only child, who kept her legacy alive, as well as the only link he was between the rest of the world and his long-​departed mother, passed on at his home in Serowe in 2010. As a tribute, Cecil Abrahams writes: “Howard, like his Mom, had to courageously battle many early and late challenges in his life and his return to the ancestors at a relatively young age. It is quite sad and painful”. Howard Rex Head left Mosadinyana Mayombela, his partner for 18 years behind at the young age of 48. In 2017, I had a privilege to interview Mosadinyana Mayombela in Bessie Head’s house, which she has inherited from Howard. While I went visiting Bessie’s grave, as well as Howard’s, I saw an empty bottle of beer placed on Howard’s grave-​side, and as I enquired from Kabo Jone, a staff of the Khama Memorial Museum who drove me to the cemetery, he said that the empty bottle of beer was part of the homage Botswanans had to pay to his drinking life. It was a symbol, a remembrance of how he lived. Howard Head was buried at the same Botalaote cemetery, a few metres away

10  The literature of the oppressed from his mother’s grave. Botalaote is where mother and son lay buried in the land that received them with open arms, as they fled, while living in South Africa, from the high-​handedness of the apartheid regime. This biography is the sum total of Bessie Head’s troubled existence.

Works cited Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Urizen Books, 1979. Brown, Coreen. The Creative Vision of Bessie Head. London: Associated University Presses, 2010. Cullinan, Patrick. Imaginative Trespasser: Letters from Bessie Head to Patrick & Wendy Cullinan 1963–​1977. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2005. Daymond, Margaret. J. “Selected Letters of Dora Taylor, Bessie Head & Lilian Ngoyi.” Everyday Matters. (Ed.) M.J. Daymond. Cape Town: South Africa, Jacana, 2015. pp. 1–​20. Eilersen, Gillian Stead. Bessie Head: Thunder Behind Her Ears: Her Life and Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann; London: James Currey; Johannesburg: David Philip, 1995. Etter-​Lewis, Gwendolyn. “Raising Hell”: The Body as Text in Selected Letters of Bessie Head.” The Life and Work of Bessie Head: A Celebration of the Seventhieth Anniversary of Her Birth. (Eds.) Lederer, S. Mary, Tumedi, M. Seatholo, and Molema, S. Leloba. Gaborone: Pentagon Publishers, 2008. pp. 122–​133. Falola, Toyin. The African Diaspora: Slavery, Modernity, and Globalisation. Hope Ave, USA: University of Rochester Press, 2014. Freire, Paulo. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Hudson Street New York: United States of America:Penguin Books, 1970. Head, Bessie. Interpretation of the History of Africa. 1986. pp. 87–​103. —​—​—​. A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings. London: Heinemann, 1990. —​—​—​. The Cardinals. Cape Town: David Philip, 1993. Hegel, Georg. The Phenomenology of Mind. New York,; Harper & Row, 1967. Van Wyk Smith, Malvem. Grounds of Contest: A Survey of South African English Literature. Kenwyn, South Africa: Juta, 1990. Vigne, Radolph. (Ed.) A Gesture of Belonging: Letters from Bessie Head, 1965–​1979. London: Heinemann, 1991. Weffort, Francisco. (“Preface.”) Freire, Paulo. Educaçáo como Praticá da Liberdade. Rio de Janeiro: Paz Terra, 1967. Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man under Socialism. Accessed on www.marxists.org/​reference/​archive/​wilde-​oscar/​soul-​man/​. June 22, 2020. Yuval-​Davies, Nira. The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations. London: Sage, 2011.

2  Exile, post-​coloniality, trauma Theories and perspectives

Here, the book discusses all the relevant theoretical issues that add to our enlarged understanding of the discourses of post-​colonial, exile, trauma, and gender tropes in Head’s fiction within the colonial and post-​colonial context(s). The emergence of the theory-​building of exilic compromise offers more insight into the complexity of Head’s work. As a counter-​response to Huma Ibrahim’s notion of “exilic consciousness,” exilic compromise is new to ways of reading Head’s work, which helps the reader to understand some of the issues that current scholarship has not adequately addressed. All the theoretical issues are interrogated and linked to the ideas of migration, identity politics, belonging, exile, and memory in a society that is chronically afflicted by black-​on-​black prejudice. Furthermore, the rationale is to bring together the fullest possible range of diverse perspectives that constitute the subjects of exile, trauma, and post-​coloniality—​either in terms of theories or themes or case-​studies.

The literature of exile The field of exile literature as a subject is vast, deep, and complex—​and it is a multi-​sided project of intellectual discourse. For me, exile literature is a narrative of migration, and the de-​territorialisation of belonging, which links the individual to a socio-​political space outside his native land, or it is a collective assemblage of exiled people, whose stories are told from different layers of perspectives, but stitched together, either by themselves or by a representative singular voice of narration. It is a literature of process—​the process of exile and the complex journey involved—​as exile itself has a meaning only when one has somewhere new to stand. Exile is a chain that connects the past, the present, and the future to the mind of the individual living outside his or her homeland. For example, “Exsilium,” in its etymological sense, means, “to reside outside the motherland’s boundaries” (Jo-​Marie Claassen 9). In a similar way, Edward Said notes that “exile is a solitude experienced outside the group: the deprivations felt at not being with others in the communal habitation” (177). Exile is a form of experiential subjectivity both inside and outside one’s native homeland, and this speaks to the fundamental sense

12  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma of loss and displacement. In connection with loss and displacement, Claassen proposes that “exile is a condition in which the protagonist is no longer living, or able to live, in the land of his birth. It may be either voluntary, a deliberate decision to stay in a foreign country, or involuntary” (9). Again, he says: “In some cases, exile can be merely the result of circumstances, such as an offer of expatriate employment. Such instances will usually cause little hardship to the protagonist” (9), which is exemplified in Head’s novels. Furthermore: exile may be forced. This last occurrence frequently results from a major difference of political disagreement between the authorities of a state and the person being exiled. Often such exiles are helpless victims of circumstances beyond their sphere of influence; sometimes, however, the exiles are themselves prominent political figures, exiled because of the potential threat to the well-​being of their rivals. (9) Exile is an experience of deportation, dislocation, separation, voluntary and involuntary departures, and sometimes, it is a flight from harassment, torture, and imprisonment by one’s native authorities as in the case of Makhaya in When Rain Clouds Gather. However, Claassen’s definition helps classify the very notion of exile into two primary categories: voluntary and involuntary exiles. Exile is voluntary when it becomes a deliberate choice for one to leave his or her country and stay in a foreign land. On the other hand, it is involuntary when one is compelled to leave his or her homeland. Because the complexity of the subject of exile, Patrick Ward in his book, Exile, Emigration and Irish Writing (2002), suggests that we should take a “multidisciplinary approach to the study of representations of exile, emigration and internal marginalisation in an international, comparative context” (242). He further wants “the cultural and literary critics, as well as the historians to deal critically with different types of exile, given the background of various forms of ‘absence’ ” (242), which is key for Head’s fiction. For example, Michael Ugarte, writing on the Spanish civil war exile literature, admits that “exile literature provides challenges to any theoretical project that would describe it: the very phrase ‘theory of exile literature,’ sounds strange, as if one could devise a theory of a particular type of literature solely according to political circumstance” (17). However, Ugarte’s creation of emixile is problematic. As a theory of exile, it suits the experience of migrant labourers from the Equatorial Guinea to Spain. He frames this concept to explain the migrant situation only within the Spanish context. So, while the concept suits the case of migrants from Guinea to Spain, it may not be applicable in other situations or contexts because emixile, for example, excludes the experience of migrant African women in its analysis of migration studies. Marvin points out that the “line separating emigration/​immigration (the economic) and exile (political) is blurred in the light of the political economy of most African countries in the postcolonial period: abject poverty enabled

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  13 by corruption and political repression” (200). This debate, in fact, is purely contextual. Nevertheless, Ugarte and Marvin are not alone in admitting the complexity enshrined in exile literature. Sebastiaan Faber, writing on The Privilege of Pain: The Exile as Ethical Model in Max Aub, Francisco Ayala, and Edward Said (2015) makes a similar claim that: Exile studies as such does not seem to have made very clear advances toward a better understanding of the exile experience. There are interesting case studies by the thousands, but when it comes to more general conclusions, rigor is hard to come by and shallowness abounds. Thinking about it, this, too, is no surprise. (16) His basic concern here is not to distinguish between emigration/​immigration and exile, but to pursue the shallowness and unclear understanding of exile experience. That is to ask, what is exile? Who is an exile? What qualifies somebody as an exile? And what is even the scope of the field? All these questions are very central not only to the theoretical project of exile, but to the entire field of exile studies, and with a particular reference to identity politics and belonging in Head’s fiction. Faber goes on to add: “Of these problems and pitfalls, I would highlight three. First, there is the issue of delimitation: What, really, is the field’s scope” (16)? Furthermore, Faber asks a barrage of questions: Should we attempt a careful definition of exile and, if so, what would that be? How do you determine who qualifies to be considered an exile and who doesn’t? Do you exclude economic immigrants or refugees? And how about expatriates like Hemingway? Is the cause of the displacement—​politics, economics, personal preference—​what matters most, or its effects? Second, there is the danger of reductionism, that is, the temptation to explain everything exiles do and produce as a direct result of their displacement. Connected with this problem is the tendency to overgeneralize, to loose [sic] track of the historical specificity of each exile experience. (16) The scope is somewhat problematic. And because the scope is vast, there is also the temptation of reductionism in an attempt to narrow the scope to a specific aspect of discourse. It is in view of this that one can safely remark that every exile theory has one crack or the other in itself, and that no theory is complete enough to explicitly capture exile as both a concept and as a field of study. It is undoubtedly clear that exile literature is vast and complex. The complexity also makes it difficult to give a chronological account of exile history, as well as its theories. McClennen supports this claim when she contends that,

14  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma “The history of exile literature is as old as the history of writing itself ” (16). McClennen’s argument reminds us of the fact that exile is an old concept before it became a product of modernity and globalisation. The field of exile has become “a promiscuously capacious category.” Faber contends that: “It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that the number of studies dealing with exile is astronomical” (4). According to him, “WorldCat gives 13,000 book titles, and the bibliography of the Modern Language Association, covering the past four decades, includes almost 5,000 on ‘migration,’ and more than 500 on ‘displacement’ ” (4). This, however, gives us only a rough idea of how both exile and diaspora studies have been diversely studied and, particularly, their rapid growths from the twentieth century to the twenty-​first century. For more emphasis, let me return to Tucker again, who contends that: Because the awareness of exile has recently grown to such an extent—​ witnessed by the many studies of it published in the past fifty years and by university courses specifically centred on the definition and experience of exile—​the term has become a generalized one. (4) The term has been loosely used or applied in recent times. In its generalized form it is what Brubaker terms “a promiscuously capacious category.” The rapid expansion of the field of exile shows how various forms of displacement such as exile itself, diaspora, and migration have been intensively explored in the past four decades or so. For this reason, it is important to narrow the focus of this study to a particular era in history, and in a more restrictive sense of usage, because exile narrative varies from era to era, and from theme to theme. For instance, exile literature in the late twentieth century was basically associated with colonialism and resistance struggle. The whole twentieth century, in particular, had witnessed a huge dislocation, displacement, and disposal of human populations across the globe as a result of political and economic upheavals. According to George Steiner, “The 20th century is the age of refugee” (11). Steiner, in his 1970s thinking, reflects on the twentieth century’s large numbers of refugees, exiles, immigrants and expatriates, as well as victims of wars and dictatorships, of genocides and poverty to be the major causes of border-​crossing across the globe. More, he claims that “a whole genre of twentieth century literature is in fact extraterritorial” (11), that is, “a literature by and about exiles” (11). Also, John Di Stefano attests to the fact that “the twentieth century stressed the perpetual loss of home—​the vision of home as its very undoing” (39). Consequently, he says, “Transnational kinship is often characterized by the physically absent members of one’s family” (39) in exile. Furthermore, in defining the twentieth century as a century of exile, Steiner argues that, “It seems proper that those who create art in a civilization of quasi-​barbarism, which has made so many homeless, should themselves be poets unhoused and wanderers across language” (11). Similarly, Ada Savin

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  15 argues that “If exile and migration have undoubtedly been part of mankind’s history since biblical and Homeric times” (1), then, she continues, “individual and collective mobility and displacement have reached huge proportions and a heightened visibility in the past decades” (1). The individual and collective movement of people is profoundly demonstrated in When Rain Clouds Gather, in which Golema Mmidi functions as a transnational community, a home to migrants, where they reflect on their identity and experience within the contexts of exile and migration. In continuation with this line of thought, Daniel L. Smith-​Christopher in Biblical Theology of Exile argues that: The study of the Hebrew exile—​and the writing which came out of it—​may contribute to an understanding of the world we live in today, including the general psychological and cultural implications of living in an age when more individuals than ever before in history are bound to live as exiles, dispersed or banished from their territorial homelands by political persecution, religious discrimination, natural disaster [and] economic necessity. (2) Here, history is acknowledged as useful in providing insight into, as well as an understanding of exile literature. To foreground the major debate on the broadening scope of exile, and the changing notions of home, nation, and belonging in McClennen’s book, as she argues at the very beginning, is to “challenge … contemporary theories about cultural identity” (ix). She contends that in many scholarly works the term “exile, having lost its reference to a painful state of being, was empty of history and an association with material reality” (1). Consequently, her book is dedicated, in part, to reconcile “the exile of the theoretical discourse with concrete cases of exile from repressive authoritarian regimes” (1). In as much as this point is one of the central arguments in McClennen’s book, I think, in my opinion, exile has not lost its reference to “a painful state of being,” and it is not in any circumstance, empty of its history. Rather, what seems appropriate here is its long-​standing history as shrouded in different layers of narratives and interpretations across different eras, times, themes, subjects, disciplines, spaces, and geographies. Pain, in every way, remains an un-​detachable element of exile narrative, and its history is an everyday history with the exiles, as well as the non-​exiles who may share their pains in solidarity. Its material reality, therefore, is powerfully evoked in modern-​day experience of exile. Nowadays, exile for most people is a product of the desire for better material conditions. It may be seen as a perceived system, a process of sociality that threads the ideas of home and belonging into a kind of world both known and unknown. Despite this process of sociality and an improved material condition, the “pain of being” is unarguably one of the prime elements of exile, and according to Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson, “It is always the

16  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma subject of regrets, memories, and transitions” (62). Nevertheless, exile has its pros and cons. McClennen therefore argues that: Few scholars have offered theories of exile writing in comparison with the vast body of exile writing and the scholarly studies of [exile], but key examples illuminate the predominance of binary thinking in relation to exile writing. The most [well-​known] example is the binary between the literary categories of “exile” and “counter-​exile,” proposed by Claudio Guillén. (31) According to Guillén, in his work, “On the Literature of Exile and Counter Exile” (1979), “exile becomes its own subject matter” and such writings can be show-​cased by the writings of Ovid and the “direct expression of sorrow” (272). Conversely, in the examples of “literature of counter-​exile,” writers, incorporate the separation from place, class, language or native community, insofar as they triumph over the separation and thus offer wide dimensions of meaning and transcend the earlier attachments to place or native origin. (272) His definition portrays exile as a form of detachment from one’s heritage, which can be language, culture, homeland, and community. The “literature of exile” is also connected with “modern feelings of nationalism” (275) and, in the “literature of counter-​exile,” he argues that, “no great writer can remain a merely local mind, unwilling to question the relevance of the particular place from which he writes” (Guillén 280). Here, the idea of place is central to the exiled writer because the question of national identity should be taken into cognizance in relation to the place of origin. In reference to nationalism, Said, an Arab-​Palestinian writer, suggests that, “nationalism is developed from ‘a condition of estrangement’ and the construction of a ‘home created by a community of language, culture, and customs’ and thus, a way of fending off exile” (176–​177). This shows how the exile constructs his or her sense of symbolic belonging in the new home through the forging of a new national identity so as to fend off the sense of loss and emotional attachment to the original homeland. Said argues the flip side of nationalism to mean that, [I]‌ n time nationalism becomes a system which defines insiders and outsiders with reference to the values of the collective habitus it has defined. Nationalism, then, ends up producing its own exiles: those who are banished to a territory of non-​belonging, whether physically and mentally. (176–​177)

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  17 Head uses this very idea of nationalism to define who is an insider/​an outsider, particularly as Elizabeth is categorised as an outsider in Botswana because of her South African identity. The nationalist feeling that wells up from the inner exile is equally captured by Paul Llie who, writing on the Pan-​Hispanic exile literature in “Exolalia and Dictatorship” (1985), refers to the universal alienation of exiles: “across the centuries in different countries, the literatures of exiles originate in different national experiences and nevertheless converge in the common loneliness of physical or psychological displacement” (227). Again, in Literature and Inner Exile … (1980), Llie privileges this very connection and, therefore, states that this shared experience “reaches beyond nationality and time itself ” (227). In furtherance to this argument, Malcolm Cowley in Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s (1974), dwells on the internal exile of writers who travel abroad particularly in Europe, arguing that, “Moreover, the writers of early 1900s, who witnessed the commercialization of culture preceding the Depression, felt a ‘sense of difference’ and isolation, which became a constant theme in their writing” (7). McClennen, also, in support of this notion adds that: “… alienation is an unpleasant and painful experience [… which] demonstrates the self’s alienation from the rise of the city and from the increasing entrenchment of modern society” (39). But, on the contrary, Aijaz Ahmad in Theory: Literatures, Classes, Nations (1992) shifts attention from alienation as pain to alienation as triumph: The prospect of inner fragmentation and social disconnection have now been stripped of their tragic edge, pushing that experience of loss … instead, in a celebratory direction; the idea of belonging is itself seen now as bad faith. (129) Michael Seidel also advances an argument that the exile now lives alienation triumphantly as a “new being” (x). This argument simply disconnects the thread that links the exile’s alienation and nationalism and, as a result, the broken links between the exile and his or her homeland are no longer an issue. Lamming proclaims his universal freedom as an exile in The Pleasures of Exile (2005). As he puts it, “The pleasure and paradox of my own exile is that I belong wherever I am” (17). His notion softens the bitter question of belonging and non-​ belonging. On the other hand, McClennen takes a slightly different view: The problem with this shift in meaning is that cultural production of exiles in the latter part of the twentieth century is rarely, if ever, void of any connection to geography, history, and the subject’s pain of alienation. Even pop culture renditions of this experience, like that of the film Alien Nation, show that the incurable fragmentation of the self produces horror—​for both the “newcomers” and their “hosts.” (40)

18  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma This view on exile complicates the question of the exile’s alienation and nationalism. I think, alienation varies from degree to degree, depending on the intensity of the exile’s individual experience. McClennen further postulates that, “alienation in the work of Goytisolo, Dorfman, and Peri Rossi is different from that found in the work of Joyce, Unamuno, or Martí” (40), and to citing examples “of various modernist writers in exile” hardly makes it “something to celebrate” (40). One of the best ways out of these polemics is to create a middle-​ground that while the experience of alienation and nationalism may be celebratory for some, it may be painful for others. Said, for example, focuses mostly on the agonising experience of exile. Tiyambe Paul Zeleza makes a claim that the entire work of Said is unique because of its exile theme. He attests to this fact by arguing that, Exile looms large in Said’s personal, professional, and political life as an existential and epistemological condition, as a spatial and temporal state of being, belonging, and becoming, and in its material and metaphorical contexts. (1) Similarly, Marrouchi argues that: “His tact—​in choosing when to record, and when to invent, and in finding a suitable voice (neither too timid nor too intrusive) in which to register the pain of dispossession—​informs his entire oeuvre” (1). The pain of dispossession that informs his work is the very pain of his exile. He says that, according to Said, “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted” (137). Said’s position on exile is one of lamentation. In other words, the crippling pain of alienation is hard to overcome, as he links exile to the lasting trauma associated with it. He hardly sees the trauma of exile as being transformed into an enriching form of modern culture. He says that exile [I]‌s fundamentally a discontinuous state of being. Exiles are cut off from their roots, their land, [and] their past. They generally do not have armies or states, although they are often in search of them. Exiles feel, therefore, an urgent need to reconstruct their broken lives, usually by choosing to see themselves as part of a triumphant ideology of a restored people. The crucial thing is that a state of exile free from this triumphant ideology—​ designed to reassemble an exile’s broken history into a new whole—​is virtually unbearable and virtually impossible in today’s world. (177) Marrouchi argues that “[Said’s] narrative frames a large question about exile and memory,” (89) and he asks, “to what extent is it possible for individuals

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  19 to live with the memory of enormous suffering” (89) [?]‌And, “how is [it] possible for an entire community, on the other hand, to forget it so quickly?” (89). But Salman Rushdie has put forward a view which is in conflict with Said’s because while Said focuses on the bereavement, displacement, and the unhealable trauma that are attached to exile, Rushdie tries to look at the creative gains of exile in his “Imaginary Homelands” From Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–​1991 (1991). These two diametrically opposed views of Said and Rushdie, may be born out of their personal or collective experience of exile. However, their perspectives are important to this project, as they portray both the positive and negative sides of exile in relation to Head’s protagonists. In Rushdie’s attempt to define the writer either as an exile or an emigrant or an expatriate, he partly shares Said’s line of argument in a way that: “It may be that writers in [his] position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt” (428). The looking back has its own implications, and as he puts it, if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge—​which gives rise to profound uncertainties—​that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost. (428–​429) The loss, in short, means that we will: Create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands […] It may be that when the Indian writer who comes from outside India tries to reflect the world he is obliged to deal in broken mirrors, some of whose fragments have been irretrievably lost. (428–​429) Jamal Amal indicates that the loss of home “may serve as an opportunity, although a tragic one, to deepen and elaborate on the understanding of the meaning of home” (120). The fact that the exile may not be able to reclaim his original heritage as a result of dislocation or displacement is what coincides with Said’s lamentation. The inability to reclaim homeland is exhibited by Head’s characters, namely Makhaya and Elizabeth, and even Margaret, as the member of a persecuted minority, finds herself a stranger in her own country. On the other hand, being alienated from one’s country may also enable the writer to contribute to subjects of universal value, which is something markedly positive. To Rushdie, the complex ties between exile and literature offer some creative benefits while Said simply focuses on the limiting effects of exile, especially in expressions such as, “unhealable rift forced between a human being

20  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma and a native place, between the self and its true home” and, this in turn, brings about the “crippling sorrow of estrangement” (428–​429). Said’s exile experience makes him a “nowherian,” a term coined by Mustapha Marrouchi in his article “Exile Runes.” Said, like Head, is a product of a cross-​grained heritage of exile, which is his triple heritage of Palestine, Lebanon, and America, much the same way that Head is South African by birth and Botswanan by adoption. Head, for example, looks back on a lost world much like Said’s Palestine where the Law of Return and the Nationality Laws are obviously racially discriminatory. Head and Said share a similar fate, especially as Said declares “that he has no intention of returning to Palestine, should such a state be formed” (97). He makes this declaration with bitterness and irony. His renunciation is what Marrouchi refers to as “a disobedient labour of remembrance … leaving home to become a nowherian” (92). Here, Marrouchi’s claim coincides with my idea of exilic compromise, as directly linked to Head’s decision never to return to South Africa. Exile, therefore, becomes a tragic homelessness. It frames a binary opposition of joy and pain, of gift and loss, of freedom and unfreedom, of love and hate, of home and un-​home. Said maintains that it is “better to wander … not to own a house, and never to feel too much at home anywhere” (Said 294). He does not even see New York, where he lived until his death, as home. In his words, “I still feel New York isn’t home. I don’t know where home is, but it certainly isn’t here” (294). Conversely, however, Head sees Botswana as her adopted home. In connection with this, Faber’s summarising of Said on some of the positives of exile is relevant: “Exile, then, comes with great advantages. In ‘Reflections’ Said lists five. In the first place, it can provide a more truthful vision of the self, fostering as it does self-​awareness and a scrupulous … subjectivity” (Faber 184). The second point is, “exile promotes a radically secular vision of the world, insofar as it makes one face the fact that history is thoroughly man-​made” (184). Again, the third point is, “since exile breaks up habits of thought and perception, it helps provide immunity against “dogma and orthodoxy” (185). The next point, which is the fourth, is that, “the exile’s multiple frames of reference can foster a ‘contrapuntal’ awareness” (186). Finally, he adds, “exile has specific epistemological advantages as well. Since it turns the familiar strange and the strange familiar, exile makes one see ‘the whole world as a foreign land’ ” (185). In these five benefits of exile listed above, Said softens the tone of exilic agony to a small degree and focuses on the enhancement of exile rather than its negative connotations or losses, just as Head’s characters believe that they will function better in exile than in their homeland. Even though the experience of exile can be terrible, its pains have been neatly turned into a redemptive motif for the exiled person, which means that not all about exile is always negative. The Somali writer, Nuruddin Farah, perceives exile as something that has positive advantages. Exile gives him what his native country Somalia could not give him. While Somalia gave him

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  21 expulsion, exile gave him acceptance, protection, the foundation to live, as well as the creative energy to write. He presents the gains of exile in his “In Praise of Exile,” as thus: Except for A Naked Needle (which I am pleased to say is out of print), all my major writing has taken place outside Somalia. For me distance distils, ideas become clearer and better worth pursuing […] One of the pleasures of living away from home is that you become the master of your destiny, you avoid the constraints and limitations of your past and, if need be, create an alternative life for yourself. That way everybody else becomes the other, and you the center of the universe. You are a community when you are away from home—​the communal mind, remembering. Memory is active when you are in exile. (13) To Farah, exile gives energy and life to his major writing. He sees himself only to become the master of his destiny outside his native Somalia. Exile enables him to avoid the constraints of the past, and to live the other by voicing the self. The exile (Farah, in this case) becomes a community unto himself, and his memory is more active only in that strange land. In a similar linking of place and self, Homi K. Bhabha, a well-​known post-​ colonial critic, beams his focus on the gulf between the self and location, the in-​between state of the exile, and the complex link between time and space. In The Location of Culture (1994), he argues that, The “beyond” is neither a new horizon, nor a leaving behind of the past, we find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. (1) This view makes it difficult to locate the proper question of culture and identity in the world of the beyond. McLeod, however, postulates that, “people who live ‘border lives’ between nations, experience situations characterized by thresholds, boundaries and barriers” (217). He further contends that “Borders are ambivalent and full of contradictions, and function as intermediate locations where the subject can move beyond a barrier” (217). The subject, even in the median state of the inside and the outside, seeks self-​ definition because the question of identity is an interior part of exile—​more so that exile is chain of memory that connects the past, the present, and the future in the mind of an individual. In a similar way, Minh-​ha asserts that: “Identity is a way of re-​departing. The return to a denied heritage allows one to start again with different re-​departures, different pauses, different arrivals” (14). The exile’s departures and re-​departures, the different stops and arrivals in the case of Makhaya’s

22  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma journey, for example, are done with the ultimate hope of finding a better society and freedom. Another telling of the binary logic of exile is McClennen’s clear explanation: “Exile writing often contains the following unity of opposites: the condition of exile is depicted as physical and material” (30); and “exile is a state that both liberates and confines the writer; writing is both the cause of exile and the way to supersede it” (30); more so that, “Exile is both spiritual/​ abstract and material; exile is personal/​individual and political/​collective; exile writing recuperates the past and re-​imagines it; exiles write about the past and also about the future” (30). She argues that “exile is both unique and universal; exile improves and also restricts the writer’s work; exile heightens both regionalism and cosmopolitanism, both nationalism and globalisation” (30). This is only a few of the dialectics of exile regarding the tensions that are often found in exile culture. In addition, McClennen avers that “These tensions track in a variety of different ways in each particular case, but these tensions are a common feature of exile writing” (30). Here, McClennen’s dialectical thinking suggests that any useful approach to exile studies should be organised by a binary approach. This can allow for a theory of exile to be more flexible. On the other hand, Michael Seidel in Exile and the Narrative Imagination (1986), developed a theory which describes “exile as an enabling fiction” (xii), pointing out the tension between imagination and reality in exile narrative. He further explains that, “the exile is both a wanderer and a homebody” (10). This means that the exile moves between rupture and connection, demonstrating “separation as desire, [and] perspective as witness” (x). This suggests a philosophical postulation that there are moments where the feeling for exile becomes desirous because of the prevailing, biting conditions at home and one’s perspective or approach to this line of thinking acts as a witness to the decision to leave homeland, either voluntarily or involuntarily. In other words, separation, put in context, is perceived as that “desire” to leave homeland, while “perspective,” on the other hand, is evoked as a “witness” to the decision to migrate into exile. From the psychological or the socio-​political point of view, Paul Tabori contends that, An exile is a person who is compelled to leave his homeland—​though the forces that send him on his way may be political, economic, or purely psychological. It does not make an essential difference whether he is expelled by physical force or he makes the decision to leave without such an immediate pressure. (37) Tabori’s key reasons for exile are quite apt, as people respond to expulsion according to different circumstances and situations of their exile. These

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  23 various forms of responses are based on either personal, social, political, spiritual, economic or cultural capacities of the exile himself or herself and hence, the different ways people endure their exiles. In agreement with Tabori’s psychological portrayal of exile, Llie asserts: That exile is a state of mind whose emotions and values respond to separation and severance as conditions in themselves. To live apart is to adhere to values that do not partake in the prevailing values; he who perceives this moral difference and who responds to it emotionally lives in exile. (3) Llie lays emphasis on inner exile as a more important question than the physical dislocation, separation, displacement and territorial non-​ belonging. Exile, therefore, creates its own character, which shows itself, not only in response to emotional torture, but also, as a conflict over values. These values may take psychological and cultural dimensions, manifesting themselves as: “(1) a feeling of isolation (endured by individuals and groups in relation to the dominant group), and (2) a partial asphyxiation of an entire culture” (Llie 47). In Exile Literature and the Diasporic Indian Writer, Amit Shankar Saha completely agrees with Tabori and Llie’s views on inner exile. He writes that: “Internal exile is another form of exile that many writers face. Perhaps it is the most damning of all exiles for in this case the exiles stay in their own country and yet are alienated” (2) as is Margaret in Maru, who feels a stranger in her own country. In line with this thought, Simpson makes a direct allusion to the Russian writer Dostoevsky when he looks back in his autobiography on the effect of his Siberian sentence as thus: “I had been cut off from society by exile and [. . .] I could no longer be useful to it and serve it to the best of my abilities, aspirations, and talents” (180). Separation is one of the agonising effects of exile, especially from one’s homeland, people, culture, tradition, custom, and so on. The separation sometimes can be as a result of a colonial encounter between the master and the subject such as Makhaya in When Rain Clouds Gather. With reference to the Indian colonial experience, for example, Amit goes further to accuse colonialism as being responsible for the alienation of Indians in the psychological context of internal exile. He argues that: “In fact it was the colonial powers that made most people aliens in their own country—​ firstly through linguistic displacement. It is within this colonial context that the native writers spawned the various sub-​genres of English literature” (180). Dahlie Hallward in “Brian Moore and the Meaning of Exile” in Medieval and Modern Ireland (1988), takes us a little further to describe the exile as a “displaced individual who continues to be at odds with both the world he has rejected and the one he has moved into” (93). Although different from the perspective of inner exile, his view portrays the exile as a rebel and by comparing the exile and the rebel, Raymond Williams’ assertion is excellently in tandem

24  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma with Hallward’s. His view is captured thus: “[An exile] is as absolute as the rebel in rejecting the way of life of his society, but instead of fighting it he goes away” (105). Hallward goes further by saying that, “Usually, he will remain an exile, unable to go back to the society he has rejected or that has rejected him, yet equally unable to form important relationships with the society to which he has gone” (105). This is exactly the fate of most of Head’s exiled characters as they find it extremely difficult to fit into the new home in exile, and at the same time cannot return to the old home they have rejected. Furthermore, in distinguishing between the exile and the rebel, as well as the social bond that exists between him and his society, Peter Wagner, in Theorizing Modernity (2001), succinctly puts it this way: there is something unrecoverable, once one leaves one’s place of origin. The social bond cannot be recreated in the same way in which it existed before; the same density of social relations and the density of meaning in the world around oneself can no longer be reached. (105) In this social context, Wagner sums up the difference better as he clearly shows the exile’s experience of social otherness in relation to alienation and estrangement. This experience of social otherness further deepens the argument in the sociology of exile, which revolves around the theory of power relations. Frank Parkin’s theory of social enclosure, in Class Inequality and Political Order (1971), is relevant here. According to him, the Property, ethnic origin, language [and] religion are used by hegemonic groups as part of a strategy by which they acquire privileges for themselves by preventing “outsiders” from getting access to material, social and cultural resources. (3) This is clearly captured in Head’s A Question of Power, and Maru, as both Elizabeth and Margaret Jr. are classified as outcasts in Motabeng and Dilepe, respectively. Consequently, they are both prevented from getting access to material, social, and cultural resources. Here, ethnic origin is chiefly responsible for their exclusion from those communities, and this leads us to the concept of exile in colonial and post-​colonial discourses.

The literature of exile within colonial and post-​colonial context(s) Here, the book discusses the literature of exile from both the colonial and post-​colonial perspectives because the idea of post-​coloniality is impossible without the colonial experience. Post-​ colonial narratives are particularly

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  25 interested in exploring who the post-​colonial is, why and how s/​he finds him/​ herself where s/​he is, and where s/​he is heading for. Using identity questions as a starting point to examine Head’s fiction, the reader could regard protagonists such as Elizabeth in A Question of Power and Makhaya in When Rain Clouds Gather as South Africans by origin, but Botswanans by their exile. Helen Tiffin advances an argument that the: Post-​ colonial cultures are inevitably hybridised, involving a dialectical relationship between European ontology and epistemology and the impulse to create or recreate independent local identity. Decolonization is a process, not an arrival; it invokes an ongoing dialectic between hegemonic centrist systems and peripheral subversion of them between European or British discourses and their post-​colonial dis/​mantling. (95) Even though post-​colonial subjects might be defined by the desire or the need to oppose, to respond, and to speak to their colonial experience, they cannot entirely reject the world they have been given. They are a product of hybridity, which coincides with the idea of split personality. Combined with the experience of exile, it bears a heavy psychological stigma, as well as constituting an identity crisis. For instance, in the case of African-​American experience, double consciousness carries the conflicting idea of being American but not fully American, as well as being African but not fully African and hence the in-​betweenness of the self. It is a fluctuating sort of thing, a shifting personality in which there is much travel within the individual’s consciousness. This fluctuating sort of life, the identity crisis that causes hybridity within the individual’s mind, constitutes what Du Bois refers to as double consciousness in which the shifting self has no definite location for his or her identity. Du Bois’ paradigm of race theory and identity politics fits into Burke’s argument in Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society: Double Consciousness: The term double consciousness is used in reference to W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, when referring to a dual awareness developed by Black Americans in the United States: knowledge of one’s own individual identity, as well as knowledge about how one will be read through a racial lens. (2) Burke further expatiates that “In the psychological literature, the idea of double consciousness, made popular by several cases of split personality highlighted in Harper’s magazine, made clear that the two selves were not only distinct but fundamentally opposed to each other” (Burke 2). The idiom of split personality (double-​consciousness) shows how implicated the exile becomes in adopting the free-​floating badge of hybridity.

26  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma Aijaz Ahmad has condemned the essence of hybridity as that which “partakes of a carnivalesque collapse and play of identities” (13). Mumia Abu-​Jarmal calls it “dehumanisation by design” (90). Another account of double-​consciousness likens it to the chain used to control prisoners. To Joan Dayan, The use of chain—​what one Arizona warden calls “the public display of chain”—​is the exploitation of a powerful symbol. Once attached to a person, it claims that person as part of a [historical] denigration and abuse, assuring the methodical exclusion of certain folks outside the pale of human relation and empathy. (12) Thinking through these words in the context of exile, or rather, to find a new idiom of engagement with the narrative of identity politics, the hyphenated life is what translates to the convenient term of “global hybridity” today. It is in large measure responsible for the phenomenon of double consciousness. It involves the negotiation of multiple selves that are not pegged to a particular nationality or geographical location. Gow links Du Bois’ notion of “double consciousness,” to multiple identities in a way that: The balance of these multiple identities produces guilt as one cannot dedicate one’s cultural experience to simply one nation. For others, this multiplicity becomes a source of celebration and pride as experiences come to shape who one is and become an accumulation of experiences that only further develop one’s identity. (25) Similarly, this guilt is further demonstrated in Francie Latour’s story in Haiti. That is, “… her struggle with identity became a conflict of interests as she felt that her physical distance from Haiti as a transnational meant a betrayal of her Haitian identity” (26). One interesting thing about split personality (or double consciousness) is that most people use it as a defence mechanism, a coping way of survival in a difficult situation. Those who have split personality, as well as multiple personalities (multiple-​consciousness) often have no recollection whatsoever of the other personalities, but only remember what happens in the current personality they possess. An example of the Haitian metaphor of suitcases and cultural collages by Maude Heurtelou will suffice. She says, “What I didn’t know then is that my suitcases were not only physical but also cultural. These suitcases, both cultural and physical, have been essential to my survival as an immigrant in three different countries” (Heurtelou 89). Similarly, Marie Nadine Pierre views herself as a “collection or, a ‘collage’ ” (178). Her experience as an immigrant typifies the forgetfulness in multiple-​ consciousness in a way that identity itself becomes more open, flexible, and

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  27 less static. To create a liberal and non-​damaging metaphor, Du Bois speaks about “the dignity of this struggle for African-​Americans … to synthesize an integrated self out of two conflicting identities” (3). This synthesis of integrated self is an attempt to create a middle ground for the two conflicting identities (say, African-​American). This often depends on the socio-​political conditions. Much of this claim is substantiated by Gow and in his reading of Stuart Hall and W.E.B. Du Bois, he argues that in “Hall and Du Bois’ conception of blackness, identity functions as a continuous navigation of selves” (Gow 5). Then again, “The transnational self acknowledges these multiplicities and accepts them. Instead of a debate of authenticity and generalizability, the ‘black Atlantic’ as an ‘empty signifier’ needs to remain as such” (5). Maintaining his line of argument, he posits that, Rather than functioning as a blanket term that seeks to blur difference and simply define the marginal difference as hybrid, the “black Atlantic” should investigate this difference and celebrate it. These differences should not serve to divide the “black Atlantic” but should instead further define the “black Atlantic” for what it is: a diverse group of people whose shared history contains slavery, but which has continued to grow into strong nations, distinct cultures, and unique expressions of both unity and difference. (5) In relation to this, Ibrahim claims that the desire to belong is what she calls exilic consciousness—​arguing that, “It initiates the resistance that subject identities confront” (2). Furthermore, she says that the “notion of exilic consciousness includes an escape from systems of oppression that give rise to desires which encompass the sphere of belonging not to your own but to another people” (2). Lamming justifies his joy of exile that, “The pleasure and paradox of [his] own exile is that [he belongs] wherever [he is]” (17). Coreen Brown, in The Creative Vision of Bessie Head, argues that “There is sufficient evidence in Head’s written accounts, both published and private, to show that Head grew to love the Botswanan landscape” (53), which is a form of Lammings’ joy of exile. Lamming’s notion of universal exile is found in Simpson’s definition of exile in which he argues that “Each of us is an exile … We are exiles from our mother’s womb, from our childhood, from private happiness, from peace, even if we are not exiles in the more conventional sense of the word” (Simpson vii). However, an exiled person is always a stranger, and to borrow the words of Hartman Saidiya, “… is like water running over the ground after a rainstorm: it soon dries up and leaves no traces” (8) yet the exiled person cannot wash off the stain of being a stranger. Saidiya further laments that: “I was the stranger in the village, a wandering seed bereft of the possibility of taking root” (4). Again, behind her back the people whisper, “dual ho mmire: a mushroom

28  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma that grows on the tree has no deep soil” (4). She returns home as a stranger, torn apart from her family, country, and relatives. She struggles to inhabit her world as an outsider with mangled memory to recollect the past as she faces the blank slate of her native history and origin. This complexity returns us to Lamming, who, after declaring himself a universal citizen, belonging to wherever he is, seems not wholly comfortable with the colonial orientation of the exile. He writes, therefore: When an exile is a man of colonial orientation, and his chosen residence is the country which colonised his own history, then there are certain complications. For each exile has not only got to prove his worth to the other, he has to win the approval of Headquarters, meaning in the case of the West Indian writer, England. (12–​13) In the above excerpt, Lamming has to contend with the dialectics of diaspora as in the Manichean classification of “self vs other,” and “us vs them.” And with this dichotomy of “self,” his freedom of belonging and existence is conditioned or rather limited. He is not satisfied. To this end, Adrienne Rich, in An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991), reminds us of the point of “unsatisfaction” in her poem, as in: I have dreamed of Zion I’ve dreamed of world revolution I’m a corpse dredged from a canal in Berlin A river in Mississippi. I am a woman standing I am standing here in your poem. Unsatisfied. (xix) The exiled person can hardly be satisfied in his or her world of elsewhere, especially as s/​he continues to create and recreate him or herself to become too many persons in one “self.” This multiplicity of self occurs as he or she travels from somewhere to elsewhere. It may be difficult for an exiled person to scrape off the scab of a second-​class label, a hybrid self, a hyphenated identity such as African-​Americans or Kurdish-​Iranians, for example. Within the narrow confines of the exiled person, s/​he has one big problem that is the problem of defining and redefining his or her identity, self, and culture in the new world. There is a moving analogy by Salman Rushdie, using the novel of Saul Bellow’s The Dean’s December to make his point: The central character, the Dean, Corde, hears a dog barking wildly somewhere. He imagines that the barking is the dog’s protest against the limit of dog [sic] experience. “For God’s sake,” the dog is saying, “open the universe a little more!” And because Bellow is, of course, not really talking about dogs, or not only about dogs, I have a feeling that the dog’s rage,

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  29 and its desire, is [sic] also mine, ours, and everyone’s. “For God’s sake, open the universe a little more!” (21) In the proper context of this analogy, the dog’s rage and desire are symbolically that of the exiled person, who is begging his or her host to help him or her move from the colonised margin (or periphery) to the imperial centre, which aligns with the dog’s cry: “for God’s sake, open the universe a little more!” It is really a pitiable and painful condition. The condition of Bello’s character is equally exemplified in colonial background of Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Other Stories: I am the little Colonial walking in the London garden patch-​allowed to look, perhaps, but not to linger. If I lie on the grass they positively shout at me: “Look at her, lying on our grass, pretending she lives here, pretending this is her garden, and that tall back of the house … She is a stranger—​an alien.” (6) Also, this is what happens to Makhaya when he tries to cross over to Botswana. His condition is initially as pitiful as can be, because in exile Makhaya faces the very problem of tribal tension he tries to run away from home. In the same way, the tragedy of exile reminds us of an incident in Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, in which a white boy spots “a West Indian in the tube at Piccadilly Circus and comments: ‘Mummy, look at that black man.’ This echoes the more economical, defining imperative of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Mask” (Selvon xvii). Bill Schwarz further adds that: This is a condition, for Lamming and Selvon as much as for Fanon, of being-​for-​others: of the migrants finding themselves stripped of humanity and history, subject to a single fantasised, racial projection of being black. (“Foreword” xvii) What this suggests is that the man is seen not only as being black, but also as an alien-​non-​belonger in the politics of space. This is one basic, de-​ humanising condition the exiled person faces all over the world. The problem is either skin colour (uncomfortable pigmentation) or race or tribe or class or something else. The imperial centre can hardly serve as a site of redemption for the colonial subject because of racial discrimination, as well as other obstacles. Further interpreting the above illustration, concerning the question of belonging, the black man is regarded as an unfit human being for the membership of that racialised space or community. This instance of shame and discrimination makes it difficult for Simon Gikandi to accept Rushdie’s

30  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma attempt to relocate the migrant subject to a new post-​colonial space. Coly, in agreement, says that, “Gikandi demonstrates that Rushdie’s desire to relocate the postimperial migrant subject into a postnational time-​space ends up being upstaged by ‘the weight of imperial history and its institutions, including the idea of the nation itself’ ” (196). Coly further aligns her position with Gikandi’s argument against postnationalist theories of home when she writes that, “responses to questions of home and belonging depend not so much on where one chooses to go but where one comes from” (xxiii). Gikandi adds: “To choose to transcend nation and patriotism, à la Rushdie is to claim some choice in the staging of one’s identity” (199). Belonging and rootedness are strongly linked to the concept of home, and Turner argues that this idea, is prevalent in human discourse, and which can be a structure, a feeling, a metaphor or a symbol. It may serve as a centre, which contains an integration of past, present and future and ultimately contains an element of reconciliation between immediate (proximate) and ultimate (abstract) concern. (179) It is abundantly clear that the people who are most keenly conscious of the need to belong and who also experience the longing for home are either exiles or migrants, who have left home to settle in a new place. In view of the escape from the systems of oppression, Mary McCarthy regards the exile as “a bird forced by chilled weather at home to migrate but always poised to fly back, constantly waiting for the chilled weather to change” (18). The chilled weather may refer to a political system of oppression or a harsh economic condition that drives somebody away from home only to take refuge elsewhere. But, in some cases, the exile as a metaphorical bird, never flies back home even when the condition at home becomes better. However, McCarthy’s view of exile corroborates with Ibrahim’s in Bessie Head: Subversive Identities in Exiles (1996). They both dwell on one point, which is the in-​between position of the exile. John McLeod, in Beginning Postcolonialism (2000), presents a similar view: The condition of exile is inevitably an in-​between position which can both be limiting and liberating. The sense of in-​betweenness caused by migrancy can cause disillusionment, pain, fragmentation and discontinuity but it can also be a creative force and source of new modes of expression. (216) It is in response to Ibrahim, McCarthy and McLeod’s shared view(s) of the in-​between position of the exile that I propose exilic compromise as a new theoretical approach, which deals with the specific irony of Head’s protagonists,

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  31 who live with a version of the very problem from which they flee into exile in the first place. This concept is later explored in greater detail. Nevertheless, the new phase of social alienation can translate to one’s alienation from other groups of people or from one’s homeland or community. Reducing the metaphor to the idea of space, the French phenomenologist, Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space, defines, “home as the crucial site of intimate life and a refuge” (34). According to Bachelard, “home is the anchor without which men and women become fragmented individuals” (34). Bachelard’s notion of home is viewed as a holding thread that binds men and women to their ancestry. Coly, in stretching the argument further, emphasises that Gaston Bachelard uses the French term “espace heureux (felicitous space) to designate home” (34). Home for Head’s characters is rather something of “neither-​here-​nor-​ there” or wherever they find themselves. It evokes in their minds an image of a multicultural setting, which gives us a transnational or transcultural reading of space. Eva Hoffman puts the transcultural site as where “multiple cultural references collide and collude” (The New… 56), like Golema Mmidi in When Rain Clouds Gather. The framework of the changing notion of home ushers in a new moment of identity formation in cultural studies. John Ochoa asks the basic questions: “What is the concept of homeland? How is the process of representation, never a simple one, complicated by displacement?” McClennen writes that the “crisis in the subject, does not lead to the end of representation” (119). It leads instead, as Ochoa argues, to a form of re-​presentation: Rather, the literature of exile often revolves around the exile’s sense of loss, or the exile’s sense of freedom once the bonds of the nation are loosened. The exile often attempts to rewrite national history and also often attempts to rewrite […] notions of community that are not predicated on the nation. (222) However, the ideas of nation and community are mostly preoccupied with the geography of exile, politics of nationalism and linguistic representation. The theme of exile occupies a major space among other defining features of post-​ colonial literature. Ochoa portrays exile as an experience that leads to a mixed cultural identity. It is an ongoing dialectics of culture and identity, of race and class. The dialectics created by the experience of exile also results in multiple binary conflicts such as racial, tribal, identity, cultural, and class tensions.

The trauma of exile Head’s fiction offers much to be considered, not only in the domains of post-​ colonial literature, exile, politics, cultural studies, and feminist discourse, but also in the area of trauma narrative. Fielding, for instance, approaches When

32  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma Rain Clouds Gather, as “literature of trauma,” observing that Head’s fiction repeatedly narrates the story of “traumatic experiences: the trauma of colonization, the trauma of patriarchy, and the trauma of tribalism” (x). Engaging with trauma theory, Fielding argues that When Rain Clouds Gather involves: a cast of traumatized characters who are dealing with the effects of one or more of these systems. For Head, telling her story is a part of her healing process. Of particular significance in the novel is Gilbert and Makhaya’s choice of agriculture as a way of dealing with trauma, mirroring Head’s own combination of agriculture and writing as means of coping. (x) Fielding points out three strands of trauma in what he calls “literature of trauma.” He categorises them as: “the trauma of colonization,” “the trauma of patriarchy,” and “the trauma of tribalism.” The trauma of colonization occurs as a result of a colonial encounter between the colonizer and the colonized, and the complex that emerges from that experience is what Fanon calls “the colonial psychopathology” in a chapter on “The Negro and Psychopathology.” There is this instance of traumatic form in A Question of Power. Elizabeth, the central character, partly endures this colonial condition in South Africa, and later goes into exile as a rejection of apartheid. Particularly problematic is, according to Fanon, the black individual’s desire to become white because “this might lead to a collapse of the ego. The black man stops behaving as an actional person.” The goal of his behaviour will be The Other (in the guise of the white man), for The Other alone can give him worth” (154). This “colonial” projection of otherness and the torments that lead to Elizabeth’s neurotic breakdowns are in fact caused by blacks. Hamber and Lewis make a claim that “all of South African society has been traumatised to some degree” (13), which is very much in line with Kirsten Holst Petersen’s description of madness in A Question of Power, as “an obvious metaphor for the kind of social organisation prevailing in South Africa, and the most striking use of this metaphor is made by the coloured writer Bessie Head” (131). Therefore, Head’s narrative indicates to her reader what Cathy Caruth terms trauma’s “endless impact on a life” (7). By responding to a traumatised and oppressive society, Head makes much of her writing deal with the agony caused by tyrannical forces, and the repercussions of that very agony in the same society. Trauma experts have argued that a trauma patient is healed by narrating the traumatic experience. For example, Felman and Laub’s perspective on Holocaust survivors indicates that: “The survivors did not only need to survive so that they could tell their story, they needed to tell their story in order to survive” (Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History 78). Their view is a strong affirmation of the fact that the telling of the story is a source of survival for the trauma patient. Tal Kalí argues that the

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  33 [l]‌iterature of trauma is written from the need to tell and retell the story of the traumatic experience, to make it “real” both to the victim and to the community. Such writing serves both as a validation and cathartic vehicle for the traumatized author. (21) In the same way, Head’s A Question of Power, repeatedly tells the story of lived trauma, and the telling provides antidote to its pains. Beyond this, taking a flight from a traumatised society to somewhere else can bring about positive results. In other words, departure provides positive effects to Head as a writer, and Fielding evidences this claim: “Head might never have been able to write as she did if she had stayed in South Africa. Exile gave her the freedom to testify, to bear witness to the traumatic event—​the wound” (13). In view of such traumatic wounds, Caruth makes a comparison with Sigmund Freud’s departure from Austria when the Nazis arrived there. Freud writes: “It forced me to leave my home, but it also freed me of the fear lest my publishing the book might cause psychoanalysis to be forbidden in a country where its practice was still allowed” (quoted in Caruth 23). Here, departure is beneficial to both Head and Freud as it enhances their ability to write across time and place. For instance, Elizabeth lives just like Head has lived in time and place, and without Head’s experience across time and place, one might ask, would it have been possible for her to transform her lived experience into literature? Or could she have lived a normal life free of trauma? My working hypothesis is that Head’s perspective derives largely from her traumatic and exilic experiences in life. Therefore, A Question of Power is a classic example of trauma, grief, and isolation. It is a disturbing tale with a moving expression of Elizabeth’s longing for things she has lost, but seems strengthened by her suffering. The novel embodies a vortex of estrangement, psychological crisis, and the politics of belonging. Elizabeth’s trauma and the politics of victimhood enable the reader to think about victimhood from a different perspective by offering some insight into the inner world of Elizabeth for whom estrangement becomes an involuntary existential condition. I explore A Question of Power using psychoanalytical and trauma theories as prisms through which I view the larger content of Head’s fiction, particularly, A Question of Women.

Home and homecoming in the South African context This aspect of the book depicts South Africa as a site where belonging is both contradictory and ambiguous. It is a place where political, historical, collective, and individual trauma continues to influence the changing notions of home and belonging for the people. Back then in the historical period when Bessie Head was writing, it was necessary to escape from the hostilities of apartheid—​a representation of traumatic experience for most black South Africans across racial and cultural divides at that time. Today, the ideas of

34  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma home, homecoming, and belonging are highly problematic in South Africa; to the extent that “Between past and future, memory and imagining, lies the shrine of home” (Paul Greedy 509). For most black South Africans, home is lost yet longed for. It is an expectation, which becomes a reality; such that, “The expression of the desire for home becomes a substitute for home, [which] embodies the emotion attendant upon the image [of home]” (Michael Seidel 11). Also, Breyten Breytenbach writes of exile and longing: “You live and write in terms of absence, of absent time (or in terms of a questioned present time). Not an imagined or remembered existence” (211). Tragically, the absent-​present subject of home in South African literature recedes “into the realm of the selective and partial, metaphor and allegory, symbol and abstraction. The absent presence and the present absence: home, like exile, is an ambiguous cohabitation of the two” (Greedy 509). For some, home is what exile is not and Greedy puts it this way: “It is obscene and unlivable-​in; it is security, a sanctuary of the familiar; it is also charged with meaning, where living on the edge can—​at least from a distance—​become shrouded in nostalgia” (509). However, it could be argued that nostalgia is lacking in the exilic memory of Head’s characters. For instance, Coly in The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone Literatures (2010) foregrounds the changing notion of home in Calixthe Beyala’s novel, Le petit prince de Belleville, weaving it into different grids of interpretations and meanings. Coly records that “Calixthe Beyala shifts from her exclusive focus on Africa in order to write novels that concentrate partly or entirely on the French landscape” (67). She goes further to add that: Beyala’s immigrant novels, known as her Belleville novels because they are set in the Parisian immigrant neighbourhood of Belleville, explore the black African woman’s quest for home in France. Most of her female protagonists appear to experience and embrace France as home. This pattern reverses both the fates of the heroines of her African novels and the pervasive representation of France as a hostile place in the Francophone African migrant literary tradition. (67) Clearly, the assimilationist narrative of home in the above excerpt generates different grids of interpretations and arguments. Coly asserts that “Beneath the linear progression that projects France as home for the African woman lies a subtext that revokes that same image and shows … the ideological turmoil of the writer” (67). The concept of home as projected by Calixthe Beyala in her novel, much like Head in When Rain Clouds Gather, is not fixed, but rather fluid, and that correlates with questions of alienation. Further allusion is made to Kimberly del Busto Ramírez’s “The Lost Apple Plays: Performing Operation Pedro,” in which he describes the experience of alienation as “an impenetrable illusion like the liminal condition of lifelong exile. To always remain ‘other’ in both the exile country and the home country, having two

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  35 ‘births’ and ‘selves,’ expands notions of a biculturalism that merely straddles nations” (322–​323). In this case, the exile remains suspended between two currents, forever floating. This reflects Said’s “impressions of exile as an occupant of a ‘median state,’ continually overlaying past and present, never being ‘totally cut off’ or achieving a surgically clean separation” (370). Furthermore, Cruz creates his “Lost Apple” metaphor in Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, (2004), using a young Cuban prostitute who shares her subjective imaginings, as well as experience with him as thus: My cat Orlando just died. I am miserable and alone in my apartment. Can you believe somebody gave me a canary? Quite frankly, I thought it was bad taste, because how can you replace a cat with a canary. So I opened the window and let the thing fly free. Now I’m resisting going back to my place, cause [sic] I know I’ll feel lonely without Orlando. (12) Clearly, Orlando is here portrayed as the thread that connects her memory with her original space. In other words, she maintains a devotion to her past by clinging to the memory of her homeland, but resists the idea of return because of the missing link, which is Orlando. Ramírez likens the prostitute’s lamentation to an allegory, as he explains that The prostitute’s mourning offers Luca an allegory of his own exiled condition. Like a second or third apple, no replacement for the beloved original—​no cat for a canary—​will do. Delita’s decision to keep wandering forges and freezes a space between her lost home and the changed home she avoids. (324) The image of Orlando like an exile’s nostalgic memory of homeland is evoked as a connecting thread between the prostitute and her place. Nevertheless, the quest for home can foster its own illusion. Andrew Gurr, therefore, notes that “home is neither here nor there” (13). But “The question yet disturbs: Why is it /​Neither, nor any land, is home?” (Peter Harris 51). The search for home for the exile is an unfinished adventure, as s/​he may experience many homes rather than a single home, and many exiles rather than a single exile. Home, as David Wright argues, “is as much a function of fate as of choice” (116). Wright refers to South Africa “from which [he] never can depart/​without a tearing of the heart/​strings that tie [him] lightly to it/​and irrefragably also,” (116) whereas Christopher Hope identifies “escape from South Africa as simultaneously impossible and desirable” (116). Rian Malan reflects on his nostalgic memory of home in such a way that, he says: It struck me, after a few years in [exile, that] I had thrown away something very precious by leaving South Africa. Maybe it was just nostalgia, but

36  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma in my memory my former life seemed somehow charged with meaning. Every day had been a battle against howling moral head winds. I had lived amidst stark good and evil, surrounded by mystery and magic … Nothing in America could ever compare with so powerful a set of intoxicants. In America, my soul was desiccated. (422) In Malan’s experience, the influence of time is considered in the process of his return to what he can remember as home, much like Helen Muggeridge and Giorgia Dona describe their notion of home as a “meeting between imagination and reality” (427). In most cases, returning exiles like Malan are compelled to “confront their perceptions of home and transition from belief to hope, from mythologizing the past to coming to terms with the present” (Muggeridge and Dona 427). In the South African context, exile is viewed, either as a condition or a process that is historically and contextually associated with forced separation, movement, political banishment, and geographical dislocation initiated by the authoritarian regime in post-​colonial Africa. Exile has been linked to a strategic space occasioned by transnational, political struggles against the norms of the apartheid regime. According to Zonke Majondina, “It is estimated that from the early 1960s, 40,000 to 60,000 South Africans were exiled, and that between 1990 and 1995 approximately 15,000 to 17,000 former exiles returned to South Africa” (177). The idea of return was constructed around the hope of a new South Africa, a hope awakened by the release of Nelson Mandela, which brought about a turning point in their decision to return to South Africa as home. They dreamt of the beautiful place that South Africa could become. In an interview conducted by Zosa Olenka, De Sas Kropownicki, a male respondent notes in Johannesburg: There was a sense of things having changed, like a “freedom will reign supreme” kind of atmosphere. So it was a very hopeful time. We believed that home was a paradise, but when we got to South Africa, we got the shock of our lives. (85) For those of them that were born in exile, longing for South Africa was premised on the memory of a mythic past. In another interview conducted by Kropownicki with a female respondent in Johannesburg, she says: “They [her parents] didn’t prepare [her] much, because they were thinking they [were] going back to fourteen years earlier, so they weren’t that prepared either” (84). Kropownicki sums her argument up that “Home for many [South African] exiles was not necessarily related to geographical space, traditions, or attachments” (84), but was rather linked with what Said refers to as a

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  37 “triumphant ideology of a restored people” (177). This triumphant ideology was basically centred on the new idiom that evolved into “a whole language about when we go back, when we are free, and when Mandela is free. So it was definitely part of my psyche growing up, that it [exile] was a temporary situation” (interview 84). While for the interviewees, the psychic construction of home in exile is a transitory journey that leads their way back to South Africa, the idea of homecoming is what is profoundly lacking in Head’s fiction. Leaving home for her major protagonists is a finality, which includes the unforgiving of their past hurts which they inherit from that old world, that is, their experience of tribal and racial segregations in South Africa. These inherited past hurts of Head’s characters lead us to the trauma of exile. In this case, I propose exilic compromise as a concept to draw out the dotted lines between home and exile, between past and present.

Theory-​building of exilic compromise: the neither-​here-​nor-​there of desire and belonging Clare Connors, in her Literary Theory: Beginners Guides (2010) reminds the reader that, “For a start, theory can itself be full of colours and interest, drama and feeling. And second, theory is not something we can simply oppose to ‘life’ …” (1). This comment by Connors is a response to an imagined “devil’s advocate” Mephistopheles, who offers a dark view on the concept of theory as thus: Theory is arid and abstract. Its generalizations wash life’s vivid and variegated colours to an undifferentiated grey. To be a theorist is to sit on the margins, thinking distantly and dispassionately about life but never getting stuck in, never living. (quoted in Connors 1) Mephistopheles, together with other anti-​theorists had a death-​wish against the existence of theory in literary studies. For example, in The Literary in Theory, the critic, Jonathan Culler, declares that “the heyday of so-​called high theory” is no more—​and, that, “the activities that have come to answer to the nickname theory are no longer the latest thing in the humanities” (1). Others, including Kenneth Surin, had even foreclosed that “this thing called theory” (6) should never have existed in the first instance. It should never have existed to the extent of gaining prominence in literary studies, as well as maintaining its dominance in the field. Furthermore, Surin, in his essay entitled, “Introduction: ‘Theory Now’?” in the South Atlantic Quarterly, describes the state of the debate in terms of a merely posited “after” of theory—​that is, “the days of theory are over, so let’s get back to doing literary studies in a way that really focuses on novels, plays, and poems, etc.,” (6). However, Calvin Thomas warns that “it’s surely

38  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma premature for intellectuals of any stripe to mourn or celebrate the expiration of theory, to wring or clap our hands about theory’s demise” (2). Thomas enlivens our hope that “Like it or not, ‘the thing’ still lives. Theory persists. Theory abides. Granted, the activities that answer to the nickname ‘theory’ may no longer be the latest thing in the humanities, but they do seem to have become lasting things” (2). Theory is, indeed, a “lasting thing,” at least, for those of us working in the humanities—​and, as Culler writes, “for in the humanities, ‘theory is everywhere’ ” (3)—​or, as Jean-​Michel Rabaté puts it in his critical book, The Future of Theory, that “theory never stops coming back” (10). Therefore, Connors in her sharp-​witted response, dismisses the arguments of the theory-​haters, including Mephistopheles’ notion with the conclusion that: “Theory is vital then, in both senses of that word: full of life and essential to life, and to the life of literature” (2). Connors’ line of argument becomes a foundation for me to say that theory itself is the effect of interaction among various determinants and the way to explain such a complex outcome of various determinants, is to distinguish the effect of the various systems in play—​that is, the interconnectedness of set ideas that formulate theories. Arguably, theory comes clothed in different terms, registers, and garments, but it should match with the evidence, which has been empirically gathered in the study of a literary work. One may agree that theory frees, but at the same time complicates a literary value—​exposing it not as given, but as negotiated—​or, not as natural, but as instituted within the sphere of the concrete knowledge that we uphold in the world of ideas. For instance, Huma Ibrahim’s concept of “exilic consciousness” does not articulate accurately what the reader can see is true of Head’s characters, who normally have no interest in returning to their old home. Ibrahim’s theory is presumably disengaged from the realistic standpoints of Head’s novels, and consequently becomes illusory. It is perceived as an apparently self-​evident theoretical position. In “The Problematic Relationship of Western Canonicity and African Literature: The Not-​So-​Singular Case of Bessie Head,” Ibrahim acknowledges that: I believe it to be the case that when a discipline, or rather the people who are practitioners of that discipline, experience varying degrees of stagnation they invent new ways to look at the same old stuff. I am not, by any means, trying to belittle new theories of but rather to suggest that the emergence of new theories often coincides with the stagnation, if not the demise, of others. (199) And because Ibrahim’s concept seems inappropriate, not necessarily stagnation, I have developed the notion of exilic compromise as a new way of reading Head’s fiction, or, rather, as a critical counter-​response to Ibrahim’s concept

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  39 of “exilic consciousness,” which is a misrepresentation of Head’s characters in the novels. For example, in transposing Head’s personal experience into the story, Ibrahim contends that: Head’s exiled characters are anxious about the loss of their birth place and their desires to belong to the place of exile. The exiled psyche of her characters is one divided against itself, for the characters often wish to return to the phantom of the old home even as they try in an exaggerated way to leave, for it is only through leaving that they can belong to the new home. It is useful to study the unresolved conflicts arising out of a state of being in exile in Head’s narratives because the exilic consciousness forms the nucleus of her writing. (2) Despite being what Ibrahim claims to be “the nucleus of [Head’s] writing,” the notion of “exilic consciousness” clearly fails to acknowledge the fact that Head’s protagonists never desire to return to their old homes. For her characters, the idea of return is void of what Avtar Brah calls “homing desires” (180). And Head asserts that “nothing can ever take away the fact that I never had a country; not in South Africa or in Botswana, where I now live as a stateless person” (Head A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings 28). In Sharar Bram’s view, returning to the old home is like “[an] attempt to travel to the past [but] the past is sealed within the borders of [the mind—​a mind which is already closed against homeland]” (357). Because the consciousness of homeland seems like a prison, they forget the first home that rejects them. For this obvious reason, exilic compromise calls for a leave-​taking from Ibrahim’s “exilic consciousness” since it does not work very well for both Head and her major protagonists in the context of their exiles. At least, what seems a bit accurate in Ibrahim’s argument of Head’s novels is that “… anxieties and desires are very important because they are the foreground for the enactment of Head’s narratives” (2). Her application of the term demonstrates “how a subjectivity responds to exile. The state of exile is often imposed on a subjectivity torn between a sense of not belonging as well as a desire to belong to one’s gender, linguistic group, community, and nation” (Ibrahim 2). However, exilic compromise as a double-​ bind concept poses some challenge, especially when one is forced by circumstances to settle for much less than what s/​he aspires to be in the new world. For example, Makhaya and Elizabeth are judged by their compromises more than by their principles and values in the novels. On the one hand, their ideas of rejecting tribalism and racism in the old home tell us something important about what they hate but, on the other hand, their compromises to accept another version of tribalism and racism elsewhere tell us who they are. Hence, their double standard is the core of exilic compromise as distinct from Ibrahim’s notion of “exilic consciousness.”

40  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma In this contextual framework, what I call exilic compromise aims to capture a double-​standard practised by the exiled person. It is a decisive or psychic surrender to all the factors and forces that compel one into exile in the first place, and to stay in exile on the other hand, either temporarily or permanently. Exilic compromise is a double-​faced mentality, a double-​mind, and a double-​existence of one divided self, caged in one broken body. It is a life caught in-​between, as demonstrated in the lives of writers such as Bessie Head, Calixthe Beyala, and other exiled writers of African and non-​African origins. Ibrahim however contends that: “… Head was engaged in two kinds of exile: one from patriarchal institutions and the other from the apartheid state” (2). In a similar way, Robert Essembo Mouangue in his (2000) essay entitled “Calixthe Beyala: France ou Afrique? Il faut choisir” [“Calixthe Beyala: France or Africa? You need to make up your mind”] gives her a condition to choose between France and Africa. Not by coincidence, Cazenave thinks Beyala’s declaration that “her head is in the West and her feet are in Africa” (xvi) is an inappropriate description: What should we say about the inverted description/​qualification, “my feet are in the West” (which would translate the reality of her geographic situation) and “my head is in Africa” which would translate her adhesion to Africa and its cultural values? (Cazenave 146) This case is drawn on to help my analysis of exilic compromise as a neither-​ here-​nor-​there kind of life, which in turn, is painful, bitter, and traumatising. It is a condition in which the exile sits astride across two or more worlds. This state of in-​betweenness, to be fair, can both be limiting and liberating. The exiled person looks back and forth, or rather, he or she is trapped under the burden of choice. In the case of ambivalence, the exile’s mind’s map is full of indecision whether to return to the old home or not. There are tensions between the self and homecoming, and the exile leans on what Coly calls “the motif of the double to manoeuvre through these tensions” (67). In the foreword to V. DiNicola’s A Stranger in the Family, M. Andolfis describes a similar situation “where [exiles] find themselves caught between two different cultures” (vii). He uses the chair-​metaphor to describe it “as sitting between two chairs and as one of the most serious existential predicaments” (xi). However, Andolfis also argues that “this in-​ between position may be considered an added resource that offers more than one choice, allowing greater mobility between two cultural alternatives” but that, “this is only possible when we can move easily from one chair to another, without fear of losing our original position” (xi). Andolfis offers what seems to be an alternative strategy that helps the exile manoeuvre through the tensions of the double without losing the other. To aid my explanation, below are two graphic images, contextualised within the theoretical project of exilic compromise to

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  41

Figure 2.1 A forward–​backward gaze of an exile. Courtesy of the Artist: Jane Boyer, Artist/​Curator/​Writer, J. Boyer ©2015, Fine Art Research Student, Anglia Ruskin University, J. Boyer Media: Watercolour & ink, www.janeboyer.com

Head’s protagonists in her novels. Exilic compromise is set to depict Head’s characters, not in the general way in which most exiles look back and forth in reminiscence of both their past and future, but in the specific context of their double standard. The two split images we see below are contextualised in a way to help explain the psychology of a divided mind—​a fragile mind that easily gives way in moments of crisis. This image, split between places are two selves of one body in opposition. One looks forwards, the other looks backwards, and never to be reconciled again. Beginnings, endings, transitions, chaos—​all words used in connection between past and present, between home and exile. Again, all words are understood by the dispossessed, as their dilemma takes full control of their minds. Indecision may be inevitable because in a confused state of mind such as this, the second syllable of the very word “re-​TURN” becomes difficult to achieve for the exile. It therefore dramatises the real battles between conscience and concession that arise from a concern, and are brought into the foreground of exilic compromise as there is no clean separation between the two faces, looking in opposition or, rather, in their forward–​backward gaze. This two-​faced image is confronted with the tensions of knowing two worlds: the old and the new. It is a movement between two contrasting states of being in which the philosopher Rosi Braidotti frames as “the nomadic subject, [which is] one that continually moves across established categories and levels of experience: blurring boundaries without burning bridges” (13), as Makhaya does in When Rain Clouds Gather.1 Similarly, the two sprinters (a doubly fixed being), one looking to the future, the other to the past, are both conflicted beings, who are neither fully separated from the past nor entirely forming a complete whole going into the

42  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma

Figure 2.2 Imaginary paintings to illustrate exile characters in Bessie Head’s fiction. Courtesy of the Artist: Jane Boyer, Artist/​ Curator/​ Writer, J. Boyer ©2015, Fine Art Research Student, Anglia Ruskin University, J. Boyer Media: Watercolour & ink, www.janeboyer.com

future. And, instead of being a unitary self, they form a hybrid puzzled piece with too many articulations. This is the same for the dispossessed in exilic space; neither one nor the other, longing in both directions for what is persistently out of reach, and never gaining momentum because of a fractured and folded identity. This, however, reflects what Peter Brooks terms “the narrating I and the narrated I” (8), as referring to the same person. He says: If there is one constant here, it seems to be discovery that self-​reflection, the work of memory on the self, the telling of a past self by “the same” self in the present, will always run up against an insoluble problem. (8) He asks a question that seems fundamental but difficult to answer: Is there any valid distinction between the self-​known and the self as knower here? The need to postulate their continuity—​I am the same as I ever was—​and the simultaneous claim of progress, change, and thus the possibility of an enhanced self-​understanding, come into conflict, since in the very process of self-​knowledge the knowing self-​obtrudes its presence over, and sometimes against, the self to be known: you can’t get to the

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  43 latter except by way of the claims of the former, which may repress the past self, distort it, make it dependent on its present reinterpretation. (8) These conflicted beings are born and reborn thereof, with the very puzzle that opens up the gap between narrative and troubling events of both life and experience, indicating that the individual has only himself to rely on, either for self-​discovery or interpretation. It crucially demonstrates the fact that the sprinters are in a difficult situation, as no clear line of decisive action is marked. In this case, we do not know precisely the direction they are going. In A Question of Power, the reader finds it difficult to distinguish between Head and Elizabeth, the protagonist. In such an autobiographical narrative, the “narrating I” is in one sense the same as the “narrated I” but, as Brooks argues, can never be identical. To take Brookes’ argument beyond the dialectics of the “narrating I” and the “narrated I” as never identical, perfectly aligns with the views of the anti-​identitarian theorists who argue that “none of us ever manages to abide in the purely self-​identical, fully self-​present way that we might be pleased to think” (Thomas, 88). The anti-​identitarians never believe in any essential or abiding core of self-​identity nor in the fact that there is anything called the “true self ” trapped within us. This, Thomas argues in “Missing Persons, bodies in pieces” that: [I]‌t’s not as if anyone of us ever originally possessed some naturally “true self ” back in the day, some organic or authentic identity that we managed to lose through some blunder, trauma, or trespass, some historical misfortune, social injustice, or original sin, an essentially “real core of self ” that’s somehow been hijacked by malign forces and that we might actually recover some bright dawn through therapy, prayer, meditation, heroic intellectual effort, divine intervention, spiritual retreat, or worker’s revolution—​but never the same person. (88) However, in “Moving Images of Home,” John Di Stefano argues that these invented identities “do not necessarily coalesce into something hybrid, but rather coexist, suspended and independent one from the other” (40). He goes on to say that “This suspended coexistence constitutes a type of strangeness located within the simultaneities of betweenness. The displaced person’s uneasiness and disjuncture embody this strangeness—​they become strangers” (40)—​as “we are always ‘extremely’ alienated ‘strangers to ourselves,’ always more or less or, in any case, other than what we (might like to) think (of ourselves)” (Thomas, 88). But Lloyd W. Brown sees it as something that “grows into a dual perception, a complex synthesis of idealistic and realistic awareness that reflects the highly effective tension … between the visionary and the skeptic” (46).

44  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma This painting, in the specific context of Head’s exilic compromise, expresses how all her characters look to the future and not the usual back-​and-​forth gaze of most double minds. For example, Makhaya’s memory chooses what to remember and what to forget. In his exilic experience, his memory only remembers the future that he looks unto and forgets the past that he leaves behind. This explains to us that memory is not like a documented film, but a reconstruction of a past event. Any reconstruction of the past is an attempt to re-​interpret reality or to re-​invent the mind. Although while memory is made to remember, it is also made to choose what to forget. Makhaya has no nostalgic grief or memory at all for his old home, thus escaping “the predicament of Lot’s wife, a fear that looking back might paralyze you forever, turning you into a pillar of salt, a pitiful monument to your own grief and the futility of departure” (Kammen xv). Exilic compromise, therefore, in this context is equal to alliance politics (lip service to collaboration). That is, the exiled person is aware of his or her condition but cannot change it and, instead of attempting to change it, s/​he surrenders to the dictates of his or her master in the new place even though s/​he may be conscious of the abandoned old home. It is a terrible dilemma, a precarious situation that brings one up against his or her own very existence. The exiled person, in this condition, is potentially reduced to a passive spectator, a passive participant in a new world that is not his or hers. To change his or her ways of seeing, his or her ways of thinking, to lift his or her perception above and beyond the colonised consciousness, s/​he ought to return to his or her old world—​the native homeland. When there is no option of return to the original homeland, as in Head’s case or, say, in the case of another politically banned refugee, exilic compromise, whether decisive or psychic, whether conscious or unconscious, is obviously the last resort. It is rather a stamp of temporal peace of mind and consolation to stay in exile, while still lamenting the losing grip of homeland. It is, again, a badge of momentary convenience, a liberating metaphor, but lacks the staying power to heal the pains of exile as the nostalgia for return keeps resonating in the mind of the exiled person. The life of the exiled person is for the meantime, and only for the meantime, because there may come a time that s/​he becomes homesick. There are exiled writers such as George Lamming who contend that “to be an exile is to be alive” (12). This is one prime example of exilic compromise because in my view, the opposite is equally true—​to be an exile is to be psychologically dead. Above all, s/​he must not forget homeland. It is a labour of remembering being-​at-​home once again. That is, the hurting sense of nostalgia for the old home, and the memory to reconnect to it is a magnetic force, powerful enough to draw the exiled person back home. While exile can be a terrible thing to experience, it might also act as a bastion, which protects the life of an exile from terror. In summation, exilic compromise could be a positive notion signalling the idea of peace of mind, and it could be a negative notion signalling the betrayal of high-​minded principles and values of an individual or a group.

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  45 The reader may wish to judge Makhaya and Elizabeth in the light of who they are or what they represent in the novels with reference to exilic compromise. In particular, for example, Makhaya’s compromise to accept the conditions of exile gives him a comparative advantage, as he seems to function better in the new home than the old home he leaves behind. For him, to compromise at whatever cost in exile, is to find peace, safety, greater well-​being, and a new home outside of the old. In any case, the thrust of exilic compromise as a conceptual framework is to create a deep sense of consciousness in the exiled person, as it hopes to gain entry into the empire of theories, especially in relation to the black African literary canon. This concept formulates a new paradigm of remembrance, the paradigm of memory against forgetting one’s homeland, identity, self, culture, and history. To this end, the study proceeds to the ideological notions of home and homecoming within the specific contexts of South Africa and Botswana.

Note 1 Credit information: Courtesy of the Artist: Jane Boyer, Artist/​ Curator/​ Writer, J. Boyer ©2015, Fine Art Research Student, Anglia Ruskin University, J. Boyer Media: watercolour & ink, www.janeboyer.com

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Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  47 Gikandi, Simon. Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993. Gow, Jamella N. Debating Difference: Haitian Transnationalism in Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 2012. Greedy, Paul. “The South African Experience of Home and Homecoming.” World Literature Today. Vol. 68, No. 3. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma, 1994. pp. 509–​515. Guillén, Claudio. “On the Literature of Exile and Counter Exile.” Books Abroad 50. 1976. pp. 271–​280. Gurr, Andrew. Writers in Exile: The Identity of Home in Modern Literature. Sussex: Harvester Press, 1981. Hall, Stuart. “Politics of Identity.” Culture, Identity, and Politics: Ethnic Minorities in Britain. (Eds.) Terence Ranger, Yunas Samad and Ossie Stuart. Aldershot: Avebury, 1996. pp. 129–​130. Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Head, Bessie. When Rain Clouds Gather. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1969. —​—​—​. Maru. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1971. —​—​—​. A Question of Power. London: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1973. Heurtelou, Maude. “My Suitcases.” Danticat. 89–​ 93. Migrant Revolutions: Haitian Literature, Globalization, and U.S. Imperialism. (Ed.) Kaussen, Valerie. Lanham: Rowman & Littleman, 2008. Hoffman, Eva. “The New Nomads.” Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss. (Ed.) André Aciman. New York: The New Press, 1999. pp. 35–​63. Ibrahim, Huma. Bessie Head: Subversive Identities in Exile. Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1996. —​ —​ —​ . “The Problematic Relationship of Western Canonicity and African Literature: The Not-​So-​Singular Case of Bessie Head.” Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head. (Ed.) Huma Ibrahim. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004. pp. 199–​215. Hutchinson, Linda. “Requiem for Edward Said.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Vol. 36, No. 23. 2003. pp. 1–​5. Kammen, Michael. Mystic Chords of Memory. New York: Vintage, 1991. Kropownicki, Zosa Olenka De Sas. The Meeting of Myths and Realities: The ‘Homecoming’ of Second-​Generation Exiles in Post-​Apartheid South Africa. 2014. Accessed on refuge.journal.yorku.ca/​index.php/​refuge/​article/​viewFile/​39621/​, 8 May 2017. pp. 79–​92. Lamming, George. The Pleasures of Exile. London: Pluto Press, 2005. Latour, Francie. “Made Outside.” The Virginian-​ Pilot 1995. Rpt. The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora (sic) in the United States. (Ed.) Edwidge Danticat. New York: Soho, 2001. pp. 125–​131. Lewis, Marvin. An Introduction to the Literature of Equatorial Guinea: Between Colonialism and Dictatorship. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007. Llie, Paul. Literature and Inner Exile: Authoritarian Spain, 1939–​1975. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. —​—​—​. “Exolalia and Dictatorship: The Tongues of Hispanic Exile.” Fascimo y experiencia literaria: Reflections para una recanonización. (Ed.) Herman Vidal.

48  Exile, post-coloniality, trauma Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, University of Minnesota, 1985. pp. 222–​254. Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl. “There is No World Outside of the Text.” Transatlantic Slippage in Eva Hoffman’s Loss in Translation. Accessed on Oxfordindex.oup.com/​ view/​10.3366/​Edinburgh/​9780748624454.003.00006, 3 September 2017. pp. 61–​79. Mansfield, Katherine. The Garden Party and Other Stories. London: Penguin Books, 1922. Marrouchi, Mustapha. “Exile Runes”. College Literature. Vol. 28, no 3, 2001. Accessed on Gale Literature Resource Center, 9 June, 2017. p. 88. McCarthy, Mary. “Exiles, Expatriates and Internal Emigrés.” The Listener Vol. 86, 1971. pp. 705–​708. McClennen, Sophia A. The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language, and Space in Hispanic Literatures. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2004. McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Minh-​ha, Trinh T.. When the Moon Waxes Red. New York: Routledge, 1991. Muggeridge, Helen and Giorgia Dona. “Black Home? Refugees’ Experiences of Their First Visit Back to Their Country of Origin.” Journal of Refugee Studies. Vol. 19, No. 4, 2006. pp. 420–​435. Nadine, Marie. “Map Viv: My life as a Nyabinghi Razette.” Danticat. 2008. pp. 171–​173. Parkin, Frank. Class Inequality and Political Order. London: McGibbon and Kee, 1971. Rabaté, Jean-​Michel. The Future of Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Ramírez, Kimberly del Busto. “The Lost Apple Plays: Performing Operation Pedro.” Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: Theater and Performance in Neustra América. Issue 2, Vol. 32, accessed on http://​newprairiepress.org/​sttcl, 26/​10/​2017. pp. 1–​23. Rian, Malan. My Traitor’s Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience. South Africa: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990. Rich, Adrienne. An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988–​1991. New York: Norton. Rushdie, Salman. Imaginary Homelands from Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–​1991. London: Granta Books, 1991. Said, Edward W. Beginnings: Intention and Method. New York: Basic, 1975. —​—​—​. “The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile.” Harper’s September. (N.P.) 1984. pp. 49–​55. —​—​—​. Reflections of on Exile: And Other Literary and Cultural Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Saul, Bellow. The Dean’s December. Kansas: Harper & Row, 1982. Schwarz, Bill. “Foreword.” The Pleasures of Exile. (Ed.) Lamming, George. London: Pluto Press, 2005. Seidel, Michael. Exile and the Narrative Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Selvon, Samuel. The Lonely Londoners. London: Penguin Books, 1996. Shankar Saha, Amit. Exile Literature and the Diasporic Indian Writer. Accessed on www.amazon.com.words without Borders, 2003–​2013, 28 April 2015. Simpson, John. Oxford Book of Exile. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Smith-​ Christopher, Daniel L. Biblical Theology of Exile. Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2002.

Exile, post-coloniality, trauma  49 Steiner, George. Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language of Revolution. New York: Atheneum, 1976. Stefano, John Di. “Moving Images of Home.” Art Journal. Accessed on www.jstor. org/​stable/​778150, 27 September 2017. pp. 38–​51. Surin, Kenneth. “Introduction: ‘Theory Now’?” South Atlantic Quarterly. Vol. 110, No. 1,Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. pp. 3–​17. Tabori, Paul. The Anatomy of Exile. London: Harrap, 1972. Tal, Kalí. Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Tiffin, Helen. “Post-​colonial Literatures and Counter-​discourse.” Post-​colonial studies reader. (Eds.) Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995. pp. 95–​98. Tölölyan, Kachig. Diaspora Studies: Past, Present and Promise. Oxford: University of Oxford, International Migration Institute (IMI), Oxford Department of International Development (QEH). 2012. Accessed on www.migration.ox.ac.uk/​ odp, 20 April 2015. Tucker, Martin. (Ed.) Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century: An Analysis and Biographical Dictionary. New York: Greenwood, 1991. Ugarte, Michael. Shifting Ground: Spanish Civil War Exile Literature. Durham: Duke University Press, 1989. Wagner, Peter. Theorizing Modernity. London: Sage, 2001. Ward, Patrick. Exile, Emigration and Irish Writing. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2002. Zeleza, Tiyambe Paul. “The Politics and Poetics of Exile: Edward Said in Africa.” Research in African Literatures. Vol. 36, No. 3. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2005, pp. 1–​22.

3  The ordeals of crossing From home to exile

Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather was published in 1969 while in exile. It was her first novel to be published. The story is about exile, about people, and about a village of Golema Mmidi in Botswana. Being about exile in particular, I would endeavour to focus on the tropes of migration and exile as one of the essential themes of this book. The text, being what I describe as a “travelling novel” because of its exile theme, finds a fitting place in Edward Said’s “travelling theory”, which, in his book, The World, the Text, and the Critic, demonstrates, for example, through the reading of Lukacs, Goldman and Raymond Williams, that one can actually pick a relevant theory, which, in itself, “can move from its original points to new uses and new positions depending on time and place and so on” (44). The mobile nature of the “travelling theory” does not only provide us with a reading lens to see When Rain Clouds Gather, as an exile novel, but it also foregrounds Janet Wolff’s argument in “On the Road Again”, that metaphors of travel in cultural criticism suggest, however, that “both senses of ‘travelling theory’ are in currency in cultural criticism” (232)—​pretty much as they are in exile literature. Therefore, Makhaya Maseko is one example of the on-​ the-​road-​again character, who moves from space to space, from geography to geography until he finds a home at Golema Mmidi, his place of exile. The characters in the novel migrate from different walks of life, and many of them are refugees from various places and spaces within the region of Southern Africa. The characters are mostly runaways from the tragedies of life, who are looking for a newer and better life in a trans-​cultural community called Golema Mmidi. Head’s characters are made to be loyal to the future, not to the past—​so they are progressively focused on the possibilities of survival in Botswana, as a new site of dwelling. For example, Martin Tucker’s compendium of Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century (1991) provides a basis for this study, as he succinctly puts together a list of 550 eminent exiles from all over the world. He writes: Altogether, out of some 550 prominent exiles worldwide whose biographies are referenced, 65 are from Africa, out of whom 40 are South Africans, mostly political refugees from the brutalities of Apartheid. The

The ordeals of crossing  51 majority of literary exiles from the rest of the continent are also escapees from the destructive authoritarianisms of postcolonial rule. (11) In his account of exiled writers, Tucker points out “brutalities of Apartheid” and “destructive authoritarianisms of post-​colonial rule,” as the bedrock problems that drive people into exile in the South African context, and he explores both the oppressiveness of the white South African regime and the oppressiveness of post-​colonial black states as key factors for migration. In particular, the second claim, which I would like to discuss as a form of black-​ on-​black prejudice/​hostility, could be explored as a pathology that holds the continent down in abject poverty and underdevelopment, and I would argue that this perspective guides Head’s novels. While Head’s characters migrate because of the “brutalities of Apartheid,” that is, the white-​on-​ black oppression, the problems of post-​colonial rule emerge once they are in Botswana (or in exile). Therefore, Head’s fiction investigates the extent to which the 1970s and 1980s post-​colonial misrule caused the migration and resettlement of Africans in exile—​an experience which has fundamentally recast the question of home. Tucker’s statistics substantiate Es’kia Mphahlele’s perspective on Southern Africa as “a terrible cliché as literary material” (Mphahlele, Down Second Avenue 210) because it was so predictably political, and Coreen Brown comments that “Writing thirty years later, critics were still claiming that it was impossible to write in Southern Africa in an unpolitical way” (26). By “political,” Sipho Sepamla means “marching shoulder to shoulder with others or breathing in and out the stink of prison cells” (190). Head, being born in this sort of society, grew up to become politically radical, though not always in predictable ways. Ultimately, the politics and patriarchal agency of power are not innocent of what gets defined in both South Africa and Botswana, and circulated as valid identity in Head’s fiction. Nevertheless, I examine Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather from the vantage-​ point of Botswanan settings, the value of which was claimed by Head herself in the following way: I found myself performing a peculiar shuttling movement between two lands. All my work had Botswana settings, but the range and reach of my preoccupations became very wide … I began to answer some of the questions aroused by my South African experience. (Head, A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings 13) Her claim is resonant with how Siniana, the male character in The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Tales, describes life in South Africa as “a terrible [hell]” (42). Head’s characters’ hellish experiences in South Africa are somewhat synonymous with the experience of Vina Apsara, the heroine of Salmon Rushdie’s novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, who, in a very critical

52  The ordeals of crossing situation says, “Good bye Hope” (1)—​as the earth swallows her up when she is about to escape the earthquake by taking flight on a helicopter to flee her native land. However, under the flashing light of hope, Makhaya Maseko, the protagonist, who claims he belongs to the Zulu tribe, seeks exile in a world elsewhere, as he makes an attempt to escape from South Africa into Botswana without being detected by the border Police. The narrative is largely about Makhaya, who is more or less an outcast, a runaway for political, cultural, and social reasons. He finds the inner energy to escape from the oppressiveness of the apartheid regime in South Africa to Golema Mmidi, a meeting place for all refugees in Botswana. Makhaya has been accused of a bomb plot to sabotage the government in South Africa and had got into trouble with the law and been jailed. He finds a new way to live in Botswana, where tribal traditions are pitted against a more progressive system of modernity. However, Makhaya attempts to process the paradox of belonging to two worlds: that of South Africa and Botswana, in which the way he lives moulds his story and his story also moulds the way he lives in these two worlds of crises. Gilbert, the British agricultural specialist, finds himself at Golema Mmidi, a desolate place characterised by crisis and poverty. He seeks to improve the well-​being of the rural poor through his cooperative scheme. While at Golema Mmidi, Gilbert later marries Maria, the only daughter of Dinorego, who befriends both Makhaya and Gilbert. Dinorego is the old man who has vast information on all the refugees in the village. Chief Matenge, on the other hand, is always interfering with Gilbert’s cooperative plans because he

Figure 3.1 An artistic/​imaginary painting of Makhaya as an exilic character in When Rain Clouds Gather. Courtesy of the Artist: Jane Boyer, Artist/​Curator/​ Writer, J. Boyer ©2015, Fine Art Research Student, Anglia Ruskin University, J. Boyer Media: Watercolour & Ink, www.janeboyer.com

The ordeals of crossing  53 sees Gilbert as a threat to his cattle business through which he exploits the villagers. In fact, chief Matenge is portrayed as an authoritarian under whom Paulina Sebeso receives words of threat for failing to report the death of her only son Isaac, who dies of tuberculosis. Makhaya develops interest in the idea of starting a new life with Paulina. He eventually proposes to her, and she willingly accepts.

Makhaya and his quest for elsewhereness Makhaya’s notion of exile as a comfort zone portrays his decision to go into exile without any looking back at his homeland. Some of the implications are the harassments he encounters. However, exile for Makhaya becomes a comfort zone defined by wherever he finds himself—​but he consequently becomes a missing piece of himself (a piece lost in the shifting nature of multiple identities and migrations), as Botswana becomes a new site of dwelling, or a place of safety for his elsewhereness. In his attempt to construct multiple personalities, Makhaya is exiled from his own self, an act that becomes an imitation or a copy without the original self. It raises the question of name/​identity-​ changing reduplication that results in the disappearance of the real. However, I intend to pursue the narrative of his movement from home to exile in a trace-​the-​dot fashion in When Rain Clouds Gather. This means, my attempt pivots on the linear progression of the plot development, and the causation of events, which are however linked to the themes of migration and exile. Makhaya Maseko is in search of both freedom and a home elsewhere. He severs ties with his native South Africa to seek refuge in Botswana. He completely surrenders the power of association with his native people, and constantly maintains a forward-​looking gaze into the future by negotiating subjectivities in order to find ease or, rather, re-​articulate his right of presence in the new home. It is a struggle deepened by the estrangement from the values and structures of the old home, and the lack of his allegiance to natal heritage is the first pre-​condition of adapting to the newly adopted home in Botswana. He is the whole journey, the whole conversation of life that brings him into exile. He finds home not where he is born, but outside his place of birth. The above portrait painting illustrates the opening vision of Makhaya, and his unique type of exile. It summarises Makhaya quite well by presenting his living gaze into the future. What we have is a painting that creates the imaginative possibility of completely separating the past from the future. Rather than being a realistic representation, Makhaya’s figure is better imagined as a symbolic metaphor, which pushes us to the edge of imagination to think and explore the recesses of the psyche, and the workings of the mind. It depicts his understanding of exile as a forward-​looking phenomenon, and also as a move away from the single definable meaning of identity and home. And “home” being what June Jordan describes as a “place of departure” (132) has consequently become “a dazzling eclectic array of defining absences” (Davies 115).

54  The ordeals of crossing So, to Makhaya, remembering the old home he leaves behind is to lose it, just like Edmond Jabès says in an interview with Paul Auster that to attempt to tell his story of exile is paradoxically and painfully to lose his story. Jabès puts it this way: “If I tell you about my life in detail … it escapes in the details I have chosen to recount” (Auster 17). This indicates that the most likely way towards depicting the human experience lies not only in the telling, but also in the looking or silencing, as well as leaving the space necessary for questions and interpretations. Makhaya, as a runaway refugee, leaves South Africa without the intention of returning to the old home. He knows his future is always before him but it is an uncertain kind of future, where hope is the only sustenance he has. Similarly, in Hope Dies Last: Making a Difference in an Indifferent World, Studs Terkel contends that “HOPE HAS NEVER TRICKLED DOWN. It has always sprung up” (xi), and he goes further to say that “That’s what Jessie de la Cruz meant when she said” (xi): I feel there’s gonna be a change, but we’re the ones gonna do it, not the government. With us, there’s a saying, La esperanza muere última. Hope dies last. You can’t lose hope. If you lose hope, you lose everything. (xi) Makhaya is a product of this philosophy, as he is clearly optimistic about the future, even though he is unsure about what it holds for him. The more he knows about what shapes his past, the more control he has over his perception of the present, and the better able he is to envisage the future he wants to design for himself without stumbling on the way, although it does not guarantee the particular future he wants. He is really not sure where he is going, but he only wants to be out of the apartheid state of South Africa. Nevertheless, Makhaya’s vision demonstrates how Head uses “rain clouds” as a symbol of hope in the story. The entire novel is perhaps a novel of hope, in which, the “rain clouds,” as a symbolic metaphor, represent the transition from the harsh life of apartheid rule, and of tribalism, to the modern-​day development through agricultural co-​operatives in the village of Golema Mmidi. “Rain clouds” make a transition from the negative to the positive. Obviously, the “rain clouds,” for Makhaya, portend a reward of faith, hope, recovery, as well as a new growth. All the refugees, including Makhaya, have dreams of a better future in Golema Mmidi. Contrary to Makhaya’s hope for the future, one might note the provocative statement by John Maxwell Coetzee: “In fact the future in general does not much interest me. The future is, after all, only a structure of hopes and expectations. It resides in the mind, it has no reality” (38). He argues that Of course you might reply that the past is likewise a fiction. The past is history, and what is history but a story we tell ourselves, a mental construct? But there is something miraculous about the past that the future lacks. (38)

The ordeals of crossing  55 While history gives us a shared past, he sees the hope for the future as a “sketchy, barren, bloodless affair” (38). How the individual sees both the past and the future depends on one’s outlook towards life shaped by his or her experience. Makhaya’s movement to Botswana is prompted by the perceived white-​and-​black tribalism that pushes him away from home in South Africa. In any case, exile is always about a journey and the discovery of new places by the exile himself. It is about the search for home by moving away from the harsh environment of one’s birth-​place. It is about the search for selfhood, the shaping and reshaping of the migrant experience by peeling off the old self for a new self to grow. It is also about the redefinition of the exile’s identity within the migratory space. Exile gives one the language to talk about the idea of being more than oneself. Therefore, from the beginning, Makhaya has a feeling of exile and he longs to be part of it. Therefore, he represents both belonging and estrangement, desire and exile, migration and the formation of multiple identities. In The Anatomy of Exile, Paul Tabori views an exile as, a person compelled to leave or remain outside his country of origin on account of well-​founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion; a person who considers his exile temporary (even though it may last a lifetime) hoping to return to his fatherland when circumstances permit—​but unable to do so long as the factors that made him an exile persist. (30) One of the reasons advanced by Tabori is true of Makhaya, as he leaves his native home because of tribalism. He is angry with his tribal heritage. Percy Mosieleng defines exile as “the condition of life essentially lived outside habitual order and intimate familiarity with the environment” (51). Mosieleng grounds his argument on Head’s exilic experience as a carry-​over into the exile of her characters. He finds it desirable to consider the connection between the biographical and the fictional narratives that invent the detached other in the discourse of estrangement. Edward Said, in his essay, “The Mind of Winter-​ Reflection of Life in Exile,” perceives exilic life as “nomadic, decentred, contrapuntal,” and he argues that “even if one does get accustomed to this life, its unsettling forces erupt anew” (54). The kind of exile that engages Head’s characters in the displaced space is described as an exile-​within-​exile. It is unique in some ways because it is a paradox that places the past and the present side by side. In this case, for Makhaya, nothing is certain because the past and the present are separate from each other. Makhaya’s exilic consciousness involves cutting of deals, making difficult compromises as he looks for a safe ground that is free from tribal prejudices. His intention is to invent and re-​invent himself into multiple identities by changing his name, identity, and even denying his tribe so as to fit into the new space. It happens between him and the old man, between him and the old woman, as well as between him and the truck driver on his way to Golem Mmidi. This is a massive issue for the reader as one is confronted

56  The ordeals of crossing with Makhaya’s problematic identity from the beginning of the novel. His identity construct suggests a double-​edged sword as Makhaya turns himself inwards and then outwards through name-​changing to suit a particular need at a particular time in his quest for belonging. This attests to the fact that a new reality has shaken his world. This interpretation clearly leads to what Desiree Lewis terms “standpoint epistemology” (123). She broadly defines standpoint epistemology to mean “the self-​consciously partisan interest in particular theories or philosophies” (123). But in recent usage, Nancy Hartstock has applied it to a feminist theory that stresses the form of “seeing from below which has universally liberating implications” (123). Although the notion of standpoint seems to have originated first of all from feminist theories. It foregrounds multiple subjectivities as it relates to the formulation of identity discourse. Theorists like Donna Haraway and Patricia Hill Collins deal with the liberating values of “seeing from below in terms of compound power relations that mold “multiple marginalities. Recognizing these multiple marginalities leads beyond essentialist, fixed constructions of identity and cultural boundaries” (Lewis 123). Makhaya keeps traversing boundaries to locate a better place for himself. Lewis also contends that this is what Nira Yuval-​Davis (2011) describes as “transversal politics and shows that marginal subjectivities are always the provisional effects of the particular discursive boundaries and shifting power relationships” (123). Lewis, therefore, sums it up by saying that “For Head, naming and exploring freedoms constantly leads to Yuval-​Davis’ formulation of transversal politics: interrogating the way different margins are constructed by transforming hegemonic centers” (123). Makhaya and Gilbert work hand-​ in-​hand with the local community to transform Golema Mmidi into a modern agricultural state. Makhaya is anxious to capture this state of freedom by moving away from the hegemonic centre, which apartheid South Africa represents, while Botswana represents the different marginal space of freedom. Marginal existence seems to be what Head has to offer her exiled characters. But in recognition of the importance of space, be it public or private, Edward Hall observes that “our spatial environment is especially important because all human experience occurs in a spatial setting whose design has a deep and persisting influence on people in that setting” (xi). In absolute agreement, Howard Stein writes, “Whether as individuals or as groups, human beings tend to cast the identity of their ‘who-​ness’ with their emotional ‘where-​ness,’ thus merging ‘who I am’ with ‘where I am’ binding self and place” (xii). This realisation is crucially relevant because a particular space may embody “feelings of safety versus threat, the sense of being at home versus isolation and alienation, the sense of continuity and cohesiveness versus discontinuity and fragmentation, and feelings of goodness versus badness” (Stein 4). These feelings continue to well up in both the conscious and the subconscious of Makhaya, manifesting their various aspects in his life as he journeys on. According to Head, “Makhaya found his own kind of transformation in this

The ordeals of crossing  57 enchanting world. It wasn’t a new freedom that he silently worked towards but a putting together of the scattered fragments of his life into a coherent and disciplined whole” (Head, When Rain Clouds Gather 127). He finds it pretty easy to move into this new form of life as, “For one thing he wanted it, and for another he had started on this road, two years previously in a South African prison,” and ultimately, “the end aim in mind being a disciplined life. But the Botswana prison was so beautiful that Makhaya was inclined to make a religion out of everything he found in Golema Mmidi” (Head, When Rain Clouds Gather 127). What Head seeks to show through the exile of her characters is the desire for a better quality of life elsewhere. Her characters, depicted as exiles, normally lack the ability to look back nostalgically as well as forwards hopefully because they are a product of the brutal socio-​political context of apartheid. Elizabeth, in A Question of Power, is exceptional as the only character who has view of both the future and the past, which links the colonial past and post-​colonial present, while Makhaya maintains a permanent gaze into the future with no reminiscence of the past. For Head, the condition of exile is about the quest for a utopian, all-​inclusive space of belonging, as well as the development of wider human relations. This theme of black or mixed race exile is a recurring motif that runs through her fiction as exemplified in characters like Makhaya, Elizabeth, and Margaret, respectively. Furthermore, it is also an engagement with the trauma and the ordeals of border crossing as I try to explain below.

The pangs of desiring to belong to a “free society” Makhaya sees exile as an existential core of life, regardless of the pains and harassments involved in crossing from home to exile. He hides in a small hut on the South African border, waiting for a chance to escape to the neighbouring state of Botswana. Maxine Sample refers to this as a “gestation period,” saying that: [As] Makhaya waits for the signal that “it is time” for his safe emergence from the hut, the reader learns that Makhaya has additionally rejected the position/​place assigned him in the patriarchal community from which he is fleeing. He rejects the part of Africa that he considers “mentally and spiritually dead through the constant perpetuation of false beliefs [of male superiority over women.” (35) However, in my view, Makhaya is far less concerned with patriarchy than with tribalism and apartheid. This desire marks the beginning of the exilic life he imposes on himself. Sample’s claim highlights a significant misinterpretation of the very factors that drive him away from home into exile. Nevertheless, her use of the phrase “gestation period” is apt, and very much in line with

58  The ordeals of crossing other scholars’ perspectives Victor Turner, for example, calls this waiting to cross over the border a “liminal state,” although he borrows the term from the Belgian folklorist Arnold Van Gennep who used it to discuss the sociocultural rites of passage (Sample also talks about a “threshold experience” (35). Focusing on the positive aspects of liminality, Turner makes an analogy between the liminal processes and a gestation period. He argues that, “by the principle of the economy (or parsimony) of symbolic reference, logically antithetical processes of death and growth may be represented by the same tokens, by huts and tunnels that are at once tombs and wombs …” (9). The symbols of both death and growth appear during Makhaya’s “gestation” period before he crosses over the border and later in the hut where he discovers the remains of Paulina’s son and cremates them. This symbolic liminality has effects on his transformation, which causes Makhaya’s identity complex to unravel, and the fact that his background is shrouded in mystery triggers suspense in the reader. For example, when the old man who shelters him in the hut asks him about his name in order to establish his origin, Makhaya reacts in a mischievous manner “… ‘I’m a Zulu.’ And he laughed sarcastically at the thought of calling himself a Zulu” (3). He probably laughs because of his grievances against tribalism. The name “Makhaya” sounds unfamiliar to the old man but sounds like a Tswana name, because the old man does not know what it is, Makhaya asserts a Zulu identity to deceive the old man. The old man is not convinced by Makhaya’s claim because he speaks the Tswana language perfectly. He probes further: “But you speak Tswana fluently” (3). This means Makhaya may probably have come from the Tswana-​speaking tribe that dominates the northern Transvaal. But, Makhaya, speaking with tongue in cheek, cleverly defends himself by saying: Yes, we Zulus are like that. Since the days of Shaka we’ve assumed that the whole world belongs to us; that’s why we trouble to learn any man’s language. But look here, old man, I’m no tribalist. My parents are—​that’s why they saddled me with this foolish name. Why not call me Samuel or Johnson, because I’m no tribalist. (3) He may have told yet another lie to the old man by imposing the Zulu identity on himself. However, Makhaya’s wish to have an English name, as well as his desire to learn any man’s language causes the reader to share the old man’s scepticism about his Zulu identity. To prove himself as no tribalist, he wishes his parents could have given him a foreign name rather than a tribal one. But this, however, indicates that Makhaya may not really be a Zulu. Thus, his identity, when the reader meets him becomes a source of mystery. It is a mystery in the sense that Makhaya has a quest to change his identity and name. It is a mystery in the sense that Makhaya has a quest to change his identity and name. One could gloss his choice of names by reference to Michel de

The ordeals of crossing  59 Montaigne’s statement in his essay “Of Repenting”: “Each man bears the entire form of the human condition; every individual bears the stamp or impress of the common lot, like coins struck from the same die” (Quoted in Brooks 3). Because Makhaya sees his identity as belonging to the “common lot” of human nature, he may want to be called either “Samuel” or “Johnson,” as something exotic, but certainly not “Makhaya” because the name “Makhaya” makes him a tribalist. That is what he makes of his native name. He, therefore, wishes to strip himself of his native name, or to undefine his initial self so as to develop a new sense of self in order not to live in the box of one identity. Makhaya is compelled by circumstances of life may to change his name and identity in critical situations. The seventeenth-​century philosopher John Locke points out that the concept of “the self depends on memory, that faculty that assures us that we are the same person as before” (14). And to him, “this self is narrative; it must be retrieved from the past, the lines of continuity leading from past to present traced and retraced” (14). Memory is what one chooses to remember and what one chooses to forget, and this becomes part of the larger narrative of who one believes oneself to be. Memory is malleable, as one can either retain, delete, shape, deny or even stretch it in a quest for who one is. Therefore, for Locke, memory is the foundation of identity. Memory is also linked to the distinctive physical characteristics of an individual: “His [Makhaya’s] long thin falling-​away cheekbones marked him as a member of either the Xhosa or Zulu tribe” (1). It shows that Makhaya’s memory of himself is not consistent, particularly as the use of the adjectives “either” and “or” shows that his identity is not clearly defined, and hence still a mystery for the reader to unravel. The mystery reminds me of what is said by the authorial voice in We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo. For her characters to be able to do some kind of physiotherapy, the narrator claims that: “In order to do this right, we need new names. I am Dr. Bullet, she is beautiful, and you are Dr. Roz, he is tall, Sbho says, nodding at me” (82). They are all wearing a fake mask of professional identity. Name as an identity is engraved in the consciousness of the bearer, and it is a mark of his or her human person from birth to death. But, on the other hand, it is not a totalising claim of his or her being or identity because it can be altered. Hartman evidences this assertion when she writes of how she changed her name from Valarie to Saidiya, which means “helper.” She, therefore, says: I changed my name. I abandoned Valarie … So in my sophomore year in college, I adopted the name Saidiya. I asserted my African heritage to free myself from my mother’s grand designs. Saidiya liberated me from parental disapproval and pruned the bourgeois branches of my family genealogy. It didn’t matter that I had been rejected first. My name established my solidarity with the people, extirpated all evidence of upstanding Negroes and their striving bastard heirs, and confirmed

60  The ordeals of crossing my place in the company of poor black girls—​Tamikas, Roqueshas, and Shanequas. (8) While Makhaya wishes to change his native name to an English name, Saidiya changes from her English name to her African heritage to join the league of other African-​American children like the Tamikas, Roqueshas, and Shanequas. This is to the disappointment of her mother who wants her to remain in that bourgeois root of their family history. Again, this is the same fate that greets Somaly Mam in her memoir. Somaly means “the necklace of flowers lost in the virgin forest.” She, too, has had several names and these several names are “the result of temporary choices” (1). In Cambodia, names are changed the way one would wish to change life. She narrates that: As a small child, I was called Ya, and sometimes just Non-​Little One. When I was taken away from the forest by the old man, I was called Aya, and once, at a border crossing, he told the guard my name was Viriya—​I don’t know why. (1) Much the same way, Makhaya in When Rain Clouds Gather, changes his name several times as he moves from space to space in search of a safe ground. However, Makhaya, unlike Margaret in Maru, embraces ultimately a common identity and refuses to insist on a particular identity of his own. Lewis adds: “Like Head, Makhaya seems determined to discover a subjectivity unburdened by coercive social obligations and imposed identities. At the start of the novel, we learn of this eagerness to disengage himself from South African norms of political behaviour” (130) where, as Head puts it in A Bewitched Crossroad, On the one hand you felt yourself the persecuted man and on the other, you easily fell prey to all the hate-​making political ideologies, which seemed to be the order of the day … [and] which gave rise to a whole new set of retrogressive ideas and retrogressive pride. (Head, A Bewitched Crossroad: An African Saga 80) Makhaya, then, flees from his original homeland as someone who has been put in an oppressive subject position, with inherited cultural codes. This narrative constructs a range of metaphors and themes, which Lewis connects to the narrative in another work of Head’s, The Deep River: A Story of Ancient Tribal Migration. Lewis goes on to say that in the story, which Head describes as “an entirely romanticized and fictionalized version of the history of the Botalaote tribe” (Head 6):

The ordeals of crossing  61 [The] love between Sebembele, a chief’s son, and Rankwana the junior wife of the chief, motivates the migration of a community under the leadership of Sebembele. It is implied that by migration they found a new settlement which accommodates their desire for freedom. Rankwana and Sebembele consequently become the pioneering figures in creating new homes based not on a constricting communal obligation, but on realizing individual desires. (Lewis 130) In addition, Lewis says, “In a stirring description, the specific meanings of home are deferred as the story’s conclusion concentrates on the quest and Sebembele’s defiance” (130), which are recorded thus: The next morning the people of the whole town saw an amazing sight which stirred their hearts. They saw their ruler walk slowly and unaccompanied through town. They saw Sebembele and Rankwana’s father walk to the home of her new husband where she had been secreted. They saw Rankwana and Sebembele walk together through the town. (Head 5) Obviously, in both When Rain Clouds Gather and The Deep River: A Story of Ancient Tribal Migration, Head locates the freedoms, as well as the desires of her characters in the construction of strange places which they refer to as homes. Home to them is that feeling of forging a common identity by blurring the boundaries between the private and the public, and between the individual and the collective. In fact, home, to Head’s characters is an idea or something that exists only in their minds. It means whatever they carry inside of them, not necessarily a physical construction or a piece of earth. Home is not where they happen to be born, but a place where they become themselves—​something to last a lifetime by stepping out of their lives, out of their world to see more of the things they care about. The message waiting to be explored in this context is that, human beings are fortunate in their diversity and complexity. As a matter of perspective, Makhaya is not constrained by what he sees, but how he sees it is what matters to him. He may believe that it is possible to have a rich experience of human nature only when he becomes something other than one “self.” And, if this is indeed the case, then, to my mind, it is his finest attribute as an exilic character. He refuses to reduce the image of who he is in the tiny box of one identity because he may have seen monocultural identity constructs—​be they tribal, nationalist, or colonialist—​ as too troubling, too limiting, too constraining, and too confining for him. Consequently, Makhaya rejects the notion of a single identity which tries to reduce him to one thing and to be that one thing alone. He constructs an alternative story of belongings, and “belongings”, used in the plural sense here, are a justification, from the ground up, for him to be more than one

62  The ordeals of crossing thing, to be fluid, and to also humanise his existence in a vast and changing world like his. To establish this within a given context, the reader gets that psychological splitting into a multiple-​consciousness of personality like Elizabeth in A Question of Power. This persuades the reader into new ways of thinking, and new ways of seeing an exile. Like a travelling school, the novel portrays Makhaya as a nomadic subject, a wanderer. Nevertheless, while in Botswana, Makhaya brings tribal issues up more glaringly in his conversation with the old man called Dinorego. His problem begins with his own name. “Makhaya,” he says: “That tribal name is the wrong one for me. It is for one who stays home, yet they gave it to me and I have not known a day’s peace and contentment in my life” (3). He, therefore, accuses his parents of being tribalistic and one of which is his native name coupled with the white-​on-​black suppression. The old man sharply reminds him, saying that it is the education that has turned his mind away (3). Dinorego does not see his native name as the problem but rather his western education. He asks, “Why did he jump so at the thought of one tiny scrap? And what about tribalism? What about the white man, who was the only recognized enemy of everyone? Oh, so you have no complaints about the white man?” (3); as he tries to pry some information from Makhaya. That Makhaya has fewer issues with the white man than with tribalism, further justifies the overall argument of the entire thesis, which concerns black-​on-​black tribal prejudice. However, my argument does not entirely ignore the ugliness of apartheid (that is, the white-​on-​black suppression), as well as its negative impacts on Makhaya. Makhaya is a victim of a rigid, brutal, blood-​letting, dehumanising, and racial segregationist system called the apartheid regime in South Africa—​ in which all black people had poor education, and lack of political rights to vote. As a colonial minority in South Africa, with a colonial mentality, Makhaya channels his grievances towards the black-​ on-​ black prejudice more than the white-​on-​black brutality that drives him away from his native South Africa into exile in Botswana. Obviously, it is the colonial education that orients his outlook on life such that he sees more evil in his people than the real, organised enemy, who is the white man. I refer to this dilemma as exilic compromise, a concept which profoundly articulates a situation in which a character runs away from a particular problem at home, hates his or her people because of that, but accepts a similar version of the same problem elsewhere. It is a double life of double desires, framed in the psycho-​existential division of the human mind—​the Manichean division of the self versus other and of us versus them. Dinorego, the old man, tries to open his eyes to the evils of colonial apartheid, but his blind self never allows him to see how the system has warped his sense of reasoning. Furthermore, Makhaya is painfully honest about his grievances against tribal prejudice. Again, the old man, while nodding his head, has this to add: They should not have given you the education. Take away the little bit of education and you will be only too happy to say, “Mama, please find me

The ordeals of crossing  63 a tribal girl and let us plough.” It’s only the education that turns a man away from his tribe. (3) Because Makhaya is trapped in the turbidity of brandy that clouds his brain, the conversation later takes a rambling deviation from the main point. However, the old man in his wisdom, brings him back to the point at hand. In trying to elicit some information from him, he asks: “Why was the young man here? What was he fleeing from? A jail sentence, perhaps. And what was this about tribalism?” (3–​4). These questions are targeted at the root causes of Makhaya’s flight from home. When the old man realises that Makhaya is running away from tribalism, he quickly reminds him that ahead of him is “the worst tribal country in the world. We Barolongs are neighbours of the Botswana, but we cannot get along with them because they are a thick-​headed lot people, who think no further than their door since.” Tribalism is food and drink to them. They basically do not get along because the Barolongs hold a superior view of themselves, while they look down on the Botswanans. Makhaya who is in search of a free society reacts thus: “Oh, Papa,” he goes on: “I just want to step on free ground. I don’t care about people. I don’t care about anything … I want to feel what it is like to live in a free country and then maybe some of the evils in my life will correct themselves” (4). The quest for a free ground is born of the desire for a higher-​quality life in Botswana or elsewhere. Head does not immediately and explicitly contrast this desire with the fact that there is no free ground or society anywhere in the world but she rather implicitly depicts it as a utopian illusion. As the novel develops, it becomes clearer that every society has its own problems, and there is no free ground anywhere. Makhaya soon realises this when he is faced with the disturbing wail of sirens of the patrol van at the border to double-​check migrants like him. He is abandoned by the old man as he closes his door against Makhaya. The implication is, as M. Genetsch puts it, that one of the most pressing problems for those forsaking their homes for a new country is the construction of new identity. In most accessible terms, the central concern for many who feel themselves uprooted is how to make life in the diaspora livable. (42) The abandonment is a rejection of Makhaya, not only as an illegal migrant but a rejection of his African brotherhood, which offers a moving insight into the human experience in post-​colonial Africa. Here, the very traditions that define the African oneness are partly dead. The old man, being a tribalist, is not free himself and clearly imprisons his soul in the web of hatred. However, the thought of the approaching sirens and being left to his fate troubles Makhaya. He consoles himself by sipping a little brandy. He makes efforts

64  The ordeals of crossing to cross over to “no-​man’s land.” The novel describes the border crossing in vivid detail: “Makhaya made ready to cross that patch of no-​man’s land. The two border fences were seven-​foot-​high barriers of close, tautly drawn barbed wire. He waited in the hut until he heard the patrol van pass” (4). In this anxious state, Then he removed his heavy overcoat and stuffed it into a large leather bag. He stepped out of the hut and pitched the leather bag over the fence, grasped hold of the barbed wire, and heaved himself up and over. Picking up his bag, he ran as fast as he could across the path of ground to the other fence, where he repeated the performance. Then he was in Botswana. (4–​5) This is one part of his ordeals in crossing the border. He risks his life in a desperate bid to step on a free ground, as he calls it. This, again, creates a suspense in the reader who wants to find out if Botswana is really a free ground in the sense he uses it. In “his anxiety to get as far away from the border as fast as possible, he hardly felt the intense, penetrating cold of the frosty night” (5) because what dominates his thought is the frightening wail of sirens thereby creating a kind of pensive reflection in him as, “for almost half an hour he sped, blind and deaf and numbed to anything but his major fear” (5). That is, he reflects only on his fear, which is the wailing sirens of the patrol vans. The siren brings him to a sudden halt because he fears that his movement may draw attention to himself. “But the lights of the patrol van swept past and he knew, from timing the patrols throughout the long torturous day, that he had another half hour of safety ahead of him” (5). Nevertheless, as he relaxed a little, his mind grasped the fact that he had been sucking in huge gulps of frozen air and that his lungs were flaming with pain. He removed the heavy coat from the bag and put it on. (5) Apart from the physical pains, the painful politics of belonging is also involved, as it mainly concerns the identity question and who belongs. Makhaya is thought to be a spy by the old hag he meets who thinks that one has to be a spy to wander about at night. She rants angrily: “Why else do people wander about at night, unless they are spies? All the spies in the world are coming into our country. I tell you, you are a spy! You are a spy!” (6). This gives the reader a layer of understanding about the identity question involved in border-​crossing and the calibre of people that trudge into the country. For this simple reason, and for Makhaya to free himself from suspicion of every imaginable kind, to lift himself above himself, and to cross all the hurdles into a safe space in exile, he has to lie several times, change his name, denounce his tribe, and change his identity, as the cross-​border experience changes from context to context, or from situation to situation.

The ordeals of crossing  65 By this complex web of migration experiences/​ordeals, one can safely think that Makhaya is, by interpretation, born more than once because of his malleable identity and name. It is more or less a game of survival strategy in a strange land of exile. Based on Makhaya’s desperate desire to seek freedom elsewhere, to run away from tribalism, Makhaya can either be a Zulu, Xhosa, or something else, depending on the prevailing circumstances in which he finds himself. Deborah B. Fontenot correctly sums it up that “The exile, transplanted, has to contend with the xenophobia of his adopted society, and concomitantly, with his powerlessness in that society. The exile … is beset with prominent difficulties of restlessness, powerlessness, and blurred identity” (16). However, we see that Makhaya’s reasons for leaving his home country are obviously sharpened again, as he cannot “marry and have children in a country where black men were called ‘boy’ and ‘kaffir’ ” (Head, When Rain Clouds Gather 11). These are the most important reasons that drive him away from home, especially as he decides not to be trapped inside the narrow boundary of his tribe. The entire continent for him is “vast without end and he simply felt like moving out of a part of it that was mentally and spiritually dead through the constant perpetuation of false beliefs” (Head, When Rain Clouds Gather 11). Changing his class or name or tribe is like emigrating from one side of his world to the other, and this requires changing his passport, changing his language, as well as losing touch with his people in the old world. But holding onto his conviction, he says, “I might like it here [Botswana], was his last thought before falling into a deep, exhausted sleep” (Head, When Rain Clouds Gather 11). This marks a place he has come to root himself in, and as Edward Relph puts it, To have roots in a place is to have a secure point from which to look out on the world, a firm grasp of one’s own position in the order of things, and a significant spiritual and psychological attachment to somewhere in particular. (38) Again, not being sure of what the future holds, Makhaya uses the expression “I might like it here,” in which, the modal auxiliary verb “might” is used to mark the uncertainty of the future events or circumstances. He might or might not like it eventually. His desire to like the place depends entirely on the circumstances that lie ahead of him. In representing his deep desire to search for a country in which to love and to live, the narrator draws the conclusion: “But whatever it was, he simply and silently decided that all this dryness and bleakness amounted to home and that somehow he had come to the end of a journey” (12). This reads like a self-​submission to fate, and to accept whatever comes his way. Sample asks a profound question, which highlights a sharp contrast to Relph’s view on the importance of roots:

66  The ordeals of crossing What security lies in a socially sanctioned condemnation to lifelong existence as a subordinate other in a society that daily confirms one’s comparative worthlessness? How can a person become spiritually and psychologically attached to a place that dehumanizes one because of her skin without in turn experiencing some kind of damage to the psyche? (43) Makhaya’s belonging is not rooted in where he is born but where he hopes to become himself. Therefore, what dehumanises or rather politicises Makhaya in this case is not skin colour per se but his tribal origin. It means there is a further motive to regard Makhaya as an outsider or stranger who is not welcome. Jean Marguard asserts that “This unnatural, suspicious and uncomfortable co-​existence between exiles and natives compels the exile to take refuge in the comforting knowledge that they will never be understood” (55). In view of this, Lewis links Head’s exile experience to that of Makhaya: “While Head turns to the figure of a San woman [in Maru] to name a specific position of marginality, she turns elsewhere to more fluid metaphoric notions of social marginality” (138). In connection with this, Lewis says One of the most persisting of these is the figure of the migrant, a figure first explored in the novel When Rain Clouds Gather. The flight from South Africa of the novel’s central character, Makhaya echoes Head’s explanation of her own. (130) Interpretatively, Makhaya’s exile experience is equal to the author’s. Makhaya’s arrival in Botswana from the outset keeps the plot line heightened by moving it from one level of suspense to the other. Again, Makhaya is harassed by the old man’s constant questioning of his identity, as he is always interested in collecting the stories of fugitives so that one day “he would be free to surprise his village with his vast fund of information on fugitives” (2). Next, Makhaya comes across an old woman and a child of about ten years, as he begins his journey to freedom. The old woman displays not only a sharp-​tempered attitude, but also, she is a character who obviously prostitutes a ten-​year-​old child to the men who come to seek refuge in her home. Makhaya, for example, describes the old woman and the child as “a pair of vultures” (8), and this is because of the way their eyes gleam at him in an unnatural manner and also because of their lifestyles. The old woman’s refusal to return Makhaya’s greeting but instead demands what he wants is culturally strange to him. Even when he puts his request politely to her that he is looking for a shelter for the night, she bursts out loud with the accusation that he is a spy (quoted above). It is the shout that bothers Makhaya because the border is very near, and at any moment, the patrol van may pass by. He

The ordeals of crossing  67 feels scared and embarrassed by her attitude. To him that is rude because women are not supposed to shout at men, especially where he comes from. The drama does not end there. To further demonstrate her harsh attitude, she eventually agrees to offer him a shelter but demands that Makhaya must pay ten shillings for a small hut that has some blankets only for a night. But, despite all the embarrassment, Makhaya smiles when she insists again that “I know you are a spy… You are running away from them [the border police]” (7). He replies: “Perhaps you just want to annoy me. But as you can see, I’m not easily annoyed” (7). Probably he is not easily annoyed in this desperate situation because he has no choice. He is rather at her mercy. And to worsen the situation, she does not reply at this point but, instead, she “turned her head and spat on the ground as an eloquent summing up of what she thought of him” (8). This action speaks volumes, as it may refer to Makhaya as either a spy, a liar, or a homeless refugee who is looking for a means of survival. Makhaya’s predicament is similar to that of most actual refugees, such as the Sudanese refugee known as Mouasan Olan’g. According to Joshua Agbo, Mouasan Olan’g: [F]‌led from his home to escape a long-​running war between the Sudanese government and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. He made his way to Nairobi capital of Kenya, where he hoped to pick up the broken thread of his life and find peace. Although he was far from the scene of war, Olan’g’s troubles were not yet over. Since arriving in Nairobi, he was constantly reminded of his refugee status. Police harassed and fined him without explanation. (79) However, beyond this drama of insult, harassment, and neglect, which Olan’g encounters, Makhaya, experiences something even more shocking. While lying down in the hut, the small child quietly opens the door and closes it behind herself. Makhaya asks: “What do you want?” (9). The little girl of ten years gives an unclear answer that “My grandmother won’t mind as long as you pay me” (9). In as much as her reply may appear ambiguous to the reader, Makhaya, in context, clearly understands her intention and dismisses her, saying, “You’re just a child” (9). But the girl refuses to leave. As a result, he gives her ten shillings without having sex with her. For him, having sex with a child under the age of consent is morally and legally wrong. Therefore, Makhaya’s refusal to take part in child sex abuse gives a hint as to his moral uprightness. Later, Makhaya’s arrival at Golema Mmidi is something of “luck and chance,” as he himself describes it. His arrival sets off a chain of events, which essentially become highlights in the plot line. At the time Makhaya arrives at Golema Mmidi, a lot of things have been happening in the village. That is, there is an immense number of hidden conflicts going on. Being a settlement of “misfits,” of characters and refugees from diverse regions and areas, there

68  The ordeals of crossing are bound to be conflicts of interest among the residents. The convergence of people from different regions in Golema-​Mmidi establishes the village as a prime example of what Stuart Hall calls a “diasporic aesthetic” (2), which operates according to a “creolising or transcultural ethic” (2). The situation is compounded by the nature of the chiefs and subchiefs, who are in charge of the settlement and who themselves are at war with one another. Head presents a demographic picture of Golem Mmidi, which includes the eruption of continual crises: Over a period of fourteen years Golema Mmidi had acquired a population of four hundred people, and their permanent settlement there gave rise to small administrative problems … and problems such as, appeals against banishment, appeals against sentences for using threatening and insulting language to a subchief, and appeals against appropriation of property by the subchief. (18) Nevertheless, all of these have combined to make the village of Golema Mmidi an unparalleled place, as the old man tells the reader that “It was not a village in the usual meaning of being composed of large tribal or family groupings. Golema Mmidi consisted of individuals, such as Makhaya, who had fled there to escape the tragedies of life” (17). It could be argued that the success of Golema Mmidi depends on migrants very much like the success of Europe depends on migrant labour as outlined in The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema: Imagining a New Europe? Guido Rings contends in this book that “as a rapidly aging continent, Europe increasingly depends on the successful integration of migrants” (1). It is worth pursuing this line of argumentation because once a nation recognises the importance of its diversity, then a new space opens up for people with different ethnic/​racial backgrounds, and for conflicting views to co-​exist. Also, in the opening up of space, it becomes clearer that there is no single narrative for the nation. Rather, the different groups of people experience the formation of their nation-​state through a variety of narratives and struggles. Based on this, Belinda Bozzoli claims that It is within the resulting, maelstrom of human suffering that communities are born, survive and die in ways peculiar to the past, the beliefs and habits, the experiences and struggles, of the people themselves. (14) Golema Mmidi is pictured as a collection of engaged communities of exiles/​ refugees by settlement. Being a transcultural community where the people experience a shared sense of belonging and history. Nonetheless, Golema Mmidi clearly reflects the historical status of Botswana as a refuge for

The ordeals of crossing  69 marginalised and dispossessed groups, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Lewis makes the historical point such that during the years of mfecane, a period of military upheaval, ethnic conflict and mass migration, Botswana progressively absorbed many of the fleeing groups and individuals during the invasions of the Nguni. In its representation of Golema Mmidi, the novel therefore exploits the theme of the discovery of home as a refuge for marginalized subjects. Yet how exactly do new homes resonate for the characters who search for them and, indeed, for Head herself ? (131) What is unique about the village is its name. “Its name too marked it out from the other villages, which were named after important chiefs or important events” (17). But, it acquires “its name from the occupation the villagers followed, which was crop growing” (17). Beyond its name, Golema Mmidi represents one of the places in Botswana, where people are permanently settled on the land, and they are ready to put new ideas to work. It is the very place that provides Head with some ease to write her first novel of exile. The British historian, Anthony Sillery, in Founding a Protectorate: History of Bechuanaland, describes how life was generally in southern Africa before it was conquered by colonial powers. Thus, according to Sillery, “… at the beginning of the Scramble for Africa the southern Africa route presented to Great Britain the most readily available means of access to the interior …” (12) and that the “Southern Africa, especially for an Englishman, was a friendly country. The chiefs, many of them courteous, civilized men, were hospitable, and the people helpful and only rarely aggressive …” (12). For this reason, Botswana became associated with what Head terms “Refugeeism.” By this she refers to Botswana as the preferred destination of many refugees. She sums up the situation in the 1960s as follows: “Refugees flood into Botswana from three points—​South-​West Africa (Namibia), Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and South Africa” (Head, “Social and Political Pressure …” 13). Again, “In 1967 I was officially registered as a South African refugee and for two years I lived with the refugee community in Northern Botswana” (13). She finally claims that “[Her] first novel, When Rain Clouds Gather, grew out of this experience. It was a fearfully demoralizing way of life, of unemployment and hand-​outs from the World Council of Churches” (13). In the novel, Makhaya’s experience of this “demoralizing way of life” is expanded to include morally significant conflicts, as summarized by Dinorego, the character who gives shelter to Makhaya: In my village, people have long been ready to try new ideas, but everything is delayed because of the fight that is going on between our chief

70  The ordeals of crossing and Gilbert. First of all the fight was about who is the good man and who is the evil man. Though everyone well knows who the evil man is. (21) Dinorego’s statement gives a premonition of a brewing battle between good and evil. Even before Makhaya arrives in the region, information about him has reached the authorities. Such potentially sinister information-​gathering heightens the tension of the plot. Maria, Dinorego’s daughter provides a potential source of conflict between Makhaya and Gilbert. She is in a way betrothed to Gilbert, and when Makhaya arrives on the scene, there is an obvious attraction between them. The reader is confronted with an expectation that Makhaya is likely to win the love of Maria to the betrayal of Gilbert, who had been cultivating her attention before Makhaya’s arrival, particularly as Dinorego, Maria’s father is hopeful of Maria showing interest in the new man, as shown in the following passage: He picked up the lamp and led the way to a nearby hut which was furnished on the same lines as his own. Then they walked to the home of Dinorego to fetch Makhaya’s baggage. The old man’s heart was full of joy. He thought he had indeed acquired a son in Makhaya. Once the two young men’s footsteps had retreated out of sound, he turned to his daughter and said, well, what do you think of the stranger, my child? (31–​32) In this regard, the plot line ends unexpectedly as Maria surprisingly accepts Gilbert’s marriage proposal after such a long period of courting. Makhaya’s presence in Golema Mmidi again brings him into conflict with chief Matenge who is presented as the personification of evil. While chief Matenge is already engaged in an unresolved battle with Gilbert over his agricultural work with the villagers, Makhaya’s presence on Gilbert’s farm makes Matenge believe that it is an opportunity for him to deal with his arch rival Gilbert, who is working to change the economic situation of the commoners for the better. This is against the wish of chief Matenge who benefits from suppressing the economic potential of the ordinary villagers. At their first meeting in Matenge’s residence, he orders Makhaya to leave the community. Makhaya’s reply is to bluntly tell the chief that he is not leaving. Chief Matenge uses abusive language to Makhaya saying, “you know what a South African swine is? ‘… He is a man like you.’ He always needs to run after his master, the white man” (66). This makes Makhaya very angry and in a murderous rage, Makhaya says to Dinorego who tries to calm the situation “The Chief is not going to die of high blood pressure … I am going to kill him” (67). The confrontation provides a high point in the unfolding plot line and makes the events suspenseful. It is Dinorego who calms down the tense situation as his worries seem humorous to Makhaya, which helps to dissolve his rage. Chief Matenge’s

The ordeals of crossing  71 efforts to get Makhaya officially expelled from the community fail and he is struck down with a severe attack of high blood pressure that makes him stay in hospital for one month. During that period, a number of rapid changes take place in Golema Mmidi and on the farm. Two important characters, Mma-​Millipede and Paulina Sebeso are introduced into the storyline. The two characters act as a catalyst in the novel to mobilise the women of Golema Mmidi to accept and adopt the new and positive agricultural innovations that Gilbert introduces to the community. These include cultivating small plots of tobacco by each Golema Mmidi woman, and then marketing the products cooperatively with the profits spread to other good purposes such as dams and boreholes. Gilbert is described as follows: He wanted the women of the village, first and foremost, to start producing cash crops which would be marketed co-​operatively through the farm. The idea was to get capital in hand which would open up the way for purchasing fertilizers, seed and the equipment necessary to increase food production in Golema Mmidi. Once people had enough to eat, other problems like better housing, water supplies and good education for the children could be tackled. (102) Gilbert’s vision is to empower the impoverished women of Golema Mmidi to become economically self-​reliant through his agricultural project. This in turn will enable them to meet other needs as highlighted in the above passage. Gilbert, George Appleby, and Gunner, for instance, are very essential to development in Golema Mmidi. On the other hand, the women are persuaded by Paulina Sebeso as a catalyst in the novel to mobilise the women of Golema Mmidi to accept and adopt the new way and positive agricultural innovations that Gilbert introduces to the community. She encourages the women to attend lessons on the farm on how to cultivate Turkish tobacco, and how to build a curing and drying shed. Dams are also built with local materials to trap the rain water to help in watering the enterprise which succeeds in initially recruiting 150 women (142) and enlarges to encompass the whole community. The narrator tells us that “This meant that a number of sheds could be built, simultaneously, on one day, as the women were now organized by Paulina Sebeso into small working groups” (142). They join the tobacco-​growing project for the larger interest of the community. In the course of this experiment, some important incidents happen which contribute to the plot trajectory. To chief Matenge’s chagrin, when he visits Golema Mmidi in mid-​August, he finds that the people are becoming “independent—​minded … and (the) tragedies of life had liberated them from the environmental control of tribe. Never before had people been allowed to settle permanently on the land as they were doing in Golema Mmidi” (152). This quote indicates the growing assertiveness of the people of Golema Mmidi and their efforts to free themselves

72  The ordeals of crossing from the clutches of poverty. Between mid-​August and mid-​September, the country experiences suddenly “intense and stifling heat” (153). Initially, the heat is welcomed as a prelude to the September rains but the effects linger and turn into devastating drought. The weather is qualified by the harsh lives of the people, given their poor economic conditions. September comes and no “rain clouds gathered in the sky” (154). The men of Golema Mmidi lose their cattle, which are at the centre of the life of the people, in huge numbers, as a severe drought sets in destroying their traditional mode of livelihood. It is an opportunity for Gilbert to unfold his vision for a co-​operative land holding system whereby the people’s cattle would be ranched at home for a scientific production of high-​grade beef; where beef production and food production would be combined; and how Golema Mmidi would supply the whole country with fresh fruits, vegetables and cash crops like tobacco. This would envision the creation of the first industries in the country. Sometimes, migrants give more than they take from the host-​ community. Here, the novel seems to suggest that race does not matter in the progress of humanity, as the white men Gilbert and George Appleby work for the good of the natives, and they are the opposites of the local chiefs who represent corrupt and evil powers. In the eyes of Ibrahim, such depictions of good and evil are framed within a Manichean ideology. That is, according to Ibrahim, “all of Head’s White people are good, and the only evil person is Black and gets power through the traditional political system” (61). Ibrahim goes on to say that “Head may be a victim of irony herself, for she casts Gilbert in the mould of ‘a potential colonial who takes it upon himself to teach African customs to the Africans’ ” (67). However, it seems wrong to see Head as unwittingly projecting a colonialist viewpoint. Her sympathy is always on both sides of the colour-​lines. Her depiction of many white characters as good may be owing to the fact that she was a beneficiary of an excellent “top down” education by white people in Monica’s Diocesan Home for Coloured Girls (but later shut down by the apartheid regime after she left). Again, a white foster mother raised her, while her real biological mother (also white) was locked away in a psychiatric hospital because of her sexual intercourse with a black man. Olaussen, unlike Ibrahim, sees clearly that there is nothing unconsciously “colonialist” in Head’s depiction of a good white man like Gilbert: Despite the fact that Gilbert works for the improvement of village economic life and finally marries a village woman, Maria, his status in Golema-​Mmidi is always that of a stranger and as such, owing to Head’s avowed privileging of the stranger, his is the positive, heroic side of the stranger. (102) In this case, Gilbert is not perceived as a traditional colonial figure in the exploitative sense of it, but a stranger (or exile), who abandons his native

The ordeals of crossing  73 homeland to work for the good of Golema Mmidi. He is not on a colonizing mission, but to improve the economic wellbeing of the people through modern agricultural technology. He sees Golema Mmidi as a back-​water community, lagging behind the modern world in terms of development. In the midst of these communal tragedies, Paulina Sebeso also loses her only son Isaac to tuberculosis and malnutrition, and her cattle to the drought. However, love comes alive in the midst of all these tragedies, as Makhaya succumbs to the love of Paulina. As the novel moves to a close in chapter twelve, the plot is on a slope of anti-​climax. The men of Golema Mmidi are in tune with Gilbert’s visions of domesticating their cattle holding, engaging in farming and pooling their efforts together. The government intervenes in the potentially tragic situation created by the drought by sending in emergency rations and constructing a spare borehole for the community. The plot heads for a denouement when chief Matenge sends for Paulina Sebeso and six old men who sit on the village council to report to his court over a case. The people are apprehensive because “Matenge never called them unless it was to destroy an inhabitant of Golema Mmidi. He had never done one act of kindness towards the villagers, seeming to be placed there only for their torture” (184). It is an occasion the whole community rises up to as “though they had known this day would arrive when they would all face their persecutor of many years” (184). The whole village gathers in Matenge’s home in support of their own and ready to express their pent-​up frustrations because they have been stopped from making progress in their lives by an evil-​minded personality in the person of chief Matenge. Like other African dictators, Matenge is an excellent example of black-​on-​black oppressor. Chief Matenge, being frightened at seeing the gathering of the villagers who were seated on the ground waiting for him to come out, barricades himself in the house crying while his servants flee into the bush. After a long wait, the trio of Makhaya, Gilbert, and Pelotong, the permit man, follow the villagers to chief Matenge’s house to find the strange situation and eventually discover that chief Matenge has hanged himself from a rafter in his palatial home. The plot ends in catastrophe for chief Matenge and could be regarded as poetic justice for all the years of cruelty he has reigned and lorded it over the people of Golema Mmidi. The people are however stunned and dazed by the catastrophic end of Chief Matenge, feeling somewhat responsible for his death “in a strange gathering-​together of all their wills” (192). In order not to allow any evil to impose itself on them, they all quickly and silently decide to suppress “it,” which could be interpreted as suppressing the lurking evil in man. The denouement does not end in hopelessness as the marriage proposal from Makhaya to Paulina stamps a note of hope on the ending of the novel.

Narrative style and the elements of satire On the surface, When Rain Clouds Gather has a clear-​cut linear plot in which one event leads to the other. This is quite the opposite of the narrative style in

74  The ordeals of crossing Maru. However, the plot of the novel is a complex one. The story line begins from the period the leading character Makhaya seeks freedom away from the clutches of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The complexity in the plot line is brought about by the manner in which the narrative voice moves the present to the past intermittently to tell about the background of most of the characters such as Makhaya, Gilbert, and Mma-​Millipede. Such a flashback device can be seen, for example, when Makhaya engages in introspective reflection about his past in the old woman’s hut in Botswana. He recalls his sisters’ servility to him back in his home and how he makes changes in the home, telling his sisters to address him by his first name and associate with him as equals and friends. For instance, He had sisters at home, one almost the same age as the child and some a few years older. But he was the eldest in the family, and according to custom he had to be addressed as “Buti,” which means “Elder Brother,” and treated with exaggerated respect. As soon as his father died he made many changes in the home, foremost of which was that his sisters should address him by his first name and associate with him as equals and friends. (10) The reader, in this instance, gets an insight into his reasons for leaving South Africa which, as previously mentioned, are: he could not marry and have children in a country where black men were called “boy” and “dog” and “kaffir.” The continent of Africa was vast without end and he simply felt like moving out of a part of it that was mentally and spiritually dead through the constant perpetuation of false beliefs. (11) Flashbacks like these provide information about the background of Makhaya and their repeated use adds complexity and intricacy to the plot. The trauma of Makhaya’s exile is more psychological than physical, particularly as he moves from home to exile. The suspicion that he is a spy still plagues him in his supposedly free ground (Botswana). As previously noted, the old hag says: “I know you are a spy, you are running away from them” (7). She even tries to shout at him because she knows he is not from Botswana and is perhaps an illegal migrant. And because the border is very near and the patrol van can pass at any moment, he replies in a more desperate voice: “How can you embarrass me like that? Are women of your country taught to shout at men?” (7). He has to lie to the old woman that he comes from over the border, and that he has an appointment to start work in the country the next day. The young man who refuses to be corrupted by having sex with a child-​ prostitute has to lie to find his way in search of a free ground.

The ordeals of crossing  75 He also lies to the truck driver when he is asked if he has been to see relatives at the Meraka. Again, he lies that his mother is ill. He even claims to be a teacher. The question is: “Should he tell the man he was a refugee?” However, “His experiences of the previous night had made him distrustful” (13). The lies continue for a while so that even when he is asked about his tribe, he thinks of a lie that is close to the truth. “What’s your tribe?” (13). He pauses for a while, “trying to think of the nearest relationship to Zulus in the northern tribes. Ndebele, he said” (13). On arrival, Makhaya has to register himself as a refugee, and wisely applies for political asylum. He shows strict compliance with the immigration policies and regulations so as to survive in an alternative space of belonging. The novel is written from an omniscient point of view, which is able to assume the perspectives of different characters. That is, the narrative voice is all-​knowing and pervasive, and thus, capable of reaching into the innermost thoughts of every character and moving over the land of its setting in a powerful way. When Head’s narrative voice engages in probing the secret thoughts of her characters, one can point to flashbacks, which turn the interior monologues of important characters like Makhaya, Gilbert, Paulina, and chief Matenge, to something, which approaches a “stream of consciousness.” For instance, the workings of Makhaya’s thought processes are closely connected to his outward actions. His thought processes characterised by associative deep consciousness are brought out of his mind by the narrator when she outlines: “[Makhaya] had merely said, ‘Why should men be brought up with a false sense of superiority over women’ ” (10)? However, Makhaya’s desperate move to cross over to the supposedly free land, and the circumstances that surround him clearly bring to light his inner fear, and describe his physical reaction to his thought though not in a detailed manner. Chief Matenge, chief Sekoto and Joas Tsepe are perhaps the most satirised of all the characters. Chief Matenge is evil in his ways, particularly in the way he oppresses his subjects in the community of Golema Mmidi. He treats his subjects much like the awful Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the ex-​president of Malawi, who made a monstrous statement saying that “his opponents should be food for crocodiles” (Agbo, 146). He exercises dictatorship over the social and economic affairs of the community. Before Gilbert introduces the scheme of co-​operative cattle ranching and tobacco cash crop farming into the community of Golem Mmidi, chief Matenge has been the cattle speculator in the community. He uses pelotons in issuing permits for the sale of any cattle. While he pays the owner of the best cattle only six pounds, he sells it between sixteen and twenty pounds thus getting rich at the expense of the herdsmen. There is an imposition of a Draconian tax regime on the poor people of Golem Mmidi, and the novel reports that: for everyone from the chiefs down to the colonial authorities had lived off the poor in one form or another and in the name of one thing or

76  The ordeals of crossing another, like cow tax, hut tax, manhood tax, and tax on not paying manhood tax. (37) Similarly, in Joseph Diescho’s Born of the Sun, we see the imposition of tax on the people of Namibia by the law, and Franz, who sends Master Kruger to collect the taxes has this to say: Tell them that the bad news is that all men are required to pay taxes, and those who do not have their tax papers yet must stay for a short while to be fingerprinted in order to get their papers … Things are changing now, and all of us must pay money to the government … it is the law and we must obey the law. I am sent by the law to tell you the news. I also pay taxes, more than what you all will have to pay, but I don’t squeal, because it is the law. (72) This reveals the predicament facing a country, Namibia, which is yet to embrace western money economy. Moreover, in the case of Botswana, it is not only the imposition of tax on the people, but the herdsmen are not allowed to sell their cattle directly to other buyers because they are denied access to use the railway trucks to transport their cattle. It is when Gilbert comes along that he breaks the monopoly by introducing the idea of the cattle co-​operative to the people through which each member gets a fair price thus putting chief Matenge out of business. By dint of this, the reader see the pitting of innovation against tradition in the agricultural lives of the people. Chief Matenge like other traditional chiefs also operates a feudal system whereby it is the chiefs who decide who should be allowed to build a brick house with a tin roof, or dig a borehole for watering his cattle. In a letter to Vigne, dated 27 November 1965, Head sums the conditions of Africa south of the Sahel as, There are a lot of pullers-​down in Southern Africa and in a crappy tribal society there are a hell of a lot—​mostly half-​crazy black people who do not know where they are going—​half crazy through constant fear and dog-​eat-​dog policy which is all they have known from the chiefs and colonial authorities. (Head, Letter 15) Paulo Freire writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “that oppressed peoples have difficulty liberating themselves because they have been socialized within the system of oppression and are therefore hindered from envisioning an existence that is free” (141). This is how the narrator in When Rain Clouds Gather, depicts the situation in Botswana: “Barely ten years ago the commoner had always to approach a chief or sub-​chief and ask him for permission to progress … brick houses were for chiefs alone, and how could an

The ordeals of crossing  77 ordinary commoner want to bring himself up to the level of a chief ” (151)? Or again, “he might desire to set up a borehole for watering his cattle. The chief could say yes and then the commoner prospered, it would not be for long” (151). The reader sees that “This unfortunate man would one day be notified by the chief that a road was to be built in the pathway of his borehole” (151–​ 152). To this end, a rhetorical question is posed: “Would the commoner please quit? And not so many months after that [,]‌the chief acquired a new watering place for his cattle” (151–​152). This excerpt depicts the class divide in the Botswanan society over which chiefs such as Matenge preside, dominating the commoners. Chief Matenge is described as having an overwhelming avariciousness and unpleasant personality [which] soon made him intensely disliked by the villagers, who were, after all, a wayward lot of misfits. Thus, appeal cases from Golema Mmidi were forever appearing on the court roll of the paramount chief—​appeals against banishment, appeals against sentences for using threatening and insulting language to a subchief. (18) Matenge falls out with his brother, Chief Sekoto over attempts he makes to displace him as chief and this leads to his banishment to Golema Mmidi as a subchief. Chief Matenge is further described as having an “extremely cunning and evil mind, a mind so profoundly clever as to make the innocent believe they are responsible for the evil” (26). However, in this state of affairs, chief Matenge is not a happy man. Change has gradually begun to seep into the society through the activities of men like Gilbert, who are on a mission to improve the society. This leads to the breakdown in health of chief Matenge in the form of high blood pressure. He delights in dressing up like an overlord with power over his dominion, such dressings up rather add to his pathetic state. With tongue in cheek, the authorial, narrative voice satirizes chief Matenge and, in this guise, “Chief Matenge really believed he was ‘royalty’. So deeply ingrained was this belief in him that he had acquired a number of personal possessions to bolster the image” (62). The novel describes some of his ill-​ gotten possessions, of the kind typically acquired by corrupt African leaders: One was a high-​backed kingly chair and the other was a deep purple, tasselled and expensive dressing gown. In this royal purple gown, he paced up and down the porch of his mansion every morning, lost in a Napoleon-​like reverie. (62) Such leaders always have praise-​singers around them, and the narrative voice highlights that, “Of late, this pacing had been often done to the

78  The ordeals of crossing accompaniment of loud chatter from Joas Tsepe. Loud is perhaps an understatement of Joas’s speech” (62). The character of Joas Tsepe is clearly captured: “He was a platform speaker who never got down from the platform. He was hoarse-​voiced. He was always in a sweat. He gesticulated” (62). Joas Tsepe is remarkably known by people as, “He had attended so many conferences that his ordinary speech was forever an underlined address: ‘Mr Chairman, and fellow delegates …’ ” (62). Joas Tsepe, on the other hand, represents a class of praise-​singers, who sing praises of corrupt leaders despite their abuse of power, as well as their criminality. The praise-​singing grants praise-​singers like Joas Tsepe access to the crumbs of food that fall from chief Matenge’s table. Thus, Sekoto, Matenge, and Joas, as Ogwude puts it, “help work out the oppressive traditional political system as well as the sycophancy of the post independent African politicians” (51). Head portrays both chief Matenge and Joas Tsepe in a highly effective way, showing how the rhetoric of deception never changes in human politics. Once they learn one particular language, it becomes formatted in their brains, such as Joas’s underlined address: “Mr Chairman, and fellow delegates …” (62). It also shows lack of creativity and a low level of capability to develop new expressions in addressing a crowd. Joas, like every typical African politician, is fond of holding onto the use of formulaic clichés to deceive the people in the affairs of governance. All of these point to one thing, that is, they comically demonstrate how Africans are implicated in what the postcolonial nation-​state has become today. “… and little men like Joas Tsepe, and their strange doings are the nightmare. If they have any power at all it is the power to plunge the African continent into an era of chaos and bloody murder” (Head, When Rain Clouds … 45–​46). Agbo sums up the argument by asserting that “Post-​colonial Africa is clearly seen as a destroyer of its own wealth, energy, brain and man-​ power” (64). The major implication of Agbo’s argument is that human beings do not wish to be reminded of their own evils, but rather prefer to blame someone else for their suffering. This is equally apparent in Head’s novels namely, When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. Both the black-​on-​black prejudice and white-​on-​black suppression give a distinctiveness to the themes of migration and exile in When Rain Clouds Gather. The white-​on-​black suppression is one of the factors responsible for his exile. Makhaya is extremely aware of tribalism as one of the very factors that drives him from South Africa into exile in Botswana. Ironically, when confronted with the black-​on-​black tribal phenomenon on his way to exile, he compromises his principles to live with tribalism in his adopted home. I refer to this as one instance of exilic compromise. Through compromise, he is able to share his exile with the natives of his adopted country and this creates some sense of guilt. Martin Heidegger, the existentialist philosopher, refers to “existential guilt, [as] a condition for the possibility of ordinary moral guilt … something like being answerable or

The ordeals of crossing  79 accountable to oneself for oneself—​a taking responsibility for oneself ” (329). He also calls it the “Being-​the-​basis for” (329) oneself. Makhaya is largely responsible for his own existential guilt of compromise. Makhaya might have good reasons to compromise on the grounds of an adage, which says: “A lean compromise is better than a fat lawsuit.” By this adage, Makhaya is immediately released from the prison of shame—​the shame of accepting what he initially rejects. However, Ibrahim argues that “Maybe Head has succeeded only in creating a figure who can cry ‘Wolf!’ There is a suggestion that knowledge of unpleasant facts, like racist oppression, can alienate and exile people from their own cultural heritage” (118). Yes, but in the context of exilic compromise, Makhaya carries the burden of existential or moral guilt for rebuffing tribalism or racist oppression at home, only to accept it as part of the conditions of his exile in Botswana. It creates a chaos of being, a plenum of forces that heighten the tensions between the individual choice and the societal dictates. Exilic compromise, viewed not entirely negatively, also allows the appearance of a hero, who represents the victory of human free-​will over the condition of necessity—​that is, the condition of being left with no reasonable alternatives. This condition comes close to a form of coercion, which makes one take decisions against his or her better judgement. For the victory of human free-​will, the reader may be tempted to compose a paean (praise song) in honour of the character, who emerges as a hero and Makhaya possesses some qualities to be singled out as a hero in this regard. However, in the story, Head gives prominent attention to more general issues of the human condition. Nkosi neatly summarises almost everything that needs to be said about Head’s sympathy for suffering humanity, especially in her three major novels: We are presented with a rich interplay of character and social scene, and Bessie Head’s broad sympathies for the outcast, for the lonely and the mentally broken, are given a convincing social framework. The simplicity of the narrative line, the careful economy of its language, and the poetic fragility of its texture, makes this one of the most exhilarating books to read. Its plea for recognition of the humanity of others is explicit. (101) This concerns itself explicitly with the themes of migration and exile. In constructing the narrative of a testing space for living, the novel projects itself as a bridge to the outside world, as Head herself narrates the confining conditions of belonging to two worlds: that of South Africa and Botswana. I have attempted to shed light on the experience of displacement, and to analyse the production of difference, identity, and place in a labile world of migration, as well as of shifting power and domination.

80  The ordeals of crossing The reader sees Golema Mmidi as a laboratory of transcultural relations, a place of multiple identities with blurring boundaries, especially as one of the places where Makhaya develops the blend of I-​and-​the not-​I identity necessary to fit into the scheme of things. Head explores questions of identity and belonging primarily through Makhaya and Gilbert as the two principal exiled characters. She weaves the themes of exile, of history, of postcolonial upheaval, into a narrative about two nation-​states, both deformed by tribal prejudice but in one of which there is some hope for the future. Makhaya and Gilbert are able to re-​create a new fabric of their homes, communities, families, and identities in the context of exile, as they fulfil the fullest repossession of their human self. They are both sustained by a profound sense of hope, as their cross-​ border perspectives redesign landscapes of their belonging, as they stretch the notion of home beyond their containable geographical limits to the world outside of home.

Works cited Agbo, Joshua. How Africans Underdeveloped Africa: A Forgotten Truth in History. Nigeria: Kraft Books, 2010. Auster, Paul. “An Interview with Edmond Jabès.” The Sin of the Book: Edmond Jabès. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985. pp. 12–​13. Bozzoli, Belinda. “Class, Community and Ideology in the Evolution of South African Society.” Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives. (Ed.) Bozzoli, Belinda. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987. pp. 1–​20. Brooks, Peter. Enigmas of Identity. : New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011. Brown, Coreen. The Creative Vision of Bessie Head. London: Associated University Presses, 2010. Coetzee, John Maxwell. Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons. New York: Viking Press, 2003. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. Diescho, Joseph. Born of the Sun. New York: Friendship Press, 1988. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books, 1991. Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Hartstock, Nancy. “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism.” Discovering Reality. (Eds.) Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merill. Boston: D. Reidal, 1983. pp. 283–​310. Head, Bessie. When Rain Clouds Gather. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1969. —​—​—​. A Question of Power. London: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1973. —​—​—​. The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales. London: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1977. —​—​—​. A Bewitched Crossroad: An African Saga. Craighall: AD Donker, 1984. —​—​—​. A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings. London: Heinemann, 1990.

The ordeals of crossing  81 Hopkins, Gerald Manley. “Spring and Fall.” The Poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. p. 18. Ibrahim, Huma. Bessie Head: Subversive Identities in Exile. Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1996. Jean, Marguard. “Bessie Head: Exile and Community in Southern Africa.” London Magazine. Vol. 18, 1979. pp. 49–​61. Jordan, June. “Notes Towards Home.” Living Room. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1985. pp. 132–​142. Lewis, Desiree. “Power, Representation and the Textual Politics of Bessie Head.” Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head. (Ed.) Huma Ibrahim. Trenton: Africa World Press. 2004. pp. 121–​142. Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding of Identity and Discovery. London: Penguin, 2004. Mam, Somaly. The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Childhood. (Trans.) Appignanesi, Lisa. Britain: Virago Press, 2007. Mosieleng, Percy. “The Condition of Exile and the Negation of Commitment: A Biographical Study of Bessie Head’s Novels.” Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head. (Ed.) Huma Ibrahim. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004. pp. 51–​71. Mphahlele, Es’kia. Down Second Avenue. London: Faber & Faber, 1959. Nkosi, Lewis. Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature. Harlow: Longman, 1981. NoViolet, Bulawayo. We Need New Names. London: Chatto & Windus, 2013. Relph, Edward. “Geographical Experiences and Being-​ in-​ the-​ World: The Phenomenological Origins of Geography.”Dwelling, Place, and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World. (Ed.) David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer. Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1985. pp. 15–​31. Rings, Guido. The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema: Imagining a New Europe? New York: Routledge, 2016. Rushdie, Salman. The Ground Beneath Her Feet. : New York City: Henry Holt & Co, 1999. Said, Edward W. The World, the Text, and the Critic. London: Vintage, 1991. Sample, Maxine. “Space: An Experiential Perspective: Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather.” Critical Essays on Bessie Head. (Ed.) Sample Maxine. Westport: Praeger, 2003. pp. 25–​45. Sepamla, Sipho. “To What Extent is the South African Writer’s Problem Still Black and Immense?” Criticism and Ideology. (Eds.) Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anne Rutherford: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1988. pp. 180–​192. Sillery, Anthony. The Bechuanaland Protectorate. London: Oxford University Press, 1952. Steiner, George. Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language of Revolution. New York: Atheneum, 1976. Tabori, Paul. The Anatomy of Exile. London: Harrap, 1972. Terkel, Studs. Hope Dies Last: Making a Difference in an Indifferent World. London: Granta Books, 2003. Tucker, Martin. (Ed.) Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century: An Analysis and Biographical Dictionary. New York: Greenwood, 1991. Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-​structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969.

82  The ordeals of crossing —​—​—​. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage.” Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation. (Eds.) Louise Carus Mahdi, Stephen Foster, and Meredith Little. LaSalle: Open Court, 1987. pp. 3–​19. Wolf, Janet. Cultural Studies. Vol. 7, No. 2, 1993. pp. 224–​239. Yuval-​Davies, Nira. The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations. London: Sage, 2011.

4  The black-​on-​black prejudice

To orient away from the predominantly institutionalised clichéd vision of the all-​too-​familiar themes/​narratives, which are what the Russian literary critic Boris Uspensky inventfully terms “the norms of the text,” I explore the unexplored black-​on-​black trope in the novel. My attempt, however, is to set up a conversation about a very salient issue, a much-​neglected aspect—​but a disturbing theme in Bessie Head’s fiction, which is the psychologising black-​ on-​black prejudice. With the exploration of this trope, the all-​too-​familiar themes are no longer seen as the “be-​all” and “end-​all” of Head’s criticism; because it allows us to read Head’s fiction, never in quite exactly the same way with previous readings of her work by other critics, except with some significant lines of connection. So, the black-​on-​black theme, being one of the overall arguments of this book, forms the materiality of the socio-​political conditions of Head’s characters both at home and in exile. However, the attempt, though, is not to press for a reductive reading of the novel, Maru, by choosing this singular theme, because other readers or critics may see far more than the theme of black-​on-​black prejudice, which, for me, is the unifying trajectory that runs throughout her fiction. The theme is situated, not just in my imaginative seam, but it is clearly identified as my modest contribution to the body of extant literary criticisms. I explore, therefore, Head’s fiction as an example of black South African exile literature, where identities are brought into question in a place of constant struggle to re-​occupy the space that colonial rulers have at least partially vacated. To critically engage with the theme of black-​on-​ black prejudice as an often-​overlooked aspect of Head’s fiction—​the very focal point of the theme of oppression, is to bring to mind the serious concern raised by Roger A. Berger in his essay, “The Politics of Madness” (1990), which he argues that: despite the excellence of the criticism on the text [A Question of Power], it strikes me as strange that no one has remarked, so far as I can tell, on the fact that Elizabeth’s objects of anxiety—​the horrific projections that persecute her—​are black. (32)

84  The black-on-black prejudice Nevertheless, not by coincidence, Sophia Ogwude remarks in Bessie Head: Exile Writing on Home (1998), that the novel “Maru is meant to expose the dismal issue of racialism using a black against black theme” (55), but gives no detailed explanation of what she means by the “black against black theme” in her study. Therefore, in the examination of Head’s Maru, this chapter shows that forms of black-​on-​black prejudice, and hostility are pervasive in her fiction, as cultural and political cues are used to determine who is an insider and who is an outsider within a black-​majority community. The outsider can be an exile, a member of a despised minority like the San (Bushmen), or from a mixed-​race background (and therefore not “black” enough). For members of the marginalised group, it can be an experience of existential anomie—​a terrible condition of living but not living as they are pushed to the fringe of the society by the powerful. It can be an experience as dehumanising as the apartheid system in South Africa from which Head and some of her characters were in flight. Head’s personal account of South Africa and Botswana reinforces the image of the horror, as she writes desolately about the conditions of life. Writing about life in the two nation-​states, she says: Black people tolerate suffering in South Africa only because they are completely powerless; we experience the same powerlessness as refugees … But the conditions under which we live in Botswana are psychologically damaging—​this sense of being permanently unwanted and excluded … a sort of sick, inward-​turning thing where people are thrown back entirely on their own resources to survive. (Head KMM 333 BHP 2) Therefore, Berger and Ogwude’s observations, for me, are the critical nubs of my thinking and investigation, as I walk into the gap left by previous critics of Head’s fiction. They form the basis for the exploration of the theme of black-​ on-​black subject matter. One may wonder why critics, mostly of African origin, walk away from this theme as observed by Berger. The non-​concern/​ reluctance of critics to engage with the subject of black-​on-​black prejudice makes it a representative of some of the problems to be solved concerning Head’s novels and the criticisms of them, a minor but serious issue within the larger debate in post-​colonial African literature. The novel, nested within the narrative of political subjectivity, shows how Head is critically engaged with tribal issues, particularly as they polarise Botswana into two tribal camps: the Batswana and the Masarwa. This division is according to this novel, but in actuality, there are more than two tribes in Botswana, and some of the other tribes are: Bangwaketse, Balete, Bakgatla, Barolong, and Bakwena. Head has chosen to simplify the historical actuality for her own artistic purposes. In a way, the novel is an opportunity for Head to talk about the narrated past of a bizarre political history that was riddled with

The black-on-black prejudice  85 numerous problems of prejudice, identity, power, existence, and the question of belonging in a tribal Africa. Maru is a novel of political intrigue and human relationships, which involve the main protagonists namely, Maru and Margaret Cadmore Jr., Moleka and Dikeledi. The dominant storyline revolves round Margaret, an abandoned orphan, a Masarwa by tribe, who is raised by a foster-​mother in an orphanage home in Botswana. She is destined to rescue her people, who are treated as outcasts and slaves by the Batswana people. The liberation of her people comes through her marriage to Maru. Maru is the Batswana man who is slated to be the next chief of his people in Dilepe village. Maru and Moleka are great friends, but they later fall out with each other because of their love for Margaret. While Maru eventually marries Margaret, Moleka marries Dikeledi, Maru’s sister. Dilepe, where most of the events in the novel take place, is known as a colony of tribal bigots such as Seth, Morafi, and the female prostitute. Maru is not just a political/​protest novel, but a novel of tribe, class, and race. Nevertheless, the structure of Maru is divided into two major parts: the first part contains themes such as love, identity crisis, tribal prejudice, and tension. For example, the novel eloquently celebrates the experience of falling in love: “In the course of two days they had fallen into a relationship of wonderful harmony. There was no tension restraint, or false barriers people usually erect towards each other” (28). Meanwhile, the second part clearly contains the denouement of all the crises experienced in the first part. That is, the emancipating force of love, its power to resolve social problems, is expressed as, How had they [the Masarwa] fallen into this condition when, indeed, they were as human as everyone else? They started to run out into the sunlight, then they turned and looked at the dark, small room. They said: We are not going back there. (103) This is what Masarwa people resolve to do the moment they hear about Margaret’s marriage to Maru, the marriage that brings them their long-​ awaited freedom.

The theorisation of Maru as a political/​protest novel The novel is a narrative of desire that clearly engages with the way things were and the way things should be in both the old and the new Africa with the overall intention of bringing about positive changes in a tribal society. This study views Maru, as a political/​protest novel set on a redemptive mission, which is what Njabulo Ndebele calls “the rediscovery of the ordinary” (3). While in Homi Bhabha’s concept of “national narration” (4), Maru emerges as a search for national belonging.

86  The black-on-black prejudice Sophia Ogwude, who has written extensively on Head’s fiction, argues that, “The contrast between what is and what could be is itself protest” (Ogwude 4). I wish to apply Ogwude’s argument to Head’s story, as well as to the understanding of individual identity in a tribal world, where identity, on the one hand, seems ever more significant and, on the other hand, seems ever threatened by the prejudice of the same society. This makes Head appear to be more interested in a protest agenda, as she is concerned about the destiny of a nation and its people. Lewis Nkosi, for this reason, calls her “one of the most exciting new voices to have emerged from Black South Africa in the middle sixties,” and he acknowledges her “efforts in her first two published novels, especially Maru,” (Nkosi 99). But, in spite of this, Nkosi contends that she does not have “the same political commitment of a writer like La Guma,” and, therefore, concludes that: “She has only this moral fluency of an intelligent, intensely lonely individual, worrying about the problems of belonging, of close interpersonal relationship, of love, value and humanity” (99). Moreover, Nkosi charges that she has no clear interest in politics at all by saying: “Bessie Head is not a political novelist in any sense we can recognise; indeed there is ample evidence that she is generally hostile to politics” (102). Also, he adds that: “Far from being an axiomatic proposition, as some critics with an innate hostility to politics tend to believe this lack of precise political commitment weakens rather than aids Bessie Head’s grasp of character” (102). Arthur Ravenscroft shares a similar ambivalent view with Nkosi, observing that, on the one hand, Head’s novels “strike a special chord for the South African diaspora,” and on the other hand, he contends that her novels are “strange, ambiguous, deeply personal books which initially do not seem to be political in any ordinary sense of the word” (Ravenscroft 174). However, Nkosi’s critique of Head was quickly challenged by women writers in the West framed by Huma Ibrahim as thus: as patriarchal and readily seized upon by Western feminists who were trying to bridge the gap between the personal and political and who were also looking for testimonials of victims and other underprivileged women from developing countries of the Third World in order to reaffirm their own sense of superiority, thinly disguised as an imagined solidarity with downtrodden women. This solidarity was often expedited because it had something to do with feeling a little better than others of one’s sex but it certainly reaffirmed the feminist inclination towards orientalist ideology. (205) It may never cease to surprise anyone who is interested in Head’s work to see how personal her message has become even for white feminists. Also, Virginia Uzoma Ola responds to Nkosi by saying that “Nkosi’s one-​sided critical perception errs on the side of balance in equating creative failure with a lack of

The black-on-black prejudice  87 recognizable political posture (Ola 4). To disagree with Nkosi, Peter Nazareth argues that No African who writes about society in present-​day Africa can avoid being committed and political, not in the sense of party politics but in the sense that every attempt to reorganize society in Africa is a move which affects everybody. (Nazareth 6) Ibrahim sums up the debate that “Looking at Head’s work without its social and political specificity is a mistake, for it freezes the discussion in unilateral ways instead of illuminating it in multiple ways” (Ibrahim 205). I agree overall to Ibrahim’s perspective, and I would argue that the context in which Head places her self-​struggle against racial discrimination in both South Africa and Botswana is political enough and should be recognised as such. Furthermore, one cannot completely dismiss Head as being politically ignorant because her concern about interpersonal relationship has relevance to the bigger, political question of exile and belonging. Nkosi fails to see this perspective in his praise and indictment of Head. Head’s fiction touches other areas such as myth and history. Ola argues that “Her works have a distinctive Bessie Head’s voice which speaks through history, politics, legend, myth, fantasy and psychology, but refuses to sacrifice optimism to dry cynicism” (4). Ola sees Head as one writer who “functions from what she calls ‘the dead calm centre of a storm that rages over the whole of Southern Africa” (4). Despite this recognition, Ola observes that “she always searches out for what she considers as Botswana’s quiet strengths. Her commitment celebrates those strengths while exposing the weaknesses” (4). Similarly, in the “Preface to Witchcraft” in A Woman Alone, Head personally claims that “a writer feels pressurized into taking a political stand of some kind or identifying with a camp,” and she goes on to add that “it was important to [her] development to choose a broader platform for [her] work, so [she has] avoided political camps because they falsify truth” (63). She may have been considered apolitical by some critics and political by others, but a variety of readings of her fiction show how Head is like what Jacqueline Rose attributes to Sylvia Plath. In appropriating Rose’s view, Head, like Path has become an author who “hovers between the furthest poles of positive and negative appraisals, [who] hovers in the space of what is most extreme, most violent, about appraisal, valuation, about moral and literary assessment as such … [who] stirs things up” (Rose 1). By interpretation, Head’s fiction refutes what Linda Susan Beard describes as a “singular voice or absolutist reading” (582). Her work offers more than one perspective in critical reading. Beyond this debate, what is interesting about Head’s writing, particularly her depiction of tribalism is the fact that she was already writing ahead of

88  The black-on-black prejudice her time, and predicting that the imagined future of the post-​colonial African state will be replete with prejudices orchestrated by Africans themselves. This was when most writers of her generation were engaged in anti-​colonial writing and movement(s), waging war against the classical empires of Europe. Kolawole Ogungbesan captures this more sharply when he says that Head, “like other South African exiles, rejects the religious, social, and intellectual order of her home country, she also rejects as completely the political vision which other African writers have posited as alternative …” (Ogungbesan 103). Ogwude lends support to his view, arguing that, “Her political vision is different. However, different though, [sic] it is a legitimate political vision and this does not temper her intensity of feeling against the entire South African social system” (14). This means Head is mindful, not only of the dehumanisation of the black people by the white people, but also the dehumanisation of the black people by other black people and, hence, the black-​on-​black theme. Overall, her depiction of tribalism goes well beyond the discussion of tribal prejudice by most black writers of her time. It is also worth stressing that established research on Bessie Head’s work has never examined this gap in any significant depth, although some critics have very occasionally noted it. For example, Ogwude briefly mentions the “black against black theme,” in her book, Bessie Head: Exile Writing on Home, but she never elaborates on this comment in any greater detail She further remarks that Maru, for instance, “is meant to expose the dismal issue of racialism using a black against black theme” (55). This particular theme is less loud in all the existing criticisms on Head’s work, and if this is the case, as I do believe it is, then, it is crucially important to engage with it in this current research. Despite the prominence of this disturbing theme, neither Ogwude nor anybody else has ever paid critical attention to its detailed exploration as a worrying issue to Head, not only for South Africa and Botswana, but well beyond this as a monocultural challenge to human coexistence and development, which I will examine for Maru in greater depth in subchapters of this thesis. However, Head does not only represent the challenges of tribalism, she also attempts to provide solutions to tribal politics through romantic love, as well as marriage. To this end, Ogwude admits that, In spite of such an unpleasant theme, Maru is also to contain a world so “beautiful” and so “magical” for its reader to be willing to read and re-​read it several times over. This is effectively achieved through language and characterization. (55) Head, therefore, aims to achieve a detribalised space, an all-​inclusive kind of space, in which all human beings, regardless of their tribal or racial origins, can live and relate to one another. I believe that this is the kind of beauty and magicality Ogwude talks about. This, of course, brings into prominence the

The black-on-black prejudice  89 central idea of love and marriage between the main characters to unify and tear down the wall of tribal segregation. Maru’s union with Margaret is also to score some political points, as expressly manifested in his double-​faced statement: “I only married you because you were the only woman in the world who did not want to be important. But you are not at all important to me, as I sometimes say you are” (5). This is how Maru projects Margaret as a woman. Again, the first question that comes to my mind is that, is the marriage really genuine or fake? Maru’s statement appears to contradict the fundamental idea of liberating Margaret from the deep conditions of tribal suppression. His statement can be interpreted as showing double standards on the part of Maru. Why? If he marries Margaret simply because she is the only woman in the whole world who does not want to be important, then, his aim is to make her self-​ important, but not to liberate her and her people as the novel makes the reader think or believe. In addition, the statement reveals that some men marry for different reasons. It may be on the grounds of inferiority complex rather than true love. Therefore, Maru’s statement reveals a tinge of hypocrisy buried in the relationship between power and language, as it is difficult for one to say where he belongs because of his double-​faced position revealed in the above passage. Maru’s hypocrisy comes out more glaringly in the second part of the sentence, “But you are not at all important to me, as I sometimes say you are” (5). This may be described as a rhetoric of deception because, again, it blurs the reader’s understanding of their union as representing a conventional liberation. His statement is somewhat political. On this note, Daniel Gover asserts that Maru is content to bide his time and pose as a traditional racialist because he is in control of virtually all the action in the book. He does not pity Margaret’s plight and maintains his distance from her on the surface even as he secretly plans to marry her. (115) Contrarily, Gover argues that His love for a Bushman is purely idealistic and will lead him to renounce his tribal powers. He does not accept the racism of his people, but will not challenge it directly. Instead, he imagines his love as the basis of a new and different world. (115) Here, Gover presents the other side of Maru to the reader as someone who is ready to go against the law and customs of his people. Contending that his love for Margaret is purely idealistic is contradictory to Maru’s double-​faced nature. The critic Zoe Wicomb rather calls their union a “stealthy negotiation.” Wicomb claims that in Maru, “Head is able to accomplish a stealthy

90  The black-on-black prejudice negotiation of class and gender. How stealthy can that negotiation be? In Maru, there is a very clear case of a paramount chief preferring to marry an untouchable woman as opposed to one of his class” (Wicomb 209). Ibrahim responds to Wicomb’s choice of the word “stealthy” by talking of the way reader tries to avoid the uncomfortable aspects of Head’s writing. She says: Perhaps Wicomb’s choice of words, stealthy, conceals our own discomfort with the risks that Head takes with the greatest aplomb. But again her risk is the storyteller’s speculation! Ultimately [,]‌Bessie Head creates problems for us, and we tend to say nearly the opposite of what we think she is saying about those issues in order to defend some version of what is the observed truth. At best, we become unreliable informants of epistemological constructs and tend to gravitate towards safer controversies. Head’s writing, especially as it anticipated the post-​apartheid era, seems to evoke discomfort at one level and a need to claim certain limited interpretations in place of others at another level. (209) However we may interpret his actions, for both cultural and political reasons, Maru maintains his distance from Margaret. Consequently, Yekini Kemp sees the novel, Maru, as a political novel. In his critique of Head, Kemp states that Maru, is “essentially a novel with a central political theme, discussing a political problem from the perspective of a male/​female interpersonal relationship …” (1). Kemp links Maru’s political statement to the larger question of Head’s political commitment to the socio-​political realities in both South Africa and Botswana. He frames what Head has done in art or literature to the relevant socio-​political issues at stake in those countries. It is on this basis that Ogwude adds that “Significantly, all her work is concerned with presenting the evils in interhuman relationships” (13), and without any doubt, “her commitment is worth presenting [with] viable liberating options first, for the downcast and oppressed, and then inadvertently, for the oppressor as well” (13), and hence, the politicisation of Maru, as a protest novel.

Black-​on-​black prejudice in Dilepe (Botswana) The black-​on-​black prejudice, as revealed through Margaret’s relationships is fundamentally a context-​specific phenomenon based on tribal discrimination or power domination, which is initiated in the African community by Africans against Africans. It is a repression of one black tribe against the other. This type of black politics of discrimination, formulated against one’s identity marker or tribal background, is, however, different from the broader racial form of prejudice, which is the discrimination or hate of one race against the other. Those who justify tribalism, for example, see it as a beneficial act of dispossession or divestment directed towards members of another tribal

The black-on-black prejudice  91 group, individually or collectively. It comes with the maintenance of power dominance by the oppressing individuals over the oppressed group of people. The idea of human, classist, tribal, and racist discrimination is presented in Head’s narrative most vividly in the way the Bushmen are treated: Of all things that are said of the oppressed people, the worst things are said and done to the Bushmen. Ask the scientists. Haven’t they yet written a treatise on how Bushmen are an oddity of the human race, who are half the head of a man and half the body of a donkey? (6) Based on the supposedly scientific classification of human genetics, the Bushmen are seen as half humans and half animals. In a similar way, the Batswana people, who claim to have the right or power to define and redefine the rest of humanity in their caste system, perceive Margaret as a Bushman. In their tribalistic way of life, they say: Some time ago it might have been believed that words like “kaffir” and “nigger” defined a tribe. Or else how can a tribe of people be called Bushmen or Masarwa? Masarwa is the equivalent of “nigger,” a term of contempt which means, obliquely, a low, filthy nation. (6) Again, “seemingly anything can be said and done to you as your outer appearance reduces you to the status of a non-​human being” (6). It is tragically sad to see that a once colonised people could continue with their mentality in the same pattern of colonial domination over themselves. Head laments bitterly about this issue, in A Question of Power, that: “I don’t like exclusive brotherhoods for black people …” (132). But, here, the words “kaffir” and “nigger,” operate principally on tribal lines to relegate the Masarwa to a very low background. The words give the Batswana a sense of superiority over the Masarwa in terms of human classification or tribal supremacy. The language of “human” versus “non-​human” is evolved, solely as an instrument of oppression of one tribe over the other. If one takes the human society for what it is, it is possible to find that this form of oppression may exist elsewhere and, thus, may be a universal phenomenon. Arguably, the universality of oppression permeates the well-​defined boundaries of tribe, as well as of race and nation. The novel puts it in a more succinct way: “How universal was the language of oppression! They had said of the Masarwa what every white man had said of every black man: They can’t think for themselves. They don’t know anything. The matter never rested there” (88). Again, “The stronger man caught hold of the weaker man and made a circus animal out of him, reducing him to the state of misery and subjection and non-​humanity” (88). Again, she says, after all “The combinations were the same, first conquest, then abhorrence at the looks of the conquered and,

92  The black-on-black prejudice from there onwards, all forms of horror and evil practices” (88). To reduce the whole idea to the specific context of black-​on-​black discrimination, there is a shift from what every white man has said about every black man to what black people are saying about themselves today. This is what gives the thematic uniqueness to Head’s narrative about postcolonial Africa. It is worth stressing that Dilepe, as presented in the novel, clearly wears the banner of tribalism. For example, the foregrounding of “DILEPE TRIBAL ADMINISTRATION” on the billboard (9) shows how tribalism is deeply engraved in the Dilepe consciousness and Nkosi terms it as “received doctrine” (14). It is a “received doctrine” in the sense that it is ingrained in their minds. This billboard notice is an official declaration of a tribal society. Some of the Batswana people like Seth, Morafi, and Ranko, in the 1960s and 1970s, could see nothing wrong with it because the black-​on-​black sort of tribalism seemed to be what defined the psychology of their society at the time. DILEPE TRIBAL ADMINISTRATION reads as if it is an ethical code of conduct, structured even within the administrative lives of Dilepe people. This is the picture the narrative paints of Dilepe in the 1960s and 1970s. Tribalism is still one of the banes that some parts of the continent are grappling with today as they were in Dilepe then. For instance, beyond the world of the novel and in comparative terms, Benue State in Central Nigeria like Dilepe in Botswana also practises tribalism. The tribal politics that exists is primarily between the Idoma people and the Tiv people, and in this case, the Tiv people control the state power as an instrument of political and economic dominations over the Idoma people. Human relations, in most cases, are defined by one’s tribal background in Nigeria. It is a disturbing phenomenon within post-​colonial Africa. Also, one finds this phenomenon in When Rain Clouds Gather. The evidence is clearly captured in the conversation between the old man and Makhaya at the beginning of the novel: “You are running away from tribalism. But just ahead of you is the worst tribal country in the world” (4). He claims that they, the Barolong, are neighbours of the Batswana, “but [they] cannot get along with them. They are a thick-​headed lot who think no further than this door. Tribalism is meat and drink to them” (4). This comparison is meant to re-​emphasise the worrying issue of tribalism in Head’s novels. Even though Makhaya’s experience of tribalism is different from Margaret’s, it is like a cancer, spread across the black continent of Africa. Makhaya’s experience of black tribalism begins on the journey from home to exile, while Margaret experiences tribalism only in Botswana her native land, and this slightly marks the difference. Similarly, Head does not only talk about this issue in Maru, and When Rain Clouds Gather, but also in A Question of Power. It is a dominant trope that runs all through her novels. This is because she has always seen tribal, classist, and racist Africa as a potential danger to the progress of the African continent. A.H. Richmond sums tribalism up as a “means whereby the members of a society possessing superior social, economic, or political status assert their influence and power over those whom

The black-on-black prejudice  93 they consider to be inferior, in order to perpetuate the status differences” (31). One of the consequences of this is that when the existence or humanity of the oppressed is not respected by the oppressors then resistance is expected from the oppressed. The black-​on-​black tribal prejudice is presented as a sentiment, and used as a tool to dismiss other people as inferior. In this specific context, the notion of black power is negatively represented as an ideology of domination, as well as a basis to define someone else’s reality and existence in a derogatory manner. Its main agenda, in my eyes, is to hide or eliminate the authentic core of someone’s values from his or her consciousness in order for him or her to live the non-​I for the other, who dictates the power. It is a culture of hate that ignites the politics of difference. The black-​on-​black tribal phenomenon creates barriers, viewed as structural prisons or restrictions that hinders the free flow of human relations. It has been claimed by some critics such as Robert Cancel that Head engages with the social reality of Botswana. He says: “She [Head] was engaging with Botswana as a cultural and historical entity” (xiii). Cancel’s claim provides the context for me to also approach the text from the historical, cultural, and geographical perspectives. To further substantiate his claim, he argues that Head, especially when it comes to her best known works, of necessity took up the challenge of using the context of a relatively small rural environment in Botswana, the village of Serowe and the Bamangwato people, as the basis for her stories. This culture surrounded her for many years, and she carefully studied it in an academic sense as well as an experiential manner. (xiii) As this study is set against the backdrop of this specific context of a narrowly defined human or tribal parochialism, I have coined the phrase of “black-​ on-​black tribal prejudice” to also represent other vices such as killing, pettiness, denial of all sorts, malice, witchcraft, wanton destruction of norms and values, corruption, and arbitrary use of power in the black sense of it. It is a cudgel of an unrelenting black rage, rancour, and hate against people’s tribal origins with the aim to subject them to a form of servitude. This experience was tragically part of the 1960s and 1970s tribal disturbances in Botswana. This colour-​within-​colour prejudice is as destructive as any. In other words, it is a terrible practice in a tribal African society. And, of course, Head’s narrative is steeped in Botswanan tribal politics. The text clearly presents Dilepe as a back-​water society that is tribally divided. For example, Desiree Lewis concludes from the evidence of the novel that, “Margaret, the Masarwa woman, thus becomes a figure for exploring a discursive process through which dominated subjects are projected in the self-​defining projects of the socially powerful” (126). More, she goes on to add that “The focus on Margaret as Masarwa is linked to Head’s recognition

94  The black-on-black prejudice of the pervasive othering of the San in southern African politics” (126). For instance, “In the nineteenth century, the extreme objectification of this group [San] led to slaughter and mutilation, with live San exhibits, as well as corpses, bodies [,]‌skulls and other body parts being exhibited in metropolitan studies” (126). She writes horrifyingly that the Surviving San groups in Botswana have been the subject of major research projects by anthropologists, psychologists and linguists, and recent years have witnessed the continuation of a colonial legacy. Yet Head refers not mainly to white racist representations, but primarily to subject constitution and objectification among indigenous southern Africans. (126) Lewis’s angle to the subject captures the hallmark of my contention even though her account reaches back to the nineteenth-​ century Botswana. On the other hand, Botswana gradually emerges into a more egalitarian society through the unions of Maru and Margaret, as well as Moleka and Dikeledi. This is how Head attempts to present the kind of literary, social, and political frameworks that represent a reasonable chance for the society to sort out its identity, tribal, class, as well as racial problems. That is, she uses the theme of universal love as a recipe for racial and ethnic healing. For all these reasons, it is very important for modern post-​colonial writers of Africa to engage with the issue of black-​on-​black tribal politics, which ultimately calls for a redefinition of concepts like identity formation, black power, black exile, and hybridity in post-​ colonial literature. Confronted with the problems of tribal politics, Head asks these rhetorical, but rather disturbing questions: How do we and our future generations resolve our destiny? How do we write about a world since lost? A world that never seemed meant for humans in the first place, a world that reflected only misery and hate? It was my attempt to answer some of these questions that created many strange divergences in my work. (Head, “Social and Political Pressure …” 21) I will now begin to discuss Head’s attempt to provide a solution to tribal politics. The novel presents the union between Maru, the eponymous character and Margaret as a means to bridge the tribal differences between the Batswana people and the Masarwa people. Maru thinks of Margaret as a point of contact to liberate her people from the evils of tribalism. Therefore, “… the conditions which surrounded him at the time forced him to think of her as a symbol of her tribe and through her [,]‌he sought to gain an understanding of her eventual liberation of an oppressed people” (88). From the foregoing, it is obvious that one of the conditions that necessitates Maru’s

The black-on-black prejudice  95 marriage to Margaret at the time is basically Head’s wish to collapse the existence of the tribal politics that are obviously detrimental to her society. Peter Mwisika argues that Maru’s marriage to Margaret Cadmore is, presumably, meant to signify renunciation of male racial power and privilege on the part of the Tswana aristocracy. It seems more like a reiteration of the original conquest and occupation of Botswana land. Maru, as a chief, is able to choose whom to marry and to change the rules of the social system almost as he wishes. (158) In other words, Moleka as the junior of the two chiefs cannot rewrite the code of his society, which is why he is not only fearful of declaring his love for a Masarwa woman, but is also in the end prevailed upon to marry Maru’s sister, Dikeledi against his will. (158) Maru’s aim or effort is to pull Margaret out of the troubled situation of her existence, which is clearly rooted in tribal prejudice. Again, reflecting on the above lines, the idea of liberation is very central to their marriage even though it is a compromised kind of freedom. It is a compromise in a sense because of the political conditions involved. That is, the basic female values are overpowered in a male-​dominated world, and women have to struggle and assert their worth. The politics involved in their marriage are in a way dependent on how Maru perceives Margaret as a woman.

The drum of love: a recipe for tribal/​racial healing In Maru, the theme of love is foregrounded as an important way of healing the existing prejudices in the Dilepe village. It is used as an attempt to destabilise the binary oppositions marked by either race, tribe or class. As I have already established, Margaret is perceived sometimes as a coloured woman by racial categorisation, but, originally, she is Masarwa by tribe. She is conditioned by the tribal prejudices in Botswana. While she faces a continued subjugation to a tribal and class-​ridden society, her marriage grants her escape from a further subjugation to a compromised kind of freedom in a society that has no intention of giving up its biases willingly. One of the conditions is for Margaret to be integrated into the Batswana tribe by dint of her marriage to Maru. By culture, a woman belongs to her husband’s tribe, which potentially becomes a gateway to the liberation of her own people. This is what it means for Margaret to be integrated into the Batswana tribe through marriage, and to serve as a gateway to the liberation of her own people. Furthermore, the marriage also means that since the Batswana

96  The black-on-black prejudice are the oppressors of the Masarwa, Maru seeks to be the bridge that unites the two divides through marriage. Marriage, therefore, becomes a potential route to communal integration. Through their union, Horace I. Goddard says, “In the end, Margaret becomes an insider of sorts, but it is ironic that both she and her husband are destined to repeat the cycle of exile to fulfil their dreams of human decency within the brotherhood of man” (106). The irony points to another exile, as both of them depart to where only God knows. The narrative, in this sense, becomes an exile of continuity; that is, it shows how they perpetuate an endless circle of migration from a physical space to a utopian one. Nevertheless, it is this very idea of integration into the Dilepe society that ultimately foregrounds the question of hybrid identity, which I will discuss later. Similarly, Moleka’s union with Dikeledi bridges the class gap in the Dilepe logic of discrimination and opens the utopian vision of creating a world of equal freedom. In pursuance of this utopian vision, Maru speaks: I was not born to rule this mess. If I have a place [,]‌it is to pull down the old structures and create the new. Not for me any sovereignty over my fellow men. I’d remove the blood money, the cruelty and crookery from the top, but that’s all. (53) This illustration demonstrates Maru’s concern to create a new Africa from the ashes of the old tribal world. His vision is to bring Dilepe out of the deep waters of vices such as corruption and abuse of power. Maru’s philosophy underscores a crime-​free society and an end to hostility. Daniel Gover argues in “The Fairy Tale and the Nightmare” that Bessie Head depicts love as a magical force from a fairy tale that overcomes insurmountable obstacles and unites people of different cultures and classes … Maru is the story of racial prejudice conquered by idealistic love functioning as a socially progressive force that advances mankind in the direction of racial equality. (113) It is truly an African tale of cruelty and inhumanity, but with a universal appeal. Head demonstrates her commitment to love in a loveless world. Ogungbesan puts it this way: Bessie Head sees commitment mainly as love; it is love which gives both the individual and the collective life a pattern of meaning. Her novels are concerned with presenting the achievements of love, with exacting its discovery and with assaying its power. All the novels present the movement of the protagonist towards another person or persons; we are invited to follow the fortunes of an isolated and alienated character towards others;

The black-on-black prejudice  97 and this quest eventually assumes both for the character and for the reader a much larger moral importance than that of the personal relationship as such. (93) Head’s representation of love is more than Maru and Moleka’s love for women. In any case, Maru’s overall ideal is to make Dilepe a village with a human face. But, despite his good intention to change the unjust world around him, in the speech beginning “I was not born to rule this place” the first part of the second sentence is a conditional clause, making it a wish rather than a concrete reality. That is, it appears like an illusion when he says, “If I have a place,” (53), as if to say, if he had the opportunity or power, he would pull down the old structures of oppression and suppression to create a new world of equal freedom for all men. But, whatever interpretation one may give to the sentence, whether it is viewed as an illusion or a reality, the key to a better society seems to be the ultimate love for humanity that transcends all else. Ella Robinson substantiates the importance of love when she writes that “Head’s protagonist, Maru, must show strength … His overriding hunger is for love. When we meet him he has already the spiritual prerequisites” (73). That is, he has the good mind to love other people, too. In reality, it seems elusive to achieve a “universal freedom” either in the fictional world or in the real world, even though, for instance, some of the Totems [members of chiefly families] believe that, “Prejudice is like the old skin of a snake. It has to be removed bit by bit” (40). One of the things that makes it increasingly difficult to do away with prejudice in whatever guise, is the question of human identity marked by one’s background, class, tribe, nationality, birth, skin colour, and language. In view of this, the Totems make the above statement solely because they are trying to accustom their hearts to the fact that their children are being taught by a Masarwa teacher at the Leseding School. But because they cannot change the fact that their children are being taught by a Masarwa teacher, they evolve the snake metaphor as a piece of apparent proverbial wisdom to console themselves. As a result, they aim towards the removal of tribal prejudice by means of a gradual process. Identity crisis is one of the most powerful themes in the narrative, as one cannot thoroughly engage with the text without a mention of it. What foregrounds the overall importance of the identity question is the idea of belonging. Identity as a marker is used to differentiate the “belongers” from the “non-​belongers”; in other words, the natives as distinct from the non-​natives. Sadly, both the Batswana and the Masarwa are also natives of Botswana, but the Batswana, in their perspective, feel more native than the Masarwa because they dominate everything as a majority. The idea of “belongers” versus “non-​ belongers” is employed in a metaphorical sense to depict the kind of tribal segregation that exists in Botswana.

98  The black-on-black prejudice However deep, compelling or thoroughly engaging the identity crisis might seem in the narrative, Head also uses the love theme to depict her characters as representing more than Botswana. That is, love becomes a larger-​than-​ life affair that transcends the narrow boundaries of tribe and class to offer a universal reading of belonging in any given space. By universal notion of belonging, I mean the rise above the boundaries of tribe, as well as class as a limitation to free belonging. This claim is evidently manifested in Moleka’s attempt to demolish the notion of parochialism at once, especially when he hears that the upper class and the principal were making trouble for the Masarwa mistress. Also, Gover argues that “Moleka responds immediately once he falls for Margaret and tries to abolish prejudice on the same day. He deliberately shocks the education supervisor by inviting him to sit down to dinner at table with his Bushmen servants” (114). Whatever the intention is behind his goodwill, the novel presents to the reader what happens as thus: He removed it all in one day. He told Seth, the education supervisor, that there was good food in his house on Sunday. When Seth arrived [,]‌he found all the Masarwas in the yard of Moleka also seated at the table. Moleka took up his fork and placed a mouthful of food in the mouth of a Masarwa, then with the same fork fed himself. (40–​41) This feast of oneness, of brotherhood and of love, demonstrates Moleka’s genuine effort to cast off the strongly rooted tribal prejudice in Dilepe. But this act, on the other hand, heightens the already existing tribal tensions in the land because his gesture is perceived as breaking a taboo. To emphasise the seriousness of this taboo, Seth removes himself from the scene only to continue to fan the embers of black-​on-​black tribalism notched on identity differences. In addition: “Seth removed himself from the house in great anger. He shouted for all to hear: ‘I shall have no dealings with Moleka’ ” (41). This statement portrays Seth’s refusal to overcome tribal boundaries. Moleka is consequently declared a pariah by mingling with the “untouchable.” His attempt to collapse the notion of “we” versus “them” becomes a crime that leads to his separation from the friendship of die-​hard tribalists like Seth and Morafi. Separation, therefore, becomes his own punishment for dining with the Masarwa people. Moleka is displaced from his circle of friends, not because he has really fallen foul of Dilepe law but because he wants a society that is free from tribal differences. Dikeledi puts the allegation in a more annoying way when she says: “… Moleka is trying to change the world by himself ” (43). Again, it sounds as if changing the world for better is an unpardonable crime. Furthermore, Ranko adds: “Yesterday, all the Masarwa in his yard sat at the table with him. He shared his plate of food and his fork with one” (43). Why should Moleka sit together with the “untouchable” at all, then, talk more of dining, sharing the same plate of food, as well as his fork with them? To the Batswana, dining

The black-on-black prejudice  99 with the “untouchable” is an abominable crime, a crime against the communal or collective conscience of the Batswana people. For this reason, the reader is moved to invest his or her emotion or pity in Moleka, as a victim of the very tribal discrimination he stands against. He attracts the reader’s pity because he is the acolyte of justice for going against the entrenched norm of tribal politics in Dilepe, the very tribal politics that heightens the problem of identity crisis, as well as tension. Another instance that is similar to Moleka’s case is that Maru also becomes a victim, losing his chieftainship because of his marriage to Margaret. And, this is because his union with Margaret goes against the tribal orientation of the Batswana people. The depth of this tribal orientation is shown by the fact that a Batswana prostitute claims to be better off than Margaret who is well educated. By claiming to be better off, she says, “He [Maru] has married a Masarwa. They have no standards” (102). This statement apparently degrades both the Batswana men and, especially the Masarwa women, who are regarded as good-​for-​nothing human beings. “They,” as used in this context refers to the Batswana men, and she generalises them as having no standards. Literally, it means, they [the Botswana men] can fall in love with any woman whether high-​class or low-​class. It is that bad that even a prostitute can claim to be a better house-​wife than a decent and well-​educated Masarwa like Margaret. By this comparison, the implication is that the worst of Batswana is better than the finest of Masarwa. If it is not too harsh a comment, then, the Masarwa are regarded as the rags of humanity by the Dilepe tribal law. Again, the novel immediately reveals, “By standards, she meant that Maru would have been better off had he married her” (102). Maru, in this instance, can be seen as Ola puts it, as the representative individual experimenting on the possibilities of the limitless power which he possesses by virtue of being the hereditary paramount chief-​elect of the Botswana, waiting to be installed after his predecessor’s death; but rather than exploit the political and social privileges of that position he surprises and shocks the community of Dilepe by giving up these gains in favour of an amorous relationship with an outcast. (16) This choice brings him into conflict, not only with Moleka, who is also Margaret’s lover, but with the Dilepe prostitute. To her, why on earth should Maru marry an underdog at all? It is rather ironic that a prostitute, who in the African culture has no place, can tell other people what “standards” mean in Dilepe. However, this still points to the tribal, and superior orientation built in the psyche of the Batswana men and women. Margaret’s marriage as a non-​ belonger forms part of the making up of her social relations in a new way—​as she becomes the focus of much attention in a society, which is persuaded that tribalism is a normal thing. She does not fit into the narrow labels of tribe,

100  The black-on-black prejudice race, or state except through her marriage to Maru as the only viable option to belong. Another interpretation of Maru’s marriage to Margaret means his death to the people of Batswana. The news of their marriage troubles them so much, and they think that that is the end of Maru. The novel reveals: “They thought he was dead and would trouble them no more” (103). Maru’s death is projected in a metaphorical sense, as it means losing his chieftaincy title, and all the privileges of power that he enjoys in his kingdom. “How were they to know that many people shared Maru’s overall ideas, that this was not the end of him, but a beginning?” (103). The ironic twist here is that, what they think to be his end becomes a beginning of a new dawn of freedom for an entirely oppressed group of people. This ironic twist in the novel bears a profound resemblance to Seretse Khama’s marriage to Ruth Williams, while studying at the University of Oxford. Their marriage provoked the apartheid government in South Africa, where there was already a law preventing sexual intercourse or marriage between the black and the white. The South African government pressured the British to ban Seretse Khama and his wife Ruth from Bechuanaland but, six years later, Khama was allowed to return as a citizen of the land, but still banned from possessing the throne of tribal kingship. However, “in 1965, when internal self-​government [was] introduced, he [took] his place at last as the head of his nation … he [was] elected Bechuanaland’s first prime minister” (History of Botswana 1). In the case of Maru and Margaret, however, they never return to Dilepe. Symbolically, however, Maru offers himself as a bridge across two divided tribes to reconcile their tribal differences. And, there is undoubtedly a sense of triumph in the very last paragraph of the novel, which shows that: People like the Batswana, who did not know that the wind of freedom had also reached people of the Masarwa tribe, were in for an unpleasant surprise because it would be no longer possible to treat Masarwa people in an inhuman way without getting killed yourself. (103) This very last paragraph marks the new balance of power relations rather than a resolution of all the tensions caused by tribal politics through Margaret’s relationships, as well as her life in Dilepe—​a village known as the Eden of tribalism and visibly proclaimed as such by the billboard, which reads, DILEPE TRIBAL ADMINISTRATION.

The novel and its style of narration First, Head admits the strange differences in her style of writing. But, one may think or argue that she is more interested in making her political points in an artistic way. Ogwude contends that “Because she neither uses conventional

The black-on-black prejudice  101 techniques nor seeks to enlist stock responses from her readers, mere peripheral study of her works results in much misunderstanding” (2–​3). Also, in line with this view, Virginia Uzoma Ola claims that in discussing Head’s fiction with African academics in the early 1980s, she observes “a type of general and tragic impatience with her themes and style much like what happened to Ayi Kwei Armah’s reputation after his publication of [The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born]” (iv). She then, again, goes on to say that Several African critics claimed she was too autobiographical; Lewis Nkosi is one of such critics. Others complained she was too utopian and the final group thought [A Question of Power] was too complex stylistically to make much sense or be taken seriously. This reaction is proved by the fact that till today most critics of her novels are non-​African, although since her death in April 1986 [,]‌her reputation among African academics has grown steadily. (iv) These divergent views of academics and critics alike may have resulted from her difficult style of writing, ranging from genre(s) to narrative techniques. And urgently important is Woolf Virginia’s remark on the theoretical issues of style. She argues that If a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his own work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, tragedy, no love, interest or catastrophe in the accepted style. (106) As good as Woolf’s remark may be, it opens up a difficult area of debate. Woolf’s distrust of well-​established storytelling conventions would not have been shared by Shakespeare or Dickens but other modern critics also seem to believe that new kinds of “meaning” require new forms of technique. Bernard Blackstone writes: [The] journalist cannot see the wood for the trees, the artist grasps the meaning behind phenomena. He is something of a philosopher, a seer, as well as a technician. But the technique comes in too. New wine will not go into old bottles. New thoughts, new ways of experience will not fit the old forms. (8) Similarly, Ogwude emphases that “Inevitably, originality of thought and spontaneity of emotion create fresh designs, fresh music, new rhythms” (4). In creating a fresh design, Head has what I call a mixture of journalistic, political, autobiographical and literary styles. This mélange of styles creates some

102  The black-on-black prejudice kind of difficulty in understanding Head’s fiction at the surface. Ogwude also admits this truth when she says that Head is an enigmatic writer who demands in-​depth study and attention as pre-​requisites for any meaningful understanding of her writings. Her peculiar personal confrontation with the South African social realities accounts for her uniqueness. (4) So, in Maru, Head’s pattern of narrative style, moving back and forth between past, present, and future, is set against the normative doctrine of linear narration of events in a novel. The style is not uncommon in modernist and postmodernist fiction, but it has become something of a trademark of Head’s writing as a post-​colonial African writer. Head begins her story by leaping into the essential circumstance(s) that is a part of a related chain of events and, in which case, the essential circumstance(s) is an extension of prior events. For example, the opening of Maru reads, like a middle of something, a pointer to a previous happening, which the reader has no knowledge of. It is this sort of narrative beginning with what is called in medias res. For instance, “The rains were so late that year. But throughout that hot, dry summer [,]‌those black storm clouds clung in thick folds of brooding darkness along the low horizon” (1). With the use of the demonstrative adjective “that,” the year and the weather in question are unknown to the reader. Here, one may ask, which year and weather? Maybe Head assumes that the reader already knows the year or the story she intends to tell and thus begins the story abruptly. The use of “that,” which points to a distant past, creates a sense of curiosity in the reader’s mind to be in search of that past. This, in turn, opens up a line of suspense, which continues until the reader is told what happens that year: “Maybe it was because the rains were so late that year and the hot earth was baked to powder by the sun” (95). What happens to the year and the weather that one has no knowledge of at the beginning of the story, is only revealed towards the end of the story. While the use of “that” distances the reader from the year in question, the use of the definite article “the” brings the hidden past closer to the reader’s knowledge. However, it maybe that Head deliberately uses this narrative technique as a form of suspense to engage the reader’s attention. Take, for example, how the tribal dichotomy in the novel is further heightened by Morafi, who is also conscious of the referent “we” versus the referent “them” in the manner of tribal categorisation and tension. He says, “I really wonder what Maru is going to do about the problem of the Masarwa” (33). Furthermore, he adds: Things are moving ahead for this country, and they are the only millstone. I don’t see what we can do with people who can’t think for themselves but

The black-on-black prejudice  103 always need others to feed them. Mind you, they seem quite contented with their low, animal lives. (33) This statement is connected with Moleka’s realisation of how Maru is going to handle the identity problems of the Masarwa people. The pronouns “we,” “they,” and “them” are employed in this context as instruments of tribal discrimination. There are more examples of such pronouns. The text creates a scenario in which pronouns are used by the superior tribe looking down on the inferior tribe, as it reads: “Their parents spat on the ground as a member of a filthy, low nation passed by. Children went a little further. They spat on you. They pinched you. They danced a wild jiggle, with the tin cans rattling: ‘Bushman! Low Breed! Bastard!’ ” (5). The use of these pronouns has a parochial appeal deployed as a language of categorisation to create differences in terms of human relations. Beyond the use of these pronouns as instruments of tribal discrimination, they are also employed to signify hierarchy. In fact, the pronouns “they” and “them” are used from the viewpoints of both the superior and inferior tribes. Also, the “they” are the dominant group, seen from the perspective of the oppressed group, with whom the narrator is now more closely identified through the use of the second-​person “you”. Arguably, this passage is technically in the authorial voice, but has slipped into the viewpoint of the Masarwa. Ultimately, what this third-​ person-​ approach of narrative technique does is that it puts the author in the all-​ knowing position of an omnipotent creator. Head becomes like God who knows everything. The reader sees this example in the way she uses the bed to depict the gender power relations among her characters. Critics like Ibrahim and Beard are said to “[Foreground] critical attention to multiple voices that shape Head’s fictions and offer suggestive approaches to her eclectic creation of narrative” (Lewis 123). They observe that “The multiple voices in Head’s work lead to a vision of art and of politics which is often highly individualistic and which defies critical orthodoxies about black or politically committed fiction” (Lewis 123).

Against the normative doctrine of story-​telling structure The structure, being framed in medias res, constitutes itself between the “has-​ already-​been” (analeptic) and the “will-​be” (proleptic) sort of storytelling—​a style in constant becoming, particularly in Maru and A Question of Power. The example of telling the end of a story at the beginning is also demonstrated in Maru’s marriage. That is, the reader is given first-​hand information about the marriage before the actual event takes place in the form of elopement. In an example of the “will-​be” sort of narration, the novel tells the reader about Maru’s marriage this way: “I only married you because you were the only woman in the world who did not want to be important. But you are not at

104  The black-on-black prejudice all important to me, as I sometimes say you are” (5). He makes this statement long before the marriage event takes place. Nevertheless, the importance of this is that it foreshadows what will happen in the long run. That is, the knowledge of the actual event is uncovered through his sexual contact with Margaret, as well as through his note to Moleka. For example, the note reads: “Moleka, by the time you read this I shall be many miles away from Dilepe. I am marrying too, almost at the same time” (102). As an addition, Moleka says to Dikeledi: “Did you know that Maru had planned to run off with the Masarwa school teacher?” (102). This is no longer new because Maru’s intention to marry Margaret has already been revealed. Therefore, the statement becomes a backward reference that foregrounds the earlier statement made concerning the marriage. This instance again shows “the-​already-​has-​been” kind of storytelling. That is, something that one has already known and does not create any sense of newness. This is how the structure is fragmented, and the essential particles of the story are scattered throughout the narration. So, to understand the story-​line correctly, one needs to suture the bits and pieces of the story together. This style is not out of place because it makes the reader sit up, and be more curious in search of vital information for analysis. Beyond a purely stylistic interpretation of this form of narrative, and given the nature of tribal politics, we may want to know why Head has written the novel in this way. She presents her story in the form of “what has been known” and “what will be known,” in order to do two things: (1) Tribalism as a concept is represented as an already existing phenomenon, which is the known; (2) It is presented in a manner that the reader will engage with in a very fresh way. In my thinking, this is what Head has achieved by using this form of narrative style. Desiree Lewis sees this as “a fascination with the way her writing eludes the linear paradigms that most [early] critics used to judge her work” (xii). She again contends that Bessie Head’s “work focuses graphically on subjects’ entrapment within narrative formulae and hegemonic modes of expression … It identifies the liberating implications of claiming language in ways that can convey subjects’ unique stories, life experiences and dreams” (xii). Lewis, therefore, adds that: In much of her writing, the author [Head] searches restlessly for ways of redefining existing signifiers, and releasing meanings from their moorings in oppressive discourses, and developing narrative strategies and fictions that allow socially marginal subjects to speak against silence or subordination. (xii)

The black-on-black prejudice  105 It is interesting to take a close look at the metaphors employed by Head in the passage. While the “sunlight” symbolises the new era of freedom, the “dark, small room” represents bondage or slavery. Looking at the dark room that holds them in bondage for so long, they take a decision by saying: “We are not going back there” (103). That world is a horrible world of slavery and oppression of the Masarwa people. Goddard supports this claim, writing: “The ‘dark, small room’ is symbolic of that world [of oppression]. On the other hand ‘the sunlight’ which is the unifying image in the novel, triumphs over the darkness” (108). He further says that he can argue that “the novel demonstrates the need for both prevailing forces of light and darkness, good and evil, even though, in the end, good is exalted over evil” (108). Maru, for example, represents both the good and evil but it is his marriage to Margaret which allows the good to prevail: When people of the Masarwa tribe heard about Maru’s marriage to one of their own, a door silently opened on the small, dark airless room in which their souls had been shut for a long time. The wind of freedom, which was blowing throughout the world for all people, turned and flowed into the room. As they breathed in the fresh, clear air their humanity awakened. (103) This symbolises a new beginning, as well as the burying of the past. That is, the past that carries the experience of class, as well as tribal prejudice in Dilepe. And, of course, the good eventually triumphs over the bad at the end of the novel. This is what the passage represents, as it marks their collective resolve never to return to that enclave of bondage. The dark, small room may not be a physical room, but a metaphorical representation of slave condition. And, if their decision not to return to the dark room works well enough for them, as the novel puts it, then that tells the reader why freedom matters and continues to matter not only in their lives, but in every human life. Their refusal to go back to the dark, small room also drives home the sense of strong resistance against slavery and the desire to embrace freedom that is long denied them. This example says something important about the reality of the former Bechuanaland and as Lewis puts it, “The novel’s conclusion magnifies the Sebina clan’s liberation as the emancipation of Bechuanaland, the enclave state which resists nineteenth-​century mfecane as well as annexation by South Africa and southern Rhodesia” (138). Conceptually, the mfecane, a Xhosa and Sotho word, was used to refer to a political upheaval and migration in Southern, Central, and East Africa in the 1820s and 1830s, respectively. It was a period of extensive warfare, chaos, and tragedy among the indigenous communities. The mfecane theory, according to Julian Cobbing, is “… a tenacious and still-​evolving multiple theme in the historiography of the apartheid state. Its basic propositions are

106  The black-on-black prejudice integral to a white settler, ‘Liberal’ history, which gestated for over a century before Walker, coined the term ‘mfecane’ in 1928” (487). Concerning the myth of origin, it is phonetically obvious that the mfecane does not sound like a word in any of the European languages, but what is significant here, as J.D. Omer-​Cooper contends is the fact that “the mfecane will continue to occupy a prominent place in the developing historiography of southern Africa” (273). However, the question of segregation in southern Africa looms large in Maru, as Margaret becomes the object of mockery because of her identity in a society that is not purged of prejudice. Below is the crisis point as the novel records it, when a child is openly insolent to her in class: A cold sweat broke out, down her back … Then he looked directly into her face with an insolent stare: Tell me, he said since when is a Bushy a teacher? The room heaved a little and the whole classroom of children blanked out before her. Yet she stood upright with wide open eyes. From a distance their voices sounded like a confused roar: You are a Bushman, they chanted. You are a Bushman. (34) The social and psychological effects of this statement on Margaret are clear, as they bring her a degrading experience in such a way that she may even begin to doubt her self-​worth. This also marks the beginning of her problem as the children stage a walk-​out on her. Their language is not only rude, insolent but also arrogant and discriminatory. The tone of the language further signifies the sense of superiority of the Batswana tribe over the Masarwa tribe in this context, and instils in the Masarwa people a tragic experience of tribal prejudice. And this is all because of tribal and identity differences. Susan Lanser insists that the emphasis should be on “specificity not sameness or difference because everyone is alone; is an island harbouring painful experiences in different forms” (2). Here, the narrative voice’s impassioned statement to the reader is apt: “If you only knew the horror of what could pour out of the human heart … They spat on you. They pinched you. They danced a wild jiggle, with the tin cans rattling: Bushman! Low Breed! Bastard” (10–​11). John Maxwell Coetzee calls such attitudes “a poetics of blood” (138). In reference to Sarah Gertrude Millin’s God’s Step-​Children, Coetzee says it is “a poetics of blood, because the difference between ethnic groups is not solely marked by the colour of the skin, but by what is hidden inside the individual and transmitted to the following generations” (138). In Millin’s novel, the skin of the mixed-​blood Barry, who is the protagonist, is described as, “white as anybody’s. But it isn’t only the skin, some inner voice would whisper” (250), and because, the narrative voice continues, “There is no chemical bonding or compounding of the two bloods. The man of mixed blood has two identities […] not a new compound identity,” and also, “All acts of shame are recorded in the blood, it is the mixing of two different kinds of pure blood that deprives coloured people of their identity” (250).

The black-on-black prejudice  107

Figure 4.1 Imaginative images of a walk-​out staged at Dilepe Primary School by the pupils against Margaret Jr. Credit information: Courtesy of the Artist: Jane Boyer, Artist/​Curator/​Writer, J. Boyer ©2015, Fine Art Research Student, Anglia Ruskin University, J. Boyer Media: Watercolour & Ink, www. janeboyer.com

The racial or tribal segregation brings sad images into larger questions in the politics of power relations that may have constituted the making of post-​colonial societies in Africa. The statement about hatred above is in the authorial voice rather than Margaret’s but Margaret bears the painful experience of tribal discrimination as a result of her attempt to be assertive in terms of her own identity. She becomes alone, as well as a lonely island unto herself. Psychologically or imaginatively, Margaret may look like this in the reader’s mind’s eye. The walk-​out is a rejection of Margaret as a Masarwa. The embattled encounter shows the dynamics of group power at work, as the class collectively blanks her out. This is a crisis moment in the novel’s battle between good and evil, and Lewis describes it thus: “Head urgently summons the reader to acknowledge a buried collective memory and the way the efficacy of racism is guaranteed by its repression in the cultural unconscious” (127). The awakening of the Masarwa’s freedom ends the lack of freedom to marry whoever you want to marry in either apartheid-​era South Africa or Botswana. An instance of this is foregrounded in Alan Paton’s Too Late the Phalarope in which the authorial voice tells the reader about the power of the Immorality Act of 1950 that The police have had instructions to enforce the Immorality Act without fear or favour. Whether you’re old or young, rich or poor, respected or nobody, whether you’re a Cabinet Minister or a predikant (church

108  The black-on-black prejudice minister) or headmaster or a tramp, if you touch a black woman and you’re discovered nothing ’ll save you. (Paton 15) In Maru, Margaret’s dream is central to the emergence of the new dawn for her people. Because she is never ashamed of being a Masarwa, the recognition of the self provides a massive strength for her people to come out of their bondage. Ostracised and dehumanised by other black Africans and Europeans alike, they latch onto the opportunity to free themselves. Goddard makes a valid case here that further strengthens the central argument of this book. The point is, as he puts it, “Bessie Head, through her principal female characters, forces the African Black man to examine his relationship towards Black women. In Maru, Margaret thus becomes a symbol of motherhood and one of female liberation and power” (108). He further contends that, Head writes about a liberation not only from a colonial past but also from the African male’s racialist, sexist and power-​seeking tendencies. She exhorts the African man to cast off those rigid, false, social systems of class and caste which encounter him [sic] and deny others their humanity. (108) This is exactly my argument. The important idea to explore is the basic truth that Head writes not only about the colonial past of Africa, but also about the post-​colonial present of Africa, which is riddled with tribal politics. The concern for African tribal politics becomes the overriding focus of my investigation not only in this chapter, but throughout the entire research, as it is closely linked to exile, trauma, and post-​colonial question(s). To justify this, one might note that there is still a tinge of tribal sentiment in the passage about liberation from a dark room, which has just been quoted. This time, the novel puts it as if the oppressed, the ostracised and the dehumanised people themselves are still using phrases like “one of their own” (108). This, to my mind, still continues to bear an ethnic or tribal stamp in understanding the shifting dynamics between citizenship and belonging. That is, even after their freedom, the people are still glued to tribal sentiment as contained in the above instance. This means that tribal sentiment does not age in their minds at all, not only in the novel, but in contemporary Batswana, as I have gathered through interview in the course of my research trip to Serowe, Botswana. It is as fresh as it has ever been since time began. For this reason, it is safe for one to say that both the Batswana and the Masarwa people are still not completely de-​tribalised in their mentality, as seen in their use of language to discriminate against one another. It is a cultural or political consciousness, which is planted in their minds as a new form of mental servitude. The mentality of the Bushmen referring to Margaret as their own is a reflection of the idea of we-​too-​ism, which politically means that they [the

The black-on-black prejudice  109 Bushmen], as previously oppressed people now matter in the scheme of things by dint of their liberation through Margaret.

Reading the novel in the contexts of symbolism and imagery of patriarchal dominance In Maru, the bed appears predominantly as a conceptual metaphor of a consummative space to tell the narrative of love affairs between Maru and Margaret, and between Moleka and Dikeledi. As a space for love affairs, Moleka’s offering of the bed to Margaret is marked as a potentially erotic intention nursed secretly for the possession of Margaret’s body in the future. The intention behind Moleka’s offer is confirmed in his kind statement as: “I’ll fetch you a bed” (22). The question to ask is, for what purpose? However, this statement suggests, to my mind, a kind of egg nest to attract her to himself for erotic purposes. For proof of Moleka’s erotic intention, one may trace the meaning of his name to the Tswana word. According to the “Introduction” to the novel, it means “an infidel, a fatherless womaniser” (ii). Gover agrees that “He is widely known as a great womanizer in the village, and his passion for love is regarded as sexually dangerous, even violent … His male sexual power has always proven destructive to women …” (114). In fact, as the novel notes, “There was nothing Moleka did not know about the female anatomy” (25). It may be interesting to ask, how come Moleka who is not a medical doctor knows so much about the female anatomy? It is because he is deeply involved in womanising. He has never stopped having sex with women since the age of 12 years. It seems obvious that his vast knowledge of the female anatomy must have been acquired through his sexual engagements with different women. Nevertheless, as for his offering of the bed to Margaret, it can be argued that naturally, a man’s kind gesture to a lady in this specific context may be seen as a Greek gift; it is hardly for free. Therefore, Moleka’s kind gesture is in fact to wet the ground for his secret love affair(s) with Margaret. And the bed becomes an object of intimacy in this very instance. Therefore, as tied to the idea of the bed as a consummative space, in a more direct sense of it, the novel gives us a clue to the drama that takes place between Moleka and Dikeledi. The text presents the drama this way: Moleka walked straight in through the open door to the bedroom. He sat on the bed, then turned and stared at Dikeledi from under his thundercloud brow. She stood at the end of the room near the door, too surprised to grasp how everything had happened so suddenly. At last she said, crossly: “What are you up to, Moleka?” (63) To read in between the lines of the above passage, the closest interpretation of the first sentence is that, Moleka may be up to nothing other than sex. This

110  The black-on-black prejudice is a possible line of thought or argument because, in the same circumstance, Dikeledi entices him with her thighs even though she warns Moleka not to touch her finger-​nail: Don’t you even dare touch my finger-​nail, Moleka-​and the way she contradicted her words by thrusting her thighs in his face, suddenly gave him an outlet for his pent-​up rage. Let her start that nonsense again—​ Don’t you dare touch my finger-​nail … (63) The thrusting of her thighs is already a come-​on, an invitation to sex as clearly offered by Dikeledi herself. However, this is Moleka’s viewpoint regardless of the use of the third person point of view. Moleka’s pent-​up anger is rather psychological because he is already in the mood for the exercise. A quick addition to this claim reveals the fact that Dikeledi makes Moleka’s bloodstream boil as evident in this line. The narrative voice tells the reader that “Dikeledi was the nearest he’d ever come to loving a woman and yet, even there, Dikeledi made his bloodstream boil by the way she wore her skirts, plainly revealing the movement of her thighs” (23). Even from the tone of the extract, one is given a much clearer psychological insight into the mood of Moleka that he is predominantly interested in actual sex and not in what he would call the usual “don’t-​ touch-​me pranks” of ladies. And because Moleka is in the mood for sex, he angrily thinks, “Let her start that nonsense again—​Don’t you dare touch my finger-​nail …—​and he [Moleka] would throttle her to death on the spot” (63). Therefore, this gives Moleka the licence or the courage to walk straight in through the open door to the bedroom as a consummate space for sex in this particular context. It is even more obvious as Dikeledi talks about the kisses she has had with Moleka afterwards. Head is partly silent on this in her description but a close reading of the novel beyond the explicit description of the scenario, suggests that sex may have taken place beneath the numerous kisses they have had. The narrative voice, therefore, pointedly talks about their kisses as I cite below: Dikeledi immediately dived into the packet of Marmite sandwiches, sat on a desk, tilted back her head and quietly threw her thoughts into her own heart. She was thinking: Moleka’s kisses taste like Marmite sandwiches. Moleka’s kisses taste like roast beef with spicy gravy. Moleka’s kisses … (68–​69) To Dikeledi, the kisses are quite overwhelming, as her confession is punctuated with ellipsis. The workings of the mind in the process of having sex may be deep but, what is buried in the ellipsis are her inexpressible emotions. This makes it difficult for the reader to say exactly what happens amidst the numerous kisses they have had. But, to evidently add

The black-on-black prejudice  111 to her emotional state of mind, “she had even fallen into bed with her heart melting with love after what Maru had told her about Moleka and the slaves in his house. He was, to her, the greatest devil-​may-​care hero on earth” (64). The text goes further to say: “Since she kept so silent, he paused in the act of undoing his other shoelace” (64). The text presents the picture of what transpires amidst the silence to this extent. Silence itself speaks volumes and it is such an emotional moment for both Moleka and Dikeledi that it is hard to express even by Head herself. Moleka and Dikeledi’s experience is not the only example of the bed as a consummative space. Maru has sex with Margaret towards the end of the novel and the bed is used in the same metaphorical sense. The bed in the case of Maru and Margaret is also a clear site of sexual engagement as there is silence like the silence between Moleka and Dikeledi, and all this silence symbolises the exercise of body, mind, and soul in sex. The drama that ensues in the case of Maru’s sexual engagement with Margaret is even more hilarious. It is hilarious in the sense that Ranko, Maru’s boy, is busy pacing up and down in the room to make sure every item is picked up except the bed, which is left behind for Maru and Margaret for their love-​making exercise. In the course of pacing up and down, his flash-​light wakes the goat up from sleep, and he discovers that there is a strange animal in the room. Out of fear, he raises the alarm by running to the far end of the room. But, even in his terrified state of mind, he is rewarded with praise by Maru as a fine spy. He says, “Ranko, you are a fine spy. Go back and kill that lion” (101); addressing him like a child, who is brain-​washed to run errands, while adults do their things. Again, he is given a pat on the back like a child who is rewarded for a good job. The idea is for Maru to have a private space to concentrate on the exercise. Again, when Ranko returns from the assignment, he discovers that there is a silence in the room, and the text reports the silence, as well as Ranko’s reaction to it. It goes this way: “There was a great silence from the inside of the room. He feared to enquire because he did not like to disturb Maru when he was concentrating” (101). Ranko’s duty is to make sure the room is safe and calm while Maru is to enjoy his soul, mind and body with Margaret. He understands the rules of the game because it is a game that requires some level of maximum concentration and no disturbance. However, the silence that marks the intense moment occurs only after Ranko has captured the Windscreen-​Wiper (the goat) that shakes the bed. After the exercise, Maru says, “All right. We can go now, he said, startling them out of their reflections” (101). This statement becomes important in the way that Goddard shows: “In act, when Maru and Margaret escape as man and wife, they leave behind the stymied world of oppression, brutality and petty chieftaincy” (106). He feels excited about the pleasure of it, and here again, the text reveals to the reader, He couldn’t tell, but at that moment he felt as if he had inherited the universe. He turned to the woman standing silently beside him, and said:

112  The black-on-black prejudice “We used to dream the same dreams. That was how I knew you would love me in the end”. (106) Their dream is to have a unified world of equal freedom as shown in the last paragraph of the novel. This, therefore, implies that Margaret and Maru have something in common and that is to get rid of their tribal differences. Ella Robinson succinctly puts it that, “Maru’s dreams and visions are systematic of the creative mind. And what he wants is to rid his own mind of tribal cruelty. And in this process his objective is to build a new world” (73). For Maru to achieve this dream of a unified world, he must do things outside the slim enclosure of tribal and social orders. Goddard asserts that, “The dream is so important to the fabric of the novel, Maru, that it is worth setting down for closer scrutiny and analysis” (106). For instance, the elopement of Maru and Margaret is central to their idea of a decent world. Again, Goddard puts it thus: They become initiates in the ritual for survival in their far removed dreamland where they will repeat the cycle of exilic living. Maru’s departure is linked to his dream of an escape to a world where decency, tolerance and justice exist. This utopian world is linked ostensibly to the forces of good. It is also symbolically linked to the field of daisies that Maru planted. (106) Margaret and Maru depart to live elsewhere in exile and the central motif of linking their world to the field of daisies is to represent two extreme forms of existence, that is, life and death. Goddard argues further that: “In particular, the daisy, the ‘eye of the day,’ resembles the sun, and is associated with vitality, sustenance and by extension, life and goodness” (106). Another aspect of this as he explains is that, “the flowers foreshadow a break with an evil past for Maru and Margaret and point to a new beginning where goodness, it is hoped, will be supreme” (106). However, it should also be pointed out that the bed is used as an instrument of power, which Maru uses to assert his authority over and above Moleka and Margaret. He uses his authority to exile Margaret’s body from the bed space. He demands that the bed must be returned as a Dilepe communal property, stamping his own authority in an autocratic manner. The name “Maru” takes its root meaning of “elements” from the Tswana language. By extension, it could stand for elements of power or elements of evil manipulation as shown in his character through the story. For example, he says, “I’m not like you, Moleka, he said, with heavy sarcasm.” “I still own the Masarwa as slaves. All my one hundred thousand cattle and fifty cattle posts are maintained by the Masarwa. They sleep on the ground, near outdoor fires” (46). He justifies his tyrannical statement as in:

The black-on-black prejudice  113 Their only blanket is the fire. When the fire warms them on the one side, they turn round and warm themselves on the other side. I have seen this with my own eyes. What will they do when they hear that a certain Masarwa in my village is treated as an equal of the Batswana and given a bed from my office? Won’t they want beds too, and where do I find all those beds, overnight? I want the bed you loaned to the Masarwa teacher returned, immediately. (46) Maru’s tyranny is another example of what my analysis here refers to as black-​ on-​black tribal prejudice. That is, he uses Dilepe as a slave-​holding colony to keep the Masarwa in subjugation even though he has some good sides to his character. It is in view of his double-​standard behaviour (i.e., good and bad nature) that Ola calls him “… a visionary and a demon, a lover and a tyrant” (16). Similarly, in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, the reader recognises Heathcliff, the protagonist of the novel, as a forerunner of Maru in Head’s novel. Sometimes it is difficult for the reader to judge whether Maru is a tyrant or romantic hero, whether to thrill him or condemn him, much as it is difficult to judge Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Maru, like Heathcliff, “is divided between love and revenge” (Watson 89). However, Heathcliff is considered (just as Ola considers Maru) as, “a devil, a Ghoul, and an Afreet” (Reed 72)—​ a word, which according to Reed, is “an Arabic word which means demon” (72). Maru, depicted as a “demon lover” could be seen as appealing to a certain type of masochistic female psychology: [The] individual affected is controlled in his [or her] sexual feeling and thought by the idea of being completely and uncontrollably subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex; of being treated by this person as a master, humiliated and abused. (Krafft-​Ebing 94) The fantasies generated by this kind of psychology frequently shape the genre of popular romance, as they do Maru. Maru is both a tyrant and a lover, and more desirable as a lover because he is a tyrant. However, for the reader not caught up in this romantic fantasy, it is often the tyranny, which seems more evident. For example, the Masarwa, taken as slaves by Maru, are meant to sleep on the ground and not on the bed like the Batswana. Their body is not meant for the bed, which is a symbol of class distinction. This is a cruel way of thinking, as well as an exercise of power. Nevertheless, his arbitrary use of power is not only restricted to Moleka and Margaret but also extends to his sister Dikeledi, as she tries to question his decision. Maru says to Dikeledi: “If I came to you one day and said: Look here, I have long controlled the affairs of your life. You can’t even cry unless I will it. Now, if you don’t

114  The black-on-black prejudice agree to marry me, you will stare at the moon for the rest of your days, what would you do?” Dikeledi put her head on one side. You went through the unbelievable with Maru. He really made people do everything he said they would, and could create such a tangle of events with his spies that it was simpler and less harassing to carry out his orders. (56–​57) This is such an autocratic response. Peter Mwikisa’s view in “Caliban’s Sister: Bessie Head’s Maru as a Rewriting of The Tempest,” writes that: This response betrays the fact that marriage for Maru is a way of not only articulating his power, but also a strategic manoeuvre for containing a potentially destabilizing female sexual agency. In other words, although she does not act, and her agency is limited, Margaret Cadmore is a powerful destabilizing force to Tswana patriarchy. (159) Margaret, no doubt, is a destabilizing force to the Tswana patriarchy because she negates the cultural stereotype against women from an oppressed tribal and racial group. Here, the novel, like The Tempest, authorises constructions of race and gender, which black people, particularly women, might find hugely disenabling when viewed from a post-​colonial perspective. Maru, in Julia Kristeva’s graphic metaphor is seen as “indubitably wrestling,” and in “a complex movement of simultaneous affirmation and negation” (257). However, in another instance, Maru speaks with such an anger that: “I don’t like anyone to be wiser than thou about my action,” he said, in a quietly threatening voice. I don’t care whether she sleeps on the hard floor for the rest of her life but I am not going to marry a pampered doll” (51). This is an obvious pointer to his apparent tyranny in terms of behaviour. Dikeledi debunks his view of the Masarwa as merely Masarwa saying, “There’s no such thing as Masarwa … There are only people” (51). Dikeledi, with her humane sensibility, confronts Maru by asking him to imagine himself sleeping on the hard floor. This is another instance where the tyranny of Maru becomes apparent to the reader. In relation to this, Goddard, in “Imagery in Bessie Head’s Work,” also makes use of the notion of “outcast,” arguing that, in her fiction, “In one form or another, the women in [Head’s novels] are outcasts” (105). In Maru, for instance, he says, Margaret, the artist, brings together all the traumas of her exilic status and focuses them artistically in her paintings, where she brings order out of chaos. Out of the deficiencies of nature, she brings to bear a wholeness that is evidenced in the way she patterns her life, with the hope of gaining inner moral strength and outward social integrity. (105)

The black-on-black prejudice  115 She relies on her artistic work not only as a means of communication, but also as a means of regaining her life, her emotional strength, as well as her social respect. Because, being a Masarwa, an artist, and a teacher, she is seen as an outcast and never projected as a full human being within a particular narrative of identity politics that determines the question of belonging in Dilepe. She is aware of the political and social implications of being an outcast. Therefore, in trying to keep in touch, that is, in terms of human communication, her artistic work becomes the most important channel for her. However, the novel portrays her as a non-​named personality or a person with no identity. It says, “Moleka would have been just on the point of making a proposal to Miss so-​ and-​so, but he would immediately hold out his hand” (24). The “Miss so-​and-​ so,” as deployed in this context refers to the ranks of the many anonymous women including Margaret whom Moleka has introduced to Maru, despite being attracted to them himself. Maybe it is forbidden to mention her name or even her tribe in this context. Here, Moleka lacks the courage to declare his love publicly to Margaret because she is a Masarwa. For example, Gover draws the reader’s attention to an important flashback incident that When he [Maru] gives in and reclaims the bed, Moleka fails to act on his love for Margaret publicly and defend her against the anti-​Bushman prejudice, thus showing himself to be unworthy of her love. His passion is not socially strong enough to confront a greater power than his own. (115) And then, again, he goes on to say that “Margaret later acknowledges this limitation of Moleka’s by saying, ‘He will never approach me, because I am a Masarwa’ ” (94); and also because she is an in-​between species in an all-​black country. But, other than this, Margaret as an artist has no personal power or voice; only her artistic work becomes her voice, as well as her source of vitality: There was this striking vitality and vigour in her work and yet, for who knew how long, people like her had lived faceless, voiceless, almost nameless in the country. That they had a life or soul to project had never been considered. (94) Beyond the fact that it is only her artistic work that indicates her source of vitality and strength, her presence as a full human is denied. This denial comes in the form of silence. For example, when Dikeledi demands more of her work: She looked sharply at Margaret. She had a message to deliver: “You must experiment with everything in that box, see,” she said, like one talking to a

116  The black-on-black prejudice little child. Margaret looked up quickly, with the gesture and sudden turn of the head of a very young child with its first toy. That was the last link she had with coherent, human communication. (81) Therefore, her artistic work becomes not only an effective channel of communication but, also, a way of seeing things in the world. She says, I had a strange experience [.]‌Each time I closed my eyes those pictures used to fill all the space inside my head. One picture was of a house. Everything around it and the house itself was black, but out of the windows shone a queer light. (83) Here, the realities of the external world exist in her head. In another instance, Dikeledi asks: “Do you always see things like that?” (84). Margaret replies: “Yes. I drew all the pictures from pictures from my mind. I first see something as it looks but it looks better when it appears again as a picture in my mind” (84). The use of artistic paintings by Margaret could be compared to Charlotte Brönte’s use of images and metaphors in Jane Eyre. Jane, the protagonist, uses images and metaphors of houses, rooms, and windows to express her seclusion, her fear, her suppression, and her escape both at the social and personal levels. One of such instances is when Mr. Reed, who is a father for Jane, dies, so she experiments with her terror by staring at a mirror in which the mirror reveals something unexpected to her. She says: My fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms speckling the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp … (21) But she finds the Red room as a place of escape, where she can feel safe, as she says, “no jail was ever more secure” (21). The mirror, being a framed image, helps her escape through her madness in her enclosed Red room, which represents the vision of the culture she is ensnared in, much as the reader sees in the very first sentence of the novel, “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day” (11). This, indeed, sums up the level of repression that Jane has to face in her childhood, and everywhere she lives becomes a sort of prison for her. Gilbert and Gubar argue that Jane Eyre is “A story of enclosure and escape, […] oppression (at Gateshead), starvation (at Lowood), madness (at

The black-on-black prejudice  117 Thornfield), and coldness (at Marsh End)” (339). And for the escape, Jane finds a shelter in the window-​seat, as she narrates: A breakfast-​room adjoined the drawing-​room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-​ seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-​legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement. (13) First, the “double retirement” refers to the book, and second, it refers to the window-​seat as a means of her escape. She uses images, not only to foreground the repressive sites of her childhood, but she explores them as tools to negotiate with patriarchy in her adult life as a Victorian woman. Nevertheless, Margaret’s vision of artistic painting is linked to the utopian imagination in Head’s novels. And the idea of “utopia,” as defined by Pangmeshi Adamu in his paper “The Utopian Quest in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru,” is “… an ideal or perfect place or state, or any visionary system of political or social perfection” (64). He argues that in literature, it refers to a detailed description of a nation or commonwealth ordered according to a system which the author proposes as a better way of life than any known to exist, a system that could be instituted if the present one could be cancelled and people could start over. (64) Pangmeshi goes further to trace the origin of this concept in the work of Head to Sir Thomas More. He says: “The word itself was coined by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 book of the same name. The roots of the word are from the Greek ou (not) and topos (place), thus meaning ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’ ” (64). Head does not show the irony which More displays when he coins the word “Utopia” which suggests that the only “good place” is “nowhere.” She is obviously more optimistic than Thomas More himself. This is the kind of world Margaret dreams as it relates to the power of human imagination; and she demonstrates how it works in an unusual way. Her mind, therefore, becomes the memory bank in which she stores and draws all the pictures that depict the happenings in the external world. For example, she uses her mind to uncover secrets. She says: I looked up again and a little way ahead I saw two people embrace each other. I stared quite hard because they were difficult to see. Their forms were black like the house and the sky but, again, they were surrounded

118  The black-on-black prejudice by this yellow light. I felt so ashamed, thinking I had come upon a secret which ought not to be disclosed, that I turned and tried to run away. (83) I do not know the nature of the secret here because she feels ashamed of herself for coming up with what is not supposed to be disclosed. With this experience, she separates what she sees into three scenes. First, “The house stood alone with its glowing windows; the field of daisies and the lowering sky made their own statement; and, on their own, two dark forms embraced in a blaze of light” (84). It is possible that Margaret conveys her lonely feelings or aloofness through the metaphor of a house that stands alone from the rest. The field and the sky also make their own statement. But, it is difficult to say what statement they make exactly except through approximated guess. And the two dark forms represent two human beings embracing each other. She uses this imagery to depict loneliness, assertion, and love. In other words, the three key words—​loneliness, assertion, and love—​may sum up Margaret’s experience in an alienating world. The separated house may represent her aloofness. And, finally, the two dark forms may represent her embrace with Maru in their love affair. This shows how she subversively exploits the existing discursive aspects through her creative work. Nkosi also demonstrates how, The text repeatedly points to the sources of Margaret’s creativity in the resources that others provide, for example, the white mentor who adopts Margaret teaches her to draw; Dikeledi provides her with materials with which to paint; Moleka gives her the space in which to work; while Maru offers her a repertoire of dream images. At the same time, the novel celebrates Margaret’s ability to reconfigure received resources and develop fictions which are distinctively hers. Margaret’s creativity therefore straddles a reliance on what she receives and her independent, uniquely positioned expression. (128) With the help of these people, she is able to forge new meanings of the world shaped by her distinctive viewpoint. In the same way, she never allows power to sabotage her vision of dreaming freedom. Nevertheless, Head talks about Margaret’s bicultural heritage as a way of resolving the identity crisis in Dilepe. But the bicultural formation of Margaret’s identity is very much linked to the circumstances that encircle her birth, as well as her being. The question of being, for instance, is rather more philosophical than literary. But, the central focus here is to make it a literary metaphor by exploring the being of Margaret, and the process of her becoming a living human through the circumstances of her birth. This attempt is targeted at addressing the question of being through the hybridisation of the human race in a multiracial and multicultural world.

The black-on-black prejudice  119

Hybridity of the self: the split personality of Margaret Hybridity as a concept has been widely applied in post-​ colonial discourse, as well as provoking a groundswell of debates in other disciplines. According to Robert Young, “ ‘Hybrid’ is the nineteenth century’s word. But it has become our word again” (6). It is, for me, the mixing of human races, cultures, traditions, identities, nationalities and languages to form a hybrid individual, who, then, becomes a multi-​personality or, rather, an embodiment of the whole such that the cross-​cutting fluidity of hybridization is a feature of constructed subjectivities and cultural experiences. Margaret’s subjection position can be examined in relation to Stuart Hall’s concept of hybridised identification. Hall writes: Identity, although it has to be spoken by the subject—​collective or individual—​who is being positioned, is not a question of what the inside wants only. And it’s not a question of how the outside, or the external dominating system, placed you symbolically: but it is precisely in the process—​never complete, never whole—​of identification. (130) Interestingly, it affords the hybrid individual the opportunity of becoming something other than his or her tradition and culture. This is what Margaret, who is the focus of my analysis represents in this light. She is of mixed African and English backgrounds. In view of this, Dikeledi advises her not to reveal her Masarwa identity. She says: “If you keep silent about the matter, people will simply assume you are a Coloured. I mistook you for a Coloured until you brought up the other matter” (16). “Coloured,” as used here refers to the fusion of two different races, which, in Margaret’s case, is culturally, though not biologically, both African and English. This African-​English identity, forced upon Margaret, becomes her cultural destiny. The “other matter,” as referred to here, is also the fact that Margaret chooses to reveal her identity. She says, “I am a Masarwa” (16). Asserting her racial identity demonstrates her confidence (even arrogance) in that she seemingly rejects the privilege offered her by Dikeledi to embrace the gesture of belonging in a tribally divided Dilepe. Goddard views her assertion as a positive refusal. He says, “However, Margaret refuses to live the life of being thought of as ‘mixed breed’ or Cape-​ Coloured, and declares her true identity as a Masarwa” (Goddard 108)—​ not to be someone else or both, but to be who she is born as. Despite this, Margaret represents the contradictions embedded in the racial categorisation, that is, the complexity of classifying people according to their colours and creating a discursive representation of them. She strikingly possesses one of the qualities of Richard Rive’s protagonist, Abe, in Emergency, who insists by saying, “I refuse to be anything other than what I am, one of you” (87). But one of the obvious implications for being a

120  The black-on-black prejudice “Coloured” is, according to Marike de Klerk writing in 1983, that: “They are the people that were left after the nations were sorted out. They are the rest” (Cape Argus 2). “Coloured,” therefore becomes the collective name for the “rest” and the “rest” politically refers to the dregs of humanity. Margaret, in this light, is categorised as the “rest.” Margaret becomes—​just like Abe—​a shame-​bearing mixed breed, “the rest,” as it becomes obvious that they cannot fashion themselves, either as Africans or Europeans but as the in-​between species of human beings. The important message in insisting on her Masarwa identity is that it tells the reader what it means to be a Masarwa or the other in Dilepe. To me, it means character, and “character” in this context means to be oneself. The strength of her character becomes a bastion and shield against the forces of discrimination, the very forces that compel her to live the other. Robinson indirectly lends his voice to Margaret’s situation in the South African context, saying that, “Head’s allegiance to substance is based on a sound belief that sanity is possible even when attacked by the insanity of presumed superiority as a result of skin color and hair texture.” That is, “In South Africa, as Head portrays it, sanity is a state sometimes won and then lost, but always it is to be pursued. The fight is for a humane society; the battle is personal, psychological, emotionally stressful” (73). And because the fight is a personal one, Margaret tries to make a clear sense of who she is, and how she may fit into her own world of exile, even though there is no pure idea of existence in her context. So Robinson contends that “everything is seasoned by analysis or by comparative revelation” (73). However, Margaret is quite the opposite of Makhaya in When Storm Clouds Gather. While the latter is ready to learn any man’s language and to belong to anywhere he finds himself, the former wishes to be one thing through her Masarwa identity and nothing more. But, the assertion of her Masarwa identity is what some people would not want to hear about in Dilepe. However, once you are a mixed race in the Dilepe context, the racial problems are somewhat reduced or, better still, she should have kept quiet about her Masarwa identity. Her entry into a biracial world is graced by utter rejection, separation, and marginalisation as a result of her ethnic or racial identity. However, the idea of keeping quiet is similar to the kind of silence imposed on Nora Helmer. It is an interesting analogy to make as Nora Helmer’s upbringing in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, is in some way similar to Margaret’s experience even though they are from two different cultural poles (or backgrounds). This analogy, tied at the intersection of cross-​cultural experience, offers an immediately helpful comparison. In A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer makes a claim to her husband: When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-​child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. (Ibsen 63)

The black-on-black prejudice  121 In a similar way, Margaret is raised as Margaret-​child much as Nora Helmer is raised as a doll-​child, who cannot express her own legitimate opinion. If I understand the culture of silence in this form, particularly in Nora and Margaret’s context today, I suppose, this is what Theile and Tredennick, in their opinion, call “blind obedience to unexamined standards of value …” (xi). Silence, therefore, becomes the connecting thread that links up these two experiences cross-​culturally. This may be why Dikeledi advises her to keep mute about her Masarwa identity, which should not be mentioned anywhere in Dilepe. Rather, the term “Coloured” is a preferred choice because the Batswana people abhor anybody with the Masarwa identity. It is this abhorrence that kills Margaret’s Africanness. For instance, Gover points out that When she begins her job as a primary school teacher in the remote Botswana village of Dilepe, her education, manner and accent lead village people to consider her a “coloured” person, the child of a mixed race marriage, rather than a Masarwa, the derogatory term equivalent to “nigger” that many Botswana use to refer to the Bushmen. Having been raised by a white missionary’s wife, Margaret has been sheltered from the sense of racial inferiority that Bushmen are subject to in Botswana. (113) In the real sense of it, her being raised by a white missionary’s wife does not shelter her from racial segregation or inferiority, rather, her mixed-​racial background denies her the core Masarwa identity, which she always asserts. Identity becomes a new frontier for her to fight. Therefore, hybridity, which is a mélange of two or more cultures, creates a bi-​cultural confusion within Margaret simply because of her rearing by Margaret Cadmore Snr., the Missionary as it pertains to her identity. By her upbringing, first, she has no African name. Her name is Margaret Cadmore. All that she has as far as her name is concerned is totally English. As such, the question of “being” is central to the circumstances surrounding her birth. It is also central to her identity as I explore further. Margaret’s mother dies in the process of giving birth to her and, being alive, she is rescued by a passer-​by, who discovers her feeble cry for survival. The story captures it this way: She had died during the night but the child was still alive and crying feebly when a passer-​by noticed the corpse. When no one wanted to bury a dead body, they called the missionaries; not that the missionaries really liked to be involved with mankind, but they had been known to go into queer places because of their occupation. They would do that but they did not often like you to walk into their yard. (6–​7)

122  The black-on-black prejudice The missionaries’ lives are portrayed in a double-​standard way, as we see them loving and loathing people at the same time. Situating the metaphor-​ image of the circumstances surrounding her birth, one can clearly see the emergence of a new being from the dead body. Margaret, being orphaned by the circumstances of her birth, and in becoming a living being, independent of the dead being, she is rescued by a passer-​by and later raised by Margaret the Missionary as a foster child. Margaret, having raised her, names her after herself. On the one hand, the naming becomes a compensation to Margaret Cadmore Snr., for raising her, and, on the other hand, the naming becomes an indelible heritage bequeathed to Margaret Jr. by Margaret Snr. This is her own gain by rearing her up. She has no African name. This is a subtle form of colonisation because what is in the name, defines the personhood, as well as everything in the being of that human person. The tragic contradiction of the novel is that, colonisation, on the other hand, grants Margaret the freedom which none of her fellow Masarwa possesses. The reader could see that the thematic focus of Margaret being the representative of her tribe or people is terribly compromised as a result thereof. Therefore, Head’s hard-​ headed approach, as well as her choice of a tribally disconnected Margaret with her English foster-​mother makes the usual European romanticisation of the “primitive” irrelevant in this case. Nevertheless, it is worth discussing the culture of the “Bushmen,” who are treated as slaves in the novel. In actuality, the “Bushman” tradition, before the putative distortion of their culture, as argued by some documentarians, such as Laurens van der Post, John Marshall, Robert Young, Paul John Myburgh, Craig and Damon Foster, was that, the Bushmen were mythically natural or pure hunter-​gatherers. For example, in the film entitled, The Gods Must Be Crazy, the narrator describes the “Bushmen as living in a state of primitive affluence, without the worries of paying taxes, crime, police and other hassles of urban alienation …” (Quoted in Gordon, Robert J. 1). This description captures how they lived before “the tragic extermination of [these] little hunter[s]‌and rock-​painter[s] by the Black and the White invaders of [this] ancient country” (van der Post 9). Van der Post, in The Heart of the Hunter, contends that the narrative thread of his book: [I]‌s a continuation of the story begun [sic] in The Lost World of the Kalahari; but it can be read as a self-​contained tale. The Lost World of the Kalahari was the story of a journey in a great wasteland and a search for some pure remnant of the unique and almost vanished first people of my land, the Bushmen of Africa. (9) The book closes with a “short story with these Bushmen, of their life [sic], their arts and crafts, music, dancing, storytelling, and of the film we made

The black-on-black prejudice  123 among them. It ends with our fare-​well to them at a place we called the Sip Wells” (9). The name “Bushmen,” according to Silberbauer George, “has been identified by some writers and scholars as a pejorative Apartheid-​era categorisation with racist undertones, and the label ‘San’ has been offered as a more appropriate substitution for ‘Bushmen’ ” (96). Similarly, “ ‘Masarwa’ is the term … used by Africans to describe not only the Bushmen but all the mixed people in the Kalahari living the Bushmen way” (van der Post 9). While “Some find the term Bushmen offensive” (BBC News, 1), other groups of the “Bushmen” tribe “say that is what they prefer to be called. [They are] also called San, Basarwa and Khoisan” (BBC News, 1)—​even though these terms are seen as offensive. Notwithstanding, the “Bushmen” are the, Original inhabitants of southern Africa—​pushed out by both Bantu groups coming from further north and European colonisers. Now, just 100,000 left—​mostly in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia [where] they traditionally live by hunting wild animals and gathering fruits and nuts. (BBC News, 1) Today, the “Bushmen … are torn between their ancestral traditions and the demands of the modern world. It leaves them struggling to maintain the remnants of their hunter-​gatherer way of life” (www.news 24, 1). Beyond the hunter-​gatherer way of life, they had a tradition that “If someone gets sick, [they] go to the grave site of that person’s ancestor to ask for help” (www.news 24, 1). More: “[They] also pray to [their] ancestors for rain” (www.news 24, 1)—​much like van der Post argues that “the Bushmen used images and idioms which would be incomprehensible to the civilised man without interpretation” (9). In line with this, Hitchcock argues that, “Whilst [‘Bushmen’] represent one of the best studied groups of indigenous peoples in the world today, much of the research done on them has concentrated on foraging adaptations” (220). In the final analysis, it has been claimed that the “Bushmen” are closer to nature than any other ethnic group in human history. However, to return to Margaret in the novel, growing into her own being, she acquires a mixed identity, as portrayed by her background experience. The experience reveals her life as: There was no one in later life who did not hesitate to tell her that she was a Bushman, mixed breed, half breed, low breed or bastard. Then they were thrown into confusion when she opened her mouth to speak. Her mind and heart were composed of a little bit of everything she had absorbed from Margaret Cadmore. It was hardly African or anything but something new and universal, a type of personality that would be unable to fit into a definition of something as narrow as tribe or race or nation. (9–​10)

124  The black-on-black prejudice Margaret retains little or nothing of her Bushman heritage, but she retains much of her Englishness because of Margaret Cadmore’s influence on her upbringing, much like Head’s real-​life foster-​mother had influence on her. In the “Selected Letters of Dora Taylor, Bessie Head & Lilian Ngoye,” published in Everyday Matters, M.J. Daymond writes that “Bessie loved and believed [Margaret Cadmore] was her birth mother” (v). Daymond shows the closeness between her and her foster-​mother. Margaret Cadmore had tremendous impact on Head, and this is what often happens when two cultures come together to form an individual. The weak one gives way to the dominant one. As such, Margaret becomes more English than African. So, her bi-​cultural upbringing creates a kind of confusion in her. However, Margaret is interested in raising her partly because of the hatred the people have even for her dead mother to the extent of not wanting to touch her corpse. By the extension of her missionary love, and to create a universal love out of human hatred, she adopts the part of the dead woman that is still alive and that is Margaret Cadmore Jr. Margaret Cadmore Snr., being horrified by human hatred, laments the condition of the Masarwa people as non-​belongers by saying, “They don’t seem to be part of the life of this country” (9). She makes this statement because the Masarwa are never integrated into the society. They live and exist on the fringe of Dilepe village. The kind of relationship forged between them and the Batswana is a master-​servant relationship and this is also exemplified in Margaret’s life while growing up in Margaret Cadmore’s house. The experience for the Margaret-​child is that of a master–​servant relationship to some extent. Head tells the reader that “No doubt, she lived on the edge of something. The relationship between her and the woman was never that of a child and its mother. It was as though later she was a semi-​servant in the house …” (10). This kind of upbringing, creates some lack of confidence in her. The novel presents it thus: There seemed to be a big hole in the child’s mind between the time that she slowly became conscious of her life in the home of the missionaries and conscious of herself as a person. A big hole was there because, unlike other children, she was never able to say: I am this or that. My parents are this or that. (9) This shows that the child is partly not confident in herself. She initially lacks the sense of self as a result of the vacuum created in her mind. This partial lack of confidence does not only deny her the power to talk about herself, but she also cannot talk about who her parents are unlike other children do. The hole in her life however creates a bi-​cultural heritage, formed, for the most part, around silence of the will, which becomes a metaphor for the absent–​ present phenomenon imposed on her in a society like Dilepe. Silence is here imposed on her as a woman, a “non-​belonger” in the Dilepe context, as well as in her upbringing. There seems to be a big hole

The black-on-black prejudice  125 in her mind between the times she becomes conscious of her life in the home of the white missionaries where she is raised and when she becomes conscious of herself in the wider society. This double consciousness relates to the absent–​ present metaphor or phenomenon. Nkosi also contends that, “Generally [,]‌Margaret’s ‘meaning’ in the first part of the novel is silence and absence, and she appears to have no presence beyond the myths and perceptions of the other vocal characters” (128). He further argues that Head: In her efforts to explore Margaret’s voice, [she] remains vigilant about the dominant texts that Margaret can never wholly transcend, and which inevitably shape her voice and actions. In other words, the author avoids the straightforward celebration of selfhood favored by many protest writers. (128) So, this form of silence rather makes Margaret uncomfortable in Dilepe village, and the notion of absent-​present, (the silence), the metaphor of the hole in her mind, and the idea of losing touch with human communication, also creates a sense of inner exile, inner longing for true home, voice, as well as a sense of self. Beyond that, there is a good account of what the child can become eventually. This implies, as the novel says that Good sense and logical arguments would never be the sole solutions to the difficulties the child would later encounter, but they would create a dedicated scholar and enable the child to gain control over the only part of life that would be hers, her mind and soul. (10) Conversely, however, as she later becomes conscious of herself, the big hole gradually gives way to self-​confidence. Her education grants her access to eventual liberation by gaining control over her life. Ola builds her argument on the idea of self-​confidence by saying that: “Margaret’s internal power derives from her upbringing by her British foster parent from whom she receives a fully strengthened personality” (15), which, as Ola argues, in “the great trials and tribulations of her life guarantee [sic] the continuance of her inner wholeness and enable [sic] her to survive both heaven and hell” (15). Nevertheless, Ola further explains that “In this situation Margaret feels warmth, love, and freedom but with Pete, Seth, and Morafi the garish and revolting caricatures and clowns who represent the school at Dilepe to which Margaret was deployed as a teacher, the haunting reality of evil is introduced into the heroine’s joy.” They constitute the full embodiments of the impersonal and brutal social milieu in which Margaret confronts daily insults from the young and the

126  The black-on-black prejudice old; by looks, words and actions. Hers is a life lived between the contest of good and evil, each working by its own form of power. (15) And, of course, Ola’s analysis of Margaret’s life refreshes the reader’s mind, not only of the good of her upbringing but, in a sense, foregrounds my central argument about the black-​on-​black theme. While Ola demonstrates how Margaret’s personality is enhanced by her British foster parent, she also draws the reader’s attention to her trials and tribulations caused by fellow black Africans, especially from the old like Pete, Seth, Morafi, and from the young like the school children in Dilepe who stage a walk-​out on her. In Ola’s view, like mine, fellow black Africans are the very ones who introduce the horror of evil into her life in a humiliating manner and, sadly, it all happens in an all-​black space (specifically, Dilepe in Botswana). The aspects of black-​on-​black prejudice, and the question of belonging are key to the discussion because they are a defining feature of both historical and contemporary Botswana. This is one aspect of post-​colonial discourse that lacks critical engagement in black exile literature, as many writers and critics are unsure about it. Overall, Head has successfully opened up a set of narratives based on a black migration experience not essentially from Africa to Europe, but from Africa to Africa. This representation of black migration is mainly occasioned by internal crises such as racial discrimination and tribal politics that compel people to migrate from home, but only to seek home elsewhere in Africa, which remains a world that has turned in on itself. Through the engagement with the text, we may come to realise that the African society in this narrative is a blame society that always points an accusing finger at the outsiders, but hardly ever points the same finger back at itself for what it does wrong. However, my focus is to shift away from this form of blame culture to the culture I call black-​on-​black blame. In other words, I have chosen a different set of lenses to view her fiction in a relatively new way. Head, in her Social and Political Pressure that shape [sic] Literature in Southern Africa, captures it more aptly, We are all really startled by the liberation of Africa, but we have been living in exclusive compartments for so long that we are all afraid of each other. Southern Africa isn’t like the rest of Africa and is never going to be … There is all this fierce hatred and it is real. There are the huge armies prepared for war against unarmed people and we are all overwhelmed with fear and agony, not knowing where it will end. (230) Many of the happenings in her story might lead to a lack of faith in humanity and, indeed, Africans have every cause to be afraid of one another, especially as there is no end in sight to this black-​on-​black hostility. There is good

The black-on-black prejudice  127 evidence that much of the African continent experiences this form of prejudice. For instance, it was the same tribal politics that started between the Tutsi and Hutu people of Rwanda that escalated into what has been recorded as one of the worst genocides in human history. The Rwandan example of Hutu versus Tutsi is very close to the tribal politics in Botswana as in the case of Batswana versus Masarwa. Significantly, Nkosi remarks that Head’s turning to a San character occurred when politics around notions of a homogenized black oppression were considered more important than the San’s distinctive oppression vis-​à-​vis black and white groupings. By representing a victimized group in the interstices of racial binaries and existing protest fictions, Head explores locations obscured in mainstream fictions of resistance. (127) What is important for me is not simply the identification of the black-​on-​black silencing and marginality, but also the intricate diagnosis of the workings of tribalism and racism in the text. This is precisely where the point lies in the blame theory today. In pointing back an accusing finger at Africa, Head has shone a light on what I believe to be the problem in many African countries, not simply Botswana. On this note, her approach to black migration gives her a unique reputation, as well as a place in twentieth-​century African literature; particularly when writers of her generation such as, Frantz Fanon, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Dennis Brutus, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali, and a host of others were critically engaged in an anti-​ colonial war against the empire. She became “post-​colonial” even in the colonial period by writing ahead of her time perhaps about what the post-​independence Africa will become. Her ability to look within Africa, and to be able to talk about what is apparently wrong with Africa rather than point an accusing finger at the colonisers, to me, is one of the central elements in her narrative about black exile, trauma, and politics of belonging and identity. She conveys to the outside world in the language it can understand the violence, abuse, and horror of the black man against his fellow black man in a once colonised society. She discharges her resentment against this act to seek emotional relief, as well as to free herself from the eternal guilt of silence. Overall, her writing manifests a continuous struggle to represent the marginalized voices, and the huge satisfaction she attaches to the struggle. However, Head does not only present tribal politics and all the consequences associated with it, she also attempts to offer solutions to the problems through inter-​tribal relationships. Basically, the heterosexual relationships between Margaret and Maru and between Moleka and Dikeledi are two obvious examples of how to create a more egalitarian society through their unions.

128  The black-on-black prejudice

Works cited Agbo, Joshua. Bessie Head and the Tribal Question in Modern Botswana: An Interview with Dr. Leloba Molema, Dr. Mary Lederer and Gasenone Kediseng. Gaborone: Botswana, 2017. Beard, Linda Susan. “Bessie Head’s Synchretic Fictions: The Reconceptualization of Power and the Rediscovery of the Ordinary.” Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3, 1991. pp. 575–​589. Berger, Roger A. “The Politics of Madness.” The Tragic Life: Bessie Head and Literature in Southern Africa. (Ed.) Abrahams Cecil. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990. pp. 31–​43. Bhabha, Homi K. “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation.” Narrating the Nation. (Ed.) Homi K. Bhabha. NY: New York City: Routledge, 1990. pp. 71–​98. Blackstone, Bernard. Virginia Woolf. London: Longman, 1952. Brönte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Penguin, 2006. Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Ebrary: Viking Penguin. 1996. Cancel, Robert. “Gestures of Belonging and Claiming Birth Rights: Short Stories by Bessie Head and Ama Ata Aidoo.” Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head. (Ed.) Ibrahim, Huma. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004. pp. 181–​198. Cobbing, Julian. “The Mfecane as Alibi: Thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolompo.” Journal of African History, Vol. 29, No. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. pp. 487–​519. Coetzee, John Maxwell. “Blood, Taint, Flaw, Degeneration: The Novels of Sarah Gertrude Millin.” White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. pp. 136–​162. Daymond, Margaret J. “Selected Letters of Dora Taylor, Bessie Head & Lilian Ngoyi.” Everyday Matters. (Ed.) M.J. Daymond. South Africa: Jacana, 2015. pp. 1–​20. George. Silberbauer. “Morbid Reflexivity and Overgeneralisation in Moswarwa Studies.” Current Anthropology, Vol. 32, No. 1, February 1991, p. 96. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. “A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane’s Progress.” The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-​ Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. pp. 336–​371. Goddard, Horace I. “Imagery in Bessie Head’s Work.” The Tragic Life: Bessie Head and Literature in Southern Africa. (Ed.) Cecil Abrahams. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990. pp. 106–​111. Gover, Daniel. “The Fairy Tale and the Nightmare.” The Tragic Life: Bessie Head and Literature in Southern Africa. (Ed.) Cecil Abrahams. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990. pp. 113–​121. Hall, Stuart. “Politics of Identity.” Culture, Identity, and Politics: Ethnic Minorities in Britain. (Eds.) Terence Ranger, Yunas Samad and Ossie Stuart. Aldershot: Avebury, 1996. pp. 129–​130. Head, Bessie. Maru. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1971. —​—​—​. A Question of Power. London: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1973. —​—​—​. “Social and Political Pressures that Shape Literature in Southern Africa.” World Literature Written in English. Vol. 18, 1979. pp. 20–​26. —​—​—​. Letter. Khama III Memorial Museum, Serowe, 40, BHP 2, 19.5. 1979. Ibrahim, Huma. Bessie Head: Subversive Identities in Exile. Virginia: UPV, 1996.

The black-on-black prejudice  129 —​ —​ —​ . “The Problematic Relationship of Western Canonicity and African Literature: The Not-​So-​Singular Case of Bessie Head.” Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head. (Ed.) Huma Ibrahim. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004. pp. 199–​215. Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll’s House: 1879. Four Great Plays. (Trans.) R. Farquharson Sharp. New York: Bantam, 1981. Kemp, Yekini. “Romantic Love and the Individual in Novels by Mariama Ba, Buchi Emecheta and Bessie Head.” Obsidian II, Vol. 3, No. 3, Writer, 1988. pp. 1–​16. Krafft-​Ebing, Richard von. Psychopathia Sexualis with Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-​Legal Study. Translated by F.J. Rebman. New York: Eugenics, 1934. Kristeva, Julia. Semiotike. Paris: Seul, 1969. Millin, Sarah Gertrude. God’s Step-​Children. New York: Boniard Liveright Publishers, 1927. Mwisika, Peter. “Caliban’s Sister: Bessie Head’s Maru as a Rewriting of The Tempest.” Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head. (Ed.) Huma Ibrahim. Trenton: Africa World Press. 2004. pp. 143–​165. Nazareth, Peter. “The African Writer and Commitment.” Transition. IV, Vol. 19, 1965. Ndebele, Njabulo. South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. Nkosi, Lewis. Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature. Harlow: Longman, 1981. Ogungbesan, Kolawole. “The Cape Gooseberry Also Grows in Botswana: Alienation and Commitment in the Writings of Bessie Head.” Presence Africaine. No. 109, 1990. pp. 82–​105. Ogwude, Sophia. Bessie Head: Exile Writing on Home. Zaria: ABU Press, 1998. Ola, Virginia Uzoma. The Life and Works of Bessie Head. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1994. Omer-​Cooper, J.D. “Has the Mfecane a Future? A Response to the Cobbing Critique.” Journal of Southern African Studies. Vol. 19, No. 2. New York: Taylor & Francis, 1993. pp. 273–​294. Pangmeshi, Adamu. “The Utopian Quest in Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru.” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. Summer Issue, VoI.1. 2009. Accessed on www.rupthaka.com/​issue0109.php. 26 May 2016. pp. 1–​16. Paton, Alan. Too Late the Phalarope. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1995. Ravenscroft, Arthur. “The Novels of Bessie Head.” Aspects of South African Literature. (Ed.) Christopher, Heywood. London: Heinemann, 1976. pp. 174–​186. Reed, Walter L. “Heathcliff: The Hero Out of Time.” Heathcliff. (Ed). Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993. pp. 70–​89. RETENG. The Multicultural Coalition of Botswana. Accessed on www2.ohchr.org/​ English/​bodies/​hrc/​docs/​RETENG_​MCB.pdf, 19 July 2016. Rive, Richard. Emergency. Cape: David Philip Publisher, 1988. Robert, J. Gordon. The Bushmen Myth: The Making of a Namibian Underclass. Oxford: Westview Press, 1992. Robinson, Ella. “The World of Bessie Head.” The Tragic Life: Bessie Head and Literature in Southern Africa. (Ed.) Cecil Abrahams. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990. pp. 73–​78.

130  The black-on-black prejudice Rose, Jacqueline. “On the ‘Universality’ of Madness: Bessie Head’s “A Question of Power.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 3, 1994. pp. 401–​418. Van der Post, Laurens. The Heart of the Hunter. London: The Hogarth Press, 1961. Watson, Melvin R. “Tempest in the Soul: The Theme and Structure of Wuthering Heights.” Nineteenth Century Fiction. 4. 2 (1949): JASTOR Web. Accessed on 16 May 2018. pp. 87–​100. Wicomb, Zoe. “To Hear the Variety of Discourses.” Current Writing, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1990. pp. 35–​44. Woolf, Virginia. “Modern Fiction.” Collected Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Vol. 2, 1960. pp. 104–​167. www.bbbc.co.uk/​news/​world-​africa-​24821867, “Botswana Bushmen: Modern life is destroying us”. Accessed on BBC News—​BBC.com, 21 May 2015. www.news24.com/​ … /​ B otswanas-​ bushmen-​ s tay- ​ c lose- ​ t o- ​ t heir- ​ roots- ​ 2 0141211, accessed on 21 May 2018. Young, Robert. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995.

5  Black power and trauma in a shut-​in world

A Question of Power, published in 1973, is about the struggle of a marginalised and dispossessed female character in a hostile society. The novel was written during the author’s mental breakdown at a psychiatric hospital in Francistown in Botswana. The novel was written and completed in less than six months. A Question of Power, in my own view, is a novel written under some psychological pressures, with what seems to be a representation of the author’s own mental hallucinations and disturbances in the story. Head has said of her novel that: “in A Question of Power, the work-​out is subtle—​the whole process of breakdown and destruction is outlined there,” and she added, “I’d lost, in A Question of Power, the certainty of my own goodness. The novel was written under pressure. I was alarmed” (53). The novel, being the last of Head’s literary work before her death in 1986, portrays the protagonist’s internal and external crises, as well as her agonising process of mental breakdown. A Question of Power, devoted to the study of trauma, and the notion of black power relations is not an arbitrary choice, but a response to a reality contained in the novel itself. However, studying or reading literature like photography requires a lot of seeing; it requires a lot of seeing from different perspectives, angles, and positions, and one needs to wear the right theoretical or critical lens to be able to see the idealised portrait of the text itself. Therefore, I choose to read A Question of Power through the theoretical lenses of Carole Boyce Davies’s “visitor theory” and the feminist “intersectionality theory” to analyse exile, power relations, multiple oppressions, and trauma as lived experiences in the novel. What the black Barbadian literary theorist, Carole Boyce Davies, calls the “visitor theory” was first developed out of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Going a Piece of the Way with Them” in Their Eyes Were Watching God, as a narrative portrait of cultural, performative practice, and constructed as a model of relationship with strangers in which Hurston demonstrates “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”. In this model of offering courtesies to visitors, Davies argues that it “comes out of several African and African-​based cultures, the host goes a piece of the way with friend or visitor, the distance depending on the relationship” (46). This formulation is a mélange of critical theories—​which,

132  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world as Davies puts it, “comes from the recognition that going all the way home with many of these theoretical positions—​ feminism, post-​ modernism, nationalism, Afrocentrism, Marxism, etc.—​means taking a route cluttered with skeletons, enslavements, new dominations, unresolved tensions and contradictions” (46). Again, Davies posits that the “visitor theory” is [A]‌kind of critical relationality in which various theoretical positions are interrogated for their specific applicability to black women’s experiences and textualities and negotiated within a particular inquiry with a necessary eclecticism. It is a particular way of reading or writing the black/​ female experience which plays on a variety of possible configurations. (46) The “visitor theory” offers an approach of interaction which is akin to the intention of “multiple articulations”. Lesley McCall, Nira Yuval-​Davis and other sociologically oriented scholars call this approach as, “intersectionality theory,” which, again, is powerfully deployed to read A Question of Power. The intersectional lens is helpful to explain the lives of women of colour, such as Bessie Head, and Elizabeth in the novel, and to critique the exclusion of their experiences, their stories in the world. It is a paradigm which gives women the right to articulate the sense of self. According to Bonnie Thornton Dill and Ruth Enid Zambrana, Contemporary women of color have continued this legacy by locating ideas that explore the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality at the center of their thinking about their own lives and those of women, men and families of color. (183) Additionally, “intersectional analysis provides an important lens for reframing and creating new knowledge because it asserts new ways of studying power and inequality and challenges conventional understandings of oppressed and excluded groups and individuals” (Collins 185). But, intersectionality as a theoretical methodology, to Nira, it, is a metaphorical term, aimed at evoking images of a road intersection, with an indeterminate or contested number of intersecting roads, depending on the various users of the terms and how many social divisions are considered in the particular intersectional analysis. (6) Despite her claim, Lutz. H contends that “intersectionality hardly appears in sociological stratification theories” (3). Conversely, in a 2008-​lecture, Kum-​ Kum Bhavnani uses the term “ ‘configuration’ as an alternative metaphor, wanting to emphasize the flowing interweaving threads which constitute

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  133 intersectionality,” which she finds, on the other hand, as “a much too rigid and fixed metaphor” (6). Also, Davina Cooper, instead, refers to the term as “social dynamics rather than intersectionality, because she wanted her terminology to trace the shifting ways [in which] relations of inequality became attached to various aspects of life” (12). But, in the overall theorisation of intersectionality, McCall argues that it is “the most important theoretical contribution that women’s studies, in conjunction with related fields, has made so far” (3). In a way, her view corroborates with that of Boyce Davies but, in a broader sense, the “visitor theory” is not applicable to black women’s experiences and textualities alone, but also to other forms of experience, including black-​ on-​black prejudice, exclusion, silence, sexuality, and cultural origin. In this case, a pluralist dimension reflects the fluid nature of exile and migrant subjectivities, as my reading applies “the visitor theory” to bring together different standpoints. The framework of intersectional theory recognises the fact that if knowledge continues to emanate from one single standpoint, its objectives can never be complete in a wide subject such as this. These theories, in turn, reflect the interdisciplinary and comparative nature of trauma literature, and respond powerfully to the recent calls for more relational approaches to exile texts. The objective of multiplicity of perspectives and approaches in the interdisciplinary model, as Adlai Murdoch and Anne Donadey argue, is “to subvert the hegemonic hold of theory” (1–​7) and also to consider what they call the “perspective intersections” (1–​7) between “different schools of thought” (1–​17). I regard the plurality of approaches represented here, not as a flaw, but instead, as a source of strength—​because it reflects the dynamic meanings of trauma—​as, for example, it escapes any fixed and narrow definitions of trauma and exile. The intersectionality theory and the “visitor theory” may be encountered “as a site of conflict, confusion, anger or be seen as a nexus of engagement, growth of specific identity and creativity” (Davies 57), their flexibilities allow new “ways in which we can negotiate a variety of identities, theoretical positions and textualities without falling prey to schisms and dualistic or binary thinking that dismisses one dynamic to privilege another” (Davies 57). Stuart Hall, nonetheless, “sees the purpose of [these theories] as helping us [to] ‘get a bit further down the road’ ” (44) —​as they help me to include other concepts such as Victor Tausk’s “influencing machine,” as “a persecutory machine of mystical nature consisting of boxes, cranks, levers, wheels, buttons, wires, batteries, and the like” (54)—​which helps us to construct the entire text as a network of complicated communication pathways. Therefore, considering the “intersectionality theory,” the “visitor theory,” and “influencing machine,” as my analytical frames of engagement, I argue that Head’s fiction is buoyed by the dialectics of exile and trauma, which bring about the inheritance of loss, the loss of identity, of culture, and of homeland. So, in this context, I explore the trauma tropes in A Question of Power, and, more particularly, signs and symptoms of trauma that may be rooted in

134  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world the basic alterations in psychological consciousness, which constitute both the self and the world of the protagonist called Elizabeth. I would utilise these theories in writing on trauma, exile, and other related themes in the novel. The novel, A Question of Power, tells the escape of a bi-​racial South African woman, Elizabeth, who flees from the racial hatred in South Africa to Botswana with her little son called Shorty. Her departure to Botswana is also depicted as a walk-​out on her cheating husband. She was originally reared by a white foster mother in South Africa. She had no knowledge of her real biological mother until the age of 13. Her foster mother later tells her that her real mother is white, and has been locked away in a psychiatric hospital as a result of her sexual relationship with a black man by whom she conceived Elizabeth. It is said that her mother suffers some mental illnesses and her teachers are warned to be on the look-​ out for her in terms of any potential signs of mental illness she might have inherited from her mother. The novel narrates the descent into Elizabeth’s hallucinations, delusions, and nightmares that eventually lead to her complete mental breakdown. The story is largely set in Motabeng, a village in Botswana, where most of the activities take place in the novel. While in Botswana, she becomes a teacher at a mission school, but she is quickly fired after being declared mentally unstable without any medical proof. At about this time, she starts to receive some visits from two spiritually symbolic figures, namely: Dan Molomo and Sello, who represent Satan/​God, and evil/​good. They begin to vie for the control of her mind—​a process that jolts her into absolute mental breakdown. In order to find a means of livelihood for herself and her only son, she becomes a gardener and works with an agricultural group that grows and sells vegetables in Motabeng. The novel focuses on Elizabeth as the most important character and explores the nature of her marginalisation based on nationality, race, colour, and psychological instability. Elizabeth’s world is always a midnight world in which, nothing is quite clear. She is so lonely, so withdrawn, and so wrapped up in her own isolation.

The narrative style/​point of view in the novel The sequence of events in A Question of Power, unlike When Rain Clouds Gather, becomes clear enough by the end of the novel. But the initial presentation of them is deliberately confusing. The first part of the novel often moves back and forth through the timeline of narration, as well as playing with the point of view. For example, at the beginning of the story, the first sentence proceeds from the gender-​neutral pronoun to the gender-​specific third-​ person, and it reads: “It seemed almost incidental that he was African” (11). Throughout the first paragraph, the narration continues with this un-​named third-​person character, a technique, which creates a sense of suspense as the reader struggles to identify his name at a quick glance. But in the second

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  135 paragraph, the reader is told that “The man’s name was Sello” (11) and the point of view quickly shifts from Sello to focus on “A woman in the village of Motabeng” (11), who parallels Sello’s inner development as “they were twin souls with closely-​linked destinies and the same capacity to submerge other preoccupations in a pursuit after the things of the soul” (11–​12). Again, the reader is confronted with another challenge, as the woman’s name is not given. While the reader is yet to sort out this challenge, the focus is again shifted from the village woman to another male character, but this time his name is instantly mentioned as “Dan Molomo” (12). It is after this encounter with Dan Molomo that the narrator tells the reader in the second paragraph that “The woman’s name was Elizabeth” (12). We might have expected the novel to begin with Elizabeth since she is largely the focus of the story but, beginning from the first page, A Question of Power seems to be a narrative of many twists and turns, exemplified by its initial rapid shift in point of view from Sello to Elizabeth, as well as its use of fragmented voices throughout. But, after the first page (where the point of view appears to be Sello’s), the novel stays almost entirely within Elizabeth’s perspective hence conforming to a limited third-​person point of view, which confines itself to the consciousness of a single character. However, A Question of Power presents the literary critic with a lot of complex issues such as the initial shift in point of view, the relation between the narrative voice and the main character’s own thoughts, and the lack of a clear framework to analyse the complexities involved. These complexities, in Brian Richardson’s view, create “a certain amount of variation within this representational view” (75) such as an uncertainty about the objective status of Sello and Dan as characters existing outside Elizabeth’s consciousness. Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear that the narrator uses the limited third-​person point of view nearly all the time in the novel. From the authorial vantage point, the narrator is not the dominating consciousness, but rather a presenter or an interpreter who puts together a piece of artistic narrative for the reader to read. By telling the story from the limited third-​person perspective, the narrator confines herself to what is “experienced, thought and felt” (144) by Elizabeth alone. By contrast, both When Rain Clouds Gather and Maru employ an omniscient third-​person style of narration, which allows the reader to enter the minds of several different characters. This is the style in which A Question of Power seems to begin: “He [Sello] said to himself that evening: ‘I might have died before I found this freedom of heart’ ” (11). This statement is rendered in the form of a stream of consciousness during which the narration changes from the third-​person point of view to a direct first-​person viewpoint, but (confusingly) the story then moves away from Sello’s viewpoint completely and never returns to it. In retrospect, we wonder if his supposed thoughts were merely a projection of Elizabeth’s own thoughts, since the narrative subsequently confines itself almost entirely to her viewpoint.

136  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world The limited third-​person point of view, which is my main frame of reference, involves a highly selective form of omniscience through which the narrator grants himself or herself complete access to the feelings, thoughts, and motives of a particular character. This may involve an unobtrusive “secret sharing” which James Wood calls “free indirect style or close third person, or going into character. Free indirect style is at its most powerful when hardly visible or audible” (7–​8). For example, the narrator goes into the mind of her protagonist and exposes her internal world: “She had been so intensely drawn inwards over a certain period that her mind dwelt entirely at the intangible level of shifting images and strange arguments” (38). The narrator filters almost everything the reader needs to know about Elizabeth’s world through her inner mind, as she withdraws from the external world to her enclave of loneliness in the larger story. Again, in a closer observation, Linda Susan Beard describes it as “a deliberate, overarching, and unobtrusive consciousness” (583); exemplified in the passage below: She lay quietly staring in the dark. Why was everything so pointed, so absorbingly profound? The wild-​eyed Medusa was expressing the surface reality of African society. It was shut in and exclusive. It had a strong theme of power-​worship running through it, and power people needed small, narrow, shut-​in worlds. They never felt secure in the big, wide flexible universe where there were too many cross-​currents of opposing thought. (Head 38) Here, we find that the similarities between the psychological condition and the societal situation are quite numerous, producing generalisations, which are perhaps as much, or more, in the narrator’s voice as in Elizabeth’s own. Taking the question of “Why is everything so pointed, so absorbingly profound?” This is exemplified when the narrator tells the reader about an encounter between Elizabeth and Camilla the racist, stating that: Elizabeth looked at her with anguish. Human relationships with her were starkly black and white. She hated in a final way and loved in a final way. She had spent all her life running away from the type of person like Camilla. They drew all the attention of life to themselves, greedily, hungrily. (77) However, the irony of Elizabeth’s life is that “Her inner life was very dependent on the rightness of the inner life of another, and she had been wilting under the strain of Camilla’s company” (77). Despite her wilting under the burden of some human beings around her, her dependence on them becomes her indebtedness to those same individuals and the society at large. The significance of her indebtedness can be framed within the context

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  137 of a Bakhtinian tripartite notion of selfhood, as clearly explained by J.T. Nealon in the passage below: Among the three selves that comprise subjectivity, only the I-​for-​others and the other-​for-​me can enjoy any kind of stability, and therefore, it is only within the categories of outsidedness that the I-​for-​myself has any hope of realizing or stabilizing itself. The I-​for-​myself is in other words, inexorably dependent on the others. (137) This, in a way, spells out the interconnectedness in human relations. Elizabeth never has a complete family, and her childhood is completely taken away from her. The absence of her parents contributes to the tragic shape of her life. Elizabeth, like Head claims in A Woman Alone, “I have always been just me, with no reference to anything beyond myself ” ( 3). It is part of the realistic source of her misfortune. Also, the role of Motabeng is absolutely dominant and decisive such that her personal fate is in the hands of the community, which makes her a victim of social, racial, gender, and cultural discriminations. She is seen as a tragic figure, who suffers from existential overwhelming. A fated exile she remains throughout the story. In psycho-​narration therefore, the narrator has a greater awareness and, as Eleni Coundouriotis puts it, “a fuller articulation of the meaning of the character’s experience, and in this way, assumes control over the character” (19–​20). This is similar to Gerald Prince’s differentiation between an “unsituated” and an “internal” point of view (51–​52). This categorisation, I suppose, is based on the difference between the mood and the voice of narration. While the mood here refers to the question of who is the character, whose psychology orients the narrative outlook, the voice asks the question of who is the narrator? The purpose of this in A Question of Power is to distinguish between the depersonalised narrator’s voice and the protagonist’s mood. The disturbing issue in a novel such as A Question of Power is that it moves between what Gérard Genette calls a “nonfocalized and an internally focalized narrative” (20). The narrator demonstrates how the novel moves outside Elizabeth’s internally focalised narrative as in: “Her exterior life had a painful way of coinciding with her inner torment. Three weeks later, as she entered the school grounds, she lost her job” (66). Here, the nonfocalised point of view portrays Elizabeth’s experience in the narrator’s own language but rendered in the limited third-​person point of view. However, in the internally focalised point of view, the reader feels the voice of Elizabeth herself as in: “I must get out of here. I am panic-​stricken” (69). These two extracts distinguish between what the narrator has to say about the protagonist in her own language and what the protagonist feels and thinks about herself in her own voice. The novel, no doubt, is loaded with psychological issues; the narrator begins by writing these issues in a non-​chronological order and in a non-​sequence of

138  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world time. E.O. Apronti, in an article entitled, “The Tyranny of Time: The Theme of Time in the Artistic Consciousness of South African Writers,” notes that, “Time manifests itself as a malignant and implacable force, an agent of tyranny, the unconcerned and detached arbiter of the fate of man in racist South Africa” (1976: 107). But in a much more positive sense of a new direction of time, the narrator has this to say: At first nothing of her own [that is Elizabeth] would come to her. A D.H. Lawrence poem—​Song Of A Man Who Has Come Through—​kept on welling up in her mind: ‘Not I, but the wind that blows through me! A fine wind is blowing the new direction of time. If only I let it bear me … If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed by the fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world … Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul …’ (Head 204) However, the double nature or rather the divided self of Elizabeth, and the fact that she is tormented by nightmarish experiences, and is shown in the middle of her mental crisis, instantly throws the reader into a realm where time is distorted. Looking at the fragmented style of the novel, one can take it as a metaphor to represent the image of a shattered world; the very shut-​in world that violates the personhood of Elizabeth. The distortion of the narrative sequence is much like Harold Pinter’s metaphor of a broken mirror in which, “The broken mirror is scattered around and every piece of it has blood stains on it; every piece has another reality, another atrocity from the past” (10). At the beginning of the story, the reader immediately learns about the upcoming events such as Elizabeth’s mental breakdown in which two men are involved: Sello, her spiritual guide and Dan Molomo, a hellish and frightening figure represented by a “powerful penis” (13). So, concerning the distortion of linear progression of the storyline, Margaret E. Tucker contends that, “The narrative structure of this text, the movement between Elizabeth as inscriber and Elizabeth as that which is inscribed, continually subverts linear notion of a single beginning and ending” (172–​173). The novel, she goes further, “ends with the beginning, begins with the ending, and the past is shown to be never ending” (173). Even when the nightmare of her mental illness is over, she is still left with the question of identity as in, “But who was she?” (14). The narrator describes Elizabeth towards the end of the novel as not “thinking coherently at all, or sorting anything out. She was just the receiver of horror, her life was suspended” (A Question of Power, 131). Here, to become a latent receiver of horror and torture of any form is to become the undesirable and, in much stronger language, Elizabeth puts the question thus, “Why must I be the audience of shit?” (175). In fact, the discovery that Elizabeth is an orphan, that the woman she believes to be her mother is not, and that her mother is white but committed to a mental hospital for having a child by a black man can be summarised as “an imposition

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  139 on her life” (16). Elizabeth as an exile is apparently defined in terms of what she lacks. She plays a detached, isolated role both as narrator and as actor in her own past. The events of her South African past appear in an unmediated, unexamined way—​this happens, then this—​like the unfolding of a fairy tale, lacking only a happy ending. (Tucker 173) The lack of clarity creates some sort of ambiguity in her alienation. The narrator captures it thus: She lived such an absent-​minded life and had such blind spots in matters of public or social awareness that it took time to piece the fragments of information together, in some coherent form. Definitely, as far as Botswana society was concerned, she was an out-​and-​out outsider and would never be in on their things. (25–​26) She is so traumatised in her adopted country that she has a problem reading the story both of her life and the life of the society logically. It becomes clear to her later that “This story kept on coming out in bits” (27). Again, Elizabeth’s life is traumatised by this imaginary life she lives in the shadow of her memory, in her mind, in her dreams, which are filled with nightmares about Dan and Sello. When the doctor asks her during her second hospitalisation whether she can give him some idea of what is troubling her, Elizabeth is unable to say more than the single word “Sello”; “she could not go beyond that. Logically, a story had a beginning. She was being killed by Dan, but Sello had started it” (180). It is the illogicality of her response that makes the doctor say “I am not a psychiatrist. I can’t treat mental breakdowns. I’ll have to transfer you to a mental hospital” (180). The reader is compelled to take the role of a witness to her traumatic conditions. The blend of these stylistic strategies reflects the chaotic conditions of a traumatised woman who cannot express herself with coherence. However, through her hallucination, and in the fantasy world created by her disturbed mind, she is obsessed with questions about the soul and the nature of good and evil. If she wants to understand the story and the people, then she must learn how to put together the fragmented pieces of the story of Motabeng much like she puts together the images of power exercised by Sello and Dan. “The fragmented pieces of the story of Motabeng” frame the overall context of the narrative style in relation to trauma. Motabeng represents a society in which nothing coheres in a logical pattern but a perfect representation of a dark world of evil and oppression. Here, one can make a useful comparison between Head’s A Question of Power and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. When, for example, Septimus’s

140  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world illness is diagnosed by Sir William Bradshaw, the famous psychiatrist, Septimus “attaches meanings to words of a symbolical kind” (96). We may say this is a normal exercise. That is, all meanings are symbolic. Nevertheless, Coundouriotis argues that, There are consequences to defying the conventional usage of language. If Septimus is taking control of language in his own way (which from a normative perspective is interpreted as a loss of control), he reveals the precariousness of the controlling view of reality. (20) Therefore, Caroline Rooney calls this in connection with A Question of Power, as the “language of power” (109). The language of power in A Question of Power connotes abuse and authority as used by Dan to command his nice-​time girls: “Apparently he [Dan] liked the girls to keep their clothes on until he told them to take them off ” (129). Similarly, Elizabeth is used by Dan and Sello for their selfish ends and Rooney sees her “to be the subjected or oppressed site where meanings are constructed, she is also the subjectless or effaced host of a parasitic deconstruction” (111). We see Dan speak power and to his nice-​time girls in a way that depicts patriarchal authority in Africa. Power is deployed as an instrument of oppression to keep women in subjection. The core of Rooney’s argument is that the “language of power is presented as the power of language to inflict concrete harm” (109). So, in Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf creates a division between Septimus and his society; that is, Septimus lives in a dangerous environment against which he struggles without success. Nevertheless, A Question of Power, on the other hand, presents the picture of the psychological, the social, the internal, and the external environment as a single whole. Coundouriotis agrees that “Elizabeth’s internal world is not a world apart, but is absolutely permeable by the ‘surface reality of African society’ ” (20). By this, Coundouriotis means Elizabeth’s personal reality is reflective of the general reality of women’s subjugation created by patriarchal institutions in Africa. In most cases, women are denied either the voice or the power to shift social and cultural norms concerning the male discrimination against them. The idea of who decides what in Africa is framed through the lens of patriarchal authority, as seen in terms of uneven power relations in decision-​making. However, because the novel is inaccessible to the reader or rather poses some difficulties to the reader’s understanding, I wish to make an analogy of the novel as a classic example of what Victor Tausk in 1919-​Vienna described as the “influencing machine, a persecutory machine of mystical nature consisting of boxes, cranks, levers, wheels, buttons, wires, batteries, and the like” (54). In the “influencing machine,” Tausk was giving the psychoanalytic explanation of what had been defined as a kind of “paranoid delusion” or what contemporary psychiatrists call “passivity delusions” or “passivity

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  141 phenomena”. Chris D. Frith, Sarah-​Jayne Blakemore, and Daniel M. Wolpert define the whole concept as “an example of a passivity experience in which a patient feels that his own actions are being created, not by himself, but by some outside forces” (358). We see a similar example in A Question of Power, where Elizabeth cries out: “My internal life is awry, and when I’m assaulted there I’m broken. I’ve withstood a lot of external hardships, but I’m incapable of withstanding internal stress, not the abnormal kind that’s afflicting me” (69). This happens when she is faced with two conflicting feelings of psychological suppression. Chris D. Frith, Sarah-​Jayne Blakemore, and Daniel M. Wolpert however contend that the “actions in question can be very trivial, such as picking up of a cup or combing one’s hair” (358). They go on to include other examples of passivity such as, “thoughts or emotions being made for the patient by outside forces” (358). These delusions often occur in patients who are diagnosed with schizophrenia. Describing the schizophrenic influencing machine as a “mystical nature” in Tausk’s term, the patients are only able to give unclear hints of the construction of the influencing machine. Therefore, the possible link between Tausk’s “On the Origin of Influencing Machine” in schizophrenia and Head’s A Question of Power is that, while Tausk uses it to describe Natalija, the young woman with schizophrenia in relation to the metaphor of “the machine,” Head uses her novel to describe Elizabeth’s mental health condition. Natalija, like Elizabeth, was someone who felt a subtle sense of alienation from her own body, saliva and name, and who eventually came to experience her own actions, sensations and perceptions as but mechanical reflections—​epiphenomena—​of what she imagined was actually happening to a distant machine that resembled her body. This distant yet intimate influencing machine had certain characteristics (e.g. the absence of a visible head, velvet on the torso) that suggest that it should be seen as a projected image not of the literal, physical body, but of Natalija’s lived body—​a lived body that had been turned inside out, reified and extruded in a process whereby normally tacit phenomena come into explicit focal awareness. (Sass 227) Beyond the comparison of the characters of Natalija and Elizabeth, to understand A Question of Power, as a novel just like Tausk’s “persecutory machine” or “influencing machine,” the reader has to construct the entire text as a network of complicated communication pathways in the same way that, “Her [Elizabeth’s] whole form seemed to turn into channels through which raced powerful currents of energy” (36). Similarly, the doctor keeps on switching off and adjusting the currents in an attempt to understand what is wrong with Elizabeth’s body. This metaphor, therefore, expresses the fact that the text is a complicated network of communication systems much like twisted electrical wires. The

142  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world author admitted this when she wrote in a letter to Sarvan Charles that, “It might have a lower key, something that can be explained in terms of African society in general … It runs on this wild style at high key level” (Bessie Head, Two Letters 15). In a metaphorical sense, the chaotic nature of the novel indicates the general political and economic conditions of Africa in such a manner that political independence still does not advance the well-​being of the people. The African society is mirrored as a strife-​torn piece of earth, which is seemingly elusive to understand.

Autobiographical aspects: Bessie Head and Elizabeth the protagonist This section deals with the autobiographical elements of the novel to establish the connection between the author and her major character. The idea is to analyse the writing back of the self (the author) into the story through the main protagonist called Elizabeth. The author has admitted that “the character of Elizabeth in the work is herself and that the text is a record of a private and philosophical journey” (58). In a sense, the novel sets up a conversation between the narrator, and the subjective self of her protagonist, Elizabeth. Sophia Ogwude recognises A Question of Power, as “an imaginative autobiography” (37); and, in the words of Paul John Eakin, it is called a “fiction of the self ” (26). It is obvious that there is very little difference between the author and the protagonist as we shall see later. But there is a significance beyond the purely personal, as the South African autobiographical writer, Arlene A. Elder, claims that: African women’s written autobiographies appear from all parts of the continent and, like Kenyan Charity Waciuma’s Daughter of Mumbi (1969) and South African Ellen Kuzwayo’s Call Me Woman (1985), demonstrate the dual purpose of telling their personal life stories while often universalizing that individual history to reflect a gendered national experience. (1) Elder’s attempt to chronicle the writings of African women writers fails to include earlier African women novelists such as Flora Nwapa and Grace A. Ogot, amongst others. However, what is important in this research is the dual purpose of autobiography, telling the personal life story of the writer, which helps the reader frame the cultural context that connects the author with her characters, particularly Elizabeth in A Question of Power. The author writes herself back into the narrative through Elizabeth’s life story. Bessie Head claims in an interview entitled: “A Search for Historical Continuity and Roots,” that, “Elizabeth and I are one” (73). One can find the direct or indirect link between Elizabeth and the author in their shared backgrounds. They both share these qualities: mix-​raced or coloured South Africans, teachers, refugees, orphans, raised by white missionaries, each has one child, and both exile(d) themselves from South Africa to

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  143 Botswana, never to return. Also, the identity of their real mothers is only revealed to both of them at the age of 13. Again, they are both on the lookout for any symptoms of genetic madness. These qualities compel the reader to believe that both the author and Elizabeth are truly one. In addition, the author has tried to explain that autobiographical part of her novel in a way, which underscores my claim. When Head was interviewed by Linda Susan Beard, she had this to say: There’s no way in which I can deny that was a completely autobiographical novel taking a slice of my life, my experience, and transcribing it verbatim into novel form. It was maybe the way in which I interpreted experience. It was an experience I went through … (“Interview” 45) By her own claim, A Question of Power, is a transposition of her life experience from one form of telling to the other, particularly from her personal discourse of experience to the discourse of autobiographical fiction. Coundouriotis frames it in such a way that “the central fiction in A Question of Power is that the novel constitutes the analysis of an experience” (28). Estelle Jelinek, in The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography from Antiquity to the Present, argues that fictional form does not diminish the autobiographical intention: “I consider an autobiography as that work each autobiographer writes with the intention of its being her life story—​whatever form, content, or style it takes” (xii). Again, Coreen sees autobiography as “a defensive response to victimization, presenting an opportunity for the writer to …” (37) “authenticate [her] self-​image” (Jelinek 15). Given these definitions by Jelinek and Coreen, the reader can reasonably take Elizabeth’s traumatic story to be the author’s own story, despite its fictional framing. However, Georges Gusdorf, building his theory of autobiography, explicitly links the genre of autobiography to imperialist ideology, arguing that: autobiography is not to be found outside of our cultural area; one would say that it expresses a concern peculiar to Western man, a concern that has been of good use in his systematic conquest of the universe and that he has communicated to men of other cultures; but those men will thereby have been annexed by a sort of intellectual colonizing to a mentality that was not their own. (28) Gusdorf wants us to see autobiographical writing as solely an imperialist project and he therefore ties his theory to the “Copernican revolution” through which “man comes to know himself as a responsible agent. He alone adds consciousness to nature, leaving there the sign of his presence” (31); and pretty much, as in my view, the author leaves the sign of her presence in A Question of Power through Elizabeth proving herself as a responsible agent.

144  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world In addition, Gusdorf appropriates the Lacanian perspective of self-​image in autobiography by showing the “encounter of a man with his image” (46). He argues that “the image is another myself, a double of my being but more fragile and vulnerable, invested with a sacred character that makes it at once fascinating and frightening” (31). In A Question of Power, this point is important precisely because it shows the basis of Elizabeth’s subjectivity, and as an encounter with the “double,” Elizabeth’s self has to be divided into two forms: the core self and the subjective self, as seen in such well-​known stories as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. On the contrary, Shari Benstock argues that the “Lacanian mirror should be understood as a metaphor for a unified self essentially imposed from the outside” (20). However, the Lacanian mirror may serve up a false image of a person’s unified self hence the metaphor for the vision of the unification of the subject and object, in my opinion, may be in discord. She struggles towards the unification of identity or at least to minimise the gulf between the outside-​and-​inside divisions (or split) of the self. Her divided self may be referred to what the psychologist terms “schizoid.” This term, according to Robert David Laing, refers [T]‌o an individual, the totality of whose experience is split into two main ways: in the first place, there is a rent in his relation with his world and, in the second, there is a disruption of his relation with himself. (17) Elizabeth suffers from the split self. She is unable to experience herself together with other people and to even be at home in her internal and external worlds. Take, for example, at the end of the text (A Question of Power), Elizabeth begins to make “fragmentary notes such as a shipwrecked sailor might make on a warm sandy beach as he stared back at the stormy sea that had nearly taken his life” (204). These notes can in turn be interpreted as Tucker puts it: 1) “By reading the novel as Elizabeth’s autobiography, we can see two Elizabeths—​one safe on the beach and the other still on the stormy sea” (171). 2) “[While] the first is the namer, the second the watcher” (171). Pinter frames it better by saying: When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-​ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror—​for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us. (12) Therefore, the “surfacing involved in Elizabeth’s journey from fragmentation to wholeness is a complex one” (Tucker 171). But in the case of the

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  145 author and Elizabeth, the autobiographical self can be understood as the automatic frame-​up of the subjective “I” and the invented “Me,” emerging and unfolding as the same person in the story. It is a process, which Dan P. McAdams describes as follows: The psychological self … as a social actor, construed in terms of performance traits and social roles. By the end of childhood, the self has become a motivated agent, too, as personal goals, motives, values, and envisioned projects for the future become central features of how the I conceives of the Me. The third layer of selfhood begins to form in the adolescent and emerging adulthood years, when the self as autobiographical author aims to construct a story of the Me, to provide adult life with broad purpose and a dynamic sense of temporal continuity. (272) McAdams’ actor-​agent-​author framework sheds more light on the study of self-​continuity, and the relationship between the self and the culture of autobiographical writing. It mirrors the self-​reflexive character of an autobiographical undertaking, which lays out the pattern for a specific way of inventing the self. But, framing the unification of self in the context of the Lacanian mirror metaphor, and in the reading of the novel, Patrick Colm Hogan avers that “the novel illustrates a disturbed process of self-​constitution” (204). By self-​constitution, Hogan means how Elizabeth sets out to determine her own action in a difficult moment as in: “Women were always complaining of being molested by her husband … After a year she picked up the small boy and walked out of the house, never to return” (19). By this singular act, Elizabeth determines herself to be the cause of a certain end in her marriage. In reality, this is similar to the way the author began to feel sad, angry, and alienated from her husband Harold Head and her country, and later sued for a divorce that ended their marriage in 1964. To return to the Lacanian mirror metaphor, Coundouriotis brings out the anxiety involved in the divided self. Coundouriotis argues that The splitting of the self into the two entities of narrator and Elizabeth is a source of anxiety because it decenters meaning, placing it somewhere in between, in the slippery divide that separates the consciousness of the narrator from that of the protagonist. (28) Clearly, the limited third-​person narrative technique is largely used by Head to focus on what is experienced, felt, and thought only by Elizabeth. This way, she separates her consciousness from that of her protagonist. The splitting of self between the narrator and Elizabeth brings the reader back to Edward W. Said’s analysis “of the classical realist novel in Beginnings” in which, Said contends that

146  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world the gesture to invent a story always stems from this split, and that in turn the invention is constrained (molested, to use his term) by the discovery in the unfolding of the plot of the protagonist’s loss of authority and subsequent disillusionment. (Said 28–​29) To the autobiographical relationship between Head and Elizabeth can be added an interesting literary link (also involving mixed-​race identity) between Elizabeth and Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Clara Thomas describes how both protagonists are culturally determined: psycho-​biography is equally applicable to A Question of Power. Antoinette and Elizabeth are simultaneously conditioned and victimized by their social and familial environments. Torn between two cultures, they exist metaphorically as women of the penumbra for whom marginalization is prescribed. As a white creole woman in the West Indies, Antoinette is regarded as outcast, a sort of freak rejected by both Europe and England whose culture and home have been hers for two generations or more. (350) Similarly, Elizabeth, as a mixed race or a mulatto woman, is racially regarded as a misfit both in her native South Africa and in her newly adopted home of Motabeng in Botswana. Carol Margaret Davison further strengthens this line of argument by saying that, To add fuel to the fires of ostracism, both protagonists are plagued by what others consider to be a genetic predisposition to madness. The faulty gene is, significantly, traced back to their mothers in both cases. In South Africa’s colour-​coded society, Elizabeth’s white mother defied the fundamental [law] of the Apartheid system (the Immorality Act of 1957) by having a child by the stable boy, who was a native. As a result, she was promptly locked away in the mental hospital. (20–​21) In the same way, as strangers in Jamaica, Antoinette and her Martinique mother, Annette, are singled out as scapegoats in their society. Mocked by her white and black neighbours, Antoinette’s mother finally yields to mental breakdown, following the deliberate burning of her house, as well as the death of her favourite child, Pierre. Consequently, Antoinette, like Elizabeth, inherits the shame of insanity—​a story that is more foregrounded in the second part of Wide Sargasso Sea, especially when Daniel Cosway warns Antoinette’s English husband, Edward Rochester, to be careful that: “There is madness in that family” (Rhys 180); “for the mentally unstable Rochester, Antoinette’s mother’s madness substantiates the case” (Davison 21). Elizabeth and Antoinette, marked and rejected by their societies, embark on a journey of

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  147 self-​definition and their movement is orchestrated by what Ezekiel Mphahlele terms “the tyranny of place” (70). Mphahlele goes further to say that, “They are not unlike Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost who cannot escape hell because he is hell personified” (70). Applying his point to Antoinette’s and Elizabeth’s circumstances, they cannot escape insanity because they have been socially and racially classed as insanity embodied. Embittered by the doings of their societies, Antoinette has this maxim that everything is “better than people” (24), which sounds pretty much like Elizabeth’s statement to her doctor that she does not like people.

Racism in the novel The concept of racism is fundamentally important in A Question of Power, especially as it portrays Elizabeth as an object of racial abuse. This sub-​section begins with the definitive idea of what racism means. For instance, Omi and Winant define “racism” as “a concept which symbolizes social conflicts and interests” (55). Whereas, Harvey Young describes it as an “invention, a convenience that encapsulates perceived (or imagined) difference” (6), and that “it should be dismissed as either a mere fiction or an anachronism”. But again, he argues that, “Its broad acceptance, seeming materiality, and staying power are anchored in its ability to provide a narrative that unifies a collective social history with the variances in individuated social perspectives” (6). Racism is about making the race of other people a factor in attitudes, actions, and relations to others. It implies a belief in the superiority of one’s own race to the other. According to Lance Selfa, “IT IS commonly assumed that racism is as old as human society itself. As long as human beings have been around, the argument goes, they have always hated or feared people of a different nation or skin color” (1). To justify this, he says, “Racism is a particular form of oppression. It stems from discrimination against a group of people based on the idea that some inherited characteristics, such as skin color, make them inferior to their oppressors” (1). Joshua Glasgow observes that “Racism can be subtle or overt, it can be intentional or unintentional, and it can be conscious or unconscious. Actions can be racist. And, of course, people can be racist” (64). Racism is in the human heart, action, behaviour, and attitude. It can be understood in terms of a disrespect for, an abuse, a denigration, and a violation of other human beings by the race that perceives itself superior. Harry M. Bracken contends that “racism always ultimately traces to, in one way or another, a certain kind of belief, ideology, theory, doctrine, or judgement, such as the belief that a race is inferior or worthy of exclusion from full political participation” (241). This belief has risen as part of the dominant ideology in the context of colonial society with a pronounced colour/​racial prejudice. Racism, of course, helps open up more complicated questions than it helps answer them. Complicated in the sense that blacks, too, can be discriminatory, either towards others or towards themselves. The burden of racial politics, in

148  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world this context, is clearly captured in the form of black-​on-​black experience, as well as the white-​on-​black form. To drive home this point, attention can be drawn to J.L.A. Garcia, who says “your hatred is by itself racist” (66). This artificial invention called racism is woven into the fabric of human society as a doctrine of supremacy of one race over the other. As a supposedly biological construct, the idea of race plays a critical role in the construction of ethnic character. The narrative acknowledges this fact. Therefore, as portrayed in A Question of Power, the mood of racial prejudice is set right from the early pages in which Elizabeth demands to know about her real biological mother’s background, as well as her identity from her foster-​mother. She says, “Tell me about my mother” (17). Her foster-​mother, being in a pensive mood or, rather, being touched by the circumstances that surround her birth, looks at Elizabeth for a while and begins to cry. This emotional outburst is sparked off by the fact that it is a tragic story. She begins to narrate the circumstances surrounding her birth when she is sent to a Boer family because of her mixed origin. In her words, it reads: “They sent you to a Boer family. A week later you were returned. The women on the Committee said: What can we do with this child? Its mother is white” (17). The last sentence in the quotation offers a clear insight into the discrimination against Elizabeth etched in the not-​white-​enough/​not-​black-​ enough logic. The reason is that her mother is white and her father is black. The black/​white binary opposition is a big racial factor, strong enough to discriminate against one in the fictional world of the novel and in the actual context of Southern Africa. However, the foster-​mother goes on to add more details to her tragic account: It’s such a sad story, she said. It caused so much trouble and the family was frightened by the behaviour of the grand-​ mother. My husband worked on the child welfare Committee, and your case came up again and again. First they received you from the mental hospital and sent you to a nursing-​home. A day later you were returned because you did not look white. (17) Therefore, Elizabeth is simply rejected by the nursing-​home because she does not look white. What causes so much trouble that the child is returned is the fact that she has a mixed-​race parentage. This violation of human relations because of skin colour is too terrible to utter aloud hence remains a secret to the child for many years. The child in this circumstance lacks any sense of safety to survive in this inhospitable world. But somehow, tough luck is connected to her rescue. That is, having been rejected by the nursing-​ home, as fate would have it, her case comes up again and again on the Child Welfare Committee. After several mentions of her case on this Committee, she is accepted into the home of her foster-​mother. Her foster-​mother puts it thus:

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  149 My husband came home that night and asked me to take you. I agreed. The next thing was, the family came down in a car from Johannesburg on their way to the racecourse in Durban … When you were six years old we heard that your mother had suddenly killed herself in the mental home. (17) She is eventually lucky to have been accepted at the age of six by her foster-​ mother. But the taking of her mother’s own life stems from the main reason that she is kept in a mental hospital, her love affair with a black man that produces Elizabeth. The union of black and white was outlawed in South Africa at the time. Therefore, according to the logic of the apartheid system, Elizabeth’s mother must be mentally insane to have had any such dealing with a black native of South Africa in the first place. Nevertheless, The last thing Elizabeth did in that small town where she had been born was to walk to the mental hospital and stare at it. There was a very high wall surrounding the building, and the atmosphere was so silent there hardly seemed to be people alive behind it. People had named the building the Red House because its roof was painted red. (17–​18) Her walk to the mental hospital marks a sad remembrance of where her mother takes her own life as a result of the frustration that stems from the segregation against her. On the other hand, it is a kind of homage Elizabeth pays to the small town of her childhood. Being a memorial, it reads: “As a small child she had often walked past it. It was on the same road that led to the bird sanctuary, the favourite playground of all the children of the town” (18). Still, as in connection with memory and fate, she remembers saying: Now we are passing the Red House, never dreaming that her own life was so closely linked to its life. She seemed to have that element of the sudden, the startling, and the explosive detail in her destiny and, for a long time, an abounding sense of humour to go with it. (18) She brings up her childhood memory against the bitter remembrance of where her mother dies. This time, she does it with a sense of humour. Even though she has a childhood full of play and humour, the town is still dubbed as part of “a country where people were not people at all” (18). This account of her background partly explains the complexity of her life issues. But, the contention here is that the child neither looks white nor black. She is mixed race (coloured). Through the story, the reader is forced to learn of life in apartheid South Africa—​as hatred for blacks and people of lower class. “She had also lived the back-​breaking life of all black people in South Africa” (19). The irony of the discrimination against the blacks in South Africa, in

150  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world the words of the novel is, “There they said the black man was naturally dull, stupid, inferior, but they made sure to deprive him of the type of education which developed personality, intellect, skill” (57). Even in Elizabeth’s mental journeys, she is told by Sello that though she has suffered a lot in South Africa, she is not to hate the whites because most of the Gods are born among them (29). Similarly, Elizabeth remembers what the German woman whom she has lived with has told her about an incident that takes place in her office involving a young black steward: There’s a small swing door at the entrance to our office, and he always comes in that way with the tea-​ tray. Well, this morning one of the Afrikaners in the office walked up to him and kicked the tray right out of his hands. The cups and sugar and milk went flying around the place. The Afrikaner turned round to his fellows and burst out laughing. They joined in. I thought the man would be angry. Oh no, he cringed and laughed too. He said: Haha, baas. (46–​47) The above passage demonstrates how demoralised the black man has become by the propaganda and he begins to believe that he is inferior. This is the kind of perception that whites like Camilla, the Danish assistant gardening instructress, also had about blacks. Unlike Gunner, who is friendly, she has a way of moving boisterously into the garden and ordering the black boys on training all over the place. In her presence “The students had simply become humiliated little boys shoved around by a hysterical white woman who never saw black people as people but as objects of permanent idiocy” (76). The narrator is always concerned about the issue of racial superiority. Sometimes she presents it as a white-​versus-​black-​or-​coloured matter and, in other instances, it is presented as a black-​versus-​black-​or-​coloured matter. It is quite a disturbing issue all through her narrative. Elizabeth is treated to a fine description of Camilla when, in her conversation with Birgette, the latter speaks of Camilla as, stone-​deaf and blind. She takes the inferiority of the black man so much for granted that she thinks nothing of telling us straight to our faces we are stupid and don’t know anything. There are so many like her. They don’t see the shades and shadows of life on black people’s faces. She’s never stopped a minute, paused, stood back and watched the serious, concentrated expressions of the farm students. There’s a dismal life behind them of starvation and years and years of drought when there was no food, no hope, no anything. (82) The narrator, through her character of Elizabeth, raises a thought-​provoking question “… all living people are, at heart, amateur scientists and inventors.

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  151 Why must racialists make an exception of the black man?” (83). All of these demonstrate the workings of racial politics. The narrator advances an argument that black people have just as many amateur scientists and inventors among them as other people, but racialists do not recognise this. The black man’s mental capacity is rated as low compared to other races. The nature of good and evil in A Question of Power is situated within a metaphysical world influenced by a blend of Hindu philosophy and Christianity. Good and evil are qualities attributed to objects, actions, and ideas. Generally, what is good is thought to be beneficial and what is evil is thought to be harmful. But, defining good and evil remains a central question that Head has explored in her novel both at the philosophical and religious levels. Hindu philosophy looks at good actions as those that lead to a higher state of being, while Christianity sees good and evil as things determined by God and revealed to humanity. At her deeper level of spiritual gravity, Elizabeth realises that evil has always been there in the world and there seems to be nothing to be done to prevent it. In her words: It did not matter who had planned evil. It has always been there, the plan. But deeper still was human passion. There seemed to be no safeguard against it, no nobility powerful enough to counter it, no depth to which the soul could not sink. (34) This provides the answer to why people who occupy the noblest of offices often sink deeper into evil. The novel provides the biblical analogy of David, the King of Israel, who occupies a position of nobility, and yet, sinks so much in evil by having Uriah set up in the forefront of battle to have him killed so that he can take the latter’s wife. Elizabeth [Accepts] Sello’s half-​concealed revelation of the descent from Buddha to David of the Jews and balanced it against what was recorded of that tumultuous, turbulent life—​the innate nobility, the deep God-​contact, the peculiar Al Capone-​like murder of Uriah and the explosive exposure, an exposure as ruthless and vehement as the murder; the long and tortuous suffering as atonement for the murder, the continuous interjections and advice of the prophets: God said it had to be this way. (65) Here, God warns against murder as a terrible crime, creating a paradox, which leads to a better recognition of what is morally wrong. This is what God says to Sello through a half-​concealed revelation as he mediates between man and the Divine as a prophet. This face-​to-​face presentation of evil by Sello signals to the subconscious of Elizabeth in a way in that she finds her mind turning to with a tinge of relief. In her confusion, she finds solace in human religion and

152  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world the divine injunction of God where men and women are capable of earning courteous respect provided they are good and noble. She sees men and women as being equal. But this equality only exists in the imagination of her mind. The illusion conforms to the utopian vision of a free world in which men and women can be accorded the same respect. Similarly, [Just] as Christianity and God were courteous formalities people had learned to enjoy with mental and emotional detachment—​ the real battlefront was living people, their personalities, their treatment of each other. A real, living battle of jealousy, hate and greed was more easily understood and resolved under pressure than soaring, mystical flights of the soul. (66) The truth, however, remains that the moment when the intensity of these evils of man becomes so overwhelming and one can break down in despair, goodness springs up: “it is when you cry in the blackest hour of despair, that you stumble on a source of goodness” (34). In a way, this statement suggests that it is in the moment of despair that one realises the value of goodness. That is, it is in the absence of good that one recognises the presence of good. With a character like Elizabeth, the philosophical mechanism, which propels her analytical mind, is constantly alert. Thus, in her conversation with Sello, she becomes aware that … “no one was the be-​all and end-​all of creation, that no one had the power of assertion and dominance to the exclusion of other life” (35). Similarly, in her conversation with Sello the monk during her nightmarish soul-​journey, the monk gives her the basic principles of the ideal life. She learns that man is basically selfish and “… in the heat of living, no one had come to terms with their own powers and at the same time made allowance for the powers of others” (35). The suffering of Elizabeth in the face of a silent God is, indeed, the suffering of a million others world-​wide, and she increasingly becomes aware of this fact. At one point, she could not help but ask, “What is love? Who is God? If I cry, who will have compassion on me as my suffering is the suffering of others? This is the nature of evil. This is the nature of goodness” (70). Elizabeth in her brooding, plaintive reflection combined with inner torment and psychological breakdown seems to ask some existential questions about God and love but there seems to be one answer to the above questions and that is, “There is only one God and his name is man. And Elizabeth is his prophet” (206). Her physical life has a painful way of co-​joining with her inner torment. Elizabeth’s questions obviously emanate from deep suffering, frustration, and lack of compassion and, also, her sense of genuine love is marred by anguish, as well as her separation from her parents in her early childhood.

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  153 Here, both evil and goodness are placed side by side or as opposite sides of the same coin. In the binary of what is “normal and abnormal” (15), the “height of goodness” and the “depth of evil” (36), the “demon” (43) and the “goodness” (43), and both “God and Satan” (161), Elizabeth humanises the terms and calls the whole thing “the brotherhood of man” (37). The brotherhood of man constitutes what she calls God. In other words, “There is no God like ordinary people” (197). The ultimate prize that Elizabeth earns in her life is “the brotherhood of man” (37), which suggests universal humanity.

Trauma and horror The narrative, viewed from the world of the novel, is split into a dialectic of the community and the individual. From the beginning, the protagonist travels from the conditions of loneliness and silence to a living world of human community. She moves in and out of mental breakdown throughout the narrative, and her movement is illuminated through a web of images. Tucker highlights that “These images, projected from various characters in Elizabeth’s mind, are signs of our society—​a society which resolves on a system of power and oppression” (170) based on binary patterns of thoughts. For example, Elizabeth, [Repeatedly breaks down] in the text [and], in its very structure the dualistic notions of tyrant/​slave, man/​woman, inside/​outside, language/​ silence. It is these dualities and the fragmentation and victimization of the Other inherent in them that Elizabeth must learn to “read” rather than participate in and “name” rather than be named by them. (Tucker 170) This sort of experience highlights the conflict between the spiritual and the material values of the protagonist. We read about the appearance of the principal male characters, Dan and Sello in Elizabeth’s nightmares, as terrifying figures. So, concerning the aspect of trauma in the novel, Elizabeth’s trauma is conceived as a kind of implosion, or as a painful struggle between two different worlds of internal and external. She suffers the effects of dislocation and cultural differences between her place of origin and her sphere of living, which resonate with my findings about trauma and black power relations within the national cultures of Africa. Trauma, being the overall focus here, is reflection of a reality contained in the novel. For instance, both Sello and Dan drive Elizabeth to the edge of psychological breakdown. While Dan annihilates her body, Sello immolates her soul and illusions. Overall, each of them strips her of something; and as the reader notes in the beginning of the narrative, Dan and Sello “turned to Elizabeth and permanently stripped her of any vesture garments she might have acquired” (32). This act of stripping disrupts her relationship with the external world,

154  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world with other people and with herself, especially the torment inflicted on her by Dan, Sello, and Medusa. As a result, she tries to explain the state of her agony, that is, her battle with Dan, Sello, Medusa, and the multiple forms of their appearances, but words fail her. While Dan remains indescribable to Elizabeth, she tries further to say what happens to her, but the whole thing looks like “the typical record of a lunatic” (179), and the novel concludes that: “She could not go beyond that” (180). Joseph Flanagan states that, often, the trauma victim “is unable to recall the traumatic experience not because she has repressed its memory” but because “the very neurological processes that are responsible for encoding experiences into consciousness are damaged by the event” (388). Elizabeth manifests the feeling of absence, nightmares, fragmented memories of events, as well as lack of capacity to locate her experience as shown in the staccato sentence. The compelling argument is that Elizabeth offers the reader a retrospective glance into her inner turmoil but the reader must first understand her inner psychology before he or she can understand her conclusion, because the novel testifies obviously to her emotional torment. Her inner torment may be referred to self-​disturbance in schizophrenia. In Elizabeth’s case, there is actually a deficiency, an absence of some precise thoughts that are unable to develop, rather than an overflow or excess of thoughts. There is a slackening of reasoning, fragility, and confusion in her mind. This is linked to incongruous affect or disorganisation symptoms, which result in “the poverty of content of speech” (Sass 260). The disorganisation symptom, according to Louis A. Sass, “comprises a variety of abnormalities in the organization of thought, speech and attention,” (260) and this also includes “tangentiality and derailment, incoherence and pressure of speech, poverty of content of speech and diminished self-​affection” (260). The workings of Elizabeth’s inner psychology overwhelm anything in the external world: In many ways, her slowly unfolding internal drama was far more absorbing and demanding than any drama she could encounter in Motabeng village. The insights, perceptions, fleeting images and impressions required more concentration, reflection and brooding than any other work she had ever undertaken. Dominating and directing the whole drama was Sello. (29) This is a picture of the mental events that unfold in Elizabeth’s mind. The unfolding drama is entirely internal, while the external world seems to be there to supply images, which appear only in her dreams. She shapes and interprets her dreams according to her inner necessities or imaginations. One may carefully draw an analogy of dream between the novel and Elizabeth, as one of the motifs. For example, C.G. Jung observes that:

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  155 A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is always ambiguous. A dream never says “you ought” or “this is the truth.” It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and it is up to us to draw conclusion. (106) The novel uses the dream motif to develop multiple meanings and interpretations. It is, therefore, important for the reader to pay attention to whatever insights and perceptions Elizabeth arrives at, and how she arrives at them in the story. Basically, what Elizabeth experiences is weaved into how the story is narrated. For example, the experience of Elizabeth is identified as a “soul journey” (50). Journeys into the soul are not for women with children, not all that dark heaving turmoil. They are for men, and the toughest of them took off into the solitude of the forest and fought out their battles with hell in deep seclusion. (50) In A Question of Power, much like in typical horror novels such as Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, American Gothic, and Hell House, Noel Carroll’s argument about horror films holds good: “the main emotional and phenomenological effect is the production or replication of fear” (38). In all horror stories, fear is seen as the strongest human emotion. There are many horror scenes in A Question of Power, as well, that cause fear in the reader’s mind. For instance, the reader shares the character’s fear as Dan “turned and looked at Elizabeth with deadly hatred: ‘I hated you,’ he said. ‘I’m going to pursue you until I destroy you’ ” (198). More horrifying is when “He frightened her deeply. He’d conducted a strange drama, in a secret way, and it had been so terrible that she had gone insane” (200). To this end, Tucker briefly turns to Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night and makes a comparison of it with A Question of Power. Both books, Tucker says, “use images of excrement, obscenity, and filth to show the horror of oppression. The filmic presentation of these images, too, is similar. We are forced not only to share the horrors, but to see them” (172). We see the display of Medusa’s power in A Question of Power, when Elizabeth “had been forcefully thrown into a state of death, alongside Sello, battered and smashed about …” (100). This describes hell as a place of torture, resulting in her trauma. Her trauma, viewed from the outside perspective, is what is referred to as her insanity. But a society which makes a sane person go insane is itself insane. In other words, the society is more insane, more irrational than Elizabeth. Similarly, what Ellen C. Scott says of Sethe in Jonathan Demme’s film adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved applies equally to Elizabeth: “… the more crucial repression for her and her fellow emancipated is the repression of her own memories of oppression. Repression through physical distance does nothing

156  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world to halt the return of the memories that plague, haunt, even oppress, Sethe” (10). Elizabeth’s memories of her childhood separation from her mother keep playing back in her adult life, as well. Tucker argues, The suffering of oppression, when dragged to the surface, causes Elizabeth to go insane and redelve into herself. The second journey is one of naming and dispelling the horrors. The first journey, which recognises oppression, is complete when the novel begins. Elizabeth is now concerned with figuring out what to do with oppression once it is recognized. (171) Therefore, we may closely sympathise with the main character in a horror novel or film but, on the other hand, we may (either as a spectator or reader) be aware of our distance from the victim. J.P. Telotte suggests that “we see more than the horror victims but, much to our frustration, can do nothing to inform them of danger because they cannot see or hear us” (123–​124). In a similar way, Scott emphasises that, [I]‌n most horror [texts], our emotions are manipulated by the perceptible thickness of the [text] as barrier and the trap of our own voyeurism—​ we have near omniscient, psychic vision, whereas the character’s vision is slow, lethargic, dim, framed and bracketed: limited. (12) Because the reader sees far more than the horror victim, the reader joins his or her sympathy with the victim rather than the text. The reader’s fear, in most cases, is displaced. He is not as scared for himself as much as for the victim. This means, given the happenings in the fictional world of the novel, the reader can also see his own world and himself in ways that help him interpret his lived experience. Examining A Question of Power, as a narrative about the experience and survival of mental health problems, connects it in many ways with trauma, hysteria, and madness. It particularly deals with the estrangement and aloneness of Elizabeth, as she goes through traumatic conditions. It depicts a phenomenological experience of fear and horror, as it introduces a chain of traumatic events, all of which can be linked back to black power used in an arbitrary sense. It also portrays a world in which women are robbed of their sexual autonomy, hence the eroticised portrayal of the female body. For instance, the name Dan becomes a sort of metonym for torment, sexual abuse; his actions, along with everything else, are best framed within the semiotics of beastliness. It is difficult to approach the text without touching on this horror aspect. In a style that blends fantastic elements with realistic narrative, the narrator takes the reader through scenes of sexual orgies, and magic, but all in the mind of Elizabeth and, perhaps, involving this imaginary Dan and different women

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  157 with funny names such as Miss Sewing-​ Machine, Miss Wriggly-​ Bottom, Miss Pelican-​Beak, Miss Chopper, Miss Pink Sugar-​Icing, Madam Make-​ Love-​On-​the-​Floor, Madam Loose-​Bottom, Madam Squelch Squelch, Body Beautiful, Sugar-​Plum, and others. The meaning of these names in context simply alluded to the sexual qualities of the bearers. For instance, Elizabeth can see “… Naked women prancing wildly in front of her and there was Dan, gyrating his awful penis like mad” (14). He sees the female body only as a sexual object to be abused. He denaturalises sex for a more political discourse. He takes pleasure in the number of women he sleeps with and keeps detailed records to amuse himself: “And what about the new records? Oh, that was supposed to be his sense of humour” (128). The political angle to the mishandling of women by Dan adds to the growing body of feminist discourse of what I may call an apartheid of gender hierarchies, which shape the cultural/​tribal interactions in the novel. More, in a particular instance of Dan’s sexual activity, the novel reports, then he simply tumbled the girl into bed beside Elizabeth and went with her the whole night. The lights on the cinema screen of her mind were down, but not their activity. They kept on bumping her awake till at dawn they made the last bump, bump, bump. (127) Dan had his penis always erected. “From that night he kept his pants down; after all, the women of his harem totalled seventy-​one” (128). Through these numerous scenes of sensuality and obscenity, Head challenges the general conviction that African writers of her generation shy away from writing about sex and sexual politics. This is one unique feature of her, a feature which many people will consider as being vulgar. However, as erotic and fantasy-​ridden as A Question of Power is, it still achieves a good deal through its literary effort to depict the sexual affairs, as captured through the mind of Elizabeth. For example, it is the male institution that defines the oppressive power structures in A Question of Power. To Coreen Brown, A similar kind of prescriptive reading occurs when some feminist critiques are applied to the symbols and imagery of Elizabeth’s breakdown. Within the narrative, Head presents Elizabeth as forcibly compelled to observe Medusa’s display of explicit sexuality and Dan’s parade of his sexual conquests. They convince Elizabeth of her own inadequacy; she experiences intense distress and total despair. (25) The evidence of sexual abuse constitutes a characteristic representation of a traumatic account. The sexualisation of the characters is framed within the matrix of triadic relations between the body, sex and pleasure as seen in the life of Dan, as well as other characters. In a traditional horror story such as in,

158  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world A Question of Power, there is a tense relationship between Elizabeth and the spirits (or ghosts)—​between the metaphysical world and the physical world, but, when viewed from the religious angle, Christopher Small suggests that “this connection between the spiritual and fleshly worlds, especially through a notion of shared, spiritualized flesh or blood, through ‘ancestry’ is a trope in African-​American culture” (113). And, he goes on to say: just as the living individual is the link between the departed and the yet unborn, so [Elizabeth] is also the link between the physical and the natural worlds, linking God to nature through membership of the natural world … and through the unique human moral and ethical consciousness. Thus all human life and activity take place within a religious framework, and no human act is without religious significance. (Small 113) Now, the lack of clear separation between the two worlds, the fusion of the living with the spirit(s) shows that, in A Question of Power, Elizabeth knows who haunts her (mainly Dan, Sello, and Medusa). Trauma, being one of the critical aspects of Head’s fiction, particularly in A Question of Power, is seen as a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event. Trauma embodies either physical or psychological wounding or piercing of both the mind and the body (Stolorow 66–67). Psychological trauma, according to Figley and Van der Kolk, cited in Stolorow refers “to a set of responses to extraordinary, emotionally overwhelming, and personally uncontrollable life events (Stolorow 6–67)” (398). Also, according to Judith Herman, “TRAUMATIC EVENTS CALL INTO QUESTION basic human relationships. They breach the attachments of family, friendship, love, and community” (51). In the same way, Mardi Horowitz defines “traumatic life events as those that cannot be assimilated with the victim’s inner schemata of self in relation to the world” (15). John Bowlby, through the theoretical lens of trauma, writes that trauma occurs “when one loses the sense of having a safe place to retreat within or outside oneself to deal with frightening emotions or experiences” (31). Elizabeth is like most trauma victims who “no longer perceive themselves as safe and secure in a benign environment” simply because “they have experienced a malevolent world” (Janoff-​Bulman and Frieze 5). Sigmund Freud describes the condition of trauma as a “profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love …” (248). Evidently, Elizabeth loses her sense of safety and the capacity to love in Motabeng because of her racialised experience in South Africa. The novel uses the horror trope to unveil the trauma of demonisation and the racialised self of Elizabeth. Although one cannot pinpoint direct evidence of war experience, or physical abuse, one can evidently point out instances of sexual abuse in A Question of Power, which should possibly lead to a psychological wounding of the victim. Let my point of departure begin with

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  159 how the novel records the childhood of Elizabeth, who has her upbringing under a foster mother, who she believes over the years to be her real, biological mother. She, however, experiences the greatest shock of her life when she suddenly realises at the mission school that her biological mother, a white woman, is locked away in a psychiatric hospital somewhere. It is shocking to the reader to know that as soon as Elizabeth arrives at the mission school, she is called aside by the Principal who gives her “the most astounding information” (16). She says: We have a docket on you. You must be very careful. Your mother was insane. If you’re not careful you’ll get insane just like your mother. Your mother was a white woman. They had to lock her up, as she was having a child by the stable boy, who was a native … Elizabeth started to cry, through sheer nervous shock. The details of her life and oppression in South Africa had hardly taken form in her mind. (16) Even though the information does not mean so much to her, it foreshadows or sets the stage for the reader to examine her symptoms of disorder, as well as any trace of emotional pains in the course of the narrative. This may be a kind of stereotypical or foundational assumption to raise questions about the character and sanity of Elizabeth. In other words, she may not really have been afflicted with her mother’s illness. But from the above revelation given by the Principal, Elizabeth’s teachers are warned to be on guard against any signs that the child may be afflicted with her mother’s illness. It is even contestable that Elizabeth’s mother is not mentally ill because textual fact exists to suggest that she is not ill at all. This evidence is contained in Elizabeth’s mother’s letter, asking the mission to “Please set aside some money for my child’s education …” (16). It suggests that there is some level of sanity in her appeal to the mission because an insane mother cannot think of her child’s education in the first place. She may only be considered to be insane by the logic of the apartheid system, because of her inter-​racial sexual affairs with a black native man. Elizabeth’s mother’s trauma is linked to the idea of white power. It is outlawed for her to cross the racial boundaries to have an affair with a black man. I refer to this as an imperial reading of madness in the novel. Subsequently, however, Elizabeth’s trauma is also partly traceable to lack of parental care and loss of stable upbringing, which combined to cause her psychological trauma. Also, the “power people,” such as Dan who represents black power, inflict bodily torture on Elizabeth. All of these are signs and symptoms of traumatic conditions in the novel. I seek further support for my claim from an article by John Lonsdale, the “Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau and Remaking Kenya”—​explain the danger of “sliding into imperial diagnosis of the type that has rushed to read derangement where legible political protest was in fact what was being expressed” (393–​421). Literally, what this means is that when people put

160  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world up resistance against the colonial authorities in time past, they were often referred to as being mad and/​or violent. So, in relation to Elizabeth’s mother’s mental illness, the diagnosis of her madness could possibly be seen as either an apartheid or colonial or imperial diagnosis. More, the diagnosis of her mental illness, can be seen in relation to Van den Berg’s argument that, The jargon of psychosis is a vocabulary of denigration. The denigration is not moralistic, at least in a nineteenth-​century sense; in fact, in many ways this language is the outcome of efforts to avoid thinking in terms of freedom, choice, responsibility. But it implies a certain standard way of being human to which the psychotic cannot measure up. (Berg 27) To demonstrate the relevance of Van den Berg’s perspective on psychosis in relation to Elizabeth, the novel shows she lives “with permanent nervous tension” (19) and, then again, the novel narrates because you did not know why white people there had to go out of their way to hate you or loathe you. They were just born that way, hating people, and a black man or woman was just born to be hated. (19) This is what Van den Berg means by saying, “The denigration is not moralistic” (27). However, in spite of the anxious wait for possible clues of psychological connection, her mother’s state of mental health worsens but nothing strange happens until after Elizabeth leaves the school. Living on the edge of South African life for a few years, she marries a “gangster just out of jail” who claims, “he had thought deeply of life while in prison” (18), but she is forced to walk out on her cheating husband, as she moves to Botswana with her small son to mark her voluntary exile from South Africa. It is her personal decision to leave as a result of frustration. Elizabeth takes up a teaching job in the village of Motabeng (i.e., a place of sand). It is while she settles down for her teaching assignment that she begins to experience traumatic disorder through hallucinations, nightmares, and disturbing memories, which gradually tip her over the edge. In the novel, the reader is told that: One night she had just blown out the light when she had a sudden feeling that someone had entered the room. The full impact of it seemed to come from the roof, and was so strong that she jerked up in bed. There was a swift flow of air through the room, and whatever it was moved and sat down on the chair. The chair creaked slightly. Alarmed, she swung around and lit a candle. The chair was empty. She had never seen a ghost in her life. She was not given to “seeing” things. The world had always been two-​dimensional, flat and straight with things she could see and feel. (21–​22)

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  161 Thus, Elizabeth gradually finds herself in a world of hysteria and fantasy, as she continues to face emotionally traumatic scenes with the unbearable emotional pains and sufferings that they wreak on her. It all begins from her mind, as a site of imagination. Her reaction to issues begins with what her mind thinks or imagines. This continues for several nights until it becomes part of her life that she cannot do away with. She begins to have strange feelings of things right inside her sub-​consciousness. Being in this traumatic condition, she is neither awake nor asleep, as well as confused, and she is torn between the dividing lines of dream and reality. Consequently, she becomes quiet, withdrawn, and incapable of explaining the mad state of affairs in her house. “A sort of terror gripped her chest. The words were almost jerked out of her mouth: ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to die quite soon’ ” (22). Again, “A wave of panic made her fling her arms into the air and take a great leap out of the bed. She paced the floor for a while, violently agitated” (22). She inherits this crisis from fantasy, and it later develops into existential crisis. And, of course, traumatic experiences, according to Herman, in this case shatter: [T]‌he construction of the self that is formed and sustained in relation to others. They undermine the belief systems that give meaning to human experience. They violate the individual’s faith in a natural or divine order and cast the victim into a state of existential crisis. (51) Also, Horowitz agrees that trauma destroys “the victim’s fundamental assumptions about the safety of the world, the positive value of the self, and the meaningful order of creation” (15). For instance, the reader discovers in the story how Elizabeth’s first mental breakdown described within the context of sanity takes the shape of a racist onslaught on her environment: “She sprang to her feet, slamming the chair back against the wall, and shouted: ‘Oh, you bloody bastard Batswana!! Oh, you bloody bastard Batswana!!’ Then she simply opened her mouth in one long, high piercing scream” (51). Elizabeth’s struggles with mental illness afford Head an opportunity to explore the social system that stigmatises mentally challenged people. By the system, I refer to the apartheid regime steeped in racial segregation in South Africa. Nkosi remarks that: “Head is keenly aware of the psychological and philosophical origins of racial and sexual oppression and the impact both racism and sexism have, for example, on South African woman” (72). Head was personally trapped in the dilemma of racial politics not simply because she was not white enough but because she was also not black enough, and in her own words, she puts it thus: I have often referred to myself as a half and half merely because I don’t care to get “in” to African society and I always think about my mother and the conditions of her death and the way I was born. (103)

162  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world This is how she reflects on some of the key aspects of the system of apartheid. With Elizabeth, Head is able to demonstrate the record of her mental breakdown through her wavering in and out of the terrifying world of insanity, the desire to share the needs, and the hurts of other people experiencing mind-​ suffering as well. This is the condition that finally leads her to “… a bed of the private ward of the Motabeng hospital. A doctor stood nearby. He bent down and said gently: ‘what’s wrong with you?’ She turned her face away and said, with extreme misery: ‘I don’t like people’ ” (51). She makes this blank statement of hate against people because of man’s cruelty against man. The novel narrates how Elizabeth, for example, is faced with a deep cesspit. It was filled almost to the brim with excreta. It was alive, and its contents rumbled. Huge angry flies buzzed over its surface with a loud humming. He [Sello] caught hold of her roughly behind the neck and pushed her face near the stench. It was so high, so powerful, that her neck nearly snapped off her head at the encounter. She whimpered in fright. She heard him say, fiercely: “She made it. I’m cleaning it up. Come, I’ll show what you made.” (53) Sello, the master of soul, “suddenly turns into an enormous sky-​bird with powerful, soaring wings” (53), as he takes over the life of Elizabeth. The unveiling of Elizabeth’s fantasy world brings us face-​to-​face with the kind of suffering of those who experience psychological trauma. The trauma continues after her hospitalisation thus: Her exterior life had a painful way of coinciding with her inner torment. Three weeks later, as she entered the school grounds, she lost her job. The school principal, a tall, thin, Motswana man, handed her a letter from the school board. He was grinning. He knew its contents: “we have received a report that you have been shouting and swearing at people in public. Such behaviour is unbecoming to a teacher. We are doubtful of your sanity, and request that you submit to us a certificate of sanity from a medical officer within fourteen days of receipt of this notice.” (66) Elizabeth, having been given an ultimatum to provide a certified medical report of her mental health condition from a doctor, is eventually forced to leave the teaching job. “I am not working here anymore” (66); even as the Principal still insists, “You can’t do that … you can’t just walk out” (66); and she also insists that, I must get out of here. I am panic-​stricken. My internal life is all awry, and when I’m assaulted there I’m broken. I’ve withstood a lot of external

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  163 hardships, but I am incapable of withstanding internal stress, not the abnormal kind that’s afflicting me. (69) Therefore, in the novel, the narrative joins the mental, the physical, and the spiritual to explain the psyche’s experience of everyday life. Elizabeth, the protagonist, finds herself in a foreign community called Motabeng. It is a terrifying, metaphysical world of psychosis, as she makes individual attempts to create a sense of the events around herself. Her experience makes the text a mad piece of fiction, which is extremely painful to read. A Question of Power, being a complex text, is an invitation to see the agony of the soul, mind, and body, as well as the trappings of a world that turns in on itself but, on the other hand, unlocks a window onto the external world of man to depict reality.

Elizabeth’s process of recovery The aim of this section is to use the story-​telling method to investigate the recovery process of a trauma patient. However, “The trauma of [an] accident, its very unconsciousness is born by an act of departure” (Caruth 22). For example, the traumatic events of birth in South Africa lead to Elizabeth and Head’s flight from South Africa to Botswana, but unfortunately, their departure does not heal their trauma. The departure brings about more traumatic experiences for Elizabeth in Botswana, as the tormentors in her nightmares are the black people she now lives among. As somebody of mixed race, she thinks she is hated for her lightness by other blacks in Botswana. She is hated for her lightness by other blacks in Botswana. Given this claim in A Question of Power, an Afrikaner called Eugene helps Elizabeth because “he was working on the simple theory that South Africans usually suffered from some form of mental aberration” (58). Eugene’s theory of mental aberration may be simple to say but its underlying factors are deep and complex. For example, Elizabeth seems to be marked from the start for a traumatic life because of either racial discrimination or tribal prejudice. Elizabeth has to reconstruct her own world of loneliness and live like a strange being. This is similar to the experience of Lauren Hartke, who: In the stark aloneness and grief that followed her husband’s suicide, Lauren Hartke, the principal character in Don Delillo’s (2001) The body artist, sculpted from the shards of her shattered world an imaginary companion, Mr. Tuttle, who embodied her own devastated state. He is like an alien being who lives in another kind of reality where he is here and there, before and after, and he moves from one to the other shatteringly, in a state of collapse, minus an identity … in a kind of time that has no narrative quality. (Stolorow, Trauma and Human Existence … 66–​67)

164  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world Mr. Tuttle lives separately from the reality of the external world, as his future seems to be unnamed. In addition, Lauren consequently waits to be told who she is because she is defined by time like Elizabeth. “You are made out of time,” the story teller goes on to tell us. “It is time that defines your existence” (94). “Time unfolds into the seams of being … making and shaping” (101). The novel ends with Lauren Hartke, the central character, yearning to feel “the flow of time in her body, to tell her who she was” (126). The emotional trauma of Lauren shows the shattering of her experiential world, as well as the breaking up of the unifying thread of time and events caused by her experience of lived trauma. In addition, Stolorow avers that: Because trauma so profoundly alters the universal or shared structure of temporality, the traumatized person, like Mr. Tuttle, quite literally lives in another kind of reality, an experiential world incommensurable with those of others. This felt incommensurability, in turn, contributes to the sense of alienation and estrangement from other human beings that typically haunts the traumatized person. Torn from the communal fabric of being-​in-​time, trauma remains insulated from human dialogue. (20) Maureen Fielding acknowledges that “most trauma theory asserts the primacy of [story-​telling] to the healing process” (19). No one heals trauma by suppressing it, but one of the ways to heal it is to talk about the experience in a story-​telling form. That way, both parties, that is, the storyteller and the listener, share the wound in the story-​telling approach. The listener plays a more important role by sharing the agony of the victim. The idea of story-​telling according to Dori Laub is “the encounter and the coming together between the survivor and the listener, which makes possible something like a repossession of the act of witnessing” (69), as we see in the conversation between Elizabeth and Kenosi. In talking about how to spend the Christmas: “You don’t spend it with anyone?” Kenosi asked, surprised. “I have no friends,” Elizabeth said. “Where is the husband?” She asked, pointedly. “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “One day I walked out of the house and never saw him again.” “Kenosi looked up quietly from her plate and fixed her inscrutable stare on Elizabeth. She kept her thoughts absolutely to herself.” “Are you married?” Elizabeth asked. “No.” “Is it difficult to find a husband?” Elizabeth persisted. “Yes.” “Do you have any children?” “I have one child,” she said. (90)

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  165 At the end of this question-​and-​answer sort of conversation, Elizabeth thinks of Kenosi as an exceedingly beautiful woman in both strength and depth of facial expression, as well as in knowingness and grasp of life. She sees Kenosi as a super-​wife, the type that will keep a clean, ordered house and “adore in a quiet, undemonstrative way both the husband and children” (90). Based on her qualities, Elizabeth says: “If I were a man I’d surely marry you” (90). The narrator tells us that this makes Kenosi smile for the first time. This conversation momentarily shifts their minds away from the pains of life. Here, story-​telling becomes a pain reliever because Felman and Laub tell us that “survivors who do not tell their story become victims of a distorted memory” (79). Also, Gene A. Plunka comments, and I agree that “human nature tends to dwell on pleasant memories and bury painful ones in their recesses of the mind …” (302), and reflecting on the pleasant memory of how to spend the Christmas shifts Elizabeth’s memory away from the pains of life to the extent of making Kenosi smile for the first time. In another instance, the protagonist’s process of recovery from trauma involves first stepping away from the original traumatic experience by finding a means of livelihood elsewhere, and to do that is for her to take to vegetable gardening, while her emotional pains, and symptoms of disorder persist. But the idea of taking to vegetable gardening is to get her mind busy with something, and to help cure her heart of the traumatic pains, as well as other forms of mind-​troubling diseases such as loneliness. This is one effective method of healing, at least in our knowledge of trauma representation. She likes to think that she is in full control of her life. For instance, “In moments of vast, expansive peace like that evening, she liked to imagine that she was gathering all the threads of life together and holding them in her hands” (61). She believes that putting the broken threads of her life together has “… an added touch of sound, solid sanity through that one, almost day-​long contact with the family life of the man, Eugene” (61); this is another antidote to her mental illness or chaotic life. Her life becomes like that of a proverbial drowning man, who is looking for anything to hold onto for survival. Fielding concludes from his research that, “most survivors seek resolution of their traumatic experience within the confines of their personal lives” (207). Elizabeth uses different methods of tackling her problems by first withdrawing from people into her private world and then again re-​engaging with them through the agricultural project. So, in her combination of emotional numbness, detachedness, irritability, and easily startled state, Elizabeth undertakes, in her mind, a discourse with Sello and Dan, two men in her life. One of the effective ways of healing trauma is to share the traumatic experience with other people. The healing cannot take place in isolation. Eric Erikson agrees that: Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In renewed connections with other people, the survivor re-​creates the psychological faculties that were damaged or deformed by

166  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic capacities for trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy. (133) If these faculties are formed by the survivor in relationships with other people, they must be reformed and sustained in such relationships for the recovery to continue. Elizabeth begins to join work-​groups such as “the youth-​development work-​groups” (71). Also, finding work to do helps the survival instinct in the patient to overcome it. “I’d prefer any kind of work with crops,” (69) Elizabeth says. Thoko nods: “We have an area of about one acre for a vegetable garden to go along with the project,” and “We are clearing out the thorn-​bush, slowly, over the weekends, but we need someone to concentrate on duplicating some of the new methods we have introduced at the farm, in the village garden. Would you like to do that?” (69). A lot of things click into place after their conversation. Basically, her relationships with other people such as Thoko, Kenosi, the English manager, and some others help her a lot to regain her sanity and to be herself again after all she passes through. Fielding asserts that Head’s “characters’ recoveries are connected to agriculture” (14), as exemplified by Makhaya in When Rain Clouds Gather, and Elizabeth in A Question of Power. Breaking her traumatised world through story-​telling takes her pain away and it also gives her the ability to make someone else smile. Her recovery process is much more effective once she takes to vegetable gardening.

The pains of exile, Elizabeth, and the world elsewhere Here, this book seeks to explore the notion of a world elsewhere, using Motabeng in A Question of Power. This notion is primarily explored in the context of exile, and the circumstances of Elizabeth’s exile. The study makes some cross-​references to other short stories by the narrator, as well as other writers like Grace Ogot. However, exile is a widely ploughed domain of literary discourse or academic discourse in general. And because of its loose application in almost all disciplines today, Aijaz Ahmad pushes for a strict definition of the concept to mean: “people who are prevented against their own commitment and desire, from living in the country of their birth by the authority of state—​any state—​or by fear of personal annihilation” (35). In other words, he continues: “I mean not privilege but impossibility, not profession but pain” (35). Consequently, exile results in placelessness and, in relation to this line of argumentation, Houston Baker defines it as the deprivation of the: [Q]‌uality of place as it is traditionally defined. For place to be recognised by one as actually PLACE, as a personally valued locale, one must set and maintain the boundaries. If one, however, is constituted and maintained

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  167 by and within boundaries set by a dominating authority, then one is not a setter of place but a prisoner of another’s desire. (15) The world of an exile, in my understanding, can be lonely, as well as located elsewhere. It is a world that is far away from home. The life therein is also conditioned by situations such as dispossession, multiplicity of identities, names, and apparently, the estrangement from homeland, as well as loved ones. It is entirely a strange world that comes with newness of experience, which may be good or bad. It is an on-​the-​move sort of lifestyle for the exile who is constantly in search of someplace else to establish a foundation for living. Elizabeth’s departure from South Africa is represented as follows: “Women were complaining of being molested by her husband. Then there was also a white man who was his boy-​friend. After a year she picked up the small boy and walked out of the house, never to return” (19). This is the fate of most exiles, as never to end up where they began. Elizabeth is driven into exile by personal circumstance(s) but also by the larger political context, confirming Savin Ada’s argument that “exile is more often than not linked to political circumstances” (Introduction 2). “In its narrow sense exile is political banishment” (2). From the theoretical perspective, exile is a sum total of all the views advanced by these scholars. Nevertheless, A Question of Power, reads much like a confirmation of the thesis of the French naturalistic novelist Émile Zola in Germinal, stating that, “the down-​trodden often find escape routes in the lewd activities of debauchery and indiscriminate sexual relations” (43). Similarly, Life in The Collector of Treasures by Bessie Head walks out of her marriage when she becomes unhappy with her husband because he takes absolute control of her life. And when Life walks out of their marriage, there is nothing Lesego her husband can do to bring her back to honour their marriage vows. Deciding her own way of life outside marriage, she becomes a prostitute. Lesego, being angered by her act of infidelity, quietly says to her: “If you go with those men again, I’ll kill you” (The Collector of Treasures 43). Terrified by what hits her, she responds as if she had already been physically attacked: She hadn’t the mental equipment to analyze what had hit her, but something seemed to strike her a terrible blow behind the head. She instantly succumbed to the blow and rapidly began to fall apart … when the hysteria and cheap rowdiness were taken away, life fell into the yawn of dull village life; she had nothing inside herself to cope with this way of life that had finally caught up with her. (43) Consequent upon Lesego’s action, Sianana tells him that he should have walked away and left her instead of killing her. Unlike Elizabeth, Life is not

168  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world lucky enough to have walked out of her marriage with her life spared. Another contrasting feature between Elizabeth and Life is that at the age of ten, while Life leaves Botswana for South Africa where she works as “a singer, a beauty queen, advertising model, and prostitute” (39); Elizabeth migrates from South Africa to Botswana. This contrast between these two characters returns us to the exile account in A Question of Power, as I attempt to analyse here. The new environment Elizabeth encounters in her exile right from the outset, as the novel records, invokes a world of deprivation. Motabeng, which represents the metaphor of a world elsewhere, in the native language of the people, means “the place of sand.” But Elizabeth renames Motabeng as, “The Village of the Rain-​Wind, after a poem she had read somewhere” (20). She renames Motabeng for two principal reasons: Motabeng is subject to a type of desert rain that does not refresh the land, “It rained in the sky, in long streaky sheets, but the rain dried up before it reached the ground” (20). The second reason is that, “The rhythm of its life was slow-​paced, like the quiet stirring of cattle turning patient, thoughtless eyes on a new day” (20). Motabeng is a remote village inland perched on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Seemingly, the only reason for people’s settlement there is the good supply of underground water because, broadly speaking, Botswana is a landlocked country in Southern Africa and most parts of the country are quite dry, and unsuitable for agriculture. When Elizabeth is on her way to Motabeng, a fellow-​ passenger mockingly poses a question to her: “You’re going to Motabeng?” (20). The question is posed solely in mockery of Motabeng. In addition, he says: It’s just a great big village of mud huts! The preponderance of mud huts with their semi-​grey roofs of grass thatching gave it an ashen look during the dry season …. People turned their noses towards the wind and sniffed the rain, but it was so often not likely to rain in Motabeng. (20) Such is the graphic picture of weather conditions in Motabeng. Nevertheless, the Kalahari Desert covers much of the central and south-​western parts of Botswana. “It took a stranger some time to fall in love with its harsh outlines and stark, black trees” (19–​20). The story “Looking for a Rain God” also portrays South Africa as a drought-​stricken place. “Towards the beginning of the seventh year of drought, the summer had become an anguish to live through … No one knew what to do to escape the heat and tragedy was in the air” (The Collector of Treasures 57). In this desperate situation, Boseyong, who is Ramadi’s wife, agrees with her husband to sacrifice their two children to the rain god so that the rain may fall. But, After it was all over and the bodies of the two little girls had been spread across the land, the rain did not fall. Instead, there was a deathly silence at night and the devouring heat of the sun by day. (59)

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  169 Head tells a story of “strain and starvation and breakdown”. The story of drought and starvation is a recurring theme in other African stories such as “The Rain Game” by Grace A. Ogot. In Head’s The Collector of Treasures, the drought also compels chief Labongo to use his only daughter called Oganda as a sacrifice that it may rain for his people but instead finds himself in a dilemma. That is: Refusing to yield to the rain-​maker’s request would mean sacrificing the whole tribe, putting the interest of the individual above those of the society … on the other hand, to let Oganda die as a ransom for the people would permanently cripple Labongo spiritually. He knew he would never be the same chief again. (Grace 181) There seems to be no remedy for the suffering characters in the two stories who are compelled to sacrifice their children for the rain to fall. However, in contrasting the African novel and the short story, Jean de Grandsaigne and Cary Spackey note that in “the novels, the characters are either emancipated from situations of conflict or else transcend such situations whereas in the short story on the contrary, the characters are left embroiled in their contradictions” (74). Their claim may not be applicable in all cases. The Kalahari Desert, on whose edge the village is perched, is an arid region on the interior plateau of southern Africa, occupying central and south-​ western Botswana, as well as parts of west-​central South Africa and eastern Namibia. This is a brief but clear description of the terrain in which Elizabeth seeks a new life away from home. Again, based on the description, the reader realises that the village has few prospects. Even farming, which the villagers depend on for survival, is a risky business in Motabeng. Thus, when Elizabeth asks Thoko if she can accompany her to her land during the school holidays, Thoko replies: A foreigner like you would die in one day, it’s so dangerous … Do you know what happened to me when I was pulling the plough? A great big Mamba snake jumped out of the ground and ran over my body; tsweeee, like lightning! (60) As if that is not enough, she adds another gory, scenic description to it. She says: I dropped dead on the ground with shock. The cattle jumped high in the air! In the night the jackals come and cry around the hut. They want the meat which we hang up in the trees. Then there is a great wild cat, like a leopard. We are afraid to rest and fall asleep under the trees. He comes around softly and with one smash of his paw cracks open our skulls and

170  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world eats our brains. He always puts the skin back nicely over the eaten part and when we find people dead like that, we know the wild cat is about … (60) Even though the reader may feel terrified by the incident that happens to Thoko, I think Head intends the reader to see Thoko’s language as hyperbolic. It seems too exaggerative to say that the wild cat comes around and “with one smash of his paw cracks open our skulls and eats our brains” (60). This becomes associated with what Elizabeth says Dan does to her. Hyperbole is being used here as a literary device to express the full horror of Elizabeth’s mental breakdown by associating it with the most extreme possibilities in her physical surroundings. Other instances that create a larger-​ than-​ life picture in the passage are: “Mamba snake jumped out of the ground and ran over my body; tsweeee, like lightening! I dropped dead on the ground with shock. The cattle jumped high in the air!” (60). In addition to creating some localised tension and suspense, this micronarrative is filled with some of the same horror, which attends Elizabeth’s nightmares. Motabeng, much like the house in Beloved, is given “a further ghostliness cinematographically … which provide[s]‌a constant ghostly movement and glow behind the scene’s action” (Scott 7). The frightening description of the village of Motabeng is a projection of a particular repression of self, of desire, and of the past, in a more extreme and horrific manner—​more dangerously haunting because of the context of subjugation. The hostility of the environment is demonstrated graphically, and the message is clear. The passage is not only concerned with vivid description of the dangerous environment but, also, includes a fear-​gripping story capable of making anyone quake in an uncontrollable manner. It certainly has this effect on Elizabeth: “These gruesome details of life in the bush made Elizabeth shudder from end to end” (60). She immediately changes her mind from venturing into farming as a way of making a living, because of the gruesome narrative told about the Motabeng environment. Then, again, the novel reports: “She cancelled totally the idea of being that kind of farmer who earned her year’s supply of food in breakneck battles with dangerous wild animals” (60). She cannot help imagining a farmer’s life as one of the utmost danger, an indication of her own feelings of vulnerability. If natives like Thoko can be terrorised by animals such as snakes, wild cats, jackals, etcetera, then, it signals that a foreigner like Elizabeth is in a more precarious situation for survival. Life in Motabeng is also deplorable in terms of housing conditions portrayed as thus: It was like living with the trees and insects right indoors, because there was no sharp distinction between the circling mud walls of a hut and the earth outside. And the roof always smelt of mouldy grass and all kinds

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  171 of insects made their homes in the grass roof and calmly deposited their droppings on the bed, chair, table and floor. (60–​61) The insects are also a bunch of disturbing creatures seen as uninvited guests. They share homes with human beings and mess up their beds. But, apart from the harshness of the environment, as well as the deplorable conditions, Elizabeth also faces isolation. A fine illustration of the unfavourable attitude and isolation of foreigners in Motabeng is found in Elizabeth’s response to Eugene’s observation that she doesn’t seem to get along with the local people: People don’t care here whether foreigners get along with them or not. They are deeply absorbed in each other. She paused and laughed. They have a saying that Botswana witchcraft only works on a Motswana, not an outsider. I like the general atmosphere because I don’t care whether people like me or not. I am used to isolation. (56) This gives a little advantage to outsiders who seek refuge there. Elizabeth, therefore, tolerates the isolation of the villagers. And, in her loneliness, Head tells the reader that Elizabeth “spent most of the time of the holidays of the rainy season taking long walks across Motabeng Village with the small boy” (61). However, Eugene warns her against the dangers of too much isolation as it leads to psychological illnesses such as boredom, and other diseases of the mind. The conversation between her and the Principal when he comes to visit her at the hospital is quite thought-​provoking, as well as rather moving. With an understanding of Elizabeth’s suffering, he says, “I suffer, too, because I haven’t a country and know what it’s like. A lot of refugees have nervous breakdowns” (52). It is at this point that the reader realises that the Principal, too, is an exile. By his utterance, he seems to understand Elizabeth’s pains and what it feels to be homeless, but ironically, he turns his face away from Elizabeth when she cries out to him that, “There’s something torturing [her]. There are strange under-​currents and events here …” (52). Because the Principal does not want to hear anything else, he swiftly accepts the fact that Elizabeth has had a mental breakdown and leaves her at the hospital. Naturally, the reader would have expected that being an exile, a stateless person like Elizabeth, he should have shown her some care, but that is not the case here.

Black power as an instrument of oppression in a shut-​in world The representation of black power in the novel shows it as arbitrary. Black power is framed as a master code of oppression in the novel not in the sense it meant in 1960s America. This analysis chooses to focus on the negatives

172  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world of black power, which is rather a deviation from the positive ideals of the black power movement in the 1960s, sparked off by Stokely Carmichael. While serving as the chairperson of the Student Non-​violent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael first used the concept of “black power,” precisely at a rally in Mississippi in 1966, which meant different things to different people. One of the philosophies of the black power movement, according to Carmichael and Hamilton, in their “Preface” to Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, “is about why, where, and in what manner black people in America must get themselves together. It is about black people taking care of business—​the business of and for black people” (vii). This is obviously not the case the thesis seeks to pursue in relation to the experience of Elizabeth in A Question of Power. For example, the novel reports that, “oppression and slavery were the same name” (53), in a place where “kings had earned crowns and never worn [their] crowns” (53). Comparatively, in Head’s real-​life experience in South Africa, Daymond writes that, “the principal at the Anglican School Head attended for six years, Saint Monica’s, would not allow Emery to see her foster mother during the holiday season, because the principal claimed that her foster mother was insane” (vii). Furthermore, Daymond describes, “how the principal also claimed Emery’s origins were a horror” (viii). Both Elizabeth’s principal and Head’s principal contribute to the stain of shame they face as coloured women in South Africa and Botswana. However, the analysis begins with the entire idea of exclusion of foreigners such as Elizabeth faces in Botswana being explicitly stated thus: “as far as Botswana society was concerned, she was an out-​and-​out outsider and would never be in on their things” (26). This is the societal view of foreigners at the time—​never to involve outsiders in their “things.” The reason for this form of exclusion may either be political or cultural. It is more likely to be political than cultural as evidently shown thus: The surface of life here [Botswana] is narrow, stifling and full of petty prejudice. It is a world with the power to turn in on itself and keep its own secret. That was the kind of world we operated in the dark times, so narrow, so exclusive, so shut in that scavengers arose and ate whatever was in sight, leaving nothing over for the ordinary man. (63) To demonstrate how this links up to the rural life in Botswana, it is expedient to make a cross-​reference to Head’s novel entitled, A Bewitched Crossroad: An African Saga, in a sociocultural/​historical fashion. Using the Sebina clan as a nodal case in point, the narrator tells a moving narrative, which can function as a historical account of most Southern African communities. The name, Sebina, represents the entire Sebina people as a clan. But, first, Sebina is at birth named Motshiping. He takes over the leadership of his clan at the age of 24 after the death of his father. He seeks to live under the over-​lordship and

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  173 dynasty of other leaders such as king Mwene-​Mustapha and chief Mengwe. Motshiping willingly surrenders everything to chief Mengwe, as well as all rights to constituted authorities. His surrender is so total that chief Mengwe later refers to him as his chiwizina that is, a fawning dog. The precarious living conditions of most tribal communities in Southern Africa in the nineteenth century, for example, are succinctly re-​captured in the narrative of the Sebina clan. The strategy that enables a group of human beings to enslave or molest the others is remarkably consistent throughout the globe. Like the ordinary man in A Question of Power, the Sebina clan, along with other groups under the Matabele tyranny, is to experience 45 of suppressive brutality. The Matabele can attack the Sebina clan without any grievance, and their killings are so indiscriminate, as well as their range of exploitation knowing no bound. The narrator writes: Their attack was sudden, violent, brutal and indiscriminate … They set houses on fire and killed anyone in sight, both men and women. They laughed and caught little children by the legs and threw them into the flames of a burning hut. (Head 15) What my thesis tries to flesh out here, using the notion of black power, is to show how Head understands that the black race can be as evil as any other race. For instance, what might be Sello’s thoughts in A Question of Power reflects pretty well a world full of secret and oppressive power. These thoughts also include the reflection that it is “… more terrible in Africa than anywhere else” (63). This may be why Motabeng is portrayed as a shut-​in world. That is, a kind of dark, or, “midnight” enclave where people are arbitrarily abused, denied access, oppressed, and traumatised with black power. It is a world in which things are not clear or open to other people. Therefore, the language of prejudice becomes the defining doctrine of segregation and oppression in this kind of world. Medusa’s way of speaking exemplified some of the evils in this kind of world: The wrong things were stressed. When someone says “my people” with specific stress on the blackness of those people, they are after kingdoms and permanently child-​like selves. “The people” are never going to be told what is good for them by the “mother” and the “father.” (63) First, this means that people are discriminated against, based on the varying degrees of blackness. Second, the “mother” and the “father” used in the passage may literally or metaphorically refer to the oppressors and torturers, who hold people in captivity. There is no moral logic for this, especially as, “Medusa was simply given a wide, free field to display her major preoccupations, the priority of which was the elimination of Elizabeth” (62). Bessie

174  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world Head, in her letter to Vigne, presents the victim/​torturer binary within the African context by appropriating Stokeley Carmichael’s philosophy of the black power movement in America. The narrator continues: This shout of rage from Mr Stokeley Carmichael is a shout from the depths of the deep, true exultant power he is receiving by being the man down there. It’s a kind of power that leaps up from the feet to the head in a drunken ecstasy. This is deep, true exultant power, but it contains a risk (the risk of arbitrary black power may be another paraphrase for A Question of Power): I feel Mr Stokeley does not know this. He might fall down on his knees and glorify his enemy. I feel these things go on in the subconscious and we give them the wrong names. (Head 55) The victim/​torturer binary notion of power in this context is diametrically opposed to what Stokeley Carmichael thinks to be the liberating philosophy of the black power movement in 1960s America. Now, within the specific context of this study, Medusa has supernatural power with thunderbolts to burrow into the human soul and cause torment. This is not what the black power movement meant in 1960s America when racism was at its peak. In reality, Head never aligns herself with the black power (nor Pan-​African) moment, but she is generally concerned with what I may call Pan-​humanity, that is, the universal humanity that suggests all lives matter. In the novel, for example, we read that, “she [Medusa] had a lot more thunderbolts in reserve, none as painful and deadly as her first blast, but each time they hit her Elizabeth would topple over, collapse and remain in bed for two days on end” (62). Elizabeth has no power or weapon to fight back, and, “Even if she wanted to, she could not retaliate in any way. She had no flashes of lightning, bolts, power of the spirit or anything like that” (62); so she is helpless. It is on this basis that Jacqueline Rose claims that “I am sure I am not the only reader to have experienced A Question of Power as writing by battery assault” (404); especially the torment of Elizabeth by Dan as the novel reports: Dan moved towards her. There wasn’t any need for her existence any longer. His hands reached for her head. He’d been doing this for months, opening her skull and talking into it in a harsh, grating voice. When she opened her eyes a few hours later her mind was a total blank. She could not remember who she was, where she was, what day it was. There was nothing in her head. (193) Again, the narrator pathetically poses a rhetorical question: “Was this his way of showing her how near the end was?” (193). The question signifies that she is apparently placed at the mercy of both Medusa and Dan who have no

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  175 kindness and charity but only what serves to enlarge their power and pleasure to torment people like her. Her life is permanently confused as a result of torment. She can no longer do anything normally because she has inherited “a permanently giddy head. She had reeled towards death. She turned and reeled towards life” (203). The ambivalence of direction shows her confused state of mind. Beyond this, Elizabeth runs away from racial segregation in South Africa to seek refuge in Botswana. But, it is surprising that while Elizabeth runs away from the segregation of black-​and-​coloured people by the whites in South Africa, she comes face-​to-​ face with a similar situation in her new place of refuge. She is confronted with exclusion that involves blacks in Botswana. This seclusion also adds to her traumatic experience. To this end, neither in apartheid South Africa nor black-​ruled Botswana would a mixed-​race (coloured) woman be seen as “black.” Here, we may see both Head and Elizabeth as coextensive actors in the frame of autobiographical third-​person narrative or as characters suffering from abuse of power. It was the author’s fate to be a second-​class citizen in both countries, which gave her a particular insight into black-​on-​black tribal prejudice (as seen in Maru), though she herself (and her character Elizabeth) were the victims of both white-​ on-​coloured and black-​on-​coloured prejudice. Thus, Elizabeth being a second-​ class citizen both at home and abroad cries in despair: Just the other day she had broken down and cried. Her loud wail had only the logic of her inner torment, but it was the same thing; the evils overwhelming her were beginning to sound like South Africa from which she had fled. The reasoning, the viciousness were the same, but this time the faces were black and it was not local people. It was large, looming soul personalities. (57) Therefore, running away from a particularly bizarre situation of segregation, but only to meet the same situation elsewhere, and to accept it, reminds the reader of Elizabeth’s enduring sense of compromise in exile in spite of the pains involved. If, in the context of this narrative, the viciousness of man against man is the same everywhere, then, the trouble is far from the binary opposition of white vs black but, rather, it is translated to mean a universal trait of human nature. In other words, the narrator protests against discrimination in all its forms, whether in Botswana or anywhere else in the world. This is one sure impression the novel creates in the reader who is looking at the evil of power from within. And, it is in view of this line of thought that Sello envisages an alternative world of utopianism. He had proclaimed this very road in opposition to horrors—​let people be free to evolve, let everything alone and re-​create a new world of soft textures and undertones, full of wild flowers and birds and children’s playtime. (64)

176  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world What Sello, the monk, advocates here is an egalitarian society, a world in which human beings are free from oppression. Sello’s liberal vision to create a free world, a new world that is all-​inclusive in nature, and beyond the utopian representation of it, one may safely conclude, is the only good alternative to the dark side of Motabeng, if ever achieved. Ironically, Sello’s vision of a liberal world does not correlate with the negative role he plays much of the time in Elizabeth’s thoughts and dreams as one of her tormentors. More frightening is the fact that Sello permits Medusa his wife to taunt and inflict injury on Elizabeth with “a terrible thunderbolt [that] struck her heart” (39). Sadly, this bolt breaks Elizabeth “into a thousand fragments” (43). More, Medusa like Dan’s nice-​time girls, satirises Elizabeth’s femaleness. Sello fails in realising his liberal vision of an equal world because of the duality of his character: good and evil. Certain qualities are associated with the names Sello, Dan, and Elizabeth. According to Joyce Johnson, Sello is given specific lunar associations. He is identified, for example, with the Egyptian god Osiris. Lunar associations are further suggested by the partial correspondence of his name with that of Greek moon goddess Selene. A possible further association for Sello, who is associated with religion, is with the Selli, the priests of Zeus, but Sello’s various manifestations also suggest ordinary associations of the word—​ the hermit’s cell, a room in a monastery, the “hell” of Elizabeth’s nightmares. (110) In a similar way, the name “Dan” represents, according to I. Schapera, “the first syllable of ‘Dangoh,’ a name among the Khoisan people for ‘a devil, a black chief, who does much harm to them’ ” (387). While the name Sello is associated with lunar, Dan is identified as solar. Furthermore, it is worth observing that “Dan is an appellation of the sun god in Assyrian mythology, who is in some sources identified with Satan” (Johnson 110). These qualities of the name “Dan” are strengthened in the name “Molomo, which is similar to the Setswana word meaning ‘first fruits’ ” (Johnson 110). The Molomo is the equivalent of the rites of first fruits in Setswana tradition, and according to Schapera, it was “a ritual that in traditional Tswana society [which] emphasized the preeminence of the chief ” (67). Etymologically, the word “Molomo” was derived from “loma,” which means, “to bite,” and it perfectly relates to Dan’s character as captured in the novel. Further still, the units, according to Gertrude Jobes, “combined in the surname ‘Molomo’-​ Molo, om, and o-​are also significant in view of Dan’s solar associations. Molo, like Mole in ‘Moleka’ ” (1207), in Maru, for example, shows a connection with the first two syllables of: Moloch, the name of the god who personifies the savage aspects of the sun’s heat. Om, usually written aum, a root word meaning “sun” is a “potent monosyllable” used in invocations in Buddhist-​Hindu rites, and

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  177 the final syllable, o, which is also connected with Buddhist-​Hindu rites, means “sun” or “eye” of the universe. (Gertrude 1207) Not left out is Medusa, who, in Greek mythology, is referred to as one of the three Gorgons. The other two Gorgons, according to Pierre Grimal, are “Stheno and Euryale” (174). He says, In Perseus’ adventures the Medusa is set against Athena, the goddess of war and agriculture. Perseus cuts off Medusa’s head and Athena is able to use it as part of her shield with the gaze of the Gorgon now turning her enemies to stone. (174) In A Question of Power, Sello sets Medusa against Elizabeth, with initially devastating effects, but the Greek myth implies that Elizabeth might be able to turn the tables on her Gorgon-​like adversary. Also, Elizabeth, who seems the least remarkable name of all the major characters, has her name derived through Greek from the Hebrew word Elisheba, which means, according to Jobes, “worshiper of god” (505). The meaning of the name, Johnson argues, “has reference to the themes of the novel and helps to define Elizabeth’s position in relation to Sello and Dan, who in turn dominate her nightmares” (110). Other possible meanings of the name refer to “consecrated to God” (110), and “glorious within,” (110) and these: [Can] be associated with different stages of development, connoting, in the first instance, commitment and, in the second, the sense of exaltation that the traveller, having overcome dangers and temptations, experiences at the end of the journey. (Johnson 110–​111) In summation, the names of the three principal torturers of Elizabeth: Dan, Sell, and Medusa are strategically chosen by the narrator to depict power, authority, dictatorship, and tyranny. Their names are symbolic applications of pain and torture. These characters deploy the evil of power as an instrument of punishment, torment, and rejection of the wholeness of human life. The reality of the novel becomes the reality of political, racial, cultural, and tribal oppressions. Trauma trope is one of the major aspects of this discussion. The novel is not only a psychological novel but also the most disturbing novel of Head because of its complexity. The novel starts off with the entire world of Elizabeth—​ with the heavy burden of trauma and molestation on her shoulders. She experiences herself mostly in aloneness and isolation. In fact, she does not experience herself as a complete human being but rather as someone split in

178  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world many ways and forms and as Laing puts it, “perhaps as a mind more or less tenuously linked to a body, as two or more selves, and so on” (17). She has various forms of attachment to other characters like Dan, Medusa, and Sello. John Bowlby has eloquently summed it up that attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life revolves, not only when he is an infant or a toddler or a school child but throughout his adolescence and his years of maturity as well, and on into old age. (442) All of these put together, plus the molestation and torment she experiences at the hands of Dan, Sello, and Medusa create the unhealable trauma wreaked upon her life. Consequently, in my exploration of A Question of Power, I have discovered that pain looms large in both apartheid South Africa and in the black-​ruled Botswana, her adopted home. In the novel, we see “a world where the ghastly specters of apartheid, gendered violence, patriarchal authority and coerced racial interpretation assume literal form in the figures of Dan, Sello, Medusa and other ghost-​women” (Hershini Bhana 35). These figures, invoked as a metaphorical representation, traumatise the collective female body in a shut-​in world by even attempting to close the possibilities of redress and healing. The trauma narrative is connected to evil, physical, and moral dirts such as sexual bestiality in a black world.

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Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  179 Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Bracken, Harry M. Philosophy and Racism. New York: Free Press, 1978. Brown, Coreen. The Creative Vision of Bessie Head. London: Associated University Presses, 2010. Brown, Lloyd W. “Creating New Worlds in Southern Africa: Bessie Head and the Question of Power.” Umoja. vol. 3, no. 1, 2021, pp. 43–​53. Carmichael, Stokely and Charles Hamilton. “Preface.” Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books, 1966, pp. vii–​xii. Carroll, Noel. “Film, Emotion and Genre.” Passionate Views. (Eds.) Carl Plantinga and Greg Smith. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, pp. 59–​87. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. Cooper, Davina. Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Coundouriotis, Eleni. “Authority and Invention in the Fiction of Bessie Head.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 27, no. 2. Indiana, IN: Indiana University Press, 1969, pp. 17–​32. Dante. The Divine Comedy. 3 Vols. (Trans.) Dorothy L. Sayers. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984. Davies, Carole Boyce. Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. New York: Routledge, 1994. Davies, Natalie Zemon. “Being Grateful to Edward Said.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 23, no. 1–​2, 2003, pp. 3–​4. Davison, Carol Margaret. “A Method in the Madness.” The Tragic Life: Bessie Head and Literature in Southern Africa. (Ed.) Cecil Abrahams. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1990, pp. 19–​29. DeLillo, Don. The Body Artist. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Eakin, John Paul. Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-​Invention. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Elder, Arlene A. “Bessie Head: The Inappropriate Appropriation of Autobiography.” Emerging Perspectives on Bessie Head. (Ed.) Huma Ibrahim. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004, pp. 1–​16. Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, 1991. Figley, Charles R. “From Victim to Survivor: Social Responsibility in the Wake of a Catastrophe.” Trauma and Its Wake: The Study and Treatment of Post-​traumatic Stress Disorder. (Ed.) Figley, Charles R. New York: Brunner-​Mazel, 1985, pp. 318–​415. Flanagan, Joseph. “The Seduction of History: Trauma, Re-​Memory and the Ethics of the Real.” Clio. vol. 31, no. 4, 2002, pp. 387–​402. Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, Penguin Freud Library. vol. 11. (Ed.) Angela Richards. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991, pp. 43–​65. Frith, Chris D., Sarah-​Jayne Blakemore, and Daniel M. Wolpert, Brain Research Interactive. Accessed on www.elsevier.com/​locate/​bres, 22/​3/​2017. Garcia, Jorge L.A. “Current Conceptions of Racism: A Critical Examination of Some Recent Social Philosophy.” Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 28, 1997, pp. 5–​42.

180  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world Gene, A. Plunka. Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. (Trans.) Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980. Glasgow, Joshua. Racism as Disrespect. USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library: University of San Francisco, 2009. Grandsaigne, Jean de and Carey Spackey. The African Short Story Written in English: A Survey Ariel. vol. 15, no. 2, 1982, pp. 73–​83. Grimal, Pierre. The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Gusdorf, Georges. “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography.” Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. (Ed.) James Olney. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980, pp. 28–​48. Hall, Stuart. “Signification: Althusser and the Post-​Structuralist Debates.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, vol. 2, no. 2, June, 1985, pp. 91–​114. Hamber, Brandon and Sharon Lewis. An Overview of the Consequences of Violence and Trauma in South Africa. Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 1997. Harold, Pinter. Writing for the Theatre, Plays: One. London: Methuen, 1983. Head, Bessie Emery Amelia. A Question of Power. London: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1973. —​—​—​. The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales. London: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1977. Hegel, Georg. The Phenomenology of Mind. New York, 1967. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. (Trans.) J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence-​ from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Horowitz, Mardi. Stress Response Syndromes. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1986. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978. James, Henry. “The Art of Fiction.” Longman’s Magazine. (Ed.) C. J. Longman. London: Green & Co., 4 September, 1884. pp. 502–​521. Janoff-​Bulman, R. and I.H. Frieze. “A Theoretical Perspective for Understanding Reactions to Victimization.” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 39, no. 2, 1983, pp. 1–​17. Jelinek, Estelle. The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography from Antiquity to the Present. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986. Jobes, Gertrude. Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbol. New York: Scarecrow Press, 1962. Johnson, Joyce. Bessie Head: The Road of Peace of Mind: A Critical Appreciation. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008. Joyce, James. Ulysses. New York: Vintage Books, 1961. Jung, C.G. Dreams. (Tran.) R.F.C. Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Laing, Robert David. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1959. Laub, Dori. An Event without a Witness: Truth, Testimony and Survival. www2.warwick.ac.uk/​fac/​arts/​theatre_​s/​applying/​…/​ma…/​core…/​laub.pdf. Lonsdale, John. “Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau Mau and Remaking Kenya.” Journal of African History, vol. 31, no. 3, 1990, pp. 393–​421.

Black power and trauma in a shut-in world  181 Lutz, Helma. “Intersectional Analysis: A Way Out of Multiple Dilemmas?” Paper presented at the International Sociological Association Research Committee 05 (on Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations) and RC34 (Women in Society). Durban, South Africa. 2002. McAdams Dan P. “The Psychological Self as Actor, Agent, and Author.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 8, no. 3, 2013, pp. 272–​295. McCall, Lesley. “The Complexity of Intersectionality.” Sign: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. vol. 30, no. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 1771–​1800. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987. Motzaf-​Haller, Pnina. Fragmented Worlds, Coherent Lives: The Politics of Difference in Botswana. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. Mphahlele, Es’kia. “The Tyranny of Place.” New Letters. (Ed.) David Ray. vol. 40, no. 1. University of Missouri, Kansas City, 1773, pp. 70–​83. Murdoch, H. Adlai and Anne Donadey. “Introduction: Productive Intersections.” Postcolonial Theory and Francophone Literary Studies. (Eds.) H. Adlai Murdock and Anne Donadey. Grainesville: University of Florida Press, 2005, pp. 1–​17. Nealon, Jeffrey.T. “The Ethics of Dialogue: Bakhtin and Levinas.” College English, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 129–​148. Nkosi, Lewis. Tasks and Masks: Themes and Styles of African Literature. Harlow: Longman, 1981. Ogot, A. Grace. “The Rain Game.” Modern African Stories. (Eds.) E.A. Komey and E. Mphahlele. London: Faber and Faber, 1964, p. 181. Olaussen, Maria. Forceful Creation in Harsh Terrain: Place and Identity in Three Novels by Bessie Head. Frankfurt and Main: Peter Lang, 1997. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. New York: Routledge, 1994. Pinter, Harold. Art, Truth & Politics. Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, SwedishAcademyStockholm.htt://​ n obelprize.org.nobel_ ​ p rizess/ ​ l iterature/​ laureates/​2005/​pinter-​lecture.html. Accessed on 5/​6/​2017. Prince, Gerald. Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton, 1982. Rhys, Jean. Wilde Sargasso Sea. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987. Richardson, Brian. “Recent Concepts of Narratives and the Narratives of Narrative Theory.” Style, vol. 34, no. 75, 2000. Rooney, Caroline. “Dangerous Knowledge and the Poetics of Survival: A Reading of Our Sister Killjoy and A Question of Power.” Motherlands. (Ed.) Susheila Nasta. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991, pp. 299–​326. Said, Edward W. Beginnings: Intention and Method. New York: Basic, 1975. Sarvan, Charles. “Bessie Head: Two Letters.” Wasafiri, vol. 12: Autumn, 1990, pp. 11–​15. Sass, Louis A. Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought. New York: Harvard University Press, 1994. Schapera, Isaac. The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa: Bushmen and Hottentots. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1930. Scott, C. Ellen. The Horrors of Remembrance: The Altered Visual Aesthetic of Horror in Jonathan Demme’s Beloved. Accessed on www.atria.nl/​ezines/​lAV_​60661_​2010_​ 52/​g40_​scott.html, 4/​11/​2016. Selfa, Lance. “Slavery and the origins of racism.” International Socialist Review, Issue 26, November–​December, 2002, pp. 1–​10.

182  Black power and trauma in a shut-in world Small, Christopher. “Africans, Europeans and the Making of Music.” Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’, and Slam Dunking. (Ed.) Gena Dagel Caponi. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999, pp. 110–​134. Stolorow, Robert D. Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic, and Philosophical Reflections. New York: Routledge, 2007. Tausk, Victor. “On the Origin of the ‘Influencing Machine’ in Schizophrenia.” The Psychoanalytic Reader: An Anthology of Essential Papers with Critical Introduction. (Ed.) Robert Flies. New York: (N.P), 1948. Telotte, J.P. “Through a Pumpkin’s Eye: The Reflexive Nature of Horror.” Film Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 3. American Horrors. (Ed.) Gregory Waller. University of Illinois Press: Urban, 1987, pp. 139–​149. Theile, Verena and Linda Tredennick. (Eds.) New Formalism and Literary Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Thomas, Clara. “Mr. Rochester’s First Marriage: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.” A Critical Study. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979, pp. 345–​356. Tucker, Margaret E. “A Nice-​Time Girl Strike Back: An Essay on Bessie Head’s A Question of Power.” Research in African Literatures. Vol. 19, No. 2, Special Issue on Women’s Writing. Indiana, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988, pp. 170–​181. Van der Kolk, B.A. “The Psychological Consequences of Over-​ whelming Life Experiences.” Psychological Trauma. (Ed.) van der Kolk, B.A. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1987, pp. 217–​233. Wood, James. How Fiction Works. New York: Farrar, 2008. Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. San Diego: Harcourt, 1990. Young, Harvey. Theatre and Race. London: Palgrave, 2013. Young, Shannon. “Therapeutic Insanity: The Transformative Vision of Bessie Head’s A Question of Power.” Research in African Literatures,. vol. 41, no. 4. Indiana University Press, 2010, pp. 227–​241. Zambrana, Ruth Enid and Dill, Bonnie Thornton. “Critical Thinking about Inequality: An Emerging Lens.” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. (Ed.) McCann, Carole R. and Kim, Seung-​Kyung. New York: Routledge, 2017, pp. 183–​193. Zola, Émile. Germinal. (Trans.) Havelock Ellis and Peter Collier. London: Scribner & Welford, 1885.

6  Fiction through history or history through fiction?

At stake, perhaps, is nothing more than the historical accounts of Botswana as an important aspect of Head’s writings. It is important because history is the first border we cross in entering into the understanding of any society—​ modern or ancient. It is a serious reflection about understanding Botswana through its written accounts, and by thinking concretely about the tribal and ethnic formations of the people of Botswana. I examine the history of Botswana by beginning with two important questions: what is it that we do when we read Botswanan literature? And why? Its history is to help us answer these questions, and to help us contextualise both our reading and understanding of the Botswanan society and its mixed-​ heritage of people. These questions are at the centre of any serious analysis of contemporary Botswana. It is clear that understanding Botswanan history is fundamental to understanding its society, literature, and politics. It is also clear that Bessie Head was very sensitive to the history of tribal and ethnic formations in Botswana, whilst nevertheless simplifying the picture considerably in order to achieve artistic coherence.

The history of tribal formations in Botswana Thomas Tlou and Alec Campbell, in their book, begin with the question of “what is Botswana?” (9). They argue that, “The name itself means the place of the Tswana peoples (bo-​), but that name also strikes at the core of the problem of defining Botswana’s national character” (9). That is, “it is a place of many people, not just Tswana. The country itself is mostly desert (the Kalahari Desert) and people live everywhere, but most of the water and resources are found along the eastern border” (9). Botswana, like every other nation of the world, has its own unique history. The history of Botswana, as I understand it, is highly complex. The complexity is partly shrouded in the blurred understanding of Botswana by non-​natives. In the same way, Mary S. Lederer argues that, “Twenty-​five years ago, many people probably thought Botswana was one of South Africa’s homelands, confusing—​or combining it with its ‘neighbor’ Bophuthatswana …” (1), again, “Part of the confusion of where and what Botswana is stems from its past and its unusual status in the colonial empire

184  Fiction through history or vice-versa [as a Protectorate rather than a colony]” (1). When it became the British Protectorate, “the expectation [was] that it [would] merge eventually with Cape Colony to the south—​or, after the success of Rhodes’s venture in the early 1890s, with Rhodes to the north” (History of Botswana 1). This determination was impeded “by the resolute action of a tribal chief who sees the implicit dangers for his people. Khama III, king of the Ngwato and a convert to Christianity, travels in 1895 to London with two other local chieftains” (History of Botswana 1). It was recorded that Khama III and his team persuaded “the colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, to promise their region the continuing protection of the crown” (History of Botswana 1), to protect the region from the Cape politicians, who wanted to join Bechuanaland to the Union of South Africa. The identity of Botswana was shaped and reshaped from the start of colonial occupation. Laderer sums up that “Part of the confusion probably also arises from the rather quiet nature of the place itself, though there are, of course, lots of famous things in Botswana” (1). According to Richard P. Stevens, in his Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Botswana, he argues that the “early history of the Botswana is shrouded in legend. Historians believe the Batswana to be part of the Bantu-​speaking tribes which moved south from Central Africa about the time of the birth of Christ” (14). However, he argues that “it was not until the 19th century that Botswana’s history became documented when such missionary figures as Livingstone and Moffat moved northward towards the Zambezi through Botswana” (14). But as the case may be today, Stevens continues, the majority of the people lived on the eastern border of the country staying in large villages. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century, when a common threat appeared from outside the country’s borders, that the various tribes came together. (14) The emerging crisis was because of the expansion of the Zulu nation-​state under the reign of Chaka Zulu. Stevens adds that, “Some of the tribes which did not join the Zulus were forced westward, and under such leaders as Sebetoane and Manthatisi, began to enter and raid the country” (14). Missionary figures such as Price, Lloyd, Willoughby, and Mackenzie intervened on behalf of Botswanans to offer resistance to the invaders from the east, as well as to the Boers who were making incursions from the south. Later, Khama III, appealed to Britain for help. Substantiating this claim, Stevens says that, In answer to their request a military mission by the British under Sir Charles Warren entered the country in 1884 to stop the Boer raiders and in the following year Britain declared Bechuanaland as far north as Serowe a British Protectorate. (15)

Fiction through history or vice-versa  185 Botswana is a mixed-​heritage country of many peoples. To show how mixed Botswana is, Stevens gives an account of the 1971 census, the very year Maru was written as a novel in exile by Bessie Head. According to Stevens, “A census held in 1971 showed that the total population of the country was then 630,000 persons, comprising about 600,000 Africans, 4000 Europeans, 3500 persons of mixed race, and about 500 Asians” (12). Furthermore, there were an estimated 11,000 nomads. At any given moment approximately 35,000 males are temporarily absent, mainly labouring in South Africa and Rhodesia. Overall population density is 2.5 persons per square mile with rural densities ranging from 0 to 6 per square mile. (12) And, of course, “The annual rate of population increase is believed to be at least 3 per cent” (12). In 1885, before Botswana became the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, it was formerly known as Bechuana, and was dominated by the Tswana. Neil Parsons, a British historian who teaches at the University of Botswana contends that “it was upon Tswanadom that the British founded the colonial state of Bechuanaland, which was in turn and in many ways the foundation for the sovereign state of Botswana” (27). There are different views about the history and demographic make-​up of modern Botswana. Parsons, however, maintains that the concept of Tswanadom that is both philosophical and territorial has led many observers to assume that Botswana is a mono-​ethnic state … but only in so far as the Tswana minority have successfully imposed its culture on the majority population of the extreme diverse origins. (27) Lydia Nyati-​Ramahobo argues that this recognition “was a colonial error that has rendered the majority of the country’s peoples not only invisible but also insignificant” (1). According to Stevens, “The largest tribe [of those which make up the Tswana] is the Ngwato (Bamangwato), which, numbering about 200,000, comprises about one-​third of the total population and owns one-​fifth of the land; its territory lies to the east” (12). What is important here is that there are several ethnic groups that make up Botswana today. It is claimed that Botswana was named after the Tswana people and, therefore, means “land of the Tswana people.” As Nyati-​ Ramahobo puts it, “… in 1933, the British authorities recognized eight tribes in the Chieftainship Act as follows: the Barolong, Bakwena, Bangwaketse, Balete, Bakgatla, Batlokwa, Bangwato and Batawana” (1). Six tribes out of the eight “reside in the Southern part of the country near the capital city, Gaborone” [and] “Two other (the Bangwato and Batawana) reside in the

186  Fiction through history or vice-versa Central and Northwest (Ngamiland) districts respectively and are numerically inferior to the tribes they rule over” (1). Stevens, like Nyati-​Ramahobo, also attests to the fact that “The Batswana people are divided into eight principal tribal groups, each occupying its own separate territory with its own traditional chiefs and retaining an inalienable communal ownership over its tribal lands” (12). Furthermore, Anthony Sillery offers a pictorial diagram of the eight principal tribes of the Protectorate, tracing them to one common ancestry, as well as their migration history in the Protectorate. So, within the specific context of this study, traditional rulership in Botswana is structured based on tribal lineage. In fact, Botswanan political culture in time past was more or less a dynasty. According to Sillery, “the Kwena, Ngwato, Ngwaketse and Tawana [claim] a common legendary ancestor and are generally believed to be descended from a single tribe of which the senior branch are the Hurutshe” (22); and, “the Kgatla, who are perhaps also of Hurutshe stock but did not enter the Protectorate until 1871; the Rolong, who claim an ancestry even more remote than the Hurutshe and their offshoots” (22); also, “the Tlokwa, a very small section of a much larger group of that name in other parts of southern Africa, traditionally an offshoot from the Kgatla” (22); and, finally, “the Lete, who are not really Tswana at all, but Transvaal Ndebele who have completely assimilated Sotho culture” (22). The dominant tribes in the north of the country are: the Basubiya, the Bayei, and the Hambukusu. Apart from the eight tribes recognised by the British authorities, there are other ethnic compositions such as Kalanga, Ndebele, Herero, San, Afrikaner, and others. It is sometimes argued that the idea of “tribe” in Botswana and the rest of Africa was a colonial invention solely to break the country/​continent into ethnic cleavages for administrative convenience. So, “under British colonial rule, the populations of these states were given the official status of ‘tribe,’ a term still used today” (10). However, the notion of “tribe” has a very long history, predating the colonial period. Robert J. Gregory traces the origin of the term to the Greek, as well as the Latin root. He says, “The term ‘tribe’ originated around the time of the Greek city-​states and the early formation of the Roman Empire.” The Latin term, “tribus” has since been transformed to mean, “A group of persons forming a community and claiming descent from a common ancestor” (1), a definition which fits the self-​understanding of many of the people in Bechuana prior to the colonial period. Morris William also observes that a tribe is a “group of persons with a common occupation, interest, or habit,” and “a large family” (1369). Fried Morton writes that the precipitation of tribes (76), was triggered by the emergence of the state, but did not really get into high gear until the emergence of the ancient empires and, later in a greater burst, after the appearance of colonialism and imperialism. (98)

Fiction through history or vice-versa  187 From whichever perspective one chooses to view the debate, in any case, the notion of tribe became a prominent concept during the colonial conquest of Africa. In the context of Botswanan history, its multi-​layered roots in terms of tribal formation pose an obvious identity problem. This problem, in turn, “can, of course, also be situated within discussions of nationalism” (Lederer 12). Lederer further explains that, In the 1960s, when many African nations became independent, defining national identity played a role in almost every aspect of national life, including in literature. Because independence fixed colonial borders, national identity was often celebrated at the expense of other sorts of identity, as was also the case with Botswana. (12–​13) The independence of nation-​states did not change the artificial borders created by the empire, but maintained the strong pre-​existing ethnic identities in the face of borders that cut through both ethnic and tribal regions of Africa. As I have observed, nationalism in modern Botswana faces a particularly difficult challenge in people’s sense of growing ethnic identity. Conversely, the Ugandan poet, David Rubadiri wrote an article in 1968 on national literature, arguing that “identity is not national but spiritual” (52–​53) that: “a person’s beliefs and habits do not adjust themselves according to artificial (and often also arbitrary) borders” (25–​53). Rubadiri’s claim is partly true because of the way people in Botswana view themselves in terms of national identity, as well as their relationships to their homeland. Therefore, the notion of “tribe” varies in meaning and interpretation today, and as Konstantina Isidoros puts it, “Finding that societies classified as ‘tribal’ had in fact also been very diverse in their organisation, anthropologists contended that the term was so ambiguous that it should be abandoned by social science” (168). The frequent reluctance to use the terms “tribe” and “tribal” is also partly because of their being derogatorily used to portend primitiveness and backwardness in popular literature. However, the reality of ethnic divisions with complicated histories in Botswana makes the use of some such term unavoidable.

The merging of fact with fiction: a case of Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind and A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga To understand what is real and what is imagined, both history and fiction help put our lives in context, such that if we want to see the past looking alive, we turn to history—​and by recreating what happened in the past, we turn to fiction. This is the sweet bond between history and fiction. Therefore, this chapter takes us far from our shore, far from our time, and consequently beyond our compass, as we reach both into time and place in Botswanan history and the humanity that filled the era. It argues that in our continued

188  Fiction through history or vice-versa search for sense, meaning, and the immortal memory we hold of people, place, event, time and space in historical novels, we unconsciously discover the essence of our humanity. The biographer Craig Mackenzie argues that Head’s writing “represents an amalgam of self-​reflection, semi-​fictional narrative, journalistic reportage and cultural comment” (1). As an amalgam of different genres weaved together, her fiction is placed at the intersection of autobiographical studies, cultural studies, women’s writing, post-​colonial literature, history, sociology, anthropology, and exile literature. It is, therefore, difficult to pigeon-​ hole Head’s writing in a particular discipline. One finds Head as a fictional writer, historian, journalist, sociologist, social anthropologist, a letter writer, autobiographer, and a psychologist. Head is all of these and more. Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind and A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga are Head’s only historical novels whose clear-​eyed vision depends on the merging of fact with fiction. The question of what is fiction, and what is history, with the aim of separating history from fiction has been so much of a debate amongst critics but, for me, history and fiction are both constructions of a discursive narrative piece. Within the narratological framework, history and fiction should rather complement each other such that when history fails to accurately capture the actual recorded fact of the past in terms of objectivity, the historian or the fictional writer can use what Alun Munslow calls the “deconstructive consciousness,” which helps us to understand history “not solely and simply as an objectivised empiricist enterprise, but as the creation and eventual imposition by historians of a particular narrative form on the past: a process that directly affects the whole project” (2). Head, for instance, asserts that, Being aware of the irony of “actual recorded fact” [of the history of Serowe], some historical data was given to me by the old men of the tribe, but it was unreliable as their memories had tended to fail them. A re-​construction was made therefore in my own imagination. (6) Here, objectivity is lost, as Head has to rely on the power of her imagination to re-​create a historical novel for the people. Using the “deconstructive consciousness” to recognise the literary approach to history, and history to Head, as Munslow suggests, is “that narrative as the form of story-​telling also provides the textual model for the past itself ” (2). Up until the nineteenth century, Olivia Chirobocea argues that, “history was a blend of fact and fiction, myth and reality” (1)—​clearly justified at the time that history became the queen of social sciences. But thereafter came a moment when history was divorced from literary fiction—​notably, novels. Hayden White argues that, literature became history’s other in a double sense: it pretended to have discovered a dimension of reality that historians would never recognize

Fiction through history or vice-versa  189 and it developed techniques of writing that undermined the authority of history’s favored realistic or plain style of writing. (25) Nevertheless, the twentieth century brought about a major change of perspective on history, as many historians realised the necessity for an interdisciplinary method in order to widen the image, to fill in the vacant spaces, and to understand the past. Thus, history, to Chirobocea, was “ramified into various branches such as cultural history (Annales School), psychohistory, social history (or history of everyday life) and others” (2). Despite this, fiction, on the other hand, seems to be more powerful, as it arguably grants better access to the mainstream narrative of events, and it is easily popularised as a form of narrative. To theorise, therefore, the relationship between history and fiction is to bring them closer to each other as I attempt to show in Head’s two historical novels. Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind and A Bewitched Crossroads: An Africa Saga. What Head, in her own words from the Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981), sees as a “sense of wovenness, and a wholeness” (23), is to Craig MacKenzie, a new dimension for her, that is, her “surmounting of the problems of isolation and alienation that characterised her earlier phase and a new commitment to Botswana, and particularly, the people of Serowe” (48). In the proneness of critics to equate the depiction of reality with an artistic coherence, Mackenzie contends that the village of Serowe provides a “symmetry and balanced absence in the novel” (48), which shows some difficulty to comprehend the totality of Head’s artistic vision. Also, Jane Grant argues that due to the non-​ fictional nature of this work, “Head has imposed a severe discipline on her normal style, [and that] underestimates the mediation and control of [her] other work” (55). Grant further argues that Head’s use of Harold M. Telmaque’s line: “Where is the hour of the beautiful dancing of birds in the sun-​wind?” (vii); does not “take on the cadence of a song (Grant 55). However, Grant’s critique massively fails to describe Head’s uniquely euphoric description of Serowe. Grant seems only to account for this euphoria as if it is an avatar of the fervidness of Head’s feelings for Serowe, but largely fails to understand that Head is only portraying how she would rather like the village of Serowe to be, and not how it is. What Head sets out to do in her historical novels as evident in her short story “The Deep River: A Story of Ancient Tribal Migration” is to give the people of Talaote tribe a history, as they had “forgotten their origins and their original language” in their continuous migrations and had “merged and remerged with many other tribes” (1). Head’s aim coincides with the framing of the four points raised by Chinweizu in his Decolonising the African Mind: •

the expansion of the horizon of African history to include its full temporal span;

190  Fiction through history or vice-versa •

the recovery and correct interpreting of long available materials which were suppressed, misrepresented, or sidelined by the objectives of colonial historiography; • vigorous research efforts to expand our knowledge and fill gaps in our inventory of events in African history; • a jettisoning of the colonialist habit of imposing on African history schemes of periodisation derived from those of European history (88). Chinweizu’s four-​point thesis is fundamental to the sanitisation of post-​ colonial African history; and the point made here is that, for example, to study Botswanan history is to interrogate its creation and its taken-​ for-​ granted realities—​the realities that cannot be explained away but serve best to describe Head’s approach to the dynamics of fiction and history. And through the juxtaposition of fictional/​imaginative and historical/​documentary experiences, Head weaves together different versions of Southern African history with the intention that when we see or read the story of the victor (i.e., the coloniser), we should also look for the story of the vanquished (i.e., the colonised) so as to balance the narratives. In the novel, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind, Head combines her skills both as a novelist and a historian, with the actual words of almost one hundred natives of Serowe so as to provide a clear picture of the village and its history. The involvement of the people shows that Head is not completely in control as she is in her other works. The novel is a multivoiced narration of an oral history of the Bamangwato people. Writing about her historical novels, Tom Holzinger writes that Head “gains confidence; she picks up Tswana materials and rearranges them. She weaves new themes, even heroic themes, into familiar village music” (48). Head doubles as an archivist and a writer to tell a history through the eyes of the people of Serowe. Serowe, whose population is said to be approximately 60,000, is an urban village in the country’s central district. As the capital for the Bamangwato people in the last century, it is Botswana’s largest village. Serowe has played a very significant role in Botswana’s history, and it is the birthplace of past Botswanan Presidents—​ from Sir. Seretse Khama, through Sir. Ketumile Masire, Dr. Festus Gontebanye Mogae, Lt. Dr. Seretse Khama Ian Khama to Dr. Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi. Serowe is essentially fundamental in the making of Botswana. Head divides the novel into three major parts so as to reconstruct the history of Serowe through the voices of the people, and to ensure a line of continuity from Khama the Great, to Tshekedi Khama, and to the white South African, Patrick van Rensburg. This kind of history writing is what Marilyn Butler calls “linearity”—​that is, how historians are “taught to strive for an effect of coherence, and linearity or sequence contributes massively by its apparent explanatory function” (28). Again, what Butler defines as a “common error in history writing that supposes that when event B follows event A, the reader

Fiction through history or vice-versa  191 infers that A caused B to happen” (28). This way, it becomes possible for Head to achieve linearity as a line of continuity. The first-​hand reportage in the novel shows the enduring influence of these great figures, and expands on Head’s engagement with education as a means of self-​advancement and of projecting the well-​being of the entire community. Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind, is not just a historical novel, but also a Development-​oriented Novel (DoN), built around the lives and works of the three principal figures: Khama the Great, Tshekedi Khama, and Patrick van Rensburg—​and also, the larger story of Serowe itself is narrated through their contributions to the development of the community, as well as the community’s response to their ideas of development. DoN, being a kind of unheard-​of concept in the corpus of Head’s criticism, is used here to emphasise the nexus of social factors that define the community’s economic life and fabric. It is a DoN because it cures the people’s poverty through the experimentation of self-​ help therapy and through the formation of age regiments (mephato) that dates back to 1875, and through which the inhabitants of Serowe are able to build “mission schools, houses and churches” (xv) for themselves. The novel, through “Development Studies,” gives “the students some of the skills to handle their own environment” (172)—​by studying local production, as well as institutions like banks. Linking, however, Development Studies to a programme of manual work, a student suggests that, “Development Studies” should be taught in all secondary schools in Botswana. This subject helps people to understand their society. Many students who have studied this subject do not think only of themselves. They do not think they are superior to other people who have less money. They can develop their country slowly and well. They do not want to improve only their own standard of living, but also that of others as well. (173) The idea of Development Studies suggests encouraging lessons about interventions and factors that contribute to positive changes in the Serowe community. Head notes that community relationships can actually serve a larger purpose of social networks and social ties, while neighbouring care is fundamental to the development and maintenance of social cohesion. This vision is one in which people of the community look out for both themselves and for others, creating an atmosphere in which a critical proportion of them is positively invested. It shows that the community-​building process focuses on providing ways for the people in the community to connect meaningfully with one another. For example, in the pre-​industrial era, the inhabitants of Serowe have “intimate knowledge of construction” as Serowe is built with “their bare hands and little tools—​a hoe, an axe and mud” (xii), therefore, creating mud huts that have “contributed much to the serenity and order of

192  Fiction through history or vice-versa village life” (49). By depicting the positive value of work, Head imposes a human face on the environment. Beginning with the trajectory of development history in Serowe, first, Khama, whose era lasts “from 1875 to 1923,” contributes to the community in a way that during his time, Serowe “became the capital of the Bamangwato tribe who were at the time were searching for surface water” (ix). One of his impacts, as Head puts it is that, “one continually gets the impression that he was deliberately reversing the tide that had swallowed up and submerged other black peoples in southern Africa” (xiii)—​and this, as exemplified in one of his laws shows that: “The lands of the Bamangwato are not saleable” (xiii). Next is the era of his son, Tshekedi Khama “from 1926 to 1959.” In his contribution to the development of Serowe, he “paid for the higher education of a small group of boys, whom he sent on to colleges in South Africa” (xiv). Consequently, “the people wanted him to educate all their children and the best solution to this problem was to get people in Serowe to build their own primary schools, which they did, on a voluntary basis, and one college, Moeng” (xiv). The last in line with this trajectory of development history is the appearance of Patrick van Rensburg and his wife in Serowe in 1963. Actually, the modem era in Serowe is marked as the growth of Patrick van Rensburg’s Swaneng Secondary School, and also the work “brigades” that he initiates to solve the crisis of unemployment for school leavers. The Swaneng School community consists of outsiders of diverse nationalities. It is in this community, much as in other communities in Head’s writing, that she presents a paradox of a disparate group of people united in their freedom from the binding ethics of another society. But before the advent of the white man education in Botswana, for instance, “women produced most of their household wares, like pots and cups, while the men were skilled in all kinds of leather work and the production of mats and blankets and clothing” (50). The contributions of the inhabitants are seen by Mackenzie to provide “subject matter which is an alternative subject of scrutiny” (46). For example, Head writes about the Boiteko workers: The wonder of it is how eager and prepared very poor people are to share everything with each other—​some work groups like the pottery house and the stone masons have higher earnings than the others and often tend to carry everyone else on their backs. (172) To corroborate Head’s claim, a Boiteko weaver offers her perspective on the Boiteko as: I do everything; card the wool, spin it, dye it and weave it—​but I don’t get rich … But what I complain about is the way Boiteko is organised. We

Fiction through history or vice-versa  193 share the money equally among all the members while the group earnings are not equal. (178) Head’s portrayal of the inequality in the group earnings is realistically an inherent problem in any scheme designed to meet the needs of a diverse group of people. Therefore, in one of her letters, Head makes no claims of an enduring tradition of African communalism as the propeller for the Boiteko projects—​rather, she writes, “none of the dreams here get Africanised because all sorts of people work together” (212). However, Head is impressed by the way the Boiteko organisation ensures that all trainees become used to each step in the production of goods—​and in her words “there is magic in seeing the whole production line” (160). This practice rescues the Boiteko project from any similarity it might bear to the concept of developed industry. Some workers themselves are less inclined than Head to value this aspect of Boiteko; again more concerned with efficiency and profit. As a worker explains, “in the near future we may have an outside group of people to specialise in washing, carding and spinning the wool, to save time” (163). The financial reward of the work is always stressed by the workers and always takes priority over Head’s more idealistic perspective. An interviewee expresses quite unequivocally the attitude towards communal work: “Most of the trainees were not in favour of a co-​operative because trainees knew that farming is very difficult here and they feared it would be a long time before they reaped financial rewards from this experiment” (150). For Head, community building begins with an investment in the neighbourhood’s social infrastructure. The development of healthy and vibrant social interactions in the community produce the conditions thought to be necessary for more formalised participation in community organisations and associations. The attitudes, behaviour, and relationships that develop as a result of social interactions within the neighbourhood are increasingly seen as the elements of a community’s social capital in Serowe. This sense of community trend also connects in Head’s last historical novel that is, A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga (1984), which Head calls an “historical novel and which her earliest biographers refer to as a semi-​ fictionalised history” (Gardner, Scott 7), achieves her purpose—​which is to record promising trends. Her endeavour is to tell the consequences of a past time for the present, as well as for the future existence. In Head’s account, her determination is to show that the history of Botswana is not “the great arid wasteland the history books would have us believe” (A Woman Alone, 87). From the historical point of view, Head burdens herself with the huge assignment of reconstructing the history of the Bamangwato tribe from 1800 to 1895. As Head writes in the “Foreword,” the Bamangwato people are “all the refugees and diverse nations absorbed into the small Bangwato clan during the era of nation building by chiefs Sekgoma I and Khama III” (7). Also, Head acknowledges in the “Foreword” that the origin of her hero,

194  Fiction through history or vice-versa Sebina, and his son is inspired by Peter Mazebe Sebina’s essay “The History of the Makalaka.” In the novel, Sebina is the chief of one of the tiny clans that seeks the protection of Khama III. As the narration unfolds, Sebina’s life story tells of a pattern of the internal, tribal disruption caused by conflicts revolving round the succession to leadership, as well as the warmongering between tribes and wholesale slaughter by the Matabele people. Head builds on the idea of the incessant migration caused by various conflicts. As their patriarch “greatly aged and completely white-​haired” (60), Sebina safely delivers his people to the promised land. He secures the destiny of his people. With Sebina, the reader witnesses the effects of Christianity, and the success of Khama’s negotiations to maintain Bechuanaland’s continuation as a British Protectorate, and to protect the land from the designs of the British South African Company. While this historical survey foregrounds the “hopeful trends” of recorded political negotiations, Sebina’s role within the unfolding events of the drama is to personify what is sublime, and what is exalted. He is portrayed not only as a guarantor of humanity in his lifetime, but also his death becomes a link between the past and the future in Head’s metaphorical crossroads. Sebina dies in the knowledge that his heir, Mazebo, who “reflected the world of his grandfather where all life and thought floated with graceful ease on a broad, flowing, peaceful river” (82) will “see the sunrise for him tomorrow” (195). This means that the qualities for which Sebina stands will endure as definitely as the sun will rise. The novel records a moment of important merging, and the one that is “bewitched,” heralds the sublime potential of a future Utopia from a past world that resounds with the glories and triumphs of legendary heroes and heroines. Head portrays Khama as a good-​ natured ruler. Khama, inspired to reform the traditional laws of his ancestors, faces the antagonism of the “die-​hard traditionalists” (86). Therefore, he becomes the hero, who, in Neumann’s view, “is charged with the task of changing the patriarchal—​the old law—​of his society” (174). This law, as represented in Khama’s society by the “old men with fierce, malevolent faces, intent on shutting out anything foreign and unfamiliar” (86), and Khama’s deviance to the accepted norms and custom, means, as Maruapula interprets it that he (Khama) “insults the ancestors” (171). For the people to see their ancestral laws being violated with “malevolence” is the prism from which Head usually interprets it, and, also, her heroes always present the most serious challenge to the obduracy of their traditions. This is what Khama’s reforms mean. Although, as Head shows, Khama is “completely at peace with himself, secure in power and reassured that all his actions were the right ones” (65). Nonetheless, like Head’s other heroes, for example, Maru and Makhaya, who travel “a lonely road,” Khama’s obligations leave him with “the lonely look of a man who has forsaken the gods of his forefathers” (98). For the sake of his tribe, there are sacrifices that

Fiction through history or vice-versa  195 he has to make, but what defines his heroic qualities is the acceptance of his responsibilities. For example, Khama’s reforms to eradicate the brutal parts of the tribal custom, such as, the secret initiation ceremonies, human sacrifice, as well as any traditional ritual that threatens “the freedom of the people” (55)—​ become a kiss of death for the dangerous aspects of their tribal customs and traditions. As a result, Khama is seen as the villain of the piece. However, the idea of freedom and tolerance is quite implicit within Head’s representation of the changes that Khama imposes on his people, which is juxtaposed against their “fear and suspicion” (171) that had forced them to obey their ancestral laws. The abolition of “bogadi,” that is, the bride-​price, for example, grants women their equal rights with men. Head cleanly measures the potential advantage of this move by emphasising the opportunity it opens up for a more mutual exchange between the sexes: which is, “a relationship of love stimulated by the beginnings of dialogue between a man and a woman” (166). In the novel, Head constantly uses the word “dialogue” to convey the sense of the free play or exchange of thoughts and ideas: This dialogue is like a wave that builds up towards a climax or peak and then crumbles or disperses itself, while a new dialogue or interest takes its place. But before that dispersal or crumbling, a man or men in the society suddenly express the total perfection of that dialogue. (123) The role of the hero is to express the “total perfection” of the age he represents, and this description of the “dialogue” is also interpreted as a version of the “Hegelian dialectic”, which is the reconciliation of opposites to create the most perfect synthesis. In the novel, the “Hegelian dialectic” suggests the function of history for both the author and her reader. To anticipate a movement towards greater freedom reflects a measure of hope that the passing of time may create a more tolerant world view. It, therefore, promises a process that becomes an essential marker of a utopian realisation. As usual for Head, it is only her heroes, her universal beings, who have the power to reform and revive. Head portrays Khama family as, “For one thing, at one time the Khama family were the power horses of this country. All influence came from them and they had the reputation of being a very cruel family” (Khama Memorial Museum 77, Bessie Head Papers 14). Furthermore, Head narrates that, Khama, the Great would be tainted with this and that was where I wanted to take off and veer away. It is awful stuff to delve into, tight, vicious mean and futile but the extent of suffering it caused is tremendous. I have so far always manipulated my characters my way—​get the hell out of this bloody mess and leave the chips to the bastards but real life is not like that. At one glance Khama, The Great is a replica of all the male heroes

196  Fiction through history or vice-versa of my novels, the same personality type so I am half on sure ground re-​ creating him. I know ahead what makes him tick. (KMM 77, BHP 14) Khama is portrayed as the hero of the novel. Nevertheless, the clearest sign of Head’s dependency on her own formulaic expression of utopian fulfilment rests in her conversion of the facts of history to produce an essentially fictional hero known as Sebina, another of her “grand” men. But the creation of Sebina does not diminish the significance of Khama; since Sebina is credited with many of Khama’s qualities. Sebina recognises their mutual compatibility: “He liked that austere face, cold and bleak in its goodness. It matched an austerity and goodness within his own nature” (65). However, it is only in the creation of fictional characters that Head can possibly establish the unique individuality of her own heroes. Head’s research into the details of Khama’s rule, could possibly be chained to her reading of a book she lists in her bibliography, Sillery’s Founding a Protectorate: History of Bechuanaland 1815–​1895, that Khama is “… never in any case disposed to tolerate opposition” (207), he simply regards his “discontented relatives as dangerous rebels … making their life intolerable in all the ways open for that purpose to a powerful tribal leader” (207). She later admits in one of her personal letters that her earlier portrayal of Khama was often “gushy,” and that, in fact, Khama was “very tricky material indeed. Some of him was good and some of him was very tricky” (Eilersen 261). What Head refers to as Khama’s “trickiness” in her letters is defined as “cleverness.” However, Maruapula, the character who is anxious to provide Sebina with evidence of this aspect of Khama’s personality, disapproves of the way in which Khama “has seized immense power to himself ” (100). So, the word “clever,” as used here, means “manipulative” or “devious.” Again, as Maruapula tells Sebina, “You will have an opportunity to observe his methods at first hand, uncle. We never win against him! If he wants to abolish bogadi, he will abolish bogadi and we will help him to do it” (168)! Sebina fulfils this role as a visionary, rather than as a historical hero. Within the narrative, the analogy that is drawn between the cyclical movement of nature and the movement of history foregrounds the restitutive or eternal promise of sunrise. And in this “solar myth, Sebina is the hero. Here, Head’s motifs, as in all her writing are to establish the Sebina’s inseparability from the natural world, with its continuity, and with its potential for rebirth: The old man had lived with birds all his life and their song was unchanging. They sang low notes, high notes and long slow notes but the song was always the same. They sang, “Happy, happy, happy!” all the time … It had not mattered where the old man had migrated with his people, he had always looked out over an unchanging view of flat open plains and dreaming hills. (163)

Fiction through history or vice-versa  197 Sebina is most adequately explained as “a spirit who dwells in all things” (130), and also, the divinity of the natural world is confirmed. It is a form of religion that needs to be distinguished from that which is used to “reinforce the social contract,” and as Northrop Frye argues, it is only “in the eternal and infinite context that is given it by religion that an apocalypse is possible” (1975, 58). And like the immortality with which Head endows the natural world, like the birds which forever sing the same song, it is this animate, and liberating quality that must survive for the benefit of a future time. The description of Sebina’s death, the merging of his consciousness with the sun’s “blazing orb of light” (195), his grandson’s promise “I’ll see the sunrise for you tomorrow,” is one of the ways Head focuses on the astonishment that Sebina symbolises throughout the story. Clearly, in Head’s creation of the novel, she does not, in fact, deviate from the ultimate priorities and concerns that inform all her writing. Head, no doubt, closely identifies with Sebina.

A critical critique of A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga as a historical novel The novel is seen by most critics such as Mackenzie as a major factor that is responsible for the construction of Head’s novel. A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga is said to be “deeply flawed” (Mackenzie 47). Mackenzie further contends that it fails both as “a piece of fiction and as a thoroughgoing historical work” (47). Its failure as history is owing to the lack of the “dry unremittingly factual quality of the school text-​book” (Mackenzie 18). He goes on to cite Barry Ronge’s contention that what is frustrating about A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga, for example, is that: A special effort is needed to perceive the different social and religious organisations of these people, and the names are tongue-​twisting mind benders. It is disheartening when you have painstakingly re-​read several pages, sorted out the names of tribes and chiefs in your mind, only to have them perish forever on the very next page. (47) This is exactly the problem with most white critics of African literature/​ history—​that the moment an African piece of work is not written from the Eurocentric paradigms, then, it is dismissed, either as trash or problematic. Granted that Head deals with the complexities of nineteenth-​century tribal dispersal, and integration of the people she writes for, but we should also bear in mind that it is their history, their story, not Ronge’s—​not anyone else’s. The novel may not read like a history text book, but what I can understand to be as more obviously at the heart of Mackenzie’s critique is Head’s desire to use fiction, particularly, her acknowledgement to fiction makes her “vulnerable to the charge of masquerading as historical fact what is in reality little more than conjecture” (Mackenzie 18). But, for me, the novel, using a different

198  Fiction through history or vice-versa style/​convention from Head’s earlier works, addresses itself to the future, as she writes in expectation, which, according to Milosz Czeslaw, “humanity … lives by memory of itself, [which] is history” (362). And as Maud Ellmann argues, “in the struggle to pre-​empt the past” the “latecomer strives to anticipate his forerunner so as to invent himself anew self-​born, and self-​begotten” (174). Ellmann’s claim might help explain Head’s own subjective relationship with her last non-​fictional novel, A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga. Nevertheless, Mackenzie seems not satisfied with Head’s claim to have included fictional element in her historical novels and that even the fictional element is implicated with Head’s attempt to inscribe what he (Mackenzie) calls her “highly partisan interests” (48); and that “History is not being accorded the objective analysis to which it is accustomed” (48). By interpretation, Mackenzie subscribes to the sweepingly held view of the epistemological distinction between fiction and history—​that while “ ‘history’ is true and objective, ‘fiction’ is untrue and subjective” (48). By this distinction, Mackenzie concludes that the novel is a literary failure. And, to Ronge, at best, what Head offers in her novel, as he earlier complains, is an unmanageable hoi polloi of historical names, events, and dates. To Mackenzie and Ronge, the order in which Head inscribes, separated from the historical narration, is entirely of her own making—​influenced by the intercalation of her fictional heroes into her story. To disagree with Mackenzie and Ronge, what is significant, despite what they point out as flaws in the novel, which are often noted by other critics, is that Head’s version of history, for the post-​modernist thinkers/​historiographers, such as Hayden White and Keith Jenkins, “holds as much ‘truth’ as any history can lay claim to” (134). Jenkins, for example, argues that all history is “a narrative discourse, the content of which is as much imagined/​invented as found” (134). White, on the other hand, deploys the post-​modernist theory of the textuality of all writing (whether history or fiction) so as to deconstruct the old peculiarities of the mainstream historical narrative. White, as cited by Jenkins, argues that, All writers of history, of whatever ideological persuasion and in spite of their claim to objectivity, all read the past from a “present-​centredness” deeply inscribed with their own ideological views. To justify their particular and often disguised ideology, they impose order on the past thus “pushing out the rhetorical, the speculative, the incomprehensible and the sublime.” (141) White’s narrativity of history is not conceived of the doctrine with which post modernism is often “charged” (143). White, however, challenges their claim to “truth” because he believes that, “the eradication of such qualities has created historical narratives that are a general ideological instrument of anti-​utopian closure” (Jenkins 143).

Fiction through history or vice-versa  199 To deconstruct the old peculiarities of the mainstream historical narrative is to open up new possibilities for “visionary politics.” As White explains: insofar as historical events and processes become understandable, as conservatives maintain, or explainable, as radicals believe them to be, they can never serve as a basis for a visionary politics more concerned to endow social life with meaning than with beauty. (Jenkins 142) This is exactly where White’s theory becomes handy for Head’s perspective of the use of history in her writing. Therefore, a post-​modernist historiography, in its deconstruction of the peculiarities of history writing, embodies the ilk of historical narrative with which Head engages. To retrieve the past for the oppressed people of Bamangwato, Head has to deconstruct history writing by using her ideological persuasions. For example, Head dramatises the recognition of “history” as event when Sebina’s moment of wonder comes—​he is invited to add his “mark” to the document of 1885 that outlines the terms of the original Protectorate Agreement: “that day he knew that a new era had begun; the document he had touched had preserved the deliberations of the day forever, never to be lost or changed in the faulty memories of men” (120). The critique of Head’s subjectivity in the novel is predicated on the view that truthful history can only be created by writers who possess an objective link with the past. However, as already discussed, post-​modern historiographers question the very idea of objectivity. They find it most clearly lacking in writers who think that their own beliefs, views, thoughts, and values are not ideological, but natural or true. Moreover, “subjectivity,” deployed in the production of a historiography, to use White’s definition, is “charged with avenging the people” (Jenkins 143). So, for Head, like White, this does not advocate a false reading of the past. Indeed, Head commits herself to recording the historical facts she has discovered and the novel was produced from her meticulous research. Head sets herself a formidable assignment, although there are no footnotes to indicate the sources of specific data, no index, but there is a bibliography which lists the primary and secondary sources of her information. In Head’s attempt to write the history for the people of Bamangwato, she retracts into the past to explicate an exhaustive catalogue of occurrences—​for example, the settlement of the British and Dutch, the incursions of the Boer Trekkers into South Africa, the discovery of gold and diamonds, the acquisitive schemes of the British South Africa Company under the Rhodes’s directive, the conflict between the Boer and the British interests, and the political transactions involved in the making of the Protectorate of Bechuanaland. But, in Sebina’s consciousness, the document is a testament that spells out hopeful trends for the future, and a witness to Khama’s stature as the leader

200  Fiction through history or vice-versa of his own people. It is, indeed, the existence of records such as this that enables Head to write a history for the people of Bamangwato. A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Sage is one of Head’s novels in which she writes of her protagonist’s demise and endows her hero’s death with an exalted significance. Here, metaphorically, Head writes not about death in the actual sense, but about continuity. Therefore, the inclusion of Sebina’s story, the interpolation of the obvious fictive element within this history would, for Hayden White, indicate the writer’s recognition and acceptance of her own ideological interests—​which means that she is in charge of her own “discourse,” and that she has achieved “a higher level of self-​consciousness than most of us currently occupy” (Jenkins 177).

Works cited Butler, Marilyn. “Against Tradition: The Case for a Particularized Historical Method.” Historical Studies and Literary Criticism. (Ed.) McGann, Jerome. USA: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985, pp. 25–​47. Chinweizu. Decolonising the African Mind. London: Pero Press, 1987. Chirobocea, Olivia. Perspectives on the Relation between History and Fiction. www. journals.openedition.org>etudesafricaine, accessed on 21/​03/​2020, pp. 191–​202. Ellmann, Maud. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. London & New York: Longman, 1994. Frye, Northrop. “Blake’s Treatment of the Archetype.” English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism. (Ed.) M.H. Abrams. London: Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 55–​71. Gardner, Susan and P.E. Scott. Bessie Head: A Bibliography. Grahamstown: National English Literary Museum, 1986, pp. 3–​17. Grant, Jane. “Encounters with Remarkable Men.” Review South, August 1981, pp. 55–​120. Gregory, Robert J. Tribes and Tribal: Origin, Use, and Future of the Concept. Accessed on www.Krepublishers.com/​…/​T%20&%20T-​01-​1-​001-​005-​2003-​Gregory.pdf, 19/​ 07/​2016. Holzinger, Tom. “Conversations and Consternations with B Head.” Writing Bessie Head in Botswana: An Anthology of Remembrance and Criticism. (Eds.) Mary S. Lederer and Seatholo M. Tumedi. Gaborone: Pentagon Publishers, 2007, pp. 35–​57. Isidoros, Konstantina. The Silencing of Unifying Tribes: The Colonial Construction of Tribe and Its ‘Extraordinary Leap’ to Nascent Nation-​State Formation in Western Sahara. Accessed on www.isca.ox.ac.uk/​fileadmin/​ISCA/​JASO/​2015/​Isidoro.pdf. 2016. Jenkins, Keith. On What is History? London: Routledge, 1995. Lederer, Mary S. Novels of Botswana in English, 1930–​2006. New York: African Heritage Press, 2014. Mackenzie, Craig. “Short Fiction in the Making: the Case of Bessie Head.” Short Fiction in the New Literatures in English: Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. (Ed.) J. Bardo. London: SAGE Publications, 1988. pp. 234-​45. —​—​—​. Bessie Head, An Introduction. Grahamstown, NELM, 1989. —​ —​ —​ . “Bessie Head’s The Collector of Treasures: Modem Story-​ telling in a Traditional Botswanan Village.” World Literature Written in English, vo1. 29, no. 2, 1989, pp. 139–​148.

Fiction through history or vice-versa  201 —​—​—​. Bessie Head. New York: Twayne, 1999. Meyerhof, Hans. Time in Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Milosz, Czeslaw. “On Hope.” Literature in the Modern World. (Ed.) Dennis Walder. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1990. Morton, Fried. The Notion of Tribe. Menlo Park: Cummings Publishing Company, 1975. Munslow, Alun. Deconstructing History. London: Routledge, 1997. Neumann, Erich. The Origins and History of Consciousness. Princeton: Bollingen Series, 1973. Newell, Stephanie. “Conflict and Transformation in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind and A Bewitched Crossroad.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 30, no. 3, 1998, pp. 79–​81. Nyati-​Ramahobo, Lydia. Minority Tribes in Botswana: The [sic] Politics of Recognition. Accessed on www.refworld.org/​pdfid/​496dc0c82.pdf, 27/​05/​2016. Parsons, Neil. “The Evolution of Modern Botswana: Historical Revision.” Evolution of Modern Botswana: Politics and Rural Development. (Ed.) Picard, L.A. Lincoln: Nebraska University Press, 1985, pp. 26–​39. Petersen, Kirsten Holst. “South Africa.” The Commonwealth Novel since 1960. (Ed.) Bruce King. London: Macmillan, 1991, pp. 125–​141. Richmond, Anthony. H. The Colour Problem: A Study of Racial Relations. Great Britain: Penguin Books, 1995. Ronge, Barry. “Review of A Bewitched Crossroads: Bessie Head.” Fair Lady. 20 March, 27, 1985. Rubadiri, David. “Theme of National Identity in East African Writing.” National Identity. (Ed.) K.L. Godwin. Melbourne: Heinemann Educational, 1970, pp. 51–​57. Schapera, Isaac. The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa: Bushmen and Hottentots. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1930. —​—​—​. Rainmaking Rites of Tswana Tribes. Cambridge: African Studies Centre, 1971. Sillery, Anthony. The Bechuanaland Protectorate. London: Oxford University Press, 1952. —​—​—​. Founding a Protectorate: History of Bechuanaland. London: Mouton & Co., 1965. Stevens, Richard P. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Botswana. USA: Scarecrow Press, 1975. Tlou, Thomas and Alec Campbell. History of Botswana. Gaborone: Macmillan Botswana, 1997. Van Baak, Joost.J. “The Place of Space in Narration: A Semiotic Approach to the Problem of Literary Space, with an Analysis of the Role os Space in I.E. Babel’s Konarmi”. Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics. Vol. 3. Amsterdam: Rodopu, 1983. www.Encyclopaedia Britannica.Com. Bechuanaland; Republic of Botswana. Accessed on 30/​06/​2016. www.historyworld.net/​wrldhis/​PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ad31 “History of Botswana.” Accessed on 17/​05/​2018. www.metrotell.co.za/​news/​theres-​no-​such-​thing-​as-​a-​coloured-​identity. Accessed on 2/​09/​2016.

7  Patriarchy and power Women on the edge of the cliff

The feminist project and the debate in relation to the question of women’s predicament, oppression, and subjectivity in patriarchal discourse is a recurring theme in African literature; just as it may be elsewhere. It is fundamentally relevant to us here because the major theme of Head’s short-​story fiction, for example, The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales (1977), which is what Huma Ibrahim cumulatively calls the “authentic women talk,” or what Chela Sandoval terms the “U.S. Third World Feminism,” and, again, the insistence of Barani Maung Maung in her TED Talks: “Why Third-​World Feminism Matters,” necessitate my engagement with the post-​colonial subject of patriarchy and the agency of cultural power. And I argue that the unflinching logic of patriarchy is to simply disempower women. This short fiction is a bold critique of gender politics in post-​colonial Africa with the discursive tensions of female subjectivity. It explores the hidden connections in the subjective experiences in the lives of Botswanan women. It also examines individual stories that show themes related to the exercise of male power/​evil and the paradox of human tragedy. Women, for so long, have been squeezed into a structure which is already coded as the rule. The gender agenda demonstrates how the African society treats women, and, as a result, the British best-​known classicist Mary Beard in her blurb asks: “If women aren’t perceived to be within the structures of power, isn’t it power that we need to redefine”? In the story, “The Deep River: A Story of Ancient Migration,” Rankwana, the heroine, whose courage to redefine the patriarchal structures in the story is seen as an embodiment of power to generations of African women who seek to resist the idea of being packaged into a male template. Rankwana does not leave the male bullies in their unchallenged occupation of misogyny, as well as the mainstream male political. Braidotti maintains that, one speaks as a woman, although the subject “woman” is not a monolithic essence defined once and for all but rather the site of multiple, complex, and potentially contradictory sets of experiences, defined by overlapping variables such as class, race, age, lifestyle, sexual preference, and others. One speaks as a woman in order to empower women, to

Patriarchy and power  203 activate socio-​symbolic changes in their condition: this is a radically anti-​ essentialist position. (1) I argue that with the foisting of specific notions of power relations, marginalisation, and agency prescribed by the traditional African society, women have remained caged within a binary close-​down. This close-​down is predicated on the idea of patriarchal ideology, leaving women to strive at the periphery or margin of the society. Head compels her female characters to challenge the post-​colonial type of polygamy through their sexual experiences, and their economic exploitations under the shadow of patriarchy. The women’s experience is named and this is what Zoe Wicomb means when she says, “We might as well start [the conversation at] the level of nomenclature” (37). Head achieves this naming through her definite focus on the lives of Botswanan women. In an interview with Linda Susan, Head says, “Most of the stories there are based on reality; they’re not inventions. They happened; they are changed” (174). The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales is a thoroughly gender-​oriented collection of short stories, fully composed of female and male characters—​and with different viewpoints. It portrays the suffering and hardship of women. This collection symbolises Head’s own life experience, and as Chapman puts it, “If these stories of the village are simultaneously stories of the modernising society, they are also versions of Head’s own story” (381). Nevertheless, the first origin of her plots lies in the oral sources of village gossips, developed into subtle tales, as well as in the many interviews and conversations she enjoyed with the natives of the village. However, my reading of her short story fiction, as Asma Mansoor insists, would “go beyond this closure to initiate debates regarding the operational praxis of a third world woman’s marginal placement as articulated in third [world] feminist discourses” (1). I would problematise the “idea of ‘disempowerment’ that stems from a patriarchal model [,]‌depicting man as the nucleus and a woman as a peripheral and centripetal entity, drawn within the [context] of self-​ consolidating representation” (Mansoor 1). Head, through her short fiction, challenges the African woman to see herself as an independent woman, and to redefine herself as an autonomous thinking woman, ably ready to dismantle the congealed structures of patriarchy and subalternity. In “From Despite Broken Bondage, Botswana Women Are still Unloved,” Head claims, When I first arrived in Botswana in 1964, women confided in me as follows: ‘Botswana men are not nice. When you take up with a man he sleeps with you for two weeks, then he passes you on to his friend, who passes you on to his friend. This is how we live. (57)

204  Patriarchy and power The Collector of Treasures narrates “dramatic stories of two married couples: Dikeledi Mokopi and her husband, Garesego Mokopi, and Kenalepe Thebolo and her husband, Paul Thebolo” (Bernardo 1–​2)—​purely from the perspective of women. Head proposes and defends the following theory about men; arguing that there are really two kinds of men in society. In the Interpretation of the History of Africa, Head characterises the first kind of man as follows: • • • • • • •

He creates misery and chaos and can be broadly damned as evil. He lives near the animal level and behaves just the same. He accepts no responsibility for the young he procreates like dogs, bulls, and donkeys. He is in the majority of society. He is responsible for the complete breakdown of family life. He dominates the government and political life. He regards sex as a means of exerting power over his wife and is not faithful. He has sex with his women like dogs, out of pure carnal lust. History can explain the origin and characteristics of this type of man, who can be analysed across three time frames (87–​103).

Head’s theory is applicable to most of her female characters. For example, Mrs. Malebogo, the old woman in “The Special One,” who, as soon as she meets anyone, she begins to talk about the tragedy of her life. Her late husband’s brothers steal the small inheritance of the cattle he leaves with her so as to take care of herself in her old age. Consequently, she is forced to seek employment to fend for herself at the age of 60 years when she should be resting. She is so pained that she wouldn’t mind standing for an hour or even more to outline details of the court case she has had with her “brothers-​in-​law” (81), and, then, she calmly remarks: “I lost it because women are just dogs in the society” (81). This means, women are of no account or importance. In the short story called “Life,” the viewpoint protagonist is depicted as an epitome of western individuality—​and her existence is a sort of narratological fate—​a traditional representation of tragedy, where there is no hope, regardless of whatever she does. This short story marks Head’s refusal to accept the conventional, patriarchal division of space for men and women in the African society by examining the sort of social relationship in the life of Life. She focuses on the societal perceptions of the protagonist, who is described as a wayward young woman. Life, upon her return to her native land after she has “left … as a little girl of ten years old with her parents” (37), marries Lesego, who she describes as a “king” (43), as well as a man who, “liked women and had been so successful in that sphere that he took his dominance and success for granted” (41). Before Life marries Lesego, she has always been a cheery, outgoing woman, who frequents the local shebeens and goes out with different men. Lesego, having

Patriarchy and power  205 cajoled her into marriage, warns her that if she goes out with those men again, he will kill her, a promise that he tragically fulfils by taking her life but the alternative to her death could have been for Lesego to walk away. Life’s murder by her husband could be historicised as a representation of patriarchy of power relations, patriarchy of dictatorship, and patriarchy of domination, which suppress her expression of freedom. Life’s character is projected to transgress the fixity of gender identities and boundaries in her village. As the narrative informs further the reader about Life’s experiences in South Africa, she, had had the sort of varied career that a city like Johannesburg offered a lot of black women. She had been a singer, beauty queen, advertising model, and prostitute. None of these careers were available in the village—​for the illiterate women there was farming and housework; for the literate, teaching, nursing, and clerical work. (39) Head may not be interested here in any polarisations of the moral and the immoral as far as African womanhood is concerned. Rather, as Kwadwo Osei-​ Nyame Jnr contends, “the story and Life’s putatively amoral character is an analytical lens through which Head engages with specific features of the so-​called African modernity and modernization” (4). Osei-​Nyame Jnr goes on to argue that “The critique of modernity is codified” (4) in the story as a phenomenon that “disrupts” the “village life” of a mainly rural” preindependent Botswanan “country” (37). Some groups of migrant workers are also described as “bringing back from South Africa with them “bits and bits of a foreign culture and city habits they had absorbed” (37). Angela Carter, who includes “Life” in her comparative anthology of short stories, entitled as, Wayward Girls, contends that, Life is thought to be bad, even wicked, not because she distributes her sexual favours but because she charges money for them, and, by doing so, disrupts the easy-​going harmony of her village and transforms its intimate relations into cash transactions. She imports the twentieth century into the timeless African village and she is made to suffer for it. (ix) Contrary to Carter’s view, one may want to argue from the gender liberal perspective that Life’s loose sexual behaviour can be seen as an act of her individual way of fighting the patriarchal tendencies in her society. Because apart from Radithobolo, who is killed by Life’s husband for sleeping with his wife, all the other men who sleep with his wife, and who like her can be said to have loose sexualities, as well, but, they are left unpunished. They are neither red-​ pencilled nor traduced as sexually perverse. Head informs us that:

206  Patriarchy and power The men were paying for her [Life’s] services. People’s attitude to sex was broad and generous—​it was recognised as a necessary part of human life, that it ought to be available whenever possible like food and water, or else one’s life would be extinguished or one would get dreadfully ill. To prevent these catastrophes from happening, men and women generally had a lot of sex but on a respectable and human level. (39) In the construction of masculinity that privileges the male over the female, Head blames history for the tyranny of patriarchy, and the position women occupy in the society—​saying: The ancestors made so many errors and one of the most bitter-​making things was that they relegated to men a superior position in the tribe, while women regarded, in a congenital sense, as being an inferior form of human life. (The Collector of Treasures, 92) As evident in the story of “Life,” Life’s husband is only sentenced to prison for five years for killing his wife. While, on the other hand, Dikeledi whose name means “tears” in “The Collector of Treasures” is sentenced for life for killing her own husband. The society never considers the fact that her husband makes her life miserable. So, despite the complete knowledge of the punishment Dikeledi will have to receive for her action, she still decides to kill him in order to stop his sexual abuse of her, as well as other women in the village. This way, Head shows how Dikeledi destroys the kind of man that creates misery and chaos because men like her husband do not only initiate but embody the errors of their ancestors. However, not all Head’s male characters are depicted like Dikeledi’s husband, because in the same story, for instance, the male cruel chauvinism of Garesego Mokopi is balanced by the gentility and compassion of Paul Thebolo: […] with the power to create himself anew. He turned all his resources, both emotional and material, towards his family life and he went on and on with his own quiet rhythm, like a river. He was a poem of tenderness. (C.T., 93) In “The Special One,” the narrator shows how old women “make love with young boys” (84) in secret because the society frowns at it. “They all do it but it is done very secretly. No one suspects, that is why they look so respectable in the day time” (84). Also, Gaenametse, whose sexual urge during menstrual cycle is depicted as a tribal taboo and she is seen as dirty, as well as a source of death and danger to the surroundings. She has “a very bad husband [who] is

Patriarchy and power  207 off from woman to woman” (83), but the village women have to pray for him while, Gaenametse, who is seen as sexually loose is being vilified by her fellow women. One of the women in her neighbourhood contemptuously says: No one will talk to her. She’s a wash-​out! Everyone knows about her private life. She had a terrible divorce case. She was driving the husband mad. She pestered him day and night for the blankets, and even wanted him to do it during the time she was having her monthly bleeding. (84) Similarly, in The Collector of Treasures, Dikeledi, who, having killed her husband, her prison wardress responds to her reproachfully: “So you have killed your husband, have you”? The Wardress, then, again remarks with a zing of jest, “You’ll be in good company. We have four other women here for the same crime. It’s becoming fashion these days” (88). In a relatively comparative sense, while women’s solidarity for fellow women is lacking in Head’s short story, in Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, Firdaus, the protagonist, who murders Marzouk, her pimp in self-​defence because of his inordinate demand for sex, gets the compassion of her male prison doctor who claims, She [Firdaus] was not like the other female murderers held in prison. You will never meet anyone like her in or out of prison. To be honest, I do not really feel she is a murderer. If you look into her face, her eyes, you will never believe that so gentle a woman can commit murder. (Woman at Point Zero 1–​2) Firdaus enjoys overprotection from both her male prison doctor and the female wardress, as they are seduced by her magic and also worry about the fact that she “will neither speak, eat, sleep nor contest her case” (20). Firdaus refuses to speak because she does not want to be released, and she wants no pardon for her crime even though she is sentenced to death. She sees prison as freedom. However, the inherent contradiction I try to point out here is that in Head’s story, it is women who are talking down on their fellow women and it calls for a re-​orientation of our critical thinking and energies from merely taking sides in the feminist debate, and questioning the material, as well as the ideological lens that interpolates the debate—​that is, the perspective from which feminists take their ideological positions in the debate. Though women’s ground of struggle varies from working conditions, cultural background, economic self-​determination, family and ideology, gender conflict and pluralism, to sexuality and subversion in all human socieities. Constituted, however, by the tension between finding the ground on which women can stand and the struggle with whether they are actually given the grand to stand, and writing particularly about women in Botswana with deep understanding and concern, Head poses a political agenda interpolated by

208  Patriarchy and power the cracks and fissures of post-​colonial feminism—​which, in this case, is women against women. This claim is justified as Gaenametse’s polygamous husband is rather seen by the village women as innocent, while she remains vilified by her fellow women. The stories in The Collector of Treasures call attention to cruelties of a patriarchal, ageist, and xenophobic order that victimises women, children, elderly people, and outsiders. The repression and victimisation of women, children, elderly, and infirm people is a gnawing feature in Head’s stories. (Tiro Sebina 161) In “Heaven is not Closed,” for example, Galethebege, an elderly woman, who is already in her 90s becomes a victim of the tension between the ancient Tswana ancestral beliefs and the white Christian faith. Galethebege is a devout Christian whose heart is frissoned by “the austere rituals of the Church, the mass, the sermons, the intimate communication in prayers with God” (11). But her faithfulness to the Christian religion is tested when she falls in love with her Ralokae, and agrees to marry Ralokae who is a die-​hard and pungent traditionalist. Galethebege is excommunicated from the Church because of her decision to marry Ralokae according to the Setswana customs. Even though she is not outwardly defiant, her action is cast in a heroic fashion—​as she relentlessly pursues the commands of her conscience with firm resolution. In “The Village Saint,” Mma-​Mompati and her husband Rra-​Mompati, who are regarded as notables, have a serious crisis in their union when Rra-​ Mompati turns his back on his family to live with another woman. The scandal shatters Mma-​Mompati’s social image, as the rumour is set in top gear. In her case, unlike the case of Life, the village people condemn, and rain curses on Rra-​Mompati for abandoning his family for another woman. According to them, Mma-​Mompati is “matchless in perfection” (15). Mma-​Mompati, in her divorce court oration, she impresses most of the villagers and, as a result, sways their sympathy towards herself. She speaks about “God, the Church, the Bible, the sick, the Poor, the Suffering, the Honour of an Honourable Woman, the Blessings of Holy Matrimony and so on” (15). The court, being impressed by her speech, orders Rra-​Mompati, “who was rich, settle her handsomely for life, with many cattle” (15). Consequently, “Life in the village became very difficult for Rra-​ Mompati”—​as, “People muttered curses at the very sight of him” (15). The Collector of Treasures can be classified as a full feminist collection of short story fiction which deconstructs the African traditional opposition of man/​woman and all the agonies associated with this polarisation. It critically attacks the supposed inferiority of women, no matter the tragic repercussions; while proposing and envisaging a new reasonable balance based on a new kind of man/​woman. It is a story full of consequences. That is: “The conditions of a society in upheaval: the women of Head’s bustling Botswanan village encounter

Patriarchy and power  209 religious conflict, the burden of poverty and, partly as a result of the clashes of ancient custom and the modern way, stressful marriages” (Chapman 381). And “The teacher behind it can be noticed easily, as many critics have done. A trace of the didacticism of the oral tale can also be spotted” (Chapman 381). It makes an interesting connection between African post-​colonial independence and political freedom, as well as the third world feminism and the liberation of African women. It has been said that, “For better or worse, her female characters are willing to leave the oppressions of the past behind, all of them, and go forward into the future without looking back” (Bernardo 1). In spite of its tragic end, The Collector of Treasures is a story full of hope. Head’s narrative is not anti-​man per se; it only attacks and kills the negative kind of man, the one that is opposing or stopping transformation. It is not only his fault, as history is much to blame, but now it is impossible for him to change. Gender distinctions, for Head, are a construction that can be modified. She denies the essentialist theory because the roles of men and women are made, not born. In closing, Barbara Harlow, in her analyses of some of the studies on women’s prisons in underdeveloped countries, argues that, “The authoritarian traditions and social structures which lead women to kill their husbands, brothers to seek blood vengeance from their sisters, must be revised” (522).

Works cited Beard, Linda Susan. “Bessie Head’s Synchretic Fictions: The Reconceptualization of Power and the Rediscovery of the Ordinary.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, 1991, pp. 575–​589. Beard, Mary. Women and Power: A Manifesto. London: Profile Books, 2017. Bernardo, Karen. Bessie Head (1937–​86): South African Writer. www.sotrybites.com/​ head1.htm. Accessed on 20/​03/​2020, pp. 1–​4. —​—​—​. Bessie Head’s The Collector of Treasures. www.storybites.com/​headtreasures. htm. Accessed on 20/​03/​2020, pp. 1–​2. Braidotti, Rose. “Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference.” Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 3–​4. Carter, Angela. “Introduction.” Wayward Girls and Wicked Women: An Anthology of Short Stories. (Ed.) Carter, Angela. London: Virago, 1986, pp. ix–​xii. Chapman, Michael. Southern African Literatures. England: Longman, 1996. El Saadawi, Nawal. Woman at Point Zero. (Trans). Hetata, Sherif. London: Zed Books, 1983. Harlow, Barbara. “From the Women’s Prison: Third World Women’s Narratives of Prison.” Feminist Studies, vol. 12, no. 3, 1986, pp. 501–​524. Head, Bessie Emery Amelia. The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales. South Africa: Heinemann, 1977. —​—​—​. Head’s Interpretation of the History of Africa. Bessie Head Papers (BHP). Khama III Memorial Museum, Serowe, Botswana. 1986, pp. 87–​103.

210  Patriarchy and power Lanser, Susan. The Edges that Blur: Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies and the Politics of Analogy. Chicago: MLA Convention, 1990. Mansoor, Asma. “Marginalization in Third World Feminism: Its Problematics and Theoretical Reconfiguration”. Palgrave Communication, vol. 2, 2016. Osei-​Nyame, Kwadwo Jnr. “Writing Between ‘Self’ and ‘Nation’: Nationalism, (Wo) manhood and Modernity in Bessie Head’s The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales.” Journal of the Short Story in English, vol. 39, Autumn 2002, accessed on URL: http://​journals.Openedition.org/​jsse/​277, 14 February, 2020, pp. 91–​107. Wicomb, Zoe. “To Hear the Variety of Discourses.” Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, vol. 4, no. 1, 1990, pp. 35–​44. Zarandona, Juan Miguel. “From Periphery to Centre? The Collector of Treasures by Bessie Head (1977): The Translation and (Mis)reconstruction of an African Woman’s Identity in Spanish, Italian and French.” UVA Publication, Num. 28, 2021, pp. 241–​263. http://​uvadoc.es/​handle/​10324/​17352. Accessed on 17/​02/​2021,

8  Conclusion Towards the unification of thematic trajectories

To unify the themes of Head’s fiction into a single whole, I intend to sum up the results attained at the end of this work. With respect to the focus of this book, the results stand within the precise limits of this study (i.e., my summation/​analysis is restricted to the major themes of this book). Cardinally, the exploration of exile, trauma, post-​coloniality, history/​fiction, and the gender-​framing of “women on the edge of the cliff,” for example, sets the theoretical framework that enables me to build a working knowledge in the field of African exile, post-​colonial, and trauma literature. However, some of the concepts, theories, themes, and frameworks articulated in this book are definitely applicable to other contexts. Thematically, this book discusses the notion of oppression with a direct focus on Bessie Head. It articulates the exilic subjectivity, and the deepening crisis of departure from home to exile. I argue through the objectives of this book that the black-​on-​black prejudice, as a new post-​colonial framework or paradigm shift, is one of Head’s distinctive contributions to the African literary canon, but largely unexplored in the existing body of Head’s criticisms. Though the canonisation of Head has occurred very rapidly in the Western academy, but to the exclusion of the black-​on-​black theme. This claim reflects the results of my preliminary investigation and helps identify the absence of any substantial critical discussion of the topic of black-​on-​black prejudice in Head’s fiction, an absence that the book aims to rectify through detailed readings of Head’s novels. For example, Head is terribly horrified to discover how the Botswana people talk of the Baswara people they oppress: “They don’t think,” they said. “They don’t know anything” (A Woman Alone 69). She, therefore, questions this blind prejudice, saying: “How do they know that? How can they be sure that the Baswara are not thinking” (69)? In Head’s fiction, the reader finds elements of black-​ on-​ black prejudice, and this book shows, particularly, in Maru, how she uses heterosexual relationships among the main characters as a means to resolve tribal/​class tensions in a community. When such relationships go wrong, as in A Question of Power, they seem to draw attention to and magnify the very problem they are meant to resolve. Evidently, the representation of the black-​on-​black phenomenon is an important part of Head’s distinct contribution to the Black

212 Conclusion African literary canon, but is a clear deviation from the existing political standard of anti-​colonial literature—​particularly at the time that writers of her age were aggressively engaged with the de-​apartheid project of the 1960s South Africa. The disturbing issue of black-​on-​black prejudice in Maru is particularly explored through the situation of Margaret, a member of the despised San (Bushmen). Substantiating the overriding argument of this book, it is a critique of the continuing ethnicisation of a post-​colonial African society in the tribal sense. Margaret is not a literal exile—​she is as much a native of Botswana as the members of the majority Tswana tribe, who look down on her—​but she is made to feel an alien in her own native land. At the end of the novel, she leaves Dilepe with her new husband Maru to become another kind of “exile” in search of a new home elsewhere, a utopian space where, with the help of Maru, she will escape the contempt of her fellow blacks. A close reading of the novel establishes the pervasiveness of black-​on-​black prejudice within the society, whilst the omniscient, empathetic narrative style contributes to a feeling that people from different tribal backgrounds could learn to understand one another better and build a better society. Through a careful examination of A Question of Power, the book accords a central role to trauma, and autobiography with extra-​textual materials that shape the concept of “self.” After the opening page, for example, and in contrast with her earlier novels, the point-​of-​view (although still in the third person) is almost entirely limited to that of Elizabeth, the mixed-​race protagonist, expressing a claustrophobic sense of mental breakdown—​a trauma of isolation in exile in which the black figures who persecute her sometimes seem to exist only in her own head. Black-​on-​black prejudice (in this case, strictly speaking, black-​on-​coloured prejudice) is shown, through a close reading, to be central to the atmosphere of psychological horror, which surrounds this novel. Therefore, the representation of a post-​colonial crisis in Bessie Head’s novels—​for example, When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru and A Question of Power, leads to the discussion of home, home-​coming, black-​on-​black prejudice, exile, and post-​colonial trauma as key themes. When Rain Clouds Gather, for instance, shows the long journey of Makhaya from confinement to freedom, but qualified by crisis and poverty. As a reflection of a post-​colonial situation, it underscores the desire to escape, not only from the outsider-​ exclusions of the host-​land prejudice, but also from the insider-​attempts to resist marginalisation, with strong appeals to cultural plurality as a means to accommodate the “other” in the host-​land. Head’s omniscient narrative style, entering easily and empathetically into the consciousness of many different characters, contributes to the optimistic belief that existing divisions of race, tribe, class, and gender can be overcome in this new post-​colonial society. What is most striking about Head’s protagonists is their conviction that home is not where they are born as natives of the land, but where they become their own dreams and realities. To them, exile is home though this “home”

Conclusion  213 is always an “exclusive elsewhere.” Craig Mackenzie shows us how Head’s heroes and heroines have similar preoccupations and an identical goal shaped as they are by the desires of their creator. Arguing that, “the central characters in the three novels, Makhaya, Margaret and Elizabeth, all share some aspects of the author herself and move sequentially closer to her own experience. This progression has a direct bearing on the shape each novel takes” (19). Theoretically, to break the cycle of over reliance on the existing critical theory, the book develops exilic compromise as another point of entrance into Head’s fiction, as well as a counter-​response to Huma Ibrahim’s “exilic consciousness,” and applied it to fit better with what I have observed in Head’s novels. In relation to this, exilic compromise carries with it the distinctive irony that Head’s protagonists have to learn to live with a form of what they are running away from in the first place (tribal and racial prejudices). My use of exilic compromise gives a more precise reading of Head’s novels than the more general idea of “exilic consciousness” which Ibrahim has attempted to apply to Head’s fiction. The book develops more fully the theory of exilic compromise with specific reference to Makhaya, the protagonist in When Rain Clouds Gather, focusing heavily on the first part of the novel—​the flight from South Africa, and the arrival in Botswana, where he is immediately confronted by versions of the problems he is escaping from. Therefore, this novel is imagined as a recollection of the individual/​collective struggle, survival, and death—​a tale of lost and imagined home. The compromise is only morally possible for them because their new location in Botswana contains hopeful possibilities, which are not visible in apartheid-​era South Africa. Head’s concerns are further deepened in The Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales (1977), a short fiction, which shows how women’s “freedom” in their sexual behaviour, for example, often leads to an even harsher oppression for them. There are stories of women resisting patriarchal societies, and, therefore, insisting on belonging to their societies. Head’s effort, like Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid’s, is “involved in questioning all that we think we know [about feminist historiography/​struggle], in a sustained examination of [our] analytical and epistemological apparatus” (199). More, through Head’s historical novels, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind and A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga, I have attempted to thematise, in and of themselves, the relationship between history and fiction. Also, with this stroke, I have carefully demonstrated the relationship between history, as the custodian of humanity’s past, and the set of ideas by which we relate to the present and to the future. However, Head’s historical novels defy conventional categories/​ styles: they are counter-​ cultural, cross-​ cultural, and transcendent—​their roots and contexts are intensely Botswanan, but their scopes traverse the world. It is in the case of traversing the world that Head’s last novel entitled as, “… Crossroads …” becomes eminently important to her vision of pan-​humanity. She emphasises the relationship between people and how important it is to break prejudices, hence the crossroads between people, nations, races, classes,

214 Conclusion genders, and tribes. Head’s “crossroads” of universal humanity similarly echoes Ella Shohat’s guiding concept of “together despite differences” (88). Here, “differences” for Shohat may include gender, sex, class, race, identity, nationality, ethnicity, and so on, but as Himani Bannerji argues, they are defined in terms of the “social relations of power and ruling, not as what people intrinsically are, but what they are ascribed as in the context of domination” (287). The crossroads metaphor, as a meeting point, one might argue that it creates a double interpretative grid/​meaning, which: on the one hand, it sets up a unified vision for the project of belonging to one community of man. But, on the other hand, according to Chinua Achebe, “… the crossroads does have a certain dangerous potency; dangerous because a man might perish there wrestling with multiple-​headed spirits, but also he might be lucky and return to his people with the boon of a prophetic vision” (159). Nevertheless, Shohat’s idea of “together despite differences,” which, for example, allegorically evokes the trans-​cultural image of Golem Mmidi in When Rain Clouds Gather, is a profound utterance of the deepest soul of mankind that provides the healing ground for Head’s characters to breathe their dreams of life. It also functions as a re-​clamation of what Audre Lorde in her novel Zami: A New Spelling of My Name calls “a biomythography of her many selves, living in the house of difference” (quoted in Davies 116). “Togetherness” symbolises one humanity; one brotherhood. Therefore, Rooney maintains that “Head’s concerns were not only her concerns, but that they might also be our concerns” (102). Head urges us to see the world beyond the shade or the somatic marker of human prejudice and to desist from maintaining the boundaries of racial/​tribal difference—​so as to embrace the precious form of human solidarity and community of one people—​a community which consists of a two-​pronged paradox: that of transforming the basic elements of the African society from the defining trauma of prejudice and, then, into a community of one national identity—​the non-​racial/​tribal community that signifies the imagined “Rainbow people” of one nation. Overall, Head’s idea of an elusive desire for the eternal—​and infinite oneness (or the universal brotherhood) of man, her kind of resolution, and her resort to an apocalyptic vision—​describes her perception of the real world in which she lives. This idea is what her writing tries to rectify. But Head’s vision, portrayed as “human thought,” opens up “new worlds,” which, as one of her characters, for example, Sebina in A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga, reflects, is “the greatest, the highest duty of mankind” (132–​133). This important quote from Head’s hero marks a fine place for me to end this book.

Works cited Achebe, Chinua. “The Role of the Writer in a New Nation”. Nigeria Magazine, no. 81, pp. 157–​160. Bannerji, Himani. “Politics and the Writing of History.” Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race. (Eds.) Pierson, Ruth Roach and Chaudhuri, Nupur. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 287.

Conclusion  215 Head, Bessie Emery Amelia. A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings. London: Heinemann, 1990. Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Massachusetts: Persephone Press, 1982. Mackenzie, Craig. “Short Fiction in the Making: the Case of Bessie Head.” Short Fiction in the New Literatures in English: Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. (Ed.) J. Bardo. London: SAGE Publications, 1988, pp. 234-​45. Sangari, Kumkum and Vaid, Sudesh. Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989. Shohat, Ella. On the Arab-​Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements: Selected Writings. London: Pluto Press, 2017.

Index

Abrahams, Cecil 9 Absence 12, 34 absent-​present metaphor 125 Abu-​Jarmal, Mumia 26 Achebe, Chinua 8, 127, 214 Adamu, Pangmeshi 117 Afrocentrism 132 Agbo, Joshua 67, 75, 78 agriculture 71, 72, 73, 75, 166, 169 Ahmad, Aijaz 17, 26, 166 alienation: exilic compromise 43; home and homecoming 34; in the literature of exile 17–​18, 31; Maru (1971) 118, 139, 212; Question of Power, A (1973) 164; and sense of place 56; When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) 79 allegory 34, 35 Amal, Jamal 19 ambivalence 40 Amnesty 4 ancestral traditions 123, 194, 195, 208 Andolfis, M. 40 anti-​colonial literature 212 anti-​identitarianism 43 apartheid: and education 72; exile from 40; laws 7; literature of the oppressed 3; Makhaya’s exile 62; and mental illness 160, 161; mfecane theory 105–​106; political exile 50–​51; political resistance 7; racial purity beliefs 6; South African context 33–​34, 36, 149–​150; and trauma 32 apoliticism 87 Appleby, George (When Rain Clouds Gather) 72 Apronti, E.O. 138 Armah, Ayi Kwei 101 arrests 7 artistic work 115–​117

assimilation 34 attachment 65, 178 authorial voice 103, 107 authoritarianism 36, 51, 209 autobiographical narrative 101–​102, 142–​147, 175, 188, 212, 213 Bachelard, Gaston 31 Baker, Houston 166 Bamangwato Development Association 8 Bamangwato people 190, 192, 193–​194, 199 Banda, Hastings Kamuzu 75 Bannerji, Himani 214 Barolongs 63, 185 Baswara people 211 Batswana people 84, 85, 91, 95–​96, 97, 99, 106, 108 Beard, Linda Susan 87, 103, 136, 143, 203 Beard, Mary 202 bearing witness 32–​33 Bechuana 185, 186 Bechuanaland 69, 105, 184, 185, 194, 196, 199 bed, symbolism of 109, 111, 112 being, states of 15 Being-​the-​basis 79 Bellow, Saul 28 belonging: alternative spaces of 75; belongers vs non-​belongers 97, 124–​125; in Head’s novels generally 4; in the literature of exile 30; Makhaya (When Rain Clouds Gather) 55, 57, 61–​62; multiple belongings 61–​62; painful politics of 64; search for national 85; South African context 33–​34; universal notions of 98

Index  217 Beloved (Morrison) 155, 170 benefits of exile 20–​21, 27, 33 Benstock, Shari 144 Benue State 92 Berg, Van den 160 Berger, Roger A. 83, 84 Bernardo, Karen 204 Bessie Head Heritage Trust 9 Bessie Head Library 9 Bessie Literature Awards 9 better conditions, exile for 15, 57, 63 Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga (1984) 60, 172–​173, 187–​200, 213 Beyala, Calixthe 34, 40 Bhabha, Homi K. 21, 85 Bhana, Hershini 178 Bhavnani, Kum-​Kum 132–​133 biculturalism 35, 118, 124 biography of Bessie Head 6–​10 Birch family 9 birth in exile 36 birth of Bessie Head 6 black power x, 93, 94, 131, 171–​178 Black Power Movement 172, 174 black-​on-​black blame 126 black-​on-​black prejudice: Botswana 90–​95, 126, 175; conclusions on 211; dehumanisation 88, 91; in Head’s novels generally x; Maru (1971) 83–​130; Question of Power, A (1973) 173; racism 148; tribalism 62; When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) 51, 73, 78 Blackstone, Bernard 101 Blakemore, Sarah-​Jayne 141 blame for suffering 126, 127 Boal, Augusto 1–​2 Boesak, Allan 3 “bogadi” (bride price) 195 Boiteko workers 192–​193 border crossing 50–​82 border lives 21 Boseyong (Collector of Treasures) 168–​169 Botalaote cemetery 10 Botalaote people 60–​61 Botswana: black-​on-​black prejudice 90–​95, 126, 175; cultural and historical entity 93; desert conditions 168–​170; Elizabeth (A Question of Power) 160; Head arriving in 5, 7–​8; history of tribal formations 183–​187; importance of Serowe 190–​191; Makhaya’s exile 53; migration 69;

population 185; power politics 51; Refugeeism 69; taxation 76; tribalism 63, 93–​95, 97 boundary blurring 41, 80 boundary crossing 56 Bowlby, John 158, 178 Boyce Davies, Carol x, 131–​132, 133 Boyer, Jane 41, 42, 52, 107 Bozzoli, Belinda 68 Bracken, Harry M. 147 Brah, Avtar 39 Braidotti, Rosi 41 Bram, Sharar 39 bravery 5 Breytenbach, Breyten 34 British Protectorate 184, 185, 186, 194, 199 British South African Company 194 Brontë, Charlotte 116 Brontë, Emily 113 Brooks, Peter 42, 43 Brown, Coreen 4, 27, 51, 143, 157 Brown, Lloyd W. 43 Brubaker, Rogers 14 Brutus, Dennis 127 Bulawayo, NoViolet 59 Burke, Meghan A. 25 Bushmen (San) 84, 91, 98, 106, 108, 121–​123, 212 Butler, Marilyn 190–​191 Cadmore Jr, Margaret (Maru) see Margaret (Maru) Cadmore Sr, Margaret (Maru) 121, 122, 124 Cambridge Street Sociology Project 1 Camilla (A Question of Power) 136, 150 Campbell, Alec 183 Cancel, Robert 93 Cardinals, The (1993) 2 Carmichael, Stokely 172, 174 Carroll, Noel 155 Carter, Angela 205 Caruth, Cathy 32, 33, 163 cattle 72, 73, 75, 76 Chaka Zulu 184 Chamberlain, Joseph 184 Chapman, Michael 203, 209 character (self) 120 character perspectives 75 Chetin, Sara xv chiefs 68, 69, 77, 95, 99, 184, 196 Chieftainship Act 1933 185

218 Index Chinweizu 189–​190 Chirobocea, Olivia 188, 189 choice, burden of 40 Christianity 151–​152, 184, 194, 208 Claassen, Jo-​Marie 11, 12 Clairwood School, Durban 7 clan leaders 172–​173 class divide 77, 85, 90, 91, 96, 105, 113 Cobbing, Julian 105–​106 Coetzee, John Maxwell 54, 106 Collector of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales, The (1977) 51–​52, 167, 168–​169, 202, 204–​209, 213 Collins, Patricia Hill 56, 132 colonialism: and autobiography 143; black-​on-​black prejudice 62; colonial master-​subject encounters 23; colonial psychopathology 32; and exile literature 14; Gilbert (When Rain Clouds Gather) 72–​73; in Head’s novels 72; history of tribal formations in Botswana 183–​185, 186; and the literature of exile 24–​31; and madness 159–​160; and names 122; and trauma 32; and tribalism 91; see also post-​colonialism “Coloured” 119–​120, 121; see also mixed race exile Coly, Ayo A. 30, 31, 34, 40 communalism 193 community relationships 31, 165–​166, 191–​192, 193 compassion 5 configuration 132 Connors, Clare 37–​38 Cooper, Davina 133 co-​operatives 52–​53, 54, 71, 72, 75, 193 corruption 77, 78, 96 cosmopolitanism 22 Coundouriotis, Eleni 137, 140, 143, 145 counter-​exile literature 16 Cowley, Malcolm 17 creative gains of exile 19 creative theorizing xv critical consciousness 3 crossing to exile 50–​82 crossroads 213–​214 Cruz, Nilo 35 Culler, Jonathan 37, 38 cultural performative practice 131 cultural studies 31 Czeslaw, Milosz 198

daisies 112 Dan (A Question of Power): Elizabeth’s dreams of 139; and Elizabeth’s psychological breakdown 153–​154, 155, 157, 174–​175, 178; name 135, 176; sex 138, 140; spiritual symbolism 134 dark room metaphors 105, 173 Davison, Carol Margaret 146 Dayan, Joan 26 Daymond, M.J. 6, 7, 8, 124, 172 de Klerk, Marike 120 de la Cruz, Jessie 54 death 58, 124, 200, 205, 207 death of Bessie Head 9 deception rhetoric 78, 89 deconstructive consciousness 188 Deep River: A Story of Ancient Tribal Migration 60–​61, 189, 202 dehumanisation 4, 26, 62, 66, 84, 88, 91, 108 delusions 141 demoralization 69 depression 5–​6; see also mental illness desire for exile 22 detachment from heritage 16 detribalised spaces 88–​89 Development Studies 191 Development-​oriented Novel (DoN) 191 devils/​demons 113 Di Stefano, John 14, 43 diaspora, dialectics of 28 diaspora studies 14 diasporic aesthetic 68 dictatorship 14, 75, 177, 205 Diescho, Joseph 76 Dikeledi (Collector of Treasures) 204, 206, 207 Dikeledi (Maru) 85, 94–​95, 98, 104, 109–​116, 118–​119 Dilepe 85, 90–​95, 126, 212 Dill, Bonnie Thornton 132 DiNicola, V. 40 Dinorego (When Rain Clouds Gather) 52–​53, 62, 69–​71 discomfort, readers’ 90 discontinuity 18 disorganisation symptoms 154 displacement: and exile 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 23; and identity 43; Maru (1971) 98; When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) 55, 79 dispossession 41, 42, 69, 90, 167

Index  219 diversity 68, 185, 192, 214 divestment 90 divided self 40, 41, 138, 144–​145 divorce 5, 7, 145, 167 Doll’s House, A (Ibsen) 120 Dona, Giorgia 36 Donadey, Anne 133 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich 23 double consciousness 25–​26, 44, 125, 144 double nature 138 double-​existence 40 Dovey, Teresa 4 dreams 155, 161 drought 72, 168–​169 Drum Magazine 7 Du Bois, W. E. B. 25, 27 Eakin, Paul John 142 economic migration 13 education 6–​7, 62–​63, 72, 97, 99, 121, 125, 159, 192 ego 32 Eilersen, Gillian 6, 7, 196 El Saadawi, Nawal 207 Elder, Arlene A. 142 Elizabeth (A Question of Power): autobiographical narrative 134, 142–​147, 175, 213; benefits of exile 33; classification as outcast 24; exile 167; exilic compromise 39, 45; identity 138; inability to reclaim homeland 19; inner world 136; intersectionality 132; looking forward and back 57; multiple consciousnesses 62; name 177; narrating and narrated I 43; as an outsider 17; psychological trauma 141; questions of identity 25; as subject of racism 147–​153; trauma x, 32, 139, 177–​178, 212 Ellmann, Maud 198 emigration 12–​13, 19 emixile 12 equality 97, 152, 176, 195 Erikson, Eric 165–​166 essential circumstance, as beginning of Head’s stories 102 estrangement 53, 55 ethnic healing 94 Etter-​Lewis, Gwendolyn 2, 3 Eugene (A Question of Power) 163, 165, 171 Eurocentric criticism 197

evil, battle with good 70, 72, 105, 107, 134, 151–​153, 176 exile: colonial and post-​colonial contexts 24–​31; definition of 11–​12, 55, 166; Elizabeth (A Question of Power) 167–​171; exile-​within-​exile 55; Head’s experiences of 66; home 33–​37; literature of 11–​49, 83, 166; Maru (1971) 112; as median state 35; Question of Power, A (1973) 139, 166–​171; from self 53; South African context 36, 50–​51; as temporary 37; and trauma 133; visitor theory 133 exilic compromise: and colonialism 62; conclusions on 213; as construct ix, xi, xv; as critical counter-​response to “exilic consciousness” 38–​39; and Head’s characters 41; between home and exile 37; in the literature of exile 11, 20, 30–​31; Makhaya’s exile 78–​79; theory-​building 37–​45 exilic consciousness 11, 27, 38–​39, 55, 213 exilic memory 34 existential anomie 84 existential crisis 161 existential guilt 78–​79 expatriates 19 Exsilium 11 Faber, Sebastian 13, 14, 20 Falola, Toyin 1, 3 Fanon, Frantz 29, 32, 127 fantasy 6, 156–​157, 161 Farah, Nuruddin ix, 20–​21 fate 35 father, Head’s 6 fear 156, 170, 195 Felman, Shoshana 32, 165 feminism 56, 86, 132, 157, 202 feudal systems 76 Fielding, Maureen 31–​32, 33, 164, 165, 166 Figley, Charles R. 158 Firdaus (Woman at Point Zero) 207 first-​hand reportage 191 Flanagan, Joseph 154 flashback devices 74, 75, 115 Fontenot, Deborah B. 65 forced exile 12, 22–​23, 36 formulaic clichés 78 forward-​backward looking 40–​41, 53 Foster, Craig and Damon 122

220 Index foster parents: Elizabeth (A Question of Power) 134, 148–​149, 159, 172; Head’s experiences of 6, 72; Margaret (Maru) 85, 121, 124, 125 fragmented voices 135, 138 Francistown 8, 131 free indirect narrative style 136 free society 57–​73 freedoms 56–​57, 61, 63, 65, 97, 105, 112, 205 free-​will 79 Freire, Paolo 1, 3–​4, 76 Freud, Sigmund 33, 158 Frieze, I.H. 158 Frith, Chris D. 141 “From Despite Broken Bondage, Botswana Women Are still Unloved” 203–​204 Frye, Nortrop 197 full humanity 115, 213–​214 future, focus on 53–​54, 57 Gaenametse (Collector of Treasures) 206–​208 Galethebege (Collector of Treasures) 208 Garcia, J.L.A. 148 gardening 134, 150, 165, 166 Gardening Group 8 Gardner, Scott 193 Garesego (Collector of Treasures) 204, 206 gender: cultural stereotypes 114; equality 152; gender politics in post-​colonial Africa 202; hierarchies 157; and mental illness 161; stealthy negotiation of 90; see also patriarchy; women Genetsch, M. 63 Genette, Gérard 137 genre 3, 14, 23, 101, 113, 143, 188 gestation periods 57 ghosts 158, 170, 178 Gikandi, Simon 29–​30 Gilbert (When Rain Clouds Gather) 32, 52–​53, 56, 70–​73, 76, 77, 80 Gilbert, Sandra M. 116 Glasgow, Joshua 147 globalisation 22 God 151–​153, 158 Goddard, Horace I. 96, 105, 108, 111, 112, 114, 119 Golden City Post 7 Golema Mmidi 31, 50–​56, 67–​69, 71–​72, 73, 214

good and evil, battle between 70, 72, 105, 107, 134, 151–​153, 176 Gover, Daniel 89, 96, 98, 109, 115, 121 Gow, Jamella N. 26, 27 Grandsaigne, Jean de 169 Grant, Jane 189 Greedy, Paul 34 Gregory, Robert J. 186 Grimal, Pierre 177 growth symbols 58 Gubar, Susan 116 Guillén, Claudio 16 Gunner (A Question of Power) 150 Gurr, Andrew 35 Gusdorf, Georges 143–​144 Hall, Edward 56 Hall, Stuart 27, 68, 119, 133 hallucination 131, 134, 160 Hallward, Dahlie 23–​24 Hamber, Brandon 32 Hamilton, Charles 172 hand-​outs 69 Haraway, Donna 56 Harlow, Barbara 209 Harris, Peter 35 Hartke, Lauren (The Body Artist) 163–​164 Hartman, Geoffrey H. xv Hartman, Saidiya 27 Hartstock, Nancy 56 haunting 158 Head, Harold 7 Head, Howard Rex 7, 9–​10 heat 72 Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) 113 Heathcote, Nellie 6 “Heaven is not Closed” 208 Hegel, Georg 3–​4, 195 hegemony 24, 56, 104, 133 Heidegger, Martin 78–​79 Helmer, Nora 120, 121 Herman, Judith 158, 161 Heurtelou, Maude 26 Hindu philosophy 151 historian, Head as 188, 190, 199 historical novels 183–​201 Hoffman, Eva 31 Hogan, Patrick Colm 145 Holocaust 32 Holzinger, Tom 190 home: in the 20th century 14; adopting a new 53; being unable to return 44;

Index  221 belonging 30; common identity 61; concepts of 30, 31, 34; conclusions on 212; crossing to exile 50–​82, 167; espace heureux (felicitous space) 31; for Head’s characters 31; Head’s characters do not desire to return 38–​39; homecoming in South African context 33–​37; loss of 19; Makhaya’s exile 53–​57, 65; memory of 35; as place of departure 53; postnationalist theories of 30; sense of 20; South African context 33–​37; as what exile is not 34 homelessness 20 homing desires 39 hope 52, 54–​55, 73 Hope, Christopher 35 Horowitz, Mardi 158, 161 horror 153–​163 humanisation 4 hunter-​gatherer traditions 123 Hurston, Zora Neale 131 huts 57–​58, 64, 67, 168, 170–​171 Hutu people 127 hybridity of the self 119–​127 hyperbole 170 hysteria x, 156, 161 Ibrahim, Huma ix, xiii, 11, 27, 30, 38–​39, 40, 72, 79, 86, 87, 90, 103, 202, 213 Ibsen, Henrik 120 identity: and “beyond” 21; common identity 61; construction of new 63; core self-​identity 43; crisis of 97–​98; Elizabeth (A Question of Power) 138; fractured 42; hybridity 25–​26, 28, 43, 96, 118, 119–​127; hyphenated 26, 28; identity formation 31; Margaret (Maru) 119; Maru (1971) 86, 118, 119; and memory 59; mixed blood 106; multiple identities 26, 31, 53, 55–​56, 61–​62, 66, 80, 167; and name 59; national identity 16; and nationalism 187; people with no identity 115; and prejudice 97; redefinition of exile’s 55; re-​departing 21; silence about 121; spiritual identity 187; as starting point in examining Head’s fiction 25; tribalism 90; unravelling of 58 identity politics 13, 26, 115 Idoma people 92 ill-​gotten possessions 77 imagined existence 34

immigration, blurred boundary with exile 12–​13 immigration policies 75 Immorality Act 1950 107–​108 Immorality Act 1957 146 imperialism 143, 159, 186 imprisonment 116 in medias res 102, 103 in-​between position of the exile 30, 40 incongruous affect 154 influencing machines 133 initiation 195 inner exile 23, 125 insanity 120, 155–​156, 159 insiders/​outsiders 17 interconnectedness 137 interdisciplinarity 133, 189 interior monologues 75 internally focalized narrative 137 international conferences xiii Interpretation of the History of Africa 204 inter-​racial marriage 6, 72, 100, 107–​108 inter-​racial relationships 72, 134, 138, 149, 159 intersectionality x, 131, 132–​133 inter-​tribal marriage 88–​89, 94–​100 Isaac (When Rain Clouds Gather) 73 Isidoros, Konstantina 187 isolation/​loneliness 118, 153, 156, 171, 177 Jabès, Edmond 54 Jane Eyre (Brontë) 116–​117 Janoff-​Bulman, R. 158 Jelinek, Estelle 143 Jenkins, Keith 198, 199, 200 Jobes, Gertrude 176, 177 Johnson, Joyce 176, 177 Jone, Jabo 9 Jordan, June 53 journalistic styles 101, 188 joy of exile 27 Jung, C.G. 154–​155 Kalahari Desert 123, 168, 169, 183 Kalí, Tal 32 Kammen, Michael 44 Kemp, Yekini 90 Kenosi (A Question of Power) 164–​165, 166 Khama, Seretse 100 Khama III, King 184, 193–​196

222 Index Khama Memorial Museum 9, 195 Khama the Great 190, 191, 192, 195–​196, 199–​200 Kitchen, Paddy 5–​6, 7 Krafft-​Ebing, Richard von 113 Kristeva, Julia 114 Kropownicki, De Sas 36 La Guma, Alex xiii, 86, 155 Labongo (Collector of Treasures) 169 Lacan, Jacques 145 Laing, Robert David 144, 178 lamentation 18 Lamming, George 17, 27, 28, 44 language 58, 65, 89, 104 language of power 140 Lanser, Susan 106 Latour, Francie 26 Laub, Dori 32, 164, 165 Lederer, Mary S. xiii, 183, 184, 187 Lesogo (Collector of Treasures) 167, 204–​205 Letter 4–​6, 7, 8, 76, 174 Lewis, Desiree 56, 60–​61, 66, 69, 93, 94, 103, 104, 105, 107 Lewis, Marvin 12–​13 Lewis, Sharon 32 Life (Collector of Treasures) 167–​168, 204–​206 liminality 34, 58 linearity 34, 53, 73–​74, 102, 104, 190–​191 Llie, Paul 17, 23 Locke, John 59 loneliness 118, 153, 156, 171, 177 Lonsdale, John 159–​160 looking back 19, 44, 53 “Looking for a Rain God” (Collector of Treasures) 168 Lorde, Audre 214 love: in the literature of exile 27; Maru (1971) 85, 88, 89, 94, 95–​100, 109, 115, 118, 122; Question of Power, A (1973) 152, 158; as recipe for tribal/​racial healing 95–​100; When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) 73 luck/​chance 67 Lutz, Helma 132 Mackenzie, Craig 188, 189, 192, 197, 198, 213 Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl 15 madness 32, 146, 156, 159 Majondina, Zonke 36

Makhaya (When Rain Clouds Gather): arrival in Golema Mmidi 67–​68; and the authorities 70–​71; autobiographical narrative 213; blurring boundaries 41; claiming Zulu identity 58; colonial master-​subject encounters 23; and Dinorego 70–​71; exile 52; exilic compromise 39, 45, 213; existential guilt 79; flashback devices 74; identity 59–​61, 120; inability to reclaim homeland 19; lying 74–​75; memory 44; name-​changing 55, 56, 58–​60, 62; post-​colonialism 212; quest for elsewhereness 53–​57; reasons for exile 74; re-​departing 21–​22; on-​the-​ road-​again 50; tragedy of exile 29; trauma 32, 74; tribalism 55, 57–​59, 62–​63, 65, 66, 75, 78, 92 Malan, Rian 35–​36 Mam, Somaly 60 Mandela, Nelson 36, 37 Manichean ideologies 28, 62, 72 Mansfield, Katherine 29 Mansoor, Asma 203 Manthatisi tribe 184 Margaret (Maru): artistic work 114–​116, 118; autobiographical narrative 213; birth of 121–​122; black-​on-​ black prejudice 90–​91, 92, 93–​95, 212; childhood 85; classification as outcast 24; exile 139; identity 60, 106, 120, 123–​125; inability to reclaim homeland 19; inner exile 23; marriage 85, 89–​90; mixed race exile 57; patriarchy 114–​116; power relations 113; split personality 119–​127; symbolism of the bed 109, 111, 112; tribalism 98, 99, 104; walk-​out 107 marginal existence 56, 66 marginalised communities 69, 79, 84, 104, 124, 203 Marguard, Jean 66 Maria (When Rain Clouds Gather) 52, 70 marriage: inter-​racial marriage 6, 72, 100, 107–​108; Maru (1971) 88–​89, 94–​100, 103–​104; and patriarchy 206–​207, 208; Question of Power, A (1973) 145, 165, 167 Marrouchi, Mustapha 18–​19, 20 Marshall, John 122 Maru (1971) 83–​130; black-​on-​black prejudice x, 83–​130, 175, 211–​212; blame for suffering 78; marginalised

Index  223 communities 66; names 176; narrative styles 74, 135; political/​protest novel 85–​90; power relations 24; see also specific characters Maru (character in Maru): good and evil 105; and Heathcliff 113; identity 103–​104; love 97; marriage 85, 89–​90, 94–​95; name 112; revenge 113; sex 111; tribalism 112, 113–​114 Maruapula (Woman Alone) 196 Marxism 132 Masarwa tribe 84–​85, 91, 95–​97, 105–​106, 108, 112–​115, 119–​120, 123 masochism 113 master-​subject encounters 23, 124 Matabele people 173, 194 Matenge, Chief (When Rain Clouds Gather) 52–​53, 70–​72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78 Maung Maung, Barani 202 Mayombela, Mosadinyana 9 McAdams, Dan P. 145 McCall, Lesley 132, 133 McCarthy, Mary 30 McClennen, Sophia A. 13–​14, 15, 16, 17, 22 McLeod, John 21, 30 Medusa (A Question of Power) 154, 155, 157, 173–​174, 175, 176, 177, 178 memory: and artistic painting 117; childhood 149; collective memory 107; and the concept of self 59; connecting to home 35; distortion of 165; of homeland 44; and identity 59; in the literature of exile 21, 28; and madness 160; nostalgia 34, 35, 57; as reconstruction 44; repressed 165; of the self 42–​43; and trauma 154, 155–​156 mental illness 134, 141, 153–​163, 165, 171 mephato 191 metaphor: absent-​present metaphor 125; bed as consummative space 111; broken mirror 138; crossroads 214; dark room metaphors 105, 173; death 200; exilic compromise 44; home 34, 35; Maru (1971) 100, 105, 114, 116, 118; Motabeng 168; Question of Power, A (1973) 138; of rain clouds 54; sunlight 105; When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) 50, 53–​54, 60 mfecane theory 69, 105–​106 migration 15, 68, 126

Miley, Thomas Jeffrey 1 Millin, Sarah Gertrude 106 Minh-​ha, Trinh T. 21 missionaries 121–​122, 125, 184 Mitchison, Naomi 7 mixed race exile 57, 84, 119–​121, 146, 148, 161–​163, 175, 212 Mma-​Millipede (When Rain Clouds Gather) 71 Mma-​Mompati (Collector of Treasures) 208 modernism 18, 102 Moleka (Maru): identity 103; love affairs 109–​111, 112; marriage 85, 94, 104; name 109, 176; power relations 113–​115; tribalism 95, 97, 98–​99 Molomo, Dan (A Question of Power) see Dan (A Question of Power) monoculturalism 61, 88 Montaigne, Michel de 58–​59 Morafi (Maru) 98, 102–​103, 125, 126 moral guilt 79 moral uprightness 67, 74 More, Sir Thomas 117 Morris, William 186 Morrison, Toni 155 Morton, Fried 186 Mosieleng, Percy 55 Motabeng 134, 137, 139, 160, 162, 166, 168, 170 mothers 6, 108, 146, 148, 159; see also foster parents Mouangue, Robert Essembo 40 mouth, Head’s 2–​3 Mphahlele, Es’kia 51 Mphahlele, Ezekiel 147 Mrs Dalloway (Woolf) 139–​140 Mtshali, Oswald Mbuyiseni 127 Muggeridge, Helen 36 multiculturalism 118 multidisciplinary approaches 12 multiple articulations 132 multiple consciousnesses 62 multiple narrative voices 103 multiple selves 26 multiple subjectivities 56 multiplicity of self 28 Munslow, Alun 188 Murdoch, Adlai 133 Mwikisa, Peter 114 Myburgh, Paul John 122 mythologization of the past 36 mythology 176–​177

224 Index names: Bewitched Crossroads : An African Saga (1984) 197; derogatory names 65, 71, 91; and identity 53; Makhaya (When Rain Clouds Gather) 55, 56, 58–​60, 62; Margaret Cadmore 121, 122–​123; Motabeng 168; Question of Power, A (1973) 135; Sello, Dan and Elizabeth 176–​177 Namibia 76, 169 narrating and narrated I 42–​43 narrative: healing trauma 32, 164–​165; narrative selves 59; stories of exile 54 narrative styles: Bewitched Crossroads : An African Saga (1984) 198; Maru (1971) 100–​109, 135; Question of Power, A (1973) 101, 103, 134–​142; When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) 73–​80, 135 nation, concepts of 31 nation states 68, 187 national identity 16 national narration 85 nationalism 16–​17, 22, 132, 187 Nazareth, Peter 87 Ndebele, Njabulo 85 Nealon, J.T. 137 new beginnings 105 Ngwato (Bamangwato) tribe 185 Nigeria 92 “nigger” 91, 121 nightmares 134, 139, 153, 160, 170, 177 Nkosi, Lewis 79, 86, 101, 118, 125, 127, 161 nomadic subjects 41, 55 non-​fiction 189 non-​humans 91 non-​I 93 nostalgia 34, 35, 57 Nyati-​Ramahobo, Lydia 185 objectification of people 94 objectivity 188, 198, 199 Ochoa, John 31 Oganda (Collector of Treasures) 169 Ogot, Grace A. 166, 169 Ogungbesan, Kolawole 88, 96–​97 Ogwude, Sophia 84, 86, 88, 90, 100–​101, 102, 142 Ola, Virginia Uzoma 86–​87, 99, 101, 113, 125–​126 Olan’g, Mouasan 67 Olaussen, Maria 72 Olenka, Zosa 36

Omer-​Cooper, J.D. 106 Omi, Michael 147 omniscient points of view 75, 103, 136 oral history 190, 203 Order of Ikhamanga 9 Osei-​Nyame Jnr, Kwadwo 205 otherness 32, 34–​35, 55, 93, 94, 120, 212 outcasts 24, 114–​115 outsiders 84, 171, 172 Ovid 16 pain of being 15–​16 Palestine 20 Pan-​Africanist movement 7, 174 pan-​humanity 174, 213–​214 paperback rights 8 paranoid delusion 140–​141 Parkins, Frank 24 Parsons, Neil 185 passivity delusions 140–​141 passports 65 Paton, Alan 107 patriarchy: exile from 40; Jane Eyre (Brontë) 117; Makhaya’s rejection of 57; Maru (1971) 109–​118; power relations 202–​210; Question of Power, A (1973) 140, 178; South African context 51; and trauma 32 patriotism 30 patrol vans 64, 66, 74 Paul (Collector of Treasures) 204, 206 Paulina (When Rain Clouds Gather) 53, 71, 73 peace of mind 44 Pelotong (When Rain Clouds Gather) 73 “Personal View of the Survival of the Unfittest, A” 2 perspective 75, 103, 134–​135 Pete (Maru) 125, 126 Petersen, Kirsten Holst 32 Pierre, Marie Nadine 26 Pietermaritzburg, South Africa 6, 9 Pinter, Harold 138, 144 place attachment 16, 56, 166 Plath, Sylvia 87 Plunka, Gene A. 165 poetics of blood 106 point of view 75, 103, 134–​135 political asylum 75 political exile 36, 44, 50–​51, 167 political/​protest novels 85–​90 politics of victimhood 33 polygamy 203

Index  225 “Poor Man” 2 post-​apartheid era 90 post-​colonialism: and African exile 51; black-​on-​black prejudice 92, 94, 211; conclusions on 212–​213; and exile 21; feminist theory 208, 209; gender politics in post-​colonial Africa 202–​203; Head ahead of her time on 88, 127; in Head’s novels 51, 102, 211–​214; and the human experience 63; hybridity 119; and the literature of exile 24–​31; power relations 78, 107; race and gender 114; in South Africa 36; tribalism 92, 94, 108 post-​imperialism 30 post-​modernism 102, 132, 198, 199 postnationalism 30 power relations: black power as instrument of oppression 171–​178; black-​on-​black prejudice 93; chiefs 77; and language 89; language of power 140; multiple subjectivities 56; patriarchy 51, 140, 202–​210; post-​ colonialism 78, 107; praise-​singers 78; sociology of exile 24; and trauma 159; tribalism 91, 93, 96 powerlessness 65 praise-​singers 77–​78 pre-​colonial Africa 69 “primitiveness” 122 Prince, Gerald 137 Principal (A Question of Power) 159, 162, 171, 172 pronouns 103, 134 prostitution 67, 74, 99, 167, 205 psychiatric hospitals x, 8, 131, 134, 138–​139, 146, 149, 159, 162 psychic damage 66, 158 psychic surrender 40 psychoanalysis 33, 140–​141 psychological breakdown 131, 134, 138, 146, 153–​154, 161, 171 psychological death 44 psychological trauma 74, 84 psychology 22–​23, 25, 41, 62, 65, 113, 137–​138, 154 psycho-​narration 137 psychosis 160, 163 Question of Power, A (1973) 131–​182; autobiographical narrative 142–​147; black-​on-​black prejudice 91, 211–​212; blame for suffering 78;

intersectionality x; looking forward and back 57; narrating and narrated I 43; narrative styles 101, 103; power relations 24; racism 147–​153; trauma 32, 33, 153–​163, 212; tribalism 92; see also specific characters Rabaté, Jean-​Michel 38 race: and colonialism 29; and home 34; hybrid identity 119; and otherness 32; and the progress of humanity 72; and trauma 33–​34; white characters in Head’s novels 72 racism: definition of 147; exilic compromise 39, 79; Head’s experiences of 5; in Head’s novels generally x; and intermarriage 72; and love 96; Question of Power, A (1973) 147–​153, 161; repression in the cultural unconscious 107; When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) 78; see also black-​on-​black prejudice radicalism 51 rain 168–​169 “Rain Clouds” (house) 8 Ramadi (Collector of Treasures) 168–​169 Ramírez, Kimberly del Busto 34–​35 Ranko (Maru) 92, 98, 111 Rankwana (Deep River) 202 Ravenscroft, Arthur 86 reader, Head as avid 8 rebels 24 re-​birth 65, 196 recovery 163–​166 redemptive motifs 20 re-​departing 21 reductionist tendencies 13 Reed, Walter L. 113 refugees: in the 20th century 14; Botswana 69; in the definition of exiles 13; Head as 5, 69; refugee settlements 8; When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) 50, 52, 67, 75 religion 151–​152, 158, 197, 208 Relph, Edward 65 restlessness 65 restored people, ideology of 37 returning exiles 19–​20, 36, 40, 41, 44, 54 revenge 113 Rhodesia 184 Rhys, Jean 146 Rich, Adrienne 28 Richardson, Brian 135

226 Index Richmond, A.H. 92 Rings, Guido 68 Rive, Richard 119–​120 Robinson, Ella 97, 112, 120 Ronge, Barry 197, 198 Rooney, Caroline 140, 214 rootedness 27, 30, 65–​66 Rose, Jacqueline 87, 174 Rubadiri, David 187 Rushdie, Salman 19–​20, 28, 29–​30, 51–​52 Rwanda 127 sacrifice 168–​169, 195 safety, feelings of 56, 158, 161 Said, Edward 11–​12, 16, 18, 19–​20, 35, 36–​37, 50, 55, 145–​146 Saint Monica’s Anglican School 6–​7, 72, 172 Sample, Maxine 57, 65–​66 San people 94, 123, 127, 186, 212; see also Bushmen Sandoval, Chela 202 Sangari, Kumkum 213 Sarvan, Charles 142 Sass, Louis A. 154 satire 73–​80 Savin, Ada 14–​15, 167 Schapera, I. 176 schizophrenia 141, 154 Schwarz, Bill 29 Scott, Ellen C. 155, 156, 170 Sebetoane tribe 184 Sebina (Bewitched Crossroad) 172–​173, 196–​197, 199, 200, 214 Sebina clan 105, 172–​173, 194, 196 second generation exiles 36 secret sharing 136 Seidel, Michael 17, 34 Sekgoma I 193–​194 Sekoto, Chief (When Rain Clouds Gather) 75, 77, 78 self 4 self vs other 28, 62 Selfa, Lance 147 self-​awareness 20 self-​confidence 125 self-​consciousness 3, 200 self-​construction 161 self-​help schemes 8 selfhood, tripartite 137, 145 self-​reflection 42–​43, 188 self-​responsibility 79

Sello (A Question of Power): and Elizabeth’s psychological breakdown 139, 153–​154, 155, 177, 178; good and evil symbolism 134, 151, 152, 162; point of view 135; power relations 173; spiritual symbolism 138; trauma 140; tribalism 150; utopianism 175–​176 Selvon, Samuel 29 semi-​fiction 188 sense of place 56 Sepamla, Sipho 51 separation 23, 152, 156 Serowe, Botswana 7–​8, 9, 93, 108, 189–​197 Serowe:Village of the Rain Wind (1981) 8, 187–​197, 213 servants 124 Seth (Maru) 85, 92, 98, 125, 126 sex 109–​111, 113, 140, 156–​157, 167, 203, 205–​206 shame 79, 118, 120, 172 Shankar Saha, Amit 23 Shohat, Ella 214 Shorty (A Question of Power) 134 shut-​in worlds 173–​178 Sianana (Collector of Treasures) 167 Siedel, Michael 22 Silberbauer, George 123 silence 3, 111, 121, 124–​125, 153 Sillery, Anthony 69, 186, 196 Simpson, John 23, 27 Siniana (Collector of Treasures) 51–​52 sirens 64 slavery 105, 112, 113, 122, 172, 173 Small, Christopher 158 Smith-​Christopher, Daniel L. 15 Sobukwe, Robert 7 Social and Political Pressure that shape [sic] Literature in Southern Africa 94, 126 social enclosure theory 24 social marginalisation 66 social otherness 24 social rejects 6 sociality 15 socialization of oppression 76 sociological stratification theories 132–​133 sociology of exile 24 solidarity 15 soul journeys 155

Index  227 South Africa: exile biographies from 50–​51; Head leaving 5; in Head’s novels 51–​52; interracial marriage 100; Kalahari Desert 169; trauma 32 Soyinka, Wole 127 Spackey, Cary 169 Spain 12 spatial environments 56 “Special One, The” 204, 206 spiritual attachment 65 spiritual identity 187 spiritual symbolism 134 spiritual values 153 spiritual worlds 158 split personality 25–​26, 62, 119–​127, 144, 177–​178 standpoint epistemology 56, 133 starvation 168–​169 statelessness 39 Stein, Howard 56 Steiner, George 14 Stevens, Richard P. 184, 185, 186 stigma 25, 161 Stolorow, Robert D. 158, 163, 164 storytelling 32, 54, 101, 103–​109, 164–​165, 187–​197; see also narrative strangers 27, 43, 72–​73 stream of consciousness 75, 135 stylistics 101, 104 subconscious 56 subjective self 144–​145 suicide 7, 73, 149 sunlight metaphors 105 Surin, Kenneth 37 suspense 102, 134–​135 Swaneng Secondary School 192 sycophancy 78 symbolic belonging 16 taboos 98 Tabori, Paul 22–​23, 55 Talaote tribe 189 Tausk, Victor 133, 140 taxation 75–​76 Telmaque, Harold M. 189 Telotte, J.P. 156 Tempest, The (Shakespeare) 114 Terkel, Stud 54 Theile,Verena 121 theory-​building 37–​45 Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ wa 127 third-​person narratives 103, 110, 134–​135, 137, 145, 175

Thoko (A Question of Power) 166, 169–​170 Thomas, Calvin 37–​38, 43 thought processes 75 threshold experiences 58 Thumboo, Edwin xiii Tiffin, Helen 25 time 36, 138, 164 Tiv people 92 Tlou, Thomas 183 tobacco-​growing 71 “together despite differences” 214 Totems 97 transcultural concepts of space 31 transcultural sites 68, 80, 214 transnational concepts of space 31 transnational identity 26–​27 transnational kinship 14 transversal politics 56 trauma: black power as instrument of oppression 177–​178; and exile 19; of exile 31–​66, 74; and exile 133; Question of Power, A (1973) 153–​163, 163–​166, 212; recovery 32, 163–​166; sexual abuse 156–​158; women in Head’s novels 114 Tredennick, Linda 121 tribalism: Bewitched Crossroads : An African Saga (1984) 172–​173; black-​ on-​black prejudice 87–​88, 90–​95, 113; Botswana 52; definition of 92–​93, 186–​187; denial of 55; exilic compromise 39; and gender hierarchies 157; Head ahead of her time on 87–​88; history of tribal formations in Botswana 183–​187; Makhaya (When Rain Clouds Gather) 55, 57–​59, 62–​63, 65, 66, 75, 78; and marriage 95–​100; Maru (1971) 84–​85, 90–​95, 211–​212; in post-​colonial Africa 92, 94, 108; pronouns 103; Rwanda 127; and trauma 32 “true self ” 43 Tsepe, Joas (When Rain Clouds Gather) 75, 78 Tshekedi Khama 190, 191, 192 Tshekedi Khama Memorial Primary School 7 Tswana people 58, 95, 109, 112, 185, 190, 208, 212 tuberculosis 73 Tucker, Margaret E. 138, 139, 144, 153, 155, 156

228 Index Tucker, Martin 14, 50–​51 Turner, Victor 30, 58 Tutsi people 127 Two Letters 142 two sprinters 42 two-​face image 41 tyranny 113, 114 tyranny of place 147 Ugarte, Michael 12, 13 unemployment 69 universal brotherhood 214 universal citizenship 28 universal freedom 97 universality of exile 22, 27 universality of oppression 91–​92 untouchables 90, 98–​99 upper classes 98 us vs them 28, 62, 98, 103 Uspensky, Boris 83 utopianism 57, 96, 101, 117, 152, 175–​176, 194, 195, 196 Vaid, Sudesh 213 Van der Kolk, Bessel 158 van der Post, Laurens 122, 123 Van Gennep, Arnold 58 van Rensberg, Patrick 7, 8, 190, 191, 192 Van Wyk Smith, Malvem 5 viewpoint 75, 103 Vigne, Randolph 4, 5, 7, 76, 174 village councils 73 “Village Saint, The” 208 visitor theory 131, 132, 133 voice, Head’s 2–​3 voluntary exile 12, 160 Wagner, Patrick 24 Ward, Patrick 12 water 71 Watson, Melvin R. 113 “we” referents 102–​103 weavers 192–​193 Welffort, Francisco 3 When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) 50–​82, 212; agricultural innovations 71,

72, 73, 75, 166; blame for suffering 78; Botswana settings 51–​52; class divide 76–​77; concepts of home 34; exile as essential theme 50; exilic compromise ix, 213; Makhaya’s exile 12, 53–​57; narrative styles 73–​80, 135; proceeds of 8; refugees 69; satire 73–​80; transnational communities 15; trauma literature 32; tribalism 65, 92; utopianism 117; see also specific characters White, Hayden 188–​189, 198, 199, 200 white characters in Head’s novels 72 Wicomb, Zoe 89–​90, 203 Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys) 146 Wilde, Oscar 2 Williams, Raymond 23–​24, 50 Williams, Ruth 100 Winant, Howard 147 Wolff, Janet 50 Wolpert, Daniel M. 141 Woman Alone:Autobiographical Writings (1990) 9, 39, 51, 87, 137, 193, 211 womanizers 109 women: and agriculture 71; “bogadi” (bride price) 195; Head’s female characters 108, 114; as less than human 115; in Maru 89; as outcasts 114; patriarchy and power 202–​210; in Serowe 192; sexual abuse of 156–​157; untouchable women 90; visitor theory 131–​132 Wood, James 136 Woolf, Virginia 101, 139–​140 Wright, David 35 xenophobia 65 Young, Harvey 147 Young, Robert 119, 122 Yuval-​Davies, Nira 3, 53, 56, 132 Zambrana, Ruth Enid 132 Zeleza, Timbaye Paul 18 Zola, Émile 167 Zulu nation-​state 184