Abstract
Maria Jesus Carbacos-Trasiera
‘To neglect the past is to postpone the future': Coetzee, Galgut, Mda
From its very inception, the political discourse of post-apartheid South Africa attempted to sever the ties with a past that shamed everyone. F.W. de Klerk coined the catch phrase “New South Africa” in his February 2, 1990 speech – in which he proclaimed the end of apartheid, the release of political prisoners and the recognition of formerly banned political organizations. Stated or implicit calls were issued from various institutional and individual fronts to comply to bury the past swiftly and quietly. The country's publishing houses favored, in the first half of the 1990s, literature which celebrated the break with the past and which denoted, instead, the ‘new' mood of post-apartheid South Africa. While – under apartheid – to separate the political and the aesthetic was criticized, that separation was generally preferred in the 1990s. To emphasize the dawn of the new day for South African letters, contemporary writers are often referred to in the cultural mores as ‘new' writers, even when their careers had begun with the previous regime. The ‘new' literature was set the task of redefining the nation's new self-image. Whatever urge there still existed to come to terms with the evils of the past at individual and collective levels, it was meant to be expressed within the controlled site of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Private stories of human right violations were given public audiences in an attempt to channel individual pain and suffering for the common purpose of reconciliation, thus sacrificing – as has been noted – social and personal justice for the cause of forgiveness, and prioritizing the possibility of a common future over the need of individual moral and material reparation.
Aware of the call to abandon prior resistant or committed stances, writers like Phaswane Mpe or Zakes Mda have openly celebrated that their spectrum was expanded beyond the black-and-white dichotomy. Still, a perception has developed that the literature that would fit the ‘new South Africa' could not simply follow the path of oblivion. First, a warning is issued to those perceiving that a simple reversal of terms, a centering of the margins, suffices to re-invent the country's literary future. Further, voices have emerged in the cultural arena to question whether – now that anti-apartheid literature has become obsolete – all denunciation literature should be likewise be declared out of order. Finally, others have reacted against the extended policy of collective amnesia and have proclaimed that the present cannot be severed from the past. This cultural and historical context needs to be taken into account when analyzing novels such as J. M. Coetzee' Disgrace , Damon Galgut's the Good Doctor , or Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying and The Madonna of Excelsior . In all of them the past plays a key role not only in understanding the present, but also in finding new ways – ranging from moderately to widely optimistic – to meet the challenge of the future.