The Department of English Celebrates Women’s Month
As neighbour to South Africa, Botswana has always shared the adversities of the then apartheid South Africa. Even years after liberation from the apartheid regime, celebrations to mark the past ordeals continue to spread across the borders to neighboring countries. Such is the case with the legacy of August as the month of when multitudes protested against the apartheid pass laws.
Twenty thousand South African women from all walks of life converged on the forbidden grounds of the Union Buildings. protesting against these draconian laws. The revolutionary women came from different cultures and languages, but were united by one common goal to end the oppressive pass laws that treated them as inferior and second-class citizen in their own country of birth.
The rise of the Black Consciousness Movement in apartheid South Africa also coincided with a period of resistance theatre. The period of resistance theatre was dominated by black men as playwrights and producers. Women generally featured in these plays as mothers and wives or as representative female figures who served as a repository of cultural values associated with the discourses of the Black Consciousness Movement, especially that of the image of Mother Africa. It is in this sense that South African plays that are influenced by the Black Consciousness Movement bear a striking resemblance to the image of the African woman propagated by the Negritude movement.
Like Black Consciousness, Negritude was a literary and artistic movement which extolled black pride and civilization. Negritude promoted images of the African woman as dark, beautiful and unspoiled. The African woman then assumed a motherly figure hence the title Mother Africa. In that sense, Mother Africa was presented as weak and helpless, constantly in danger of being captured and/or violated by invading forces from outside. As a result, the African man assumed the role of the soldier/saviour who stood ready to protect and defend Mother Africa from potential invaders.
In his paper entitled Roles of Female character in selected plays from apartheid South Africa presented in August Mr Owen Seda, Lecture at the Department of English saw it fit to celebrate the day in style with a public lecture on the roles of women during the regime. Mr Seda described apartheid as basically an elaborate and systematic denigration of certain sections of South African society, with the black races occupying the lowest position on the social scale. In the system women suffered the dual oppression of racial and gender discrimination.
The paper used examples drawn from selected plays like Mthuli Shezi’s play Shanti, Credo Mutwa’s uNosilimela, Athol Fugard’s No Good Friday and Hello and Goodbye the paper examined how women characters are presented in plays from apartheid South Africa. He used a materialist feminist approach to explore the novels. Materialist feminism view women as a subordinate class as a result of certain social relations existing within a broader economic system. The novels largely authored by men, depict women as agents of resistance or as powerless victims of apartheid.
Mthuli Shezi’s play Shanti displays the above influence in its portrayal of the female character. The play is based on an interracial love affair between Shanti, who is a young Indian woman and her black lover Thabo. Because apartheid laws did not allow interracial love affairs, Thabo is forced to escape into exile in Mozambique to join uMkhonto weSizwe. By joining the guerrillas, Thabo hopes to free South Africa from the shackles of apartheid and return to claim Shanti’s love as a form of human trophy. Unfortunately however, Thabo is killed in Mozambique after a letter he sends to Shanti is mistaken for military espionage. Thabo’s manhood is thus enlarged by his love for Shanti and his subsequent death in exile. It is in this sense that as a drama of Black Consciousness, Shanti portrays a negative image of the female character transforming her not into a progressive arm of the struggle but a human trophy for which the man is prepared to die.
Credo Mutwa’s uNosilimela is another play of the Black Consciousness movement which portrays the female character in a negative way. uNosilimela is an epic heroine who leads the people of South Africa out of bondage to freedom. However, although Mutwa presents a positive epic heroine he undermines her in the sense that for her to be the heroine and social redeemer that she becomes, she first has to trash her people’s traditions through rebellion and violence. She also has to become an outcast and a prostitute in order that she achieves the above. In other words it is as if for the female character to achieve greatness on equal terms with men, she has to lose her feminine qualities.
Although Athol Fugard’s No Good Friday is not necessarily influenced by the Black Consciousness Movement, it also portrays the female character in a negative way. It is based on an encounter between Willie an educated and upcoming young black male, his live-in girlfriend Rebecca and Shark, a local gangster who faultlessly collects protection fees from backyard residents in Soweto every Friday evening. While Willie summons the courage and bravery to confront Shark, Rebecca is presented in the image of the perfect Mother Africa housekeeper and care-giver. Unemployed and homebound, Rebecca seems to exist only in order to minister to the needs of Willie. Uneducated herself, Rebecca is infinitely impressed by Willie’s education and impressive command of the English language. In the end Rebecca serves no useful dramatic purpose except to provide a background against which Willie’s manhood is realized as he faces the threat of selling out on Shark.
In Hello and Goodbye, Fugard focuses on two members of the race of poor whites during apartheid South Africa; Hester and Johnnie Smit. Hester has just returned home after many years to confront her brother Johnnie to demand her share of their late father’s inheritance. As she dissects the family’s poor material circumstances, Hester rebels against male domination. Her brother is unable to understand this behavior. To him, no pure Afrikaner woman would speak and behave as Hester does. Compared to Hester’s reaction which is more ‘manly’, Johnnie is less able to face up to his reality. Unfortunately, however, Fugard presents Hester as a whore in order for her to challenge sexual repression and to resist and rebel against male patriarchy. It is as if in order that the woman can tell it like it is, she has to break out of the mould of the ‘proper woman’ as traditionally defined by men. It is also as if so long as she cuts the image of a whore and a prostitute, Hester has the license to challenge Afrikaner patriarchy and the subordination of women.
In all the plays female characters have been portrayed negatively in plays from apartheid South Africa, however worthy to mention is their roles played indirectly to fight the apartheid system.