*
This essay was originally presented in an abbreviated
version at the conference on "Récit
émergeant, récit renaissant, 1859-1939"
held at the Université Michel de
Montaigne-Bordeaux 3, Bordeaux,
France, on January 23-26, 2002.
1
Although the editions indicated above were the first to
appear, in this paper references are to later editions:
Sarah Gertude Millin, God's Stepchildren,
Johannesburg: Ad.Donker, 1986, with a Preface by Tony
Voss, pp. 7-17; William Plomer, Turbott Wolfe, ed.
by Stephen Gray, with background pieces by Roy Campbell,
William Plomer, Laurens van der Post, Nadine Gordimer,
Michael Herbert, Peter Wilhelm, David Brown and Stephen
Gray, Johannesburg, AD.Donker, 1980; Thomas Mofolo,
Chaka, translated into English and edited by
Daniel P. Kunene, London, Heinemann,1984; Solomon
T.Plaatje, Mhudi, London, Heinemann, 1978, ed. by
Stephen Gray with an introduction by Tim Couzens.
Millin's book was
revised by the author for a later 1924 edition, the one
currently used, which became
very popular in the United
States. Mofolo's novel suffered heavy censorship from
the hand of its
missionary publishers; the excised parts were never
recovered, while Plaatje's,
who also suffered censorship, was restituted to its
original version when Tom Couzens
and Stephen Gray rescued the manuscript after a fire had
damaged the storage
area of the Lovedale Press and edited the complete
version. In this essay I
qualify people and books as 'white' and
'black' to design a
visible grid of reference relating to its
central theme, the
crossing and mixing of white/black in
miscegenation.
2
Gandhi recruited a batallion of Indian troopers to
support the British army in the repression of the Zulu
rebellion. Gandhi's group never went into fighting, but
only assisted the wounded and dead, both white and black.
Later he admitted that he would have never flanked the
British expedition had he known that it was not a war but
a massacre of innocent women and
children.
3
William Plomer then belonged to the group of the famous
journal Voorslag, together with Campbell and van der
Post; he later moved back to England where he became a
leading figure in the world of publishing and
literature.
4
The fleeting reference to Gauguin and his Tahiti seems to
give a flavour of romantic exoticism to Turbott's story
by evoking a vision of happiness and sexual abandonment
and easy gratification.
5
See Lewis Nkosi, Mating Birds, London,Constable,
1986, where a young black man waiting to be executed for
the alleged rape of a white girl talks to a psychoanalist
and describes the ambiguity of the encounter with the
girl on the beach divided by a partition so as to
separate white from blacks. The man seems unable to make
it clear for us whether it was rape or not, for the only
way to enter into contact with a white woman seems to be
rape.
6
See Arthur
Maimane, Victims, London, Allison and Busby, 1976.
Here there is no doubt about the fact that it was a rape,
yet the reasons for it are complex, as well as the way
the woman reacts when she finds out she is pregnant: she
keeps the child in spite of her husband and social
milieu, who outcast her, while the apartheid system
throws her i nto an
impossible situation compelling her and the daughter to
move into a coloured section of Johannesburg. The
question here is whether the hybrid outcome of the events
signify anything for her and the child-apart from sheer
survival.