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Nationalism and the Farm Novel in South Africa, 1883–2004

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070903101854

1465-3893

Nicole Devarenne,

Legal Issues in South Africa

Abstract From Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) to Van Niekerk's Agaat (2004), the farm novel has reflected South Africa's experience of colonial conflict, white supremacy, gender struggle and nationalism. Revisited at key historical moments, the farm novel describes a deterministic relationship between genre and ideology, drawing attention to the role a particular fictional mode has played in justifying the disenfranchisement of blacks and the disempowerment of women. The social context in which the Afrikaans farm novel developed was one of emerging Afrikaner nationalism; it lent credibility to a story about Afrikaners' rural origins that provided an illusion of continuity in South African history and a description of an unchanging Afrikaner identity. Since the 1960s, leftist Afrikaans writers, concerned with the role the early farm novel played in promoting white supremacy, have rewritten it in order to deconstruct its themes and tropes. J.M. Coetzee's English-medium challenge to the farm novel genre, in his fiction and elsewhere, can be viewed in this context. Increasingly, since the end of apartheid, feminist versions of the genre have articulated connections between nationalist ideology, the canon and the representation of gender. I view recent rewritings by Marlene van Niekerk, particularly, as a challenge to both literary convention and racist-masculinist ideology. Her work draws attention to the genre's importance in describing the relationship between white supremacy and land ownership; moreover, it proposes new directions for the study of pastoral traditions in South African writing. Notes *I am very grateful to Stephen Minta, Peter Blair, Zoë Wicomb and Derek Attridge for their help and guidance in this research, and to this journal's unidentified referees for their constructive comments and suggestions. 1 K. Schoeman, Olive Schreiner: A Woman in South Africa, 1855–1881 (Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 1991), pp. vi–vii. 2 K. Schoeman, Olive Schreiner: A Woman in South Africa, 1855-1881 (Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 1991), p. 419. 3 K. Schoeman, Olive Schreiner: A Woman in South Africa, 1855-1881 (Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 1991), p. 441. 4 J.M. Coetzee, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 83, 106. 5 H. Giliomee notes in The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (London, Hurst & Company, 2003), p. 321, that Roman-Dutch law, which 'compelled the division of a farmer's property among his children … left children on farms subdivided into parts too small to farm efficiently'. 6 Coetzee, White Writing, p. 82. 7 Coetzee, White Writing, p. 83. 8 A. Coetzee, 'n Hele Os vir 'n Ou Broodmes: Grond en die Plaasnarratief Sedert 1595 (Pretoria, Van Schaik, 2000), pp. 15–16. Unless otherwise indicated, translations from works in Afrikaans are my own. 9 I. Ochiltree, 'Mastering the Sharecroppers: Land, Labour and the Search for Independence in the US South and South Africa', Journal of Southern African Studies [JSAS], 30, 1 (March 2004), p. 50. 10 I. Ochiltree, 'Mastering the Sharecroppers: Land, Labour and the Search for Independence in the US South and South Africa', Journal of Southern African Studies [JSAS], 30, 1 (March 2004), p. 58. 11 Giliomee, The Afrikaners, p. 322. 12 Giliomee, The Afrikaners, pp. 318–22. 13 Coetzee, 'n Hele Os, p. 3. 14 J. Wenzel, 'The Pastoral Promise and the Political Imperative: The Plaasroman Tradition in an Era of Land Reform', Modern Fiction Studies, 46, 1 (Spring 2000), p. 94. 15 Coetzee, White Writing, p. 88. 16 D.F. Malherbe, Die Meulenaar (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 1978), p. 183. 17 C. Campbell, Phylloxera: How Wine Was Saved for the World (London, HarperCollins, 2004); H. Giliomee, 'Western Cape Farmers and the Beginnings of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1870–1915', JSAS, 14, 1 (October 1987), p. 51; P. Scully, 'Criminality and Conflict in Rural Stellenbosch, South Africa, 1870–1900', Journal of African History, 30, 2 (1989), p. 290; 'KWV History', available at http://www.kwv.co.za/kwv-history, retrieved on 1 April 2009. 18 J.C. Kannemeyer, Die Afrikaanse Literatuur, 1652–2004 (Cape Town, Human & Rousseau, 2005), pp. 91, 97. 19 Coetzee, White Writing, p. 83. 20 Coetzee, 'n Hele Os, p. 56. 21 J.D. Heyns, ''n Vergelyking tussen C.M. van den Heever se Somer (1935) en André Letoit se Somer II (1985)', Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, 29, 2 (May 1991), p. 45. 22 Coetzee, White Writing, p. 87. 23 Wenzel, 'The Pastoral Promise', p. 94. 25 Coetzee, White Writing, p. 83. 24 Coetzee, White Writing, pp. 85–6. 26 M. van Niekerk, 'Afrikaner Woman and Her "Prison": Afrikaner Nationalism and Literature', in R. and E. Kriger (eds), Afrikaans Literature: Recollection, Redefinition, Restitution (Amsterdam, GA, Rodopi, 1996), p. 147. 27 M. van Niekerk, 'Afrikaner Woman and Her "Prison": Afrikaner Nationalism and Literature', in R. and E. Kriger (eds), Afrikaans Literature: Recollection, Redefinition, Restitution (Amsterdam, GA, Rodopi, 1996), p. 149. 28 M. van Niekerk, 'Afrikaner Woman and Her "Prison": Afrikaner Nationalism and Literature', in R. and E. Kriger (eds), Afrikaans Literature: Recollection, Redefinition, Restitution (Amsterdam, GA, Rodopi, 1996) 29 C.L. Leipoldt, The Valley: A Trilogy (Plumstead, Stormberg, 2001), p. 172. 30 C.L. Leipoldt, The Valley: A Trilogy (Plumstead, Stormberg, 2001), p. 246. 31 C.L. Leipoldt, The Valley: A Trilogy (Plumstead, Stormberg, 2001), p. 237. 32 C.L. Leipoldt, The Valley: A Trilogy (Plumstead, Stormberg, 2001), p. 231. 33 H.C. Bosman, Celebrating Bosman: A Centenary Selection of Herman Charles Bosman's Stories (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2005). 34 N. Gordimer, 'The Idea of Gardening', New York Review of Books, 2 February 1984, available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/5958, retrieved on 22 February 2009. 35 N. Gordimer, The Conservationist (London, Bloomsbury, 2005), p. 17. 36 N. Gordimer, The Conservationist (London, Bloomsbury, 2005), p. 9. 37 N. Gordimer, The Conservationist (London, Bloomsbury, 2005), p. 17. 38 R. Barnard, Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 72. 39 R. Barnard, Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 70, 75. 40 R. Barnard, Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 74. 41 E. Leroux, To a Dubious Salvation (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972), p. 82. 42 E. Leroux, To a Dubious Salvations (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972), p. 79. 43 E. Leroux, To a Dubious Salvations (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972), p. 101. 44 E. Leroux, To a Dubious Salvations (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972), p. 102. 45 H. White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 84–5. 47 C.M. van den Heever, Somer (Pretoria, J.L. van Schaik, 1938), p. 152. 46 A. Letoit, Somer II: 'n Plakboek (Cape Town, Perskor, 1985), p. 14. 48 Coetzee, White Writing, pp. 87–8. 49 Letoit, Somer II, p. 108. 50 I. Barnard, 'The "Tagtigers"?: The (Un)Politics of Language in the "New" Afrikaans Fiction', Research in African Literatures, 23, 4 (Winter 1992), p. 90. 51 E. van Heerden, Ancestral Voices (London, Penguin, 1989), p. 165. 52 E. van Heerden, Ancestral Voices (London, Penguin, 1989), p. 108. 53 E. van Heerden, Ancestral Voices (London, Penguin, 1989), p. 99. 54 E. van Heerden, Ancestral Voices (London, Penguin, 1989), p. 116. 55 E. van Heerden, Ancestral Voices (London, Penguin, 1989) 56 Van Heerden's novels do not share this agenda – in Kikuyu, for example, a backwards-looking Calvinism, which informs a patriarchal system based on exclusion, is allowed to coexist with a proletarian Christianity in the service of revolution. 57 E. van Heerden, Kikuyu (Cape Town, Kwela Books, 1998), p. 192. 58 E. van Heerden, Kikuyu (Cape Town, Kwela Books, 1998), pp. 193–4. 59 E. van Heerden, Kikuyu (Cape Town, Kwela Books, 1998), p. 4. 60 E. van Heerden, Kikuyu (Cape Town, Kwela Books, 1998), pp. 30–1. 61 On the representation of coloureds in Somer and other plaasromane, see V. February, Mind Your Colour: The 'Coloured' Stereotype in South African Literature (London, Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 36–7. 62 van Heerden, Kikuyu, p. 31. 63 Coetzee, 'n Hele Os, p. 95. 64 Malherbe, Die Meulenaar, p. 80. Die Patriot was the first Afrikaans magazine, and mouthpiece of the Afrikanerbond and Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners, which had been instrumental in the first Afrikaans language movement. 65 Giliomee, The Afrikaners, p. 224. 66 C.M. van den Heever, Droogte (Pretoria, J.L. van Schaik, 1939), p. 119. 67 N. Devarenne, '"In Hell You Hear Only Your Mother Tongue": Afrikaner Nationalist Ideology, Linguistic Subversion, and Cultural Renewal in Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf ', Research in African Literatures, 37, 4 (November 2006), pp. 105–20. 68 Coetzee, 'n Hele Os, p. 102. 69 Van Heerden, Kikuyu, p. 74. 70 M. van Niekerk, Triomf (Cape Town, Queillerie, 1994), p. 1. 71 Cited in Van Niekerk, 'Afrikaner Woman', p. 147. 72 Coetzee, White Writing, p. 65. 73 M. van Niekerk, Agaat (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2004), p. 590. 74 Van Niekerk, 'Afrikaner Woman', p. 141. 75 On the 'spectacular' in black South African literature, see N.S. Ndebele, South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1994). 76 Wenzel, 'The Pastoral Promise', p. 111.