|
|
|
|
|
|
The telling voices in Nadine Gordimer's Telling talesNS ZuluDepartment of African Languages, University of Stellenbosch
Telling tales (2004), edited by Nadine Gordimer, published by Bloomsbury Publishing in London and distributed by Jonathan Ball Publishers in South Africa, is a collection of short stories by well-know writers around the world. The reader is aware that some of the stories in the collection are told in the "we" narrative voice. It is a voice that speaks for the voiceless and downtrodden in various parts of the world: the refugees displaced by the war of dissidents in Mozambique in Nadine Gordimer's story; the enslaved peasants and abused women in India in Salman Rushdie's story; the oppressed blacks whose children are shot by soldiers in pre-1994 South Africa in Njabulo S Ndebele's story; and the "abandoned children of this planet". I focus on two of the stories: Salman Rushdie's "The firebird's nest" and Njabulo S Ndebele's "Death of a son". "The firebird's nest" decries the enslavement of the poor Indian subjects by their princes even though the government had abolished the privileges of the princes: "They have no power over us" (p 46). The "us" voice is clearly the voice of the exploited who continue to be subjugated by princes under the guise that they are given jobs. Like some princes, Mr Maharaj enriches himself by mysteriously burning his rich brides once he has finished their dowry. The brides come from far places where the habit of burning brides for dowry is unknown as Mr Maharaj marries a rich American girl for the same purpose. His sister tells her that she too will "burn herself": "All brides in these parts are brought from far afield. And once men have spent their dowries, and then the firebird comes ... Do you know how many brides he has had?" (p 58). The "we" voice is also a liberating voice in this story because the greedy Maharaj drowns in a flood but the American bride is saved. The flood is also said to have cleansed the region "of its horrors, of its archaic tragedies, of its men" (p 63). This is the symbolism of the liberating voice: no bride shall burn because of her dowry, and no Indian man shall labour under the yoke of a cruel prince. The collective voice in Njabulo S Ndebele's story "Death of a son" sighs with relief in the first paragraph of the story with the realisation that the apartheid government had at last come to its senses and released their dead son, which its soldiers in Casspirs had shot, then came back for the body to find out about "the cause of death", and later asked the parents to pay for his body for burial: "At last we got the body ... We were exhausted ... We had to find the strength to grieve" (p 201). This is a relief because it had been a struggle to get the body from the police. But the telling voice knows about this struggle: "The problem was that I had known long ago that we would have to buy the body anyway ... we knew we would be required to pay the police or the government for the release of the body of our child" (p 202). This serves as harsh irony to a state that kills innocent children and requires their parents to buy them back for burial. The greatest insult is that the bereaved should get a receipt - proof that they had paid for their son's body: "We have the receipt. The police insisted we take it. That way, they would be 'protected'. It's the law, they insisted" (p 202). Protected from whom? the reader asks. Yet the reader realises that this was standard practice, and therefore that the "we" voice is not only the voice of the Bantu and his wife in this story, but the communal voice of all those black people in the East Rand townships and other parts of the country who have been subjected to buying their relatives shot by apartheid soldiers, or hacked by the chief's mighty and destructive impi. The reader knows, like this telling voice, that then the soldiers were under presidential command to rid the country of terrorists and communists. They were under strict instruction to shoot anything that moved in "these" communist-infested townships. The chief had his political ambitions. The taxi owners wanted to spread their economic empire.
Send your comments to webvoet@litnet.co.za to continue the discussion on SêNet, our interactive opinion page.
|
||
© Kopiereg in die ontwerp en inhoud van hierdie webruimte behoort aan LitNet, uitgesluit die kopiereg in bydraes wat berus by die outeurs wat sodanige bydraes verskaf. LitNet streef na die plasing van oorspronklike materiaal en na die oop en onbeperkte uitruil van idees en menings. Die menings van bydraers tot hierdie werftuiste is dus hul eie en weerspieël nie noodwendig die mening van die redaksie en bestuur van LitNet nie. LitNet kan ongelukkig ook nie waarborg dat hierdie diens ononderbroke of foutloos sal wees nie en gebruikers wat steun op inligting wat hier verskaf word, doen dit op hul eie risiko. Media24, M-Web, Ligitprops 3042 BK en die bestuur en redaksie van LitNet aanvaar derhalwe geen aanspreeklikheid vir enige regstreekse of onregstreekse verlies of skade wat uit sodanige bydraes of die verskaffing van hierdie diens spruit nie. LitNet is ’n onafhanklike joernaal op die Internet, en word as gesamentlike onderneming deur Ligitprops 3042 BK en Media24 bedryf. |
|||
Telling
tales
Click here and subscribe to our fantastic free newsletter - for your
weekly cultural fix!