RASICM IN AMERICA AND APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA A LITERARY DISCOURSE OF RICHARD WRIGHT’S BLACK BOY AND ALEX’ LA GUMA’S A WALK IN THE NIGHT

ABSTRACT

This research work is aimed at looking at the problems of racism and apartheid in South Africa and America with references to two selected texts from the two countries. The instruments used include library research and text analyses. Chapter one deals with introduction, background to the study, statement of problem, purpose of the study, scope and limitation, methodology used and justification. Chapter two of the work is basically concerned with literature review with the views of different authors on the nature and problems of racism and apartheid. Chapter three deals with the textual analyses of the

selected texts. Chapter four is on the comparison between racism in America and apartheid in South Africa, and the reaction of the characters in the selected texts to racism and apartheid. Chapter five covers conclusion.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The subject of racism and apartheid has been a lively topic for critical debate since the turn of the   twentieth  century, with scholars examining the treatment of various  kinds of discrimination based on race, religion, or gender in literary works, both past and present as well as in the attitude of the writers themselves. Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics. Apartheid on the other hand, is an Afrikaans word meaning “the state of being apart”. While apartheid was the system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party Government, the ruling party from 1948 to 1994, under which the rights, associations and movements of the majority of black inhabitants were curtailed and minority rule was maintained, racism in America was

backed by racial segregation laws enacted from 1876 to the 20th century in the United States

at  the  state  and  local  level.  They  mandated  racial  segregation  in all  public  facilities  in Southern States. The separation in practice led to conditions for African Americans that were inferior  to  those  provided  for  white  Americans,  systematizing  a  number  of  economic, educational and social disadvantages.

The vast majority  of research  on racial segregation  focuses  on the United  States; however,  in one of the most influential  books on racial segregation  American  Apartheid, Massey and Denton assert that the impact of racial segregation in the U.S is similar to the impact of racial segregation in South Africa (Massey, Douglas and Denton, Nancy 15). This comparison  provides  the basis  of my study  to understand  whether  the  patterns  of racial

segregation of blacks from whites in the United State are the same for Africans in South Africa.   Critics   have  approached   the  study  of  racism   in  literature   by   exploring   its characteristics, in a genre. Scholars have also been particularly interested in discussing the treatment of racism in fiction written by and about African Americans. For example, Ralph L. Pearson in his book The Negro in American Civilization: A Study  of Negro Life and Race Relations in the Light of Social Research, has commented on Charles S. Johnson’s attempt to combat racism during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Karen Overbye has examined Evelyn Scott’s depiction of mulattoes in two novels (The Narrow House 1921, and Escapade

1923)  composed  in  that  same  period.  Jerry  H.  Bryant  commented  on racial  violence  in Richard Wright’s Native Son, written in 1940, and Steven G. Kellman has written  of the uneasy relationship between African Americans and Jews as seen in Bernard Malamud’s The Tenants (1971).

Other critics have focused on the theme of racism in individual works of literature. Frances W. Kaye, for example in his article “Race and Reading: The Burden of Huckleberry Finn” continues a long-standing and vigorous discussion about racism in Mark Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Anna Shannon Elfenbein has explored Kate Chopin’s manipulation of racial and gender stereotypes in The Awakening (1899), and their treatment by Southern Society. The novels Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and The Destruction of Black Civilization by Chancellor Williams all discuss the severity of the problem. One area of the world in which white racism toward blacks has been prevalent is the United States. For much of American history true progress for blacks in the area of Civil Rights has  been difficult to attain. The view of many whites in America toward civil rights is summed up in Invisible Man by a simple Salutation. “To Whom It May Concern: Keep this Nigger – Boy Running” (Ellison 33).This idea is reflective of the bleak situation  African  Americans  face  in America.  Finally,  the racism  which  persisted  in the

United States becomes apparent when Ellison describes how “the white folk tell everybody what to think” (Ellison 143). This declaration reveals how white dominance in America was so utterly Complete that Whites told blacks how to live, act, and even think.

As Africans were moving to self-rule elsewhere  on the continent,  whites in  South Africa were determined that they were going to maintain their way of life, which to them meant maintaining power, in other words the whites would continue to deny power to the majority of Africans. Whites in South Africa of British and Dutch descent were roughly 20 percent of South Africa’s population. Asians (mainly Indians) were roughly 2 percent.

Blacks were about 70 percent, and those classified as coloreds (of mixed race) were about 8 percent. White farmers and manufacturers had become dependent upon blacks as cheap labor. South Africa had become urbanized, with 50 percent of the black population living in cities dominated  by white governments  also known as African  Homelands,  many of the blacks were working as semi-skilled labor in manufacturing factories, blacks operating machinery having replaced the white masters, craftsmen of previous generations.

A law had been passed creating what was called a Civilized  Labor Policy,  which protected the wage levels of white workers and left employers free to hire blacks at wages as low  as possible.  And  there  was the Bantu  Act of 1953,  which  took schools  away from missions and answered that whites would receive an education that was different from and superior to that of blacks.

The movement of blacks in the urban areas had battered race relations, and in 1948 the  most  conservative  of  white  political  parties,  the  Nationalist  Party,  won  the  national election, election in which no blacks participated.  The National  Party was  predominately rural and consisted largely of those with Dutch heritage, and it was the  most adamant in maintaining a separation between whites and other races in South  Africa. They set out to more than maintain the separation of the races; they tried to turn back the clock and undo

what appeared to them to be unacceptable integration. Blacks were working in white owned factories, other white businesses and in white’s homes. But they were largely segregated into black enclaves in the cities and had their own facilities and doors of entry to public places along other  restrictions  that were common  in the South  in the  United  States.  New laws restricted blacks living in cities. They were forbidden to own their own homes in urban areas. They had to rent less than satisfactory housing from  local administration  boards. The old apartheid dogma that blacks were “temporary sojourners” in the cities was applied. Those who had worked for the same employers  for fifteen years or for different  employers  for fifteen years were allowed to continue living in cities and towns, and all others were regarded as migrant workers who had to have special work permits, which were to be renewed every year. Blacks were now obliged to carry passbooks, open to inspection by any policeman or agent of the government whenever asked. Blacks had to acquire special permission for travel to  various  activities.  Every square inch of South Africa was designated as belonging to a racial grouping, and blacks were removed from villages and lands where generations  had lived and worked on fields they believed they owned, to be replaced by whites.

1.2      Background to the Study

Apartheid in South Africa

Apartheid  was  a  system  of  racial  segregation  enforced  by  the  National  Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority non-inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy rule was maintained.

Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times. However, apartheid as an official  policy  was  introduced  following  the  general  election  of  1948.  New  legislation classified inhabitants  into four racial groups   “Native”, “White”, “Colored”,  and “Asian”. (Baldwin 18), and residential areas were segregated, sometimes by means of forced removals. Non-white political representation was completely abolished in 1970, and starting in that year

black people were deprived of their citizenship, legally becoming citizens of ten tribally based  self-governing   homelands   called  Bantustans,   four  of  which  became   nominally independent states. The government segregated education, medical care, beaches, and other public services, and provided black people with services inferior to those of white people.

APARTHEID LEGISLATION

The state passed laws paved the way for “grand apartheid”, which was centered on separating races on a large scale by compelling people to live in separate places defined by race.  The first major  apartheid  law was the Population  Registration  Act of  1950,  which formalized racial classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the age of eighteen specifying their racial group. Official teams or Boards were established to come to an ultimate conclusion on those “people whose race was unclear” (Ungar 224).

The second pillar of major apartheid was the Group Area Act of 1950. Until  then, most settlements had people of different races living side by side. This Act put end to diverse areas and determined where one lived according to race. “Each race was allocated its own area,  which  was used in later  years as a basis of forced removal”  (Besteman  6).Further legislation in 1951 allowed the government to demolish black shackland slums and forced white employers to pay for the construction of housing for those black workers who were permitted to reside in cities otherwise reserved for white people. The prohibition of Mixed Marriages  Act  of  1949  prohibited  marriage  between  persons  of  different  races,  and  the Immorality  Act of 1950 made sexual relations  with  a person of different race a criminal offence.

Under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act of 1953, municipal grounds could be  reserved  for a particular  race,  creating,  among  other  things,  separate  beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and universities. Signboards such as “whites only” applied to public areas

even  including  park  benches  (Beck  128).  Further  laws  had  the  aim  of  suppressing resistance, especially armed resistance to apartheid. The suppression of Communism Act of

1950 not only banned the South African Communist Party and any other party subscribing to communism, but defined communism and its aims so sweepingly that it  had the effect of legally  gagging  any opposition  to government  policy,  especially  to  apartheid.  Disorderly gatherings were banned, as were certain organizations that were deemed threatening to the government.

Education was segregated by means of the 1983 Bantu Education Act, which crafted a separate system of education for black students and was designed to prepare black people for lives as a laboring class. In 1959 separate universities were created for black, colored and Indian people. Existing universities  were not permitted  to enroll  new  black students. The Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974 required the use of  Afrikaans and English on an equal basis in high schools outside the homelands (Becks 130).

The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 created separate government structures for black and  white  citizens  and  was  the  first  piece  of  legislation  established  to   support  the government’s  plan  of  separate  development  in  the  Bantustans.  The  Bantu  Investment Corporation Act of 1959 set up a mechanism to transfer capital to the homelands in order to create  employment  there.  Legislation  of  1967 allowed  the  government  to stop  industrial development in “white” cities and redirect such development to the “homelands”. The black Homeland Citizenship Act of 1970 marked a new phase in Bantustan’s strategy. It changed the status of black people living in South Africa so that they were no longer citizens of South Africa, but became citizens of one of the ten autonomous territories. The aim was to ensure a demographic  majority  of white  people  within  South Africa  by having  all ten Bantustans achieve full independence. Interracial contact in sport was frowned upon, but there were no segregatory sport laws.

Under the homeland system, the South African government attempted to divide South Africa  into  a number  of separate  states,  each of which  was supposed  to  develop  into a separate nation-state for a different ethnic group (Leach 15). Territorial separation was not a new institution. There were, for example, the “reserves” created under the British government in the nineteenth century. Under apartheid, some thirteen percent of the land was reserved for black homelands, a relatively small amount compared to the total population, and generally in the economically  unproductive  areas of the  country. Under the homelands  system, blacks would  no longer be citizens  of South  Africa; they would  instead  become  citizens  of the independent homelands who merely worked in South Africa as foreign migrant laborers on temporary work permits. In 1958 the promotion of Black Self-Government Act was passed, and  border  industries  and  Bantu  Investment  Corporation  were  established  to  promote economic development  and the provision of employment  in or near the homelands. Many black South Africans who had never resided in their identified homeland were nonetheless forcibly removed from the cities to the homelands.

Ten homelands were ultimately allocated to different black ethnic groups;  Lebowa (North Sotho also referred to as Pedi), Quaqua (South Sotho),  Bophuthatswana (Tswana), Kwazulu  (Zulu),  KaNgwane  (Swazi),  Transkei, and Ciskei  (Xhosa),  Gazankulu  (Tsonga), Venda (Venda) and Kwandebele (Ndebele). Four of these were declared independent by the South African government. Transkei in 1976, Bophuthatswana in 1977, Venda in 1979, and Ciskei  in  1981.Once  a  homeland  was  granted  its  nominal  independence,  its  designated citizens  had  their  South  African  citizenship  revoked,  replaced  with  citizenship  in  their homeland.  These people were  then issued passports instead of passbooks.  Citizens of the nominally autonomous  homelands also had their South African citizenship  circumscribed, meaning they were no longer legally considered South African (Hunter: 55)

PETTY APARTHEID

The  National  Party  passed  a  string  of  legislation  which  became  known  as  petty apartheid.  The  first  of  these  was  the  Prohibition  of  Mixed  Marriages  Act  55  of  1949, prohibiting  marriage  between  white  people  and  people  of  other  races.  The  Immorality Amendment  Act  21 of 1950  (as amended  in 1957  by Act  23) forbade  “unlawful  racial intercourse” and “any immoral or indecent act” between a white person and a Black, Indian or Colored person. Blacks were not allowed to run businesses or  professional practices in those areas designated as “White South Africa” without a  permit. They were supposed to move to the black “homelands” and set up businesses and practices there. Transport and civil facilities were segregated. Black buses stopped at black bus stop and white ones at white bus stop. Trains, hospitals and ambulances were segregated.

In the 1970’s each black child’s education within the Bantu Education System,  the education system practiced in black schools within white South Africa cost the state only a tenth  of each white  child’s.  Each black homeland  controlled  its own separate  education, health and police system. Blacks were not allowed to buy hard- liquor. They were able only to buy state-produced  poor quality  beer.  Public  beaches  were  racially  segregated.  Public swimming  pools,  some  pedestrian  bridges,  drive-in-cinema  parking  spaces,  graveyards, parks,  and public  toilets  were segregated.  Cinemas  and  theatres  in white  areas were not allowed to admit blacks. There were practically no cinemas in Black areas. Most restaurants and hotels in white areas were not allowed to admit blacks except as staff. Black Africans were prohibited from attending white churches under the churches Native Laws Amendment Act of 1957. “Blacks earning 360  rand a year, 30 rand a month or more had to pay taxes while the white threshold was  more than twice as high, at 750 rand a year, 62.5 rand per month (Wilson 405).

Blacks could never acquire lands in white areas. In the homelands, much of the land belongs to a “tribe”, where the local Chieftain would decide how the land had to be used. This resulted in white people owning almost all the industrial and agricultural lands and much of the prized residential land. Most blacks were stripped of their South African Citizenship when the “homelands” became “independent”. Thus, they were no longer able to apply for South African passports. Eligibility requirements for a passport had been difficult for blacks to meet, the government contending that a passport was a privilege, not a right. As such, the government  did  not  grant  many  passports  to  blacks.  Apartheid  pervaded  South  African culture,  as well as the law.  This was  reinforced  by much  of the media  and the lack of opportunities  for the races to mix  in  a social setting  entrenched  social  distance  between people (Wilson 406).

RACISM IN ANTI-BLACK AMERICA

Racism involves the belief in racial differences, which acts as a justification for non – equal treatment. For more than 200 years before the Civil War, Slavery existed in the United States. But after the war things began to get worse for blacks. The South thought they needed to do something. The Southern legislatures, former confederates, passed laws known as the black codes, after the war, which severely limited the rights of blacks and segregated them from whites. Now before, there was no need to separate whites and blacks because 95 percent of blacks were slaves. But they were separated at schools, theaters taverns, and other public places. So Congress  quickly responded  to  these laws in 1866 and seized the initiative  in remaking the South. But by 1877 Democratic parties took over power of the South and ended reconstruction. The blacks were barred from holding political offices, the right to vote, and participating as equal members of society.

The Democratic Party stopped blacks from voting. Fees were charged at voting booths and were expensive for most blacks. And the literacy test, since teaching blacks were illegal,

most  adult  blacks  were  former  slaves  and  illiterate.  The  Democrats  created  laws  that segregated the schools and public facilities. By the 1900’s the Southern legislators  carried segregation to the extremes. Here are some of the years and the states where they started

   1914: Louisiana required separate entrances for blacks and whites.

   1915: Oklahoma segregated telephone booths

   Mississippi made it a crime to advocate or publish “arguments or suggestions in favor of social equalities or of interracial between whites and Negro’s”.

   Arkansas had segregation at racetracks.

   Texas prohibited integrated boxing matches

   Kentucky required separate schools, and also that no textbook that is issued to a black would ever be reissued or redistributed, they also prohibited interracial marriage

   Georgia barred black ministers from performing a marriage between white couples.

   New Orleans created segregated red light districts for white and black prostitutes.

When the United States entered World War II, the South was a fully segregated society. Everything  from  schools,  restaurants,  hotels,  train  cars,  waiting  rooms,  elevators,  public bathrooms,  colleges, hospitals, cemetery, swimming pools, drinking  fountain, prisons, and even churches were made for whites or blacks but never for both. Segregation was supported by the legal system and police. But beyond the law, there  was always a threat by terrorist violence. The Ku Klux Klan, knights of White Camellia, and other terrorist gang murdered thousands of blacks and some whites to prevent them from voting and participating in public life. One of the main forms of  violence was lynching. Between 1884 and the 1900 white mobs lynched more than 2,000 blacks in the South. They were lynched for any violation of the Southern code. They also burned them alive, shot them, or beat them to death.

The Jim Crow was a system of laws and customs that enforced racial segregation and discrimination  throughout  the  United  States,  especially  in  the  South,  from  the  late  19th century through the, 1960’s. The laws did not specifically mention race, but were written and applied  in a way that discriminated  against  African  Americans.  In the  case of plessy V. Ferguson (1896), the court held that the Civil Rights Act of 1887 was unconstitutional and ruled that the 14th  Amendment  did not prohibit individuals  and  private organization  from

discriminating  on the basis of race, hence the Southern slogan “separate but equal”.  This

ruling was the start of legalized  racial segregation.  Laws were enacted that restricted  all aspects of life and varied from state to state. Crow extended to deny private as well as public, or civil rights to all African Americans. They were denied all social forms of respect. Whites addressed even black adults as “boy”, and all blacks were expected to show a high level of respect to all whites. Signs reading “Whites only” or “Colored” hung over drinking fountains and down to almost every public place.

By 1914 every Southern State had passed laws that created two separate  societies: One  black,  the  other  white.  The  Combination  of  constant  humiliation,  dismal  economic opportunities,  and  segregated  education  for  their  children  made  thousands  of  African Americans leave the South in the Jim Crow era. Blacks and whites could not ride together in the same railroad cars, sit in the same restaurants, or sit in the same theaters. Blacks were denied access to parks, beaches, picnic areas, and from many hospitals.  Blacks, particularly in  the  South,  faced  discrimination  in  jobs  and  housing,  and  were  often  denied  their constitutional right to vote through literacy tests and poll taxes administered with informal loopholes and trick questions. Some States had curfew for African Americans, and sometimes they were restricted from even working in the same room as whites.

1.3   STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The issue this project has set out to deal with is the problem of racism in America and apartheid South Africa. Some critics have approached the study of racist literature in America and apartheid South Africa by exploring its characteristics in a genre. For  example, Laura Niesen De Aruna has written about a racist and imperialist current in Caribbean literature, while Frances A. Della Cava and Madeline H. Engel have cited examples of prejudice against Blacks, Jews, and women in fiction. Some other general approaches have included discussing what whiteness plays in the literature of these periods but no attempt has been made to x-ray the effects of these practices on the persons involved.Therefore,my literary discourse of racist literature in America and apartheid South Africa is an attempt to present the psychological effects of these segregational practices on the characters in the texts under study, and how these effects are made manifest.

1.4      PURPOSE OF STUDY

The purpose of this study is to present a critical analysis  of racism and  apartheid literature in America and South Africa using the novels of two authors from the two regions. Richard Wright’s Black Boy and Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night. My intention is to show that racism and apartheid is indeed a common and prominent theme in the literature of those periods. It also looks at the personal understanding of the Blackman’s point of view and his situation. This project exposes how racism and  apartheid affects the mentality and the way of living of the Black race, reducing them to a level of inferiority, in every aspect of their lives.

1.5      SCOPE AND LIMITATION

My scope and limitation is on the theme of racism and apartheid in the two selected primary texts so as to prevent the project from being ambiguous. The reason for limiting the

investigation  to these two texts is to allow a detailed analysis from the two  traditions; America and Africa, and to examine the shared thematic preoccupation of  these two texts with regard to the issue of racism and apartheid, and oppression and suppression of the blacks by the whites.

1.6      METHODOLOGY

The  methodology  used  is  library  research  and  textual  analyses  of  primary  texts, adopting  Carl  Jung  (1952),  psychological  approach  on literature.  It  is believed  that  this approach will best expose the inner mind and psychological torture of the black characters in the two texts. Racism and apartheid are better analyzed, examined and portrayed through the working of the intellectual thinking of those affected. This approach is the only approach that has helped to review visual and close insight of  confrontations  and conflicts between the blacks  and  the  whites.  Concentration  is  placed  on  the  major  characters  who  serve  as representatives for the Blacks. Through their experiences, we can deduce the predicament of the black man in America and South Africa.

1.7      JUSTIFICATION

Many works have been carried out on black American literature many of them, focusing on self-identity and racism. For example, the concept of racism and criss of self-identity in  James Baldwin’s Go tell it on the Mountain (1954) and George Lamming’s Water with Berries (1972) focused on aspect of racism. Both novels highlighted the concept of self-identity. The present study will  be  different,  because  it will  deal  specifically  on  apartheid  and racism,  their  definitions  , background study, effects and reflection in the literature of the period, looking at the relationship between the two concept as practiced in America and south Africa, although it will not supplant other research works on the same study, it will be able to treat the topic in greater depth with the detailed description and analysis required, to that extent I believe it will serve as a useful aid to future researchers.

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