I wanted to read this on our honeymoon as it's about South Africa, and we were in, well, South Africa. Instead I read the excellent laugh-a-minute romp, Booker-Prize winning 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' which seemed befitting of such a joyous occasion.
Back on more familiar shores I set to reading this. It was written in 1948 in Apartheid-ruled South Africa by Alan Paton who the National Party in South Africa found to be a nuisance for years to come. The novel focuses on a black priest, Stephen Kumalo who goes on a journey to Johannesburg in search of various family members who have left their tribe for a better future in the nation's biggest city. He finds out that his sister has only survived through means of prostitution and his son is nowhere to be found, but rumours are that he is with a bad crowd and up to no good.
The novel is astonishingly good. Considering that it was written in a country where equality was only being whispered about 40 years later, it includes quotations that are powerfully relevant to today's South African society: "I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it." and “I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating.” Without turning into a history bore, it struck me that the quotations are not too dissimilar from Nelson Mandela saying that the only way for South Africa to progress is by forgiveness. This novel questions how easy it will be for the black community in South Africa to forgive the imperial powers that took away their country as they knew it:“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”
The novel somehow manages to evoke images of the country and the difference between the peaceful, yet struggling countryside and the corrupt labyrinth of the big city. Even though the land is dry; the cows are eating away at what little grass there is (the tribesmen bought wives with cows, why would they want to decrease the number they have?); there is no milk and the babies are dying, somehow the move to Johannesburg does not really improve the life of the migrants who have moved for a better lifestyle. The novel has one or two chapters which take us away from the main characters and look at how townships started growing in South Africa and these were some of the most enlightening chapters for someone who doesn't know the history of such things, exploring the exploitation involved in the birth of these places. They are still going strong - Penny and I drove past so many of these landscapes on our drives in South Africa and as such it was fascinating to read about them:
I wish I had read the novel whilst I was away. It was utterly heartbreaking in some respects and offered hope in others. Paton is a staunch Christian man and the novel focused on a religious man and had a parable-like tone to it, but that added to it. It is a novel that must be read.
Key quotations
“But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.”
“Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering. ”
“Happy the eyes that can close”
“There is not much talking now. A silence falls upon them all. This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.”
Quick final thoughts
- What a lovely man Jarvis is. And what a shame that under different circumstances him and Kumalo could have been friends.
- I am not sure what to make of Absolum or what to make of his mother's 'let's get on with it' attitude after the sentence was upheld.
- Poor old Kumalo making his journey up that mountain.
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