RACISM AND RESISTANCE IN NADINE GORDIMER’S BURGER’S DAUGHTER

Abstract

History is witness to the fact how racism was practiced in the world and the resistance of people towards this ideology. Race and racism deprived people of their rights and this ideology was very inhumane. In South Africa, the system of apartheid was very strong and the forces that led to its development as well as the efforts of the people whose sacrifices led to its downfall. Resistance from various fronts have changed the conditions of people who faced the brutal race laws. However, its legacy is evident in the conditions of these people. Diseases, poverty and illiteracy are all the living legacies of racism. Literature was a tool to protest the inequality and discrimination under the apartheid. This paper analyses Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter which was written in 1979, a time when the Black Consciousness Movement put the blacks in front, deciding their own futures and fighting their own problems. Gordimer’s novel shows the involvement of the white South Africans who fought against the brutal race laws along the blacks.

Burger’s Daughter (1979) was Nadine Gordimer’s response to one of the important incidents in the history of South Africa. On 16 June, 1976 thousands of school children gathered in Soweto to protest against the enforced use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools. Although the protests were peacefully conducted, by the end of the meeting two children were shot dead by police. With this an unexpected resistance burst with extraordinary intensity in South Africa which came to be known as the Soweto Revolt. It was an episode of cultural and political resistance. It was not only the issue of use of Afrikaans but the assertion of black dignity and identity as well. Hence, Soweto gave rise to the ‘Black Consciousness Ethos’ and earned a central place in the history of South Africa’s resistance. In The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History From Inside, Stephen Clingman considers: