Gordimer’s Pen Keeps the Flame of Justice Burning

Good evening fellow bloggers and readers!  I would like to take this time now to reflect upon my high school education.  Um, where was Apartheid?  Hello!  Why wasn't I taught about this shameful occurrence in the world's history?  Why wasn't I taught more about Africa in general?  I am outraged tonight:  by my lack of knowledge until now and also, by the actions of my fellow humanity.

          For those who are unfamiliar with the term, I'd like one to get acquainted.  Apartheid was the heinous crime which ruled South Africa and Namibia from 1948 to 1993.  The new legislation, comprised of the minority of white people, had won the general election in1948 and began to enforce a system of legal racial segregation.  This was a horrible time!   People were classified merely as white, colored, black, or Indian.  Black Africans were deprived of their citizenship and many became slaves to white men.  I was horrified to learn about this oppression. I am ashamed of such history.  Take note, friends, for mistakes happen so that we learn from them and try to do all in one's power to not have them repeated.
           More importantly, mistakes happen so that we may grow from them.  The South African writer Nadine Gordimer frequently wrote about the Apartheid.  I quickly took a liking to her short stories because they were different from anything I've read so far, in one way:  she speaks for all people.  I recently learned more about Gordimer in my Women in Literature course.  The Nobel Prize winning writer is also a political activist.  She had been a member of the African National Congress in the anti-Apartheid movement and has recently been active in HIV/AIDS causes.  Gordimer once said:
            “The writer seems to have more responsibility for human rights than anyone else in the arts…When we come to the relationship of writers to their society, to an oppressive society, the word carries tremendous weight…writers have to accept this special responsibility for defending human rights…to move away from writing to acting.”
            I have the utmost respect and admiration for the way Gordimer carries out this responsibility which she has taken upon herself. In her short story “Amnesty,” Gordimer’s characters remain nameless.  Without names, the characters would represent anyone, and everyone as a whole, which is what she had intended.  I found the reverse of this situation in her other short story, “Six Feet of the Country.”  In this short story, Gordimer left the narrator nameless.  He is nameless because he represents the scared, naïve, minority white man.  Or should I say, “Baas man?”  I believe that the narrator could also represent, speaking in times of the Apartheid, the white man’s imperialistic system.  I would like to think of it as this:  a criticism of the very system that oppressed the Africans.  I would like to thank Nadine Gordimer for her bravery in moving from writing to acting.  I am fortunate to have read her literature, which has grown out of her “life as a writer, out of [her] necessity to act upon the social fabric around [her] and to be acted upon by it, to be a part of it.”