May 15, 2002
A Vibrant Battler of Apartheid Keeps Her Vibrancy
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
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| Reuters |
| In May 1986, Ms. Gordimer joined children in the apartheid-era black township in Alexandra, near Johannesburg, to lay a wreath at the graves of Africans killed during their fight against racial segregation. |
JOHANNESBURG, May 7 — Behind the wooden gate, past the skittering dog, inside the rambling old house, plastered on the door of Nadine Gordimer's office is an African National Congress poster that proclaims, "Freedom Now!"
The poster may raise an eyebrow. Just last year, it seemed that some black leaders of the governing African National Congress and Ms. Gordimer, the pre-eminent author and white anti-apartheid activist, had fallen out after local officials deemed one of her books racist and tried to ban it from high schools.
The officials backtracked after a furious outcry, but the poster still prompts the question: has Ms. Gordimer wavered in her longstanding support for the African National Congress?
To raise the question is to risk the wrath of Ms. Gordimer, a Nobel laureate who is slight but imposing with her silver hair and fierce eyes. "This is so distressing and so annoying," she snapped. "The A.N.C. did nothing to Nadine Gordimer."
With that, she ticked off a few things she would like the world to know.
One: This was not some tragic tale of a white supporter of the struggle being betrayed by black allies. The members of the local panel that proposed banning her book were white, not black.
Two: The nation's minister of education called her immediately to say the idea of banning the book, "July's People," was ludicrous and would never happen under an A.N.C. government.
Three: Nadine Gordimer is still a loyal member of the African National Congress, a supporter of President Thabo Mbeki and an optimist about South Africa and its future, eight years after the end of apartheid.
"People like myself, who identify with the freedom struggle, we see so many good changes that have occurred, so many true signs of freedom," Ms. Gordimer said in an interview this week. "It's certainly not the majority of whites who feel pessimistic about the future here; there are many people who feel as I do."
She continued: "The laws have changed; this is a tremendous thing in itself. A large amount of people who never had running water now have it. The same thing applies to electrification. Many people take this for granted, but black South Africans never had these things available to them during the apartheid era."
At a time when many whites grumble openly about their anxieties under black rule, Ms. Gordimer offers a striking counterpoint. In her sprawling house, with its crowded bookshelves, she is still celebrating South Africa's hard-fought freedom, even as she acknowledges the difficulties and challenges ahead.
Some whites roll their eyes at her talk. They dismiss her as a hopeless romantic, an idealist who has closed her ears to the everyday concerns of whites, who make up about 13 percent of the population.
Ms. Gordimer, who at 78 seems tough as nails, says she is no dreamer. She has watched the giddy euphoria fade in the years since Nelson Mandela was elected the first black president in 1994. She hears the complaints from prominent white politicians about crime and affirmative action. She has her own worries about unemployment, AIDS and corruption.
But it should not be forgotten, she emphasizes, that blacks and whites are now treated equally under the law, or that the A.N.C. government brought houses to more than a million poor blacks for the first time.
"I'm a realistic optimist," said Ms. Gordimer, who spoke to a reporter in a series of interviews, once at her home several months ago and then again this week. "I know how huge the problems are. I know the big mistakes that have been made. But the problems are being tackled. They cannot be solved in seven or eight years. What is seven years?"
Ms. Gordiner is one of South Africa's literary giants. She chronicled the injustices of apartheid in novels and short stories along with other white artists, including the playwright Athol Fugard and the novelist J. M. Coetzee.
The white government banned several of her books, but she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991 and she is still writing, still exploring this changing world.
On cold winter afternoons, she climbs the stairs to her attic office, where the sun streams through the windows. An Olivetti typewriter sits on her desk along with a copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and a bottle of Wite-Out correction fluid that has toppled over.
Her most recent novel, "The Pick-Up," explores the relationship between a wealthy white South African woman and a working-class Arab immigrant. Ms. Gordimer does not like to talk about her works in progress, but she enjoys describing the changes around her.
She pours a cup of hot tea, sinks into her chair and marvels at South Africa, post-apartheid. There are poor blacks becoming first-time homeowners. White and black teenagers teetering on platform shoes at the malls. Whites learning to work for black bosses. Multiracial professionals becoming neighbors in some prosperous suburbs.
But Ms. Gordimer quickly bristles at questions she considers irrelevant. Do not, for instance, ask about how white liberals are feeling these days. ("I happen to be white, but I'm not a liberal, my dear," she said sharply. "I'm a leftist.")
In fact, she has grown quite weary of all the questions she gets from Americans and Europeans who worry about the plight of whites in the new South Africa.
"It is a stock question that I'm asked whenever I travel: `What is happening to whites?' " Ms. Gordimer said. "Whites in Europe and America, they identify very strongly with whites in a minority situation and they project their own fears onto our situation.
"But I say: `Do you never think about what is happening to blacks? Do you think it's all rosy? That the transition is not difficult for all people?' "
Ms. Gordimer praises Mr. Mandela for his leadership and for setting a positive example in this new democracy by stepping down after one term. But she also supports Mr. Mbeki, who is often criticized by whites for his strong support of affirmative action and black empowerment.
She says she sometimes disagrees with him, particularly with his stance that the cause of AIDS is still debatable. But she notes that he reversed course last month and agreed to distribute AIDS drugs to pregnant women infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.
It only takes a drive from Ms. Gordimer's prosperous, tree-lined street to the ramshackle black townships to see that true equality is still out of reach for most people. She acknowledges that her party has yet to accomplish many of its cherished goals, like free health care.
But she and others argue that the A.N.C. should not be written off because it has sometimes failed to transform its dreams into reality. Falling short, she says, will not stop South Africans from moving forward.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
