Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home Africana Periodical Literature Go to database home

bibliographic database
Line
Previous page New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Ominous inevitabilities: reflecting on South Africa's post-transition aporia in Achmat Dangor's 'Bitter Fruit'
Author:Akpome, AghoghoISNI
Year:2013
Periodical:Africa Spectrum (ISSN 0002-0397)
Volume:48
Issue:2
Pages:3-24
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:transitional justice
truth and reconciliation commissions
apartheid
novels
About person:Achmat Dangor (1948-2020)ISNI
External link:https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/646
Abstract:Achmat Dangor's novel 'Bitter Fruit' (2001), nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2004, is one of several important works of fiction that comment on the imperfections of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), offering a polemical critique of South Africa's on-going transition. In this article, the author examines two significant ways in which Dangor's novel questions the work of the TRC. First, the author posits that the story represents the TRC's model of transitional justice as being too determined by a 'forgive and forget' approach that is inadequate as a means of providing reconciliation and thus fundamentally flawed. Second, the author argues that, overall, the novel depicts the national reconciliation project as a mission that has in a way resulted in the appropriation of justice from - instead of its delivery to - some victims of Apartheid-era crimes. The aim of this article is not to present Dangor's fictional text as a one-dimensional reflection of complex social realities, but rather to foreground the practical and imaginative means that his inspired realist narrative offers for dealing with the aftermath of the massive social injustices perpetrated in South Africa during the Apartheid era. Bibliogr., notes, sum. in English and German. [Journal abstract]
Views
Cover