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Reconciliation and the “self-in-community” in post-transitional South African fiction

Since the end of apartheid and South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, efforts at reconciliation have been dramatic, most notably in the form of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), as well as deeply incomplete. In response, a great deal of post-transitional South African literature and criticism has taken up the question of how to effect reconciliation, particularly outside institutional forums like the TRC. A prominent strand of South African literary studies insists that reconciliation rests on a form of ethical responsibility in which the individual is displaced from him- or herself in order to enact hospitality toward others. This view draws on a Levinasian conception of ethics whereby responsibility entails radical vulnerability with no assurance of reciprocation. Yet a growing corpus of fiction complicates this vision of reconciliation, recognizing that for many South Africans, the violations of apartheid gave rise to what Annie Coombes refers to as a “dissolution of [the] self”, and any effort at building a more inclusive society must redress that dissolution. This article argues that Jo-Anne Richards’ My Brother’s Book (2008) and Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit (2001) present reconciliation as a product of two opposing endeavours. On the one hand, it involves the willingness to give up a sense of self in taking on responsibilities for others. On the other hand, it requires reclaiming a sense of self by asserting one’s right to make affiliative choices and actively construct new spaces of belonging.