used police and the military to literally destroy the settlements, forcing the inhabitants cross-country to the newly-founded segregated townships like Guguletu.
Gungululu
Mandisa is sent away from Guguletu to live with her grandmother in the ancestral village where her mother was born. This is a very different world from the one she has known so far in her fourteen years: It is a traditional tribal village where old customs are still in effect and there are none of the amenities of even the township slums. Mandisa is lovesick for China and does not adapt easily to the village.
Gungululu is the name of a district as well as of the village, and is situated in the Eastern Cape region – Mandisa describes it as comprising “some twenty or so villages” (p. 101). This is also where the author Sindiwe Magona was born (see Chapter 2.1). At the time covered in the novel, the village and the region were a part of the Transkei, which existed as a state (although unrecognised by the South African government) from 1976 to 1994.
The village is presented in an ambiguous way in the novel (pp. 88–114). Mandisa’s reaction is predictably and even understandably negative – she is a teenager from a bustling township, torn away from her boyfriend and stuck in a backwards village in the middle of nowhere. She complains that the village is “remote”, but worse, she is “separated from China” (p. 108). But there is a simplicity and a calm in the village which she appreciates, and she admits that the place isn’t bad and that the school is good (p. 108). As is the case with the traditions and customs that have so much influence over her life, Mandisa is frustrated and restrained by rural life, yet appreciates its rooted, solid essence.
Apartheid in South Africa
Apartheid (meaning literally “separateness”) was a system of racial segregation in South Africa. It existed as a state-ordered policy determining South African society from 1948 until 1991.[4]
Segregation is the act or policy of separating people of different races, religions or genders, and treating them differently. Many cultures across the world and throughout history, from 8th century China to 13th century Europe and the USA in the 20th century, have practiced segregation in order to separate people of different races in daily life. Even following the end of apartheid in South Africa, segregation by race, religion and gender still exists in various countries all around the world.
The apartheid system was based on a very simple ideology – white supremacy. The fundamental idea was that white-skinned people are in every way superior to darker-skinned people, and that blacks must be repressed and segregated in order to benefit the white ruling class. This repression and segregation was the form that apartheid took and the guiding principle for how society was structured. The white rulers were predominantly Afrikaners, who were descended from the Dutch colonists of the 17th and 18th centuries. They maintained a firm grip on politics, the economy and land ownership and had, since the 17th century, enforced increasingly strict and regulated racial divisions and separations. The development of apartheid – from isolated, casual racist oppression within regions and communities to outright national policy – was gradual, taking over two centuries, and it then lasted in its most strict and brutal form for a little less than fifty years.
A very brief history of apartheid
Pre-20th century racial oppression and discrimination was more freewheeling and casual: there was a slave era, the increasing theft of land and resources from native peoples by European (mostly Dutch) settlers, and with the coming of the British there was a rise in industrialisation and a great expansion of mining projects (South Africa is home to some of the most profitable diamond mines on the planet, with roughly 49% of all diamonds still being mined in Central and South Africa). Black people were pushed off their land when the white settlers wanted to use it themselves; they were forbidden from living in certain places and doing certain work; they were not allowed to vote or enter white churches; and criminal acts against blacks were barely noticed and rarely dealt with seriously by white authorities. The Dutch settlers had already introduced a hierarchy of race, with whites at the top, Indians and Asians somewhere in the middle, and blacks at the very bottom.
By the mid-20th century, however, the central government began to institute stricter and more precise legislation to enforce the system of white supremacy.
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act in 1949 is considered to be the first step in the institutionalisation of white supremacy as state policy. This law, and the Immorality Act of the following year, made it a crime to marry or have sexual relationships across racial lines.
Another 1950 law, the Population Registration Act, defined the four legal racial groups: black, white, coloured and Indian. Your race defined where you could live, what job you could have, and who you were allowed to interact with. Identification papers included these racial designations, and citizens were not able to cross the boundaries of their assigned region without these papers.
In 1953 the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act defined racially-specific public services, such as hospitals, universities and public parks, which were not allowed to be used by members of other races.
Also passed in 1953, the Bantu Education Act segregated national education, effectively cutting black South Africans off from the better-financed and organised educational infrastructure, which was from this point on only available to whites.
In the 1950s the government also created the “pass laws”, which stopped black South Africans from being able to travel freely in the country. The pass laws in particular limited blacks’ ability to enter urban areas; black South Africans were now required to provide authorisation from a white employer to be able to enter specific towns and cities (when China vanishes, Mandisa first believes he may have been arrested for just this crime: “Maybe he had been arrested for a pass offence”, p. 144).
These laws led to the forced relocations of the 1960s–1980s, during which millions of non-white Africans were removed from their homes and made to live in so-called “tribal homelands” – although these areas often had no historical validity or relevance for the tribes. These regions were also largely unsuitable for larger populations, with very poor agricultural potential and little or no infrastructure. Some of these so-called bantustans became independent republics. The goal of the white supremacist governments was to strip black Africans of their South African citizenship as they moved into the bantustans, thus removing all remaining rights from the blacks and freeing the white rulers of all remaining responsibility for the blacks.
Petty and grand apartheid – Very broadly speaking, apartheid in South Africa came in two forms. Petty apartheid is the segregation of public facilities (hospitals, public toilets, churches, public transport etc.) and social events, meaning that blacks and whites are not allowed – by law – to share these facilities or to mix with one another in “social events”. Grand apartheid is concerned with housing and employment. So the relocations which play such a huge role in Mandisa’s youth are an example of grand apartheid: the government telling her and her family where they are allowed to live (see p. 28, where Mandisa describes the shock of being relocated to Guguletu). Black labour was necessary to uphold South Africa’s industries – particularly mining – because the blacks could be exploited with poor wages, little or no labour law protections, and inadequate security for dangerous jobs. This government control of work is also a case of grand apartheid.
The apartheid system was hugely controversial and widely denounced all around the world. As well as activism and resistance within South Africa, there were global movements aimed at stopping and removing the institution of white supremacy as state policy. Many countries joined in arms and trade embargoes against South Africa. In 1973
