The Promise: Black and White of the "Land of the Rainbow"

Author: Tanuki De

2021 was a prosperous year for African literature. After Gulna, an English-language writer from Tanzania, won the Nobel Prize in Literature, South African writer Damon Galgut subsequently won the Booker Prize that year for his book "The Promise". The citation reads: "The Promise is a powerful writing for a declining family and troubled land. At the same time, the novel was praised by the judges as "a masterpiece" and "proof of the prosperity of 21st-century fiction."

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Damon Galgut has been writing fiction and theatre since graduating from the University of Cape Town. In 2003 and 2010, Galgut was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novels The Good Doctor and In a Strange Room. Continuing the literary tradition of farm-writing in South Africa, the award-winning Promise reflects on South Africa's racist system and legacy by focusing on a small plot of land and a lengthy struggle for its ownership. In November this year, the book was introduced by Guangxi Normal University Press, translated into Chinese and published in China.

The story of The Promise revolves around four funerals of the Swat family, a descendant of Dutch immigrants in South Africa. Amor's mother, Rachel, before her death, made a promise to Salomi, the family's black maid, that her husband would transfer the cabin where Salomi and her son Lucas lived to them, which also constitutes the main contradiction and driving force of the story.

Sister Amor is the only character in the Swat family who insists on keeping that promise, which the author also calls the book's "moral center" in interviews. For decades, Amor spent most of his time in the countryside, but never missed the funerals of family members. She always rushed back to her hometown at the last minute, constantly mentioning the transfer of ownership to relatives and friends, but was always blocked by other family members.

Swat Farms was not just a handover of family property, it represented the promise of the South African government to blacks. Another South African writer, Nobel laureate Coetzee, has pointed out that South African literature is a "literature in bondage" behind which is a "deformed and stunted" society. To understand the weight of Galgut's commitment, the racial problem in South African society cannot be bypassed.

Influenced by both geographical and historical factors, South Africa practiced apartheid during the half-century from 1948 to 1994 when the National Party was in power. In 1950, the South African government enacted the Population Registration Act, which classified people as white, colored, native, or black according to race. Even though the number of blacks accounted for more than half of the country's population at that time, wealth, power, politics, etc. were all monopolized by a small number of whites, and the freedom of movement of non-whites was restricted in all aspects, and they had been living under the nightmare of racist violence. Therefore, in the 80s of the 20th century, at the moment when the mother of the Swat family made a promise, Salomi, as a person of color, did not have the right to own property. The book says that "she worked her life for the Swat family, shuttling between the farm and the cottage where they lived, but not belonging to any place." "It is also a true portrayal of the black labor of that era.

Galgut's work was clearly influenced by writers such as Woolf and Faulkner, or perhaps because during the writing of "The Promise", he put his pen on hold for a while to write a film script, which gave the book "The Promise" a strong sense of lens, the reader's perspective flowed freely between different characters, and the meta-narrative mode also appeared intermittently in the book. However, the maid Salomi, as an important character in the book, has always existed as an invisible position, and the author has never entered her perspective to describe what she thinks, just as all the Swat family attitude towards her. "When her mother died, she was by the bedside with her mother, but everyone didn't seem to see her, obviously treating her as an invisible person. Also invisible is her feelings. Everyone would only tell her to clean the place and wash the sheets. She did it all, she cleaned, she washed the sheets. Salomi is invisible in the author's narrative, and behind it are more black people who are not seen in reality.

In 1994, after years of civil strife, Nelson Mandela won the election on behalf of the African National Congress Party and became president of a democratic government. In 1997, the South African Constitution went into force permanently, apartheid was abolished, and South Africa finally became a "rainbow nation" in name. The father in The Promise died in 1995, during Mandela's tenure. The book describes how Amor returned to Pretoria for his funeral, a city that had just finished Youth Day and was hosting the semifinals of the Rugby World Cup, and was filled with cheerfulness: "The city center has never been like this, and many blacks are wandering around as if they belong. The city almost feels like an African city! ”

At this point in history, everyone is hopeful that South Africa "looks like a democracy" and that Salomi is no longer legally restricted by black identity and should have legally inherited the house. However, this is not the case, and the fate of black people in the post-apartheid era continues. In the book, the enactment of the policy did not reverse the inertia of the Swats' "white supremacy" thinking. Salomi's son, Lucas, like her, did not receive a good education and could not find a good job to make ends meet; Even Anton is considering evicting workers from farms because "the new law is good for tenants and people who occupy land without permission, and you can't be sure that they can't claim land." Following the abolition of apartheid, the South African Government still had to remedy the legacy of past racism and the social problems that had arisen as a result of rapid policy shifts. The Promise is also a microcosm of South Africa's post-apartheid political dishonesty.

It is not until the final chapter of the novel, when four of Amor's relatives die one after another, and all the obstacles have disappeared, that she is finally able to hand over the title deed to Salomi. But by this time Salomi was 71 years old, and the log cabin that bonded the promise between the two races was already dilapidated. In Galgut's book, "time" is the most important element. The author tries to show the contradictions in the fulfillment of promises, but does not set up a sharp enough force on the other side to break through these shackles - Amor did not "fight" enough, even if he wanted to help Salomi, only the course of history and the death of family members as a driving force. From "apartheid" to "rainbow country", the revision of these policies and the evolution of the social environment may be enough to call it "sea change" in the political process, but it is still too long for a person's life. Moreover, while the passage of time removes obstacles, it also weakens the weight of commitment itself. As Lucas indicted the "white lady" Amor:

"You don't need it anymore and don't mind throwing it away. It's like the leftover food you eat. What you gave my mother is this kind of thing, thirty years late, it's better not to give nothing. ”

To this day, race in South Africa is still widely discussed. Clinical psychologist Sath Cooper said in an interview that the dominance of racial identity hinders the formation of a truly shared identity. "We haven't realized that we're human first and foremost. We always add color to it, then add external properties to it, and then maybe language and beliefs, which leads to further division. At the end of the book, Amor scatters Anton's ashes and walks towards an unknown fate. But it is foreseeable that the reshaping of human relations will remain the shared vision of the South African people, and the gaps left by history will take longer to repair. (Tanukide)

Source: Guangming Network - Literary Review Channel