Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Nadine Gordimer’s much celebrated novel, “July’s People,” largely narrates the story of white and black community relations during the dawn of South Africa’s “post-apartheid” moment. With a specific focus on one major theme of the novel, the focus of this paper is on “July’s People” and its capacity to comment on and analyse some of the continuities and discontinuities that have rendered African biological fathers as absent from their nuclear families, especially their young and growing children. The paper concentrates on the novel’s ability to unmask the lasting impact of colonialism on the cultures of fatherhood among Africans, who have been subjected to the oppressive tactics of settler colonialism in South Africa. Whether dismembered from their families as a result of employment migration systems, settler conveniences in urban spatial planning, or the resultant alienation that developed as a result of the extended absences of fathers from home, this paper analyses the novel in relation to such forms of family disintegration. Lastly, by juxtaposing the “perfect” family structure of the Smales against that of July’s (Mwawate), the paper grapples with how the novel can act as a “register” of memory in the dismemberment of settler colonised and neo-colonised societies.