Jane Rosenthal MOTHER TO MOTHER by Sindiwe Magona (David Phillip); UNBROKEN WING by Bridget Pitt (Kwela )
In the 1980s a cartoon figure of a stout and immovable Black Sash lady with fist held aloft, subtitled “Womandla!” was created by poet and cartoonist, Gus Ferguson.
It was an inspired conjunction of black and white resistance to the old regime – hopeful, wishful thinking probably, but wonderfully invigorating. Although we are now living in more realistic times, it is tempting to think that these two novels, set only four years apart in fictional time, 1989 and 1993, might perhaps be taken as some kind of indicator of where we are at now, eight years down the line from Nelson Mandela’s release.
Sadly, and for widely differing reasons, their usefulness in that regard is limited even though they are written by women at very different points on the socio-political spectrum.
Bridget Pitt’s novel, Unbroken Wing, is set in 1989 in Cape Town and explores the nine months of a pregnancy in the life of Ruth, white, middle-class and vaguely left. Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother is a fictionalised account of the life and events leading up to the murder of Amy Biehl, told from the point of view of the mother, Mandisa, of one of the youths who did the deed.
What makes it interesting to consider these novels together is that Magona, ever the self-appointed scourge of white madams (including liberals and other lefties) in her previous books, has little time for the kind of woman that Ruth is in Unbroken Wing, while Pitt’s engagement with women such as Mandisa is minimal.
And although I think it would be fair to say that Magona identified rather closely with Mandisa, the mother of Mxolisi, in her book, Pitt’s relationship with her main character is more complicated; a sort of half-hearted retrospective wannabe, she sees Ruth as being and doing things she partly admired and partly scorned.
Unbroken Wing recreates a recognisable Cape Town, more or less plausibly. The plot revolves around the growing up of Ruth when she finds herself pregnant and alone, and the main interest lies in the unfolding of character and the often detailed and often very beautifully written descriptions of Cape Town.
Ruth is a scruffy lefty-feminist or feminist-lefty with a coloured musician- activist boyfriend. A central theme is that men are pretty useless one way or the other.
Jack, the boyfriend, is dead gorgeous (as in black panther, you can imagine the type – lean, sinuous), a philanderer and guerrilla operative, conveniently consigned to jail for most of the book.
His fate is somewhat open-ended – such is life with irresistible bastards. Giles, housemate and comforter, turns out to be hopelessly wimpish. And anyway he’s English and uncommitted to the new South Africa, merely a curious journalist.
In the main it is a jolly good read, a bit obvious in places, and ends with a wonderful fantasy (faintly embarrassing) expressing the longing for reconciliation, rebirth and going forward.
The final scenes, leaving the Mother City, are set in our wide and beautiful hinterland, the Karoo (our real mother?) in which, of course, women come into their own in the age-old way.
Mother to Mother begins with Mxolisi’s mother coming home from work to find Guguletu in turmoil because a white woman has been killed by the comrades that day, not far from her house. Mandisa describes how she gradually comes to realise that her son, who has not come home, was involved.
In a series of flashbacks she recounts her own childhood in Blouvlei (familiar territory for Magona) leading up to how she fell pregnant with Mxolisi .
The betrayal and desertion by her boyfriend echo Pitt or Ruth’s jaded view of men, but what follows, when decisions regarding her future are made on her behalf by the men in her family, is a bitter testimony indeed.
So Mxolisi is born to a mother barely older than a child herself, under-educated, disempowered, condemned to poverty.
Magona uses a period Mandisa spent back in the Transkei to include an account of the Xhosa Cattle Killing, as well as several comments about “stolen land”. The inclusion of these seems rather contrived, but certainly adds to the case she builds to account for the brutalising despair of Mxolisi’s life.
Somehow neither of these novels will satisfy those who hope to see a reflection of the extraordinary richness of South Africa today in all its diversity and confusion, since by writing from such polarised positions they seem to be perpetuating division. Which is not to deny the authors’ right to write the books they wanted to write, rather than the books others (this reviewer, perhaps) think they should have written. One could argue that these novels reflect the way we were, but even the past has not been faithfully enough rendered. In neither of these books did I experience that sense of recognition which binds the reader into the story.
Sadly, Pitt’s novel is threatened by an exploration of the political scene at that time which feels somehow researched rather than experienced; she’s keen to get it all in, all the funerals, marches, detentions, petty squabbles within the left. All this contrasts strangely with the cynicism of the non-joiner, the outsider.
In fact, she doesn’t even care much for Ruth, whom she portrays as bright but terminally messy, vague and hopelessly sensitive (wet), weeping for hours on the kitchen floor over a news report about a child she’d taught being shot by the police.
Weeping is fine (appropriate), but not for hours. Pitt herself is confused about whether to mock or celebrate the contribution of white women in the past.
And it is precisely this sentimentalisation (too much wringing of hands and weeping) that makes one sympathise with the lethally exasperated Magona who shows us the real suffering of Mandisa and women like her. Yet Magona herself fails to satisfy when she overdoes the stereotyping of white women who make their maids work terrible hours and barely recognise their humanity. She demeans her narrative and reduces its impact by failing to see a more nuanced view of white women.
But women such as these created by Magona and Pitt may well exist. There are probably still madams (not all of them white) out there whose grossly unfair labour practices have continued unabated; there are still women who fancy themselves a gentler, finer species than men and who retreat to the birthing chamber in exclusive solidarity. But real women in South Africa are not well served by these fictional images, since in politics and business they have shown that the issues are broader and deeper, and the energy and wit manifested seriously astounding.
Many South African women are going to love these books, but sadly, because of the way they are written, readers will probably remain as divided as the authors. It would be nice to have less invective, less wringing of hands, a more subtle and well-rounded reality, a better celebration of the total Womandla! in our society.