Analysis Of Once Upon A Time By Nadine Gordimer

In the 1930’s it was rare for a black South African to attend college. But Mandela not only attended, he graduated, got a degree from law school, and set up a practice in Johannesburg which he hoped could support his small family. Yet apartheid was always a humiliation to him. When the Afrikaner, or Dutch South African, Nationalists came to power in the 1948 election, the segregation habits of the past three hundred years became law. Hoping for a brighter future, Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) and became its first Youth Leader.

Racism, discrimination and degradation faced by Blacks and other ethnic minorities under the apartheid system was not unlike the segregation and intimidation faced by African-Americans in the Jim Crow south. Jim Crow system of segregation that kept Blacks from fully participating in public and civic activities and relegated African-Americans to substandard conditions at work, school and even in the home. Blacks in South Africa were under the clutches of an overt, national policy of racism and segregation implemented by the country’s highest level of government. Civil and human rights abuses of Blacks in South Africa at the hand of the country’s white minority occurred long before apartheid officially began, but the system’s official start brought strict, sweeping laws such as the rule that all persons in South Africa to be categorized as white, Black, colored and Indian, without exception. Like in the U.S. during Jim Crow, Blacks and whites were not allowed to marry and sexual relations between members of different races was a criminal offense.

Mandela once said, “A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.” (Page 32). This quote is an accurate description of all the people who supported the apartheid in South Africa starting when the National Party was elected in 1948. Knowing why this happened and what brought the apartheid to an end is vital to not making the same detrimental mistake again. Apartheid came to an end because of internal unrest, external pressure, and great leaders.

Thesis Statement: Apartheid may have been a horrible era in South African history, but only so because the whites were forced to take action against the outrageous and threatening deeds of the blacks in order to sustain their power.

As a result of racial segregation, resistance from coloured people in both the United States and South Africa escalated. Furthermore, the history of the African civil rights movement validated: “Nationalism has been tested in the people’s struggles . . . and [proved to be] the only antidote against foreign rule and modern imperialism” (Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom 2008, 156) . By comparing and contrasting the American Jim Crow Laws and South African apartheid, we have evidence that both nations’ constitutions led to discrimination, activism, reform and reconciliation.

What could convince a serial killer not to kill another person? “Time and Again” is a short story written by Breece D’J Pancake. The story is about an older man whose wife has passed away. After his wife passed away, his son ran away. During the winter the man drives a snowplow, where he offers rides to hitchhikers. When the hitchhikers are in his truck, he murders them and feeds them to his hogs. One day he picks up a hitchhiker, and the man plans on killing him. As he is about to kill the boy, he changes his mind and just lets the boy get out of the snowplow. The hitchhiker that the snowplow driver picked up is actually his son.

Baldwin gives the impression that no white man has ever had to walk a mile in a black man?s shoes. While the Negro was getting shipped to America without a pot to piss in, the white man remained hiding behind beliefs in ?white supremacy? (Baldwin 133). The concept of white supremacy has separated two different races for years. For Americans, whose heritage came from Europe, acceptance of the Negro was not considered due to the ?jeopardy? it could cause among their status as men (Baldwin 133). Baldwin knows his rage must have limitations so he begins to question how this type of ignorance could have evolved. Baldwin tries to associate this stupid form of hate with the Swiss village but cannot because he feels that the villagers remain innocent by their ignorance to anything that does not affect them, in their village, directly.

a. The narrator points out several stereotypes of black people living in South Africa during that time (along with alienation and communication). For example, he talks about how they raise their children differently from whites and spending their last earnings on funerals etc. By telling the story through this point of view, Gordimer is pointing out the naivety of the white people towards discrimination and separation between blacks and whites that takes place in apartheid. This view lays out a scene in which faults of a divided and victimizing apartheid are revealed.

Nadine Gordimer’s “What were you dreaming?” is known to be a very sensitive, open account of her private and social relationship in South Africa. Gordimer witnessed the difference between the white minority, and their continuous efforts to weaken the rights of the black population. Gordimer made it her duty to promote the consequences of the apartheid, the problems that oppression inflicts on both the colonized (settled) and the colonizers (immigrants), its effect on daily life, and the division it caused between the black and white races. As a result, she wrote the short story, “What were you dreaming?” to show the readers her view, not explain it.

The apartheid of South Africa was a time of constant fear and unknown and tested faith in the people who it continuously impacted.

The national party achieved power in South Africa in 1948 the government, usually comprised on “white people”, and racially segregated the country by a policy under the Apartheid legislation system. With this new policy in place the black South African people were forced to live segregated from the white people and use separate public facilities. There were many attempts to overthrow the Apartheid regime, it persisted to control for almost 50 years.

In the Novel “Cry the Beloved Country” by Alan Paton, two fathers are trying to put the pieces of there families back together while also keeping themselves together. They each go through a variety of struggles, with one learning his sister is a prostitute and his son is a murder while the other deals with his sons death and tries to move passed it. Throughout the novel, racial tension is a theme frequently seen from the beginning of the book til the very end. Paton uses the setting of South Africa to underscore racial tension associated with the apartheid movement to illustrate these themes. The concept of racism is prevalent during the story as it is used by the government to caused both blacks and whites to fear each other which eventually tears apart Kumalo’s family.

Many of the contemporary issues in South Africa can easily be associated with the apartheid laws which devastated the country. The people of South Africa struggle day by day to reverse “the most cruel, yet well-crafted,” horrific tactic “of social engineering.” The concept behind apartheid emerged in 1948 when the nationalist party took over government, and the all-white government enforced “racial segregation under a system of legislation” . The central issues stem from 50 years of apartheid include poverty, income inequality, land ownership rates and many other long term affects that still plague the brunt of the South African population while the small white minority still enjoy much of the wealth, most of the land and opportunities

A Nobel Prize winning writer, Nadine Gordimer discovers moral, racial and social issues in Africa under apartheid rule. Her novel “Burger’s Daughter” shows the struggles of a group of antiapartheid activities which depict the journey of soul searching.

The Journey to the Brothers’ FarmThe apartheid era in South Africa caused a separation between black and white people. The white people had the upper hand, because they had a way stronger financial background, which enabled them to employ black people to work for them. The black people were therefore undermined, and they worked as slaves. This problem is processed in the short story “The Journey to the Brothers’ Farm”, in which we are introduced to a girl named Annelie. She lives in South Africa, and has experienced terrible things, where she has experienced apartheid at first hand. The composition of the story is very interesting as it is build up in two parts. The part written in italic contains a statement received by the Tweekopfentein