Political Negotiation, Reconciliation, and Reconstruction in Post-Apartheid Female Narratives

Abstract

Since the official end of apartheid, different state actors and non-state actors have been
chanting the creed of national reconciliation and reconstruction for a better and harmonious
South Africa. In fact, Desmond Tutu’s vision of the “rainbow nation”, to an extent, has been the
driving force behind the policies of successive regimes in South Africa following the trauma and
dispossession of the past. Since literature can also be conceived as an interpretation of society
in time and space, the discourse of national reconciliation and reconstruction has found inroads
in the literary and cultural productions of post-apartheid South Africa. This paper, thus, seeks to
show the relationship between post-apartheid female narratives and post-apartheid politics. In
other words, it verifies the contributory role of South African female writers in re-negotiating,
re-conciliating and re-constructing the post-apartheid nation. In this connection, this paper is
predicated on the premise that the post-apartheid South African female writer, just like her male
counterpart, is also involved in the political project of nation building through political
negotiation, reconciliation, and reconstruction. These writers, in their works, affirm the view that
without political dialogue and reconciliation, the nation-building project in post-apartheid South
Africa is a mere hoax and an exercise in futility.