‘No time like the present’ is a remarkable
novel. The book offers a sobering but balanced account of post-apartheid South
Africa as seen through the eyes of a group of former ANC militants. Though the
book also offers the recurrent motive of the broken dreams, Gordimer moves
beyond the trope of disillusionment to consider how militants’ lives were
shaped by the experiences of the revolutionary process they participated in.
She ponders the reminiscences, debates and contradictions that former ANC militants
grapple with as they try to build up a ‘normal’ life in the new South Africa, a
country which continues to hold enormous socio-economical differences and now
witnesses an unprecedented crime wave. Gordimer describes how scores of
Zimbabwean refugees that flood the country live in abominable circumstances and
are treated as second-rate citizens, in what some of the former militants
interpret as a new form of apartheid. As a protagonist states in the books: ‘we
are all pissed off with what is becoming of the country’.
The unfolding postwar political events within
‘their’ ANC party lead to further confusion and bewilderment, and sometimes
drive deep wedges between the former militants. For example, the book
elaborates extensively on the corruption scandals that involve ANC leadership
figures. Individual militants respond very differently to corruption
allegations directed against their former comrades. According to some it is a
good sign: the country is finally preoccupied with the ‘normal’ problems of an
African country. Though for some former militants the ANC internal problems are
an additional motivation to seek migration opportunities outside of South
Africa, someone else admonishes: ‘don’t allow bad politics to drive you out of
the country of your heart’. Gordimer, who besides writing many
award-winning novels was also an anti-apartheid activist, describes the South
African aftermath without embellishments, but also bereft of excessive moral
censorship. In its accomplished human measure, the book transcends into an
account that balances the residual passions of past struggles with the everyday
moral dilemmas of urban middle-class life in Africa. No doubt South Africa will
continue to reinvent itself. And ‘normalcy’ will not be an option.
If you click the present link you will find
a much more accomplished review of Gordimer’s book. What struck me in particular were the many parallels between Gordimer’s fictionalized
account and the aftermath of the revolutions in Central America. The disenchantments
and re-accommodations that Gordimer describes are remarkably similar to what
occurred amongst former militants of revolutionary movements in Central America.
Great collective accomplishment like the revolutionary take-over in Nicaragua
and the negotiated settlements in El Salvador and Guatemala were followed by a
period of confusion in which leadership, militancy and constituencies became
uncertain of its common goals and its new postwar roles. Nonetheless, as
Gordimer portrays for South Africa’s ANC, some kind of ‘silblinghood of
comrades’ did remain, a sort of revolutionary kinship as ‘a meaning of life
that could not be erased’. Also in Central America’s troubled post-insurgency,
for many militants involved ‘the most definite self comes from the struggle'. What is unclear and indeed heavily contested is what exactly this might mean today.
