From Barrons’ Booknotes (Theme): Inequality and Injustice

Kumalo’s search for his son takes place against the backdrop of massive social inequalities, which, if not directly responsible for Absalom’s troubles, are certainly catalysts for them. Because black South Africans are allowed to own only limited quantities of land, the natural resources of these areas are sorely taxed. The soil of Ndotsheni turns on its inhabitants?exhausted by over-planting and over-grazing, the land beecomes sharp and hostile. For this reason, most young people leave the villages to seek work in the cities. Both Gertrude and Absalom find themselves caught up in this wave of emigration, but the economic lure of Johannesburg leads to danger. Facing limited opportunities and disconnected from their family and tribal traditions, both Gertrude and Absalom turn to crime.

Gertrude’s and Absalom’s stories recur on a large scale in Johannesburg, and the result is a city with slum neighborhoods and black gangs that direct their wrath against whites. In search of quick riches, the poor burglarize white homes and terrorize their occupants. The white population then becomes paranoid, and the little sympathy they do have for problems such as poor mine conditions disappears. Blacks find themselves subjected to even more injustice, and the cycle spirals downward. Both sides explain their actions as responses to violence from the other side. Absalom’s lawyer, for instance, claims that Absalom is society’s victim, and white homeowners gather government troops to counter what they see as a rising menace. There is precious little understanding on either side, and it seems that the cycle of inequality and injustice will go on endlessly.

From Barrons’ Booknotes (Themes): Reconciliation

Cry, the Beloved Country chronicles the searches of two fathers for their sons. For Kumalo, the search begins as a physical one, and he spends a number of days combing Johannesburg in search of Absalom. Although most of his stops yield only the faintest clues as to Absalom’s whereabouts, the clues present a constantly evolving picture of who Absalom has become. As Kumalo knocks on the doors of Johannesburg’s slums, he hears of his son’s change from factory worker to burglar, then from promising reformatory pupil to killer. When Kumalo and Absalom are finally reunited after Absalom’s incarceration, they are virtual strangers to each other. The ordeal of the trial brings them closer together, but it is not until after the guilty verdict that Kumalo begins to understand Absalom. In Absalom’s letters from prison, Kumalo finds evidence of true repentance and familiar flashes of the little boy he remembers.

Jarvis has no actual searching to do, but it takes him little time to realize that he knows little about his own son. Away from Ndotsheni, Arthur has become a tireless advocate for South Africa’s black population, an issue on which he and his father have not always agreed. Reconciliation with a dead man might seem an impossible task, but Jarvis finds the necessary materials in Arthur’s writings, which give Jarvis clear and succinct insights into the man that Arthur had become, and even instill in Jarvis a sense of pride.

From Barrons’ Booknotes (A Plot Overview):

Kumalo is now deeply aware of how his people have lost the tribal structure that once held them together, and he returns to his village troubled by the situation. It turns out that James Jarvis has been having similar thoughts. Arthur Jarvis’s young son befriends Kumalo, and as the young boy and the old man become acquainted, James Jarvis becomes increasingly involved with helping the struggling village. He donates milk at first, then makes plans for a dam and hires an agricultural expert to demonstrate newer, less devastating farming techniques. When Jarvis’s wife dies, Kumalo and his congregation send a wreath to express their sympathy. Just as the diocese’s bishop is on the verge of transferring Kumalo, Jarvis sends a note of thanks for the wreath and offers to build the congregation a new church, and Kumalo is permitted to stay in his parish.

On the evening before his son’s execution, Kumalo goes into the mountains to await the appointed time in solitude. On the way, he encounters Jarvis, and the two men speak of the village, of lost sons, and of Jarvis’s bright young grandson, whose innocence and honesty have impressed both men. When Kumalo is alone, he weeps for his son’s death and clasps his hands in prayer as dawn breaks over the valley.

From Barrons’ Booknotes (A Plot Overview):

Meanwhile, the newspapers announce that Arthur Jarvis, a prominent white crusader for racial justice, has been murdered in his home by a gang of burglars. Kumalo and Msimangu learn that the police are looking for Absalom, and Kumalo’s worst suspicions are confirmed when Absalom is arrested for Jarvis’s murder. Absalom has confessed to the crime, but he claims that two others, including John Kumalo’s son, Matthew, aided him and that he did not intend to murder Jarvis. With the help of friends, Kumalo obtains a lawyer for Absalom and attempts to understand what his son has become. John, however, makes arrangements for his own son’s defense, even though this split will worsen Absalom’s case. When Kumalo tells Absalom’s pregnant girlfriend what has happened, she is saddened by the news, but she joyfully agrees to his proposal that she marry his son and return to Ndotsheni as Kumalo’s daughter-in-law.

Meanwhile, in the hills above Ndotsheni, Arthur Jarvis’s father, James Jarvis, tends his bountiful land and hopes for rain. The local police bring him news of his son’s death, and he leaves immediately for Johannesburg with his wife. In an attempt to come to terms with what has happened, Jarvis reads his son’s articles and speeches on social inequality and begins a radical reconsideration of his own prejudices. He and Kumalo meet for the first time by accident, and after Kumalo has recovered from his shock, he expresses sadness and regret for Jarvis’s loss. Both men attend Absalom’s trial, a fairly straightforward process that ends with the death penalty for Absalom and an acquittal for his co-conspirators. Kumalo arranges for Absalom to marry the girl who bears his child, and they bid farewell. The morning of his departure, Kumalo rouses his new family to bring them back to Ndotsheni only to find that Gertrude has disappeared and run back to her old life of sin.

From Barrons’ Booknotes (A Plot Overview):

In the remote village of Ndotsheni, in the Natal province of eastern South Africa, the Reverend Stephen Kumalo receives a letter from a fellow minister summoning him to Johannesburg, a city in South Africa. He is needed there, the letter says, to help his sister, Gertrude, who the letter says has fallen ill. Kumalo undertakes the difficult and expensive journey to the city in the hopes of aiding Gertrude and of finding his son, Absalom, who traveled to Johannesburg from Ndotsheni and never returned. In Johannesburg, Kumalo is warmly welcomed by Msimangu, the priest who sent him the letter, and given comfortable lodging by Mrs. Lithebe, a Christian woman who feels that helping others is her duty. Kumalo visits Gertrude, who is now a prostitute and liquor-seller, and persuades her to come back to Ndotsheni with her young son.

A more difficult quest follows when Kumalo and Msimangu begin searching the labyrinthine metropolis of Johannesburg for Absalom. They visit Kumalo’s brother, John, who has become a successful businessman and politician, and he directs them to the factory where his son and Absalom once worked together. One clue leads to another, and as Kumalo travels from place to place, he begins to see the gaping racial and economic divisions that are threatening to split his country. Eventually, Kumalo discovers that his son has spent time in a reformatory and that he has gotten a girl pregnant.

From Barrons’ Booknotes:

Cry, the Beloved Country takes place after these upheavals and immediately before the implementation, in 1948, of apartheid, which codified the systematic inequalities depicted in the novel. During the time in which the novel is set, black workers were permitted to hold only unskilled jobs and were subject to “pass laws” that restricted their freedom of movement. In 1913, the Natives Land Act radically limited the amount of land that black South Africans were permitted to own. As the character Arthur Jarvis states in the novel, just one-tenth of the land was set aside for four-fifths of the country’s people. The resultant overcrowding led many black South Africans to migrate to Johannesburg to work in the mines. Those in power welcomed the influx of cheap labor but failed to provide adequate housing or services to address the mass migration. These are the circumstances under which the character Stephen Kumalo leaves his impoverished rural village to search for his son in Johannesburg.

Though Paton’s novel helped raise the social consciousness of white South Africa, things got much worse before they got better. In 1948, the National Party (representing Afrikaner and conservative interests) gained power and introduced apartheid. Under apartheid, every South African was classified according to race, and the Group Areas Act enforced the physical separation of blacks from whites. Every aspect of South African life was racially segregated. Under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress (ANC), which had been founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress and renamed in 1923, began protests against the new laws in the form of strikes and marches. After decades of struggle and bloodshed, the ANC prevailed, and South Africa held its first free election in 1994. Mandela was elected president, apartheid was dismantled, and the country ratified one of the most liberal constitutions in the world.

From Barrons’ Booknotes:

Cry, the Beloved Country is set in this tense and fragile society, where the breathtaking beauty of the nation’s natural landscape is tainted by the fears of its people. And yet, the message of the novel is one of hope. Characters such as Stephen Kumalo, James Jarvis, and Theophilus Msimangu reveal a potential for goodness in humankind, and are able to defuse hatred, overcome fear, and take the first steps necessary for mending a broken nation.
Historical Background

Cry, the Beloved Country is set in South Africa in the 1940s. Its story unfolds against a backdrop of economic and political tensions that have a lengthy, complicated history. Thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived, southern Africa was populated by various African tribal groups, including the San, the Khoikhoi, and, later on, Bantu-speaking peoples who were ancestors of the modern Zulus. The first European settlers in South Africa, the Dutch, arrived in the mid-1600s. The Dutch wanted only to set up bases for trade, not to colonize the country, and they met with little resistance. But by the mid-1700s, the Dutch, who had come to be known as the Boers and who had developed their own language, Afrikaans, had begun to settle deeper and deeper into the country. In a process similar to the displacement and destruction of Native American life in the United States, African tribes were forced off their traditional lands, decimated by disease, and defeated in battles against the well-armed Boers.

English settlers first arrived in 1795. Unlike the Dutch, by the early 1800s the English decided to make South Africa a full-fledged colony. Concentrated in coastal cities, the English soon found themselves in conflict with Boer farmers, who called themselves “the white tribe of Africa.” The Boers moved north, away from the coast, while the Zulus, led by the famous warrior-leader Shaka, pressed south on a military campaign. Inevitably, the two groups clashed, fighting a number of bloody battles before the Zulus were defeated. The Boers created several independent republics, but when diamonds and gold were discovered in the Boer territories, the British moved to annex them, leading to the first Anglo-Boer war in 1881. The Boers regained the independence of their territories, but when gold was discovered near what is now Johannesburg in 1886, the British invaded the area again. The second Anglo-Boer war lasted from 1899 to 1902. The victorious British were able to establish rule, and they officially established the Union of South Africa in 1910.

I recently reread one of my favorite novels, Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. It is one of those “reads” that will change your life.

From Barrons’ Booknotes:

Alan Paton was born in the South African city of Pietermaritzburg on January 11, 1903, to a Scottish father and a South African mother of English heritage. An active and intelligent child, Paton went on to attend Natal University, where, among other activities, he wrote poetry and served as student body president. At the age of twenty-two, he became a teacher at two of South Africa’s elite, all-white schools, first in the village of Ixopo, then in Pietermaritzburg. Ten years later, he left teaching to pursue a career as a reformatory worker. He was appointed principal of the Diepkloof Reformatory, a prison school for black youths. While at the reformatory, Paton attempted to loosen the restrictions placed on the youths and emphasized preparation for life outside the reformatory walls. He also traveled extensively to study reformatory schools worldwide. It was on one such trip, shortly after World War II, that he wrote Cry, the Beloved Country, the novel that earned him his fame as an author.

Cry, the Beloved Country was published in 1948 to overwhelming international acclaim?at the time of the author’s death, in 1988, more thaan fifteen million copies of the novel had been sold, and it had been published in twenty different languages. In Paton’s native South Africa, however, praise for Cry, the Beloved Country remained muted, and the novel’s objective take on the problems of racial inequality in South Africa created much controversy. Nonetheless, Paton’s reputation as one of South Africa’s greatest writers remained secure, though his subsequent novels, Too Late the Phalarope (1953) and Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful (1981), were praised by critics but failed to generate the same excitement as Cry, the Beloved Country.

Although apartheid, South Africa’s infamous system of enforced racial segregation, was not instituted until after the novel’s publication, the South Africa of Cry, the Beloved Country was nevertheless suffering from the effects of racial segregation, enforced inequality, and prejudice. The crime rate was high, and attacks on whites by black agitators caused panic among the country’s white citizens. Black South Africans found themselves adrift as the traditional tribal cultures gave way to the lure of the cities, and many South Africans were left without any moral or social organization to turn to. Whites held a monopoly on political power, and they did nothing to alleviate the extreme poverty among black South Africans, which in turn led many young black men to crime. The gold mines, which were so vital to South Africa’s economy, depended on cheap black labor to remain profitable, and as a result, the workers were paid barely enough to survive. But those in power inevitably broke up attempts to strike or seek a better wage.