Post-Apartheid Interregnum: A Study in Selected South African Novels

In this study, I share Nadine Gordimer's conception of an interregnum as a period of indeterminacy characterized by ambiguities, paradoxes, and contradictions. Consequently, I argue that despite the political transformation in 1994, post-apartheid South African literature reveals that the old binaries and strictures of apartheid have been carried over into the present. Thus, the new landscape in South Africa depicts ambiguities and contradictions that are indicative of a process of interregnum. Accordingly, I argue that post-apartheid South Africa presents a picture of resistance to change and asserts that the process of political transition to black rule would require a redefinition of roles and relationships, self-sacrifice, and re-examination of values. I focus on racial tension, prejudice and exploitation; I examined violence, corruption, political ineptitude, suffering and death as illustrative of disillusionment in the new South Africa. Overall, I show that post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by reversal of expectations, where the old is preventing the birth of the new and that this constitutes a process of interregnum.

Ernest Cole, a native of Sierra Leone, taught for many years atFourah Bay College, The Gambia College, and University of TheGambia. His research interests include empire and blackness inAnglophone African, Caribbean, Indian, and Victorian literatures.He teaches at Hope College, Holland, Michigan where he isAssistant Professor of English.