Reconstructing identity in post-colonial black South African literature from selected novels of Sindiwe Magona and Kopano Matlwa

Abstract

This study seeks to examine the concept of identity in the post-colonial South Africa. Like any other African state, South Africa was governed by a colonial strategy called apartheid which meted out harsh conditions on black people. However, the indomitable system of apartheid was subdued by the leadership of the people, which is democracy in 1994. Notwithstanding the dispensation of democracy, colonial legacies such as inequality, racial discrimination and poverty are still yet to be addressed. As mirrored in Sindiwe Magona’s Beauty’s Gift (2008) and Mother to Mother (1998) and Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut (2008) and Spilt Milk (2010), the colonial past perhaps paved a way for social issues to warm their way into the democratic South Africa. This study will use the aforementioned novels penned in the post-colonial period to present an evocation of identity-crisis in South Africa. It will then employ these methodological approaches; Afrocentricity, Feminism, Historical-biographical and Post-Colonial Theory to assert and re-assert the identity that South Africans have acquired subsequent to the political transition from apartheid to democracy. KEY WORDS: Apartheid, Colonialism, Democracy, Identity, Post-Colonialism