Black revolutionary masculinity in Miriam Tlali's Amandla: Lessons for contemporary South Africa

Abstract

abstract Miriam Tlali's 1980 novel, Amandla, offers one of South Africa's most detailed accounts of the 1976 Soweto uprising from the perspective of a number of young revolutionaries of the time. Based on events Tlali witnessed as a resident of Soweto during 1976, the novel offers a detailed portrayal of Black Consciousness ideology in the service of anti-apartheid activism, while explicating gender relations between men and women activists and members of the larger community. This essay focuses on the ways in which Amandla, Tlali's second novel, constructs black, revolutionary masculinity in ways that hold valuable lessons for democratic, post-apartheid South Africa as it grapples with high rates of gender-based violence. I argue that through the main character of Pholoso and a host of women characters with whom he interacts, Tlali offers a blueprint for a politically engaged masculinity which refuses to articulate itself through patriarchal hegemony, while accommodating and encouraging women's autonomy, equality, and leadership in political activity. The novel also engages with the issue of domestic violence, demonstrating a community response to violent masculinity that doesn't undermine black unity. Critically ignored upon publication and in both apartheid and post-apartheid literary canons, Amandla's militant depiction of the Soweto uprising is worth revisiting for its insights on masculinity, revolution and gender relationships within the cauldron of political upheaval.