‘It may have seemed personal but it wasn’t’: The Person(al) as Nation(al) in Post-Apartheid Literary Representations of Retribution

Abstract

Crime fiction has experienced a boom in popularity in South Africa in recent years. While some critics argue over the high- or lowbrow status of the genre, a more fruitful approach may be to consider how fiction about crime addresses particular themes in order to negotiate contested ideas of nation-ness. This article will first assess how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the osmosis between creative non-fiction and crime fiction have laid the foundations for a discourse whereby personal narratives of justice and victimhood are transposed to a level of national significance. Narratives of revenge are a key route by which authors of crime fiction tackle a sense of unfulfilled justice. Violent crimes in Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak are narrated from differing perspectives, portrayed variously as acts of disproportionate revenge or violently just retribution. In these novels, the characters impart wider significance to their own violence and victimhood, tying themselves to the failures of the TRC and the new nation’s supposed inability to deliver justice. In Bitter Fruit, Disgrace, and Margie Oford’s Daddy’s Girl, sexual violence is portrayed as a weapon to right historic grievances. Contemporary crime fiction both reinforces and challenges popular misconceptions about rape, encouraging audiences to reassess notions regarding the post-colonial state. With familial metaphors for the nation prevalent in post-apartheid South Africa, narratives of intra-familial sexual violence highlight issues surrounding inter-generational responsibility and the recurrence of a violent past.