South African censorship: the production &amp; liberation of Waiting for the barbarians, by J. M Coetzee

Marilia Fatima De Oliveira,Maria Perla Araújo Morais,Andrea Martins Lameirão Mateus

doi:10.4025/actascilangcult.v41i2.45604

Abstract

During Apartheid, South African censorship became the main legal instrument for the control and cultural tutelage of society. Censors decided which literary works could be read. Thousands of books were withdrawn from circulation, but the censorship did not achieve total success in curtailing the circulation of ideas. One novel, in particular, was released despite being not only very political, but also representing events that were – as J. M Coetzee puts it – in the minds and hearts of people of conscience during Apartheid: torture and fake reports issued by the South African police. Through documental and critical analysis, this article aims to answer one question: why Waiting for the barbarians, novel by J. M Coetzee published in 1980, was never banned? We will bring information and reflections on how the use of literary strategies, a political strategy and the exercise of censorship by a peculiar censor were crucial for the system’s circumvention.

Highlights

We heard long time ago from Professor Fernando Rosa Ribeiro, at Universidade de Campinas (São Paulo, Brazil), that South African Apartheid could not be considered a colonial regime because South Africa became independent from England in 1910, and the Apartheid era officially started only in 1948, after the Afrikander party and the Herenigde Nasionale Party formed a coalition in order to win the elections in 1940
During the South African’s Apartheid, a corpus of censors guided by complex laws decided what could be read and what should be banned from bookstores and even private bookshelves
Despite all the restrictions and censorship imposed by the authorities to prevent people from doing what they were willing to do, as well as speaking against what was going on in the country, the censorship apparatus was circumvented by writers, editors and even – and this was the most surprising information we found during our research – by the South African censors themselves

Summary

Introduction

We heard long time ago from Professor Fernando Rosa Ribeiro, at Universidade de Campinas (São Paulo, Brazil), that South African Apartheid could not be considered a colonial (or post-colonial) regime because South Africa became independent from England in 1910, and the Apartheid era officially started only in 1948, after the Afrikander party and the Herenigde Nasionale Party formed a coalition in order to win the elections in 1940. In his non-fictional books Doubling the point: essays and interviews (Coetzee, 1992) and Giving offense: essays on censorship (Coetzee, 1996) Coetzee – among other topics – touches the question of censorship, physical and psychological violence and torture – strongly opposing to any idea of violence of any kind By reading his fictional and non-fictional writings we may infer that Coetzee was very much aware of the eyes of censorship watching over his (and other artists) shoulders and of the role of censorship in the lives and works of all artists in South Africa as well as its mechanisms of oppression. M Coetzee’s files that Coetzee kindly allowed us to work with, gently sent to us by the librarian Cecilia Blight from the National English Literature Museum (NELM), in South Africa

Literature and censorship

Conclusion