Torture, violence and apartheid in André P. Brink’s A Dry White Season

Abstract

The preoccupation with skin color and other physical qualities of black men to legitimize colonialism and imperialism were of significance in South African history. The implementation of racism, discrimination, and exploitation in South Africa was unprecedented because apartheid was employed to the majority of blacks systematically and institutionally by the colonizer countries. Apartheid regime, as an official policy of the Afrikaner government between 1948 and 1990, created huge disparity and discriminations between the whites and non-whites. Published in 1979, A Dry White Season is Andre Brink’s fifth novel and it presents the enigmatic events that happen to Ben Du Toit and other black characters. The novel is the account of subjugation, illegal detentions, and murders of black people under the custody of the security police during and after of the Soweto uprising in South Africa. Setting his novel within the backdrop of the Soweto riots, Brink chooses a nameless narrator to narrate the turbulent events which reflects the brutality of apartheid during the 1970s and 1980s. Contented with his wife and his three children, Ben is killed mysteriously in a hit and run accident. The mysterious death of the protagonist and the events are narrated by a nameless narrator who was Ben’s former university roommate. By disregarding the intimidation and seizures, Ben assumes responsibility to research the illegal detentions and tortures individually. This study explores the issues of torture, state violence, and arbitrary arrests of black peoples during the apartheid years in South Africa.