Writing Roots in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

What are the benefits and drawbacks of the popular practice of writing Alex Haley-style Roots narratives—and making roots claims more broadly—in post-apartheid South Africa? This article explores this question through special attention to two South African neo-slave narratives. The first, Botlhale Tema’s The People of Welgeval (2005), is a contemporary version of Haley’s classic that reveals the benefits of genealogical narration particularly in repairing individual trauma and addressing the vexing problem of land redistribution. The second, Yvette Christiansë’s Unconfessed (2006), can be read as text that challenges both the literary model and the psychological and social projects I associate with Haley and Tema, as it foregrounds the gaps or cracks present in such acts of recuperation and focuses on a kind of pain than cannot be assuaged or made up for. I argue that, taken together, these novels concerned both with historical slavery in South Africa and its legacy in the democratic present help us to move beyond a longstanding “roots”/ “routes” dichotomy to understand what roles each term plays for individuals grappling with racial oppression and where, how, and why the terms fold into each other.