Zoe Wicomb in Conversation with Hein Willemse

Abstract

David's Story tells the story of the former guerilla fighter David Dirkse; Sally, his wife; the enigmatic and physically powerful Dulcie, David's comrade and suspected lover. All along, the struggle was his life and now, after the release of Nelson Mandela and the dawn of the freedom Dirkse fought for, the main character finds himself in a difficult situation. His name is circulated on a hit list of uncertain origin. With this imminent threat and in fulfilment of his need for historical representation he tells his story to an unnamed woman writer. Dirkse and his narrator explore his identity as a coloured person (a person of mixed heritage) and his roots in the Griqua community. The peculiar ideas of Andrew Le Fleur, the founder--culture broker of Griqua identity, resonate in Dirkse's search for his place in the new, postapartheid South Africa. The novel has a fragmentary, postmodernist structure with a complexity of historical tales, imaginary relationships, and a mixture of historical and fictional characters who represent the ambiguities of racial identities and political and social life in South Africa.