A Fork in the Road by André Brink

Author:André Brink
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409075356
Publisher: Random House

They had dropped the original charges of pornography, blasphemy and endangering the security of the state, only to morph into literary critics.

Yet it would not be entirely true to regard the abandonment of censorship as an unequivocal victory for literature, for the arts generally. What was decisive in this development was the overall context in the country, particularly since the Soweto uprising of 1976 and the murder of Steve Biko a year later, with its immediate aftermath, the banning of nineteen political organisations and a general clampdown on the press freedom. Predictably, these dire events led to an increased persecution of all forms of opposition – a process that persisted, visibly, with the repression and the successive states of emergency in the country during the eighties, until even P. W. Botha could no longer contain it and subsided into apoplexy. But even while this was happening, there were growing signs of panic in the government’s frenetic attempts to manage the situation. International sanctions were beginning to hurt the regime. Locally, a United Democratic Movement was established as a front for the exiled ANC; trade unions, permitted by the government in a desperate attempt to relieve the pressures accumulating within labour, introduced open defiance and challenges to the authorities on the floors of factories; demonstrations and various forms of opposition gained momentum in the churches, on the university campuses. The security police simply lacked the manpower to counter all these challenges at the same time. The desperate measures they were driven to, included the worst excesses of torture and repression the country had yet witnessed – but once again the very excesses signalled the breakdown of the system. And in the midst of all this turmoil, the arts were no longer regarded as a serious threat. Especially for a regime not noted for its interest in reading. P. W. Botha himself was reputed not even to read newspapers.

South Africa was finally ready to face the challenges of democracy. Except that, regrettably, democracy is seldom permanent unless an electorate remains constantly alert against abuses. What a pity that today, after some fifteen years of this new experience, the old reflexes should appear to be preparing for a comeback – sponsored by the very people who, under apartheid, had suffered most under the lack of freedom of speech. But we know, depressingly, that a battered child is often likely to become an abusive parent.

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