Mother to Mother von Sindiwe Magona. Königs Erläuterungen Spezial.. Patrick Neill Charles

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2.1

Biografie

YEAR	PLACE	EVENT	AGE
1943	Gungululu (village in what is now called the Eastern Cape, formerly Transkei), South Africa	27 August: Sindiwe Magona is born, eldest of eight children
1962	Gugulethu	She works for years as a junior school teacher.	19
1966	Gugulethu	Already the mother of two children, Magona is now pregnant with a third when her husband leaves the family.	23
1981	Gugulethu	Completes a graduate degree (her third academic degree) from Columbia University (USA) via post.	38
1980s–2000s	New York, USA	Magona moves with her family to New York to work at the United Nations.	Late 30s–60
1993	New York	Awarded an Honorary Degree in Humane Letters by Hartwick College in Oneonta (New York State, USA).	50
Up to 1994	New York	Works for the UN, presenting anti-apartheid radio programmes.	51
1990	Cape Town, South Africa	Publication of the first part of her autobiography To My Childrens Children.	47
1998	Cape Town	Mother to Mother was published.	55
2003	New York/Cape Town	Magona has been working for the UN’s Public Information Department before retiring in 2003 and moving back to South Africa.	60
2003–now	Cape Town	Writer in Residence at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town; also works for Georgia State University (USA).
2007	South Africa	In this year, Magona is awarded several major prizes. She is presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to South African Literature, as well as other prizes recognising her literary work, her social activism and her efforts to promote and celebrate Xhosa culture.	64
2012	South Africa	2012 she is joint winner with Nadine Gordimer of the Mbokodo Award in Creative Writing.[1]	69

2.2	Zeitgeschichtlicher Hintergrund

      ZUSAMMENFASSUNG

       Mother to Mother is set in the Western Cape province of South Africa and covers a period from the early 1970s up until 1993.

       The book describes the era and aftermath of apartheid in South Africa and is the real world backdrop to the murder of Amy Biehl in August 1993.

      Mother to Mother is set in the Western Cape province of South Africa and covers a period from the early 1970s up until 1993. The story is largely situated in a black township near Cape Town called Guguletu. Other locations include the squatters’ settlement of Blouvlei, where Mandisa grew up, and her ancestral village Gungululu, where her grandmother still lives. All the African characters in the novel belong to the Xhosa people, and we see many examples of tribal customs and traditions.

      The book describes the era and aftermath of apartheid in South Africa, a period of extreme racial oppression, state neglect, police brutality and political turmoil and violence. This is the real world backdrop to the murder of Amy Biehl in August 1993 (see p. 32); the novel is a fictionalised account of the killing.

Geography

      Guguletu

      The majority of the book – and the entirety of its present-day time frame, in 1993 – is set in the township of Guguletu, which is 15 kilometres outside Cape Town, in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Today Guguletu has a population of over 98,000, and more than 98% are black Africans. The primary language spoken in the township is Xhosa.

      Guguletu (which comes from the Xhosa phrase for “our pride”, igugu lethu) was founded in the 1960s as a home for the black people of the Cape Town district of Langa. During apartheid, blacks in the region were not allowed to live in Cape Town and were forced to live in one district, which became desperately overcrowded. Residents were relocated to Guguletu and other newly-founded townships, where overcrowding, lack of education, jobs and adequate infrastructure (electricity, running water, waste removal, etc.) greatly increased social tensions. Guguletu is infamous for its high levels of crime, including world-famous murders like that of Amy Biehl, and it remains a troubled and problem-ridden community even in the 21st century, with an estimated murder every two and a half days between 2005 and 2010[2].

      Blouvlei

      Blouvlei is the squatters’ settlement where Mandisa remembers growing up, before her family was forcibly relocated to Guguletu. Blouvlei was founded by squatters – people who occupy land or buildings without permission and without paying rent. It was one of three major squatters’ settlements, the others being Windermere and Epping Forest, which were founded by people coming south to find work in Cape Town during and after the Second World War. They were estimated to be home to roughly 20,000 people each. Cape Town was a “closed city” (blacks were not allowed to live there) and there was very little employment or hope for jobs. Poverty was widespread amongst the black population.[3]

      Successive governments made efforts to redirect some of the migrants to a “reception depot” in Langa, which itself became terribly overcrowded. After the war, some settlers were allowed by the local council to buy the land they had occupied, but the national government took control of everything related to housing across the country and began to relocate black Africans as a part of the efforts to enforce segregation.

      There were groups of civil rights activists in Blouvlei who worked to resist the forced relocations as part of their struggles against the apartheid system. As Mandisa explains СКАЧАТЬ