Racism is one of the most pernicious problems of the human society. It sustained on the prejudices of the whites. Racial hierarchy has come to be maintained with the rise of the modern world system

How was she to have known, until she came here, that the special consideration she had shown for his dignity as a man, while he was by definition a servant, would become his humiliation itself, the one thing there was to say between them that had any meaning.

Fifteen years

your boy

you satisfy. (98)

July’s ungrammatical fragmented English reveals that it merely serves a utilitarian function for his employers and is just a tool to make him work for them. It can be pointed out that the dignity, which is conferred and simultaneously denied, produces the most oppressive effect of July’s existence. No matter how liberal and considerate the Smales’ had been, July was never given a chance to rise above his status of a servant. July’s recognition of self and inability to find a language to give outlet to it results in frustration. It is this frustration that results in a tirade against Maureen in his language, towards the end of the novel. When Maureen, looking for Bam’s lost gun accuses him of stealing her scissors, he speaks out:

-You- he spread his knees and put an open hand on each. Suddenly he began to talk at her in his own language, his face flickering powerfully. The heavy cadences surrounded her; the earth was fading and a thin, far radiance from the moon was faintly pinkening parachute-silk hazes stretched over the sky. She understood although she knew no word. Understood everything: what he had had to be, how she had covered up to herself for him, in order for him to be her idea of him. But for himself- to be intelligent, honest, dignified for her was nothing; his measure as a man was taken elsewhere and by others…. (152)

Maureen finally comes to understand that all her earlier assumptions regarding her relationship with July have been a farce in the face of the harsh realities of apartheid. She fails to communicate with July in the changed circumstances. The novel thus demonstrates a need for common language as a prerequisite for social integration and advancement in South Africa. Gordimer wants to bring home the possibility of language as the instrument of social change. He no longer is July, a name for whites to use, but Mwawate, an individual independent of their service. This outburst frees July of Maureen’s sentimental belief that she understands him perfectly and undercuts any respectful relationship with him. She understands that here she and her family is in total dependency on July just like July was on them in the white suburbs. Whatever little vestiges were there of her earlier life collapse after July’s berating. Unable to settle in her new role and detached from all her earlier roles of mother and wife (meaningful only in the past bourgeois life), “She runs…she runs: trusting herself with all the suppressed trust of lifetime, alert, like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take care of young, existing only for their lone survival,…She runs” (160). The final scene indicates total demolition of the white supremacy, the old order is gone but the new order is yet to be born. One thing is clear however, that in the new order whites have to forge a new identity for them, but at present they, as Maureen’s portrayal suggests, are unable to do so. Under utter desperation to get rid of the present order and unable to accept the role of subservience, Maureen tries to escape towards the sound of the helicopter, not knowing whether it contains “saviours or murderers” she runs towards an unknown future (158).

Different interpretations are offered by the critics to the ending of the novel. According to Rowland Smith, Maureen’s flight reveals a “radical collapse of identity”. Besides, it also depicts “a total inability to live with the present…embod[ies] rejection… lead[s] to an unrevealed future [and] clinches the sense of traumatic impasse which the book reveal[s] (qtd. in Uledi-Kamanga 152). Stephen Clingman on the other hand posits a different view. He points that Maureen’s eventual running signifies her “escape from old structures and relationships, which have led her to this cul-de-sac”. But he adds further that she is “running towards her revolutionary destiny” for she is aware that “it is the only authentic future awaiting her” (“July’s People” 114). Sheila Roberts on the other hand provides a completely different and negative perspective on the ending which hints at Gordimer’s punishment to Maureen for being a white liberal female and therefore an object of wrath (82). Maureen’s act of running would liberate her from her complicity with the white state (Pearsall 106). Along with the above interpretations, one last point can be added- Maureen’s running indicates the destruction of her previous identity. She confronts her collusion with the apartheid system and is ready to pay its price even if it is at the cost of her own safety.

July’s People does present the morbid symptoms of the interregnum, a condition that seems to be bleak but at the same time it also presents a hope for communal harmony and mutual understanding between races. Smales’ children undoubtedly hint at the “post- revolutionary rebirth” (Head 134). Royce, Victor and Gina are shown adapting the lifestyle of July and his village and develop friendship with July’s children. Gordimer brings it out particularly through Gina, the daughter when she carries a black child in similar fashion as blacks do and refuses to eat the pork offered by Maureen as she is “full of pap anyway”. Not only that, she establishes a bond with Nyiko, a little black girl, and the two girls are shown “giggling” together (JP 41-42). She is also accepted by the community for “…she would disappear into the dark of this hut or that and wouldn’t be found as usual, taken in, by those who lived inside, as neither he nor his wife ever were…”(121). Another noteworthy aspect is that Gina is able to learn July’s language which is beyond Bam and Maureen. Victor is also portrayed as adapting the black lifestyle. He is shown to be performing a gesture of obeisance when “receiving the gift with cupped palms” (157). The children have learnt to share their belongings with others which can be interpreted as distribution of wealth, considered to be the sole right of whites. Calling it as post-apartheid utopia, Ali Erritouni observes that the children represent “for whites the terms of a future, more egalitarian coexistence with blacks” (78).

Gordimer seems to prescribe the terms and condition on which whites ought to live in South Africa, once the majority rule is established. She in fact carries on with her belief that “the white writer’s task as ‘cultural worker’ is to raise the consciousness of white people” (Essential Gesture 293). If the image of Rosa Burger sequestered in the prison cell symbolizes the alienated white dissidents post-Soweto, then the stance adopted by Gordimer in July’s People reflects her condition in the world of writing. Isolated with the growing black consciousness that permeated the world of artists, she desperately sought an avenue to rejoin the struggle. And this, she found by engaging herself with the campaign against censorship. In her fight, she took every opportunity to censure the sinister system that thrived on racist ideology. Censorship, she proclaimed in her essay “The Unkillable Word” (1980), was an instrument of “thought control, idea control” and was very much an “arsenal of apartheid as the hippos [heavily armoured cars] that went through the streets of Soweto in’76” (Essential Gesture 245).

In her effort to find a way out of the solitude, Gordimer knows that it can come only through her writing though based on new terms of relevance and commitment of being a writer in South Africa. She adds that “the nature of art in South Africa today is primarily determined by the conflict of material interests in South African society” (134). This particularly differs from the view upheld for the same in her earlier works. In the changed circumstances then the task of both the black and white writer is to seek a common culture of the future. But that common culture can be attained only in the face of economic and political equality. It is evident in her essay “Relevance and Commitment”: “Equal economic opportunity, along with civil and parliamentary rights for all…is rightly and inevitably the basis for any consideration of the future of the arts” (134). Black writers can become committed by fusing their inner selves and the outer reality and thereby speaking the voice of the people. White writers have their own difficult way. But it could be in their terms of this commitment to a future common culture that they can become true “apprentice{s} to freedom” (143). In her essay “Living in the Interregnum” she has pointed out that what passed for reality in South Africa had become unreality for her. As a writer her work found itself answerable to the new order “struggling to be born” (Essential Gesture 278).

It is this logic that has drawn Gordimer’s fiction to future. July’s People is the most apt example of all. Set explicitly in the critical moment of the future, it affirms the prophecy made in the The Conservationist. July’s People can be seen as an act of preparing for the future where Gordimer has set the features of white bourgeois culture in South Africa to a radical and penetrating analysis.

In fact the most remarkable aspect of the novel is that it reveals the future in realistic terms. In 1983, with the formation of United Democratic Front (UDF), the boycotts and strikes increased rapidly. ANC contributed towards it by urging people to “‘Make apartheid unworkable! Make the country ungovernable!’” The introduction of the new constitution by P. W. Botha attracted nationwide protests due to the fact that it maintained white supremacy. UDF denounced the new constitution which had no place for blacks. There was widespread arson and killing in Transvaal, Orange Free State, Natal and Cape with participation from all the sections of the community across gender. Another Sharpeville Massacre occurred on February 1985 at Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape, in which the police killed 21 people, resulting in violent protests by ‘necklacing’ (placing tyre around the necks and then setting them afire). Consequently, a state of emergency was declared on 21 July 1985. (Clark and Worger 98-100). The country, in the words of the Minister of law and order, Adriaan Vlok, edged towards “‘anarchy and bloody revolution’” (qtd. in Clark and Worger 100). July’s People, in that case, had a firm grasp on the future reality than the situation that existed during the time the novel was being written. Although it appeared apocalyptic, yet the images it presented gave one version of the way change in South Africa might come about.

However it can be pointed out that by portraying such apocalypse prophetically and by presenting an uncertain ending, she has put forward an uncertain future of South Africa nevertheless with great possibilities. The possible reason for not defining the future probably lies in Gordimer’s belief that it is not for whites to prescribe the role of blacks in South Africa as put forward by Zwelenzima Vulindlela to Rosa in Burger’s Daughter. In “Where Do Whites Fit In?” Gordimer writes: “even those of us who don’t want to be boss (or bass, rather) have become used to being bossy…. The facts that we’ll be well-meaning and that the advice may be good and badly needed do not count; the sooner we drum that into our egos the better” (Essential Gesture 35). But she does seem to prescribe the ways in which whites should adapt themselves to the new situation through Smales’ children. White South Africans should redefine themselves in order to fit in the new South Africa. They should assimilate its culture, language and values.

It can be added, that in uncertain ambiguous environment of July’s People one thing that seems to be certain is that Gordimer will continue to unravel the consciousness of her age, extending the major socio-aesthetic project that began in the early 1950s. Additionally, it can be said that Gordimer’s inner trust which tells her that she must write, goes beyond the apartheid era where she is inclined to deal with the post-apartheid South Africa.

The House Gun published in 1998 is Nadine Gordimer’s first truly post-apartheid novel that deals with contemporary South Africa, its complexities and the legacy of apartheid. The novel not only explores the predominance of violence in post–apartheid South Africa but also the relationship between parents and child and also how once privileged whites came to depend on a black to save them from a crisis. In an interview with Dwight Garner, Nadine Gordimer stated that the main concern of The House Gun is truth and reconciliation: “It’s about getting to the truth of a shocking story, and it’s about the things that hold you afloat- religion,…rationalism…when something terrible happens, what structures are there to support you?” (“Salon Interview”).

The story revolves around a white couple Claudia and Harald Lindgard, whose son Duncan is charged with the murder of his ex-lover Carl Jesperson, after he discovers his present lover Natalie in a compromising position with Carl. In order to save their son from getting convicted, Claudia and Harald turn to a black lawyer Hamilton Motsamai. As the story unfolds the reader comes to understand how the seemingly personal and private crisis has political and public overtones which have been Gordimer’s forte. The brief outline of the novel undoubtedly reveals many aspects that Gordimer has explored in the text which has a definite relation with the post-apartheid South Africa.

In order to understand the author’s underlying motive and keeping in mind the purpose of the study it becomes imperative to discuss the political context and the social reality of the time in which the novel was written. On 10 May 1994, Nelson Mandela became the first black president in the first ever democratic elections. Blacks voted for the first time in their lives which marked the transfer of power from the white minority to the black majority. He spoke:

The moment to bridge the chasm that divides us has come…We enter into a covenant that we shall build a society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity- a rainbow nation which is at last at peace with itself and the world at large…We must therefore act together as a united people for national recovery…Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will experience the oppression of one by another. (qtd. in R. Johnson 3)

In December 1996, a new constitution was passed which according to its preamble, sought to:

‘heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental rights’ and in which ‘government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law’…bill of rights that recognized the equality of every person before the law, and prohibited the state from discriminating on any grounds, ‘including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth’. (Clark and Worger 123)

There was hope all around for a better country and a better future for all in this “rainbow nation.” But this hope was far-fetched, for the consequences of the years of suppression were many and not easily calculable. Hence contrary to the African National Congress (ANC) slogan “A Better life for All” there was widespread poverty, unemployment and violence, indicating a complete social collapse by the year 2000 (R. Johnson 5). As the numbers of Africans increased in Johannesburg in an unsuccessful search for houses and jobs, it saw a rise in the crime rate. The problem was aggravated by the “ready availability of guns, often high powered military weapons such as AK 47s, resulting from the arming of the white population under apartheid and the importation of huge number of weapons from the former war zones of Angola, Mozambique, and other parts of southern Africa” (Clark and Worger 129).Violence thus was rampant in post-apartheid South Africa which can be termed as a legacy of apartheid.

The House Gun generated from such a context. Gordimer probes questions of individual and social responsibility at the time of widespread violence. The act of murder not only challenges the personal belief of the parents, it also brings them out of their elite and secure life to face the harsher realities of the society in which they live. The very beginning tells the reader that “Something terrible happened” (3). The terrible in fact occurs in the life of the parents Claudia and Harald Lindgard who, till now lived in a state of privately secluded and secure life, enjoying the privileges that the apartheid era bestowed on them. The Lindgards, as Gordimer has portrayed, are not racist “…if racist means having a revulsion against skin of a different colour…” (86). Gordimer, as it has been proved by now, holds no sympathy for liberal whites and leaves no opportunity to criticize the liberal attitude whether during or after apartheid novels undertaken by her. The following excerpt from the novel strengthens the observation. Lindgards are into the profession which does not involve them in the direct exploitation of blacks. Claudia, a doctor and a rationalist believes that “flesh, blood and suffering are the same” and Harald a businessman and a religious person, believes that “all humans are God’s creatures” (86) but still:

neither had joined movements, protested, marched in open display, spoken out in defence of these convictions. They thought of themselves as simply not that kind of person; as if it were matter of immutable determination, such as one’s blood group, and not failed courage. He did not risk his position in the corporate establishment…she did not risk her own skin by contact, outside the intimate professional one, with black men and women she treated, neither by offering asylum when she deduced they were activists on the run from the police…[she] kept away from them outside clinic and surgery hours…. (86-87)

Harald’s belief too “protected him from the sin of discrimination” but he “had never done anything to challenge it in others” (87). He, very conveniently accepted “without questioning that black people could not be granted housing bonds; they could not afford to meet payments. A bad risk. That was the fact. The government of the time should house them: so he voted against the government, who did not do their duty. That was the extent of his responsibility…” (88). Through these lines one can easily perceive the inherent sarcasm of the author against the liberal attitude, its inefficacy in any positive social change and the liberal’s collusion with the oppressive regime. It can be understood that one of Gordimer’s aim in The House Gun is to indicate “the liberal’s illusions that he can exist beyond the pale of the historical process” (Diala, “Nadine Gordimer” 54). So for Harald and Claudia the news of the murder and the consequent arrest of their son is nothing less than a shock for it has brought them out of their private, safe and electronically secured township (world). They are forced to confront the reality of the post-apartheid society wherein seeking refuge with Hamilton Motsamai becomes a necessity for them.

Sandra Chait has noted that the transfer of power from oppressor to the oppressed usually brings about shock, sorrow and anger at the chaos of the upheaval. She adds that the oppressors are finally compelled to confront their culpability. Chait also notes that, in the case of South Africa, the transition to democracy had been sufficiently gradual to allow white South African writers “a gestation in which to ponder collective guilt and, as in Germany, to search the past for answers to that inevitable question, ‘How could it have happened?’”(17). Adding to Chait’s observation Isidore Diala has further observed that among white South Africans there is perceptible anxiety to “acknowledge the culture of violence in post-apartheid South Africa as part of the enduring legacy of apartheid.” In fact only five hundered whites out of four and a half million signed the “guilt-list”, an acknowledgement of the self evident truth that apartheid had inflicted massive damage to black South Africans (“Nadine Gordimer” 50). Quoting Mc Greal, Diala brings out the point very poignantly:

We acknowledge the white community’s responsibility for apartheid since many of us actively or passively supported that system. Some white people were deeply involved in the struggle against apartheid but they were very few in number. We acknowledge our debt to fellow black South Africans since all whites benefitted from systematic racial discrimination. We therefore believe that it is right and necessary to commit ourselves to redressing these wrongs. We pledge to use our skills, resources and energy…[toward] promoting a non-racial society whose resources are used to the benefit of all its people.(51)

It can be added to the above observation that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established in 1995 for the purpose of investigating into the sufferings of people and confession of the agents of state, the perpetrators of innumerable atrocities. (Clark and Worger 124). In fact David Atwell and Barbara Harlow have acknowledged TRC to be a potentially heroic project but with its own ambiguities: “Apart from the cost of giving amnesty to torturers and assassins, the militant youth culture of the 1980s…has left an uncomfortable legacy of seemingly apolitical crime and vigilantism”(3). They further contend that the TRC excluded natural justice. For the sake of principle and peace forgiveness was elevated above justice. TRC sought to emphasize “individual acts of abuse” and obscured “the systematically abusive social engineering that was apartheid”. Therefore, “apartheid’s legacy remain[ed] evident in extensive poverty, educational deprivation, and a warped criminal justice system which, because it was developed as an instrument of political oppression, seems incapable of dealing with ordinary crime” (2).

The House Gun demonstrates that omnipresent violence. Nadine Gordimer has dealt with this harsh fact explicitly in her text when she writes:

…in a region of the country where the political ambition of a leader had led to killings that had become vendettas, fomented by him, a daily tally of deaths was routine as a weather report; elsewhere taxi drivers shot one another in rivalry over who would choose to ride with them, quarrels in discotheques were settled by the final curse-word of guns. State violence under the old, past regime had habituated its victims to it. People had forgotten there was any other way. (49-50)

The above lines vividly reveal the harsh reality of a society where violence has become a part and parcel of the daily lives of people. Gordimer seems to blame it not on the new regime and the new rule but as a precipitate of the gone by era where violence was state sanctioned and was resorted to by the whites to control blacks quite often. Thus it can be seen, specifically with reference to the post-apartheid situation in South Africa, that violence perpetuates violence. It becomes evident when Motsamai, in the defense of Duncan, states that: “He cannot be brought to account for encouragement of robberies, hijackings and rape so regrettably common in this time of transition from long eras of repression during which state brutality taught violence to our people…” (271). Although the murder of Carl Jesperson has no South African dimension to it as it has been committed out of jealousy, but the overall context of violence-ridden society as invoked by the narrator cannot be ignored. In this regard it becomes inevitable to discuss the significance of the title itself which reveals the presence of the gun in the house.

The gun in the novel acquires symbolic significance which is kept for the purpose of “mutual protection against burglars” but is used to kill one of the inmates of the house (16). The gun is shared “like a six-pack of beers” and is available to any of the young residents of the house. During the trial it is revealed that the gun is dealt with negligently and treated casually by the people of the house until it is used as a murder weapon. It was, as Hamilton puts it “…lying around in the living room, like a house cat; on a table, like an ashtray…” (271).The purpose of the gun had been to protect the residents of the house as violence threatens their daily existence. This widespread violence in the form of thefts, murders and rapes necessitated the presence of the gun in every house in post-apartheid South Africa and so “If it hadn’t been there the man on the sofa would not be under the ground of the city” (157).

The gun has further symbolic significance attached to it. The shared gun in the house acts as “a symbol of the shared interchangeable relations…” (254).This factor brings in another aspect that pervaded the post-apartheid South African community and thus came to be portrayed in the fiction of that time. Brenna M. Munro pointed out that South African constitution is the first in the world to “ban discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation”. She further observes that the issue of gay rights not only served as an element of the narratives in the transitional public culture but also played a necessary role in the formation of “rainbow nation”, a phrase that encoded the “intersection of multi racialism and gay rights” (398). Nadine Gordimer however has been the first heterosexual writer to deal with such cultural and political shift in None To Accompany Me and The House Gun. Gordimer has brought it out in the novel very vividly. She writes: “Everyone who shared the house was homosexual” (HG 207). Elsewhere, replying to prosecutor’s charge, Motsamai declares “…homosexual activity…under the new Constitution[is]…recognized as the right of individual choice. Homosexual relationships such as existed in the common household, are commensurate with ‘acceptable standards’ in our country” (271). It can be added that this shift was registered in The Conservationist where Gordimer portrayed Terry, Mehring’s son, as a homosexual although unlike in The House Gun the character and the issue remained unexplored.

Homosexuality thus becomes one of the key issues besides violence to be dealt with in the novel. In fact it is responsible to some extent in bringing Claudia and Harald out of their make believe world. Until the act of murder, they survived on their fancy that they know everything about their son and he is what they taught and thought him to be. Claudia and Harald remember telling Duncan: “…There’s nothing you cannot tell us. Nothing. But he had not been able to tell them anything that was leading him towards that Friday night when something terrible happened to him. He had not told them that he loved a man…” (159). Hence the belief, that their family is relatively safe and unaffected from the changes that have taken place in the society, is shattered by the revelation about the sexual orientation and the inherent violence in their son. This discovery makes them realize that they are no different from the rest of the people. It is inconceivable for Lindgards that “the sound principles with which he was imbued: one, the sacred injunction, Thou Shalt Not Kill, two, the secular code, human life is the highest value to be respected” would become meaningless when their son is accused of murdering a fellow human being. They discover that their son “like everyone else breathed violence along with the cigarette smoke” (98-99, 267).

Violence that occurred at a personal level with a personal motive thus acquires a wider social implication in the text. Ironically, it is an outcome of the past regime. Gordimer has brought out this irony in the following lines where she mentions that the murder may go unnoticed when compared with:

…the spectacular public violence where you can film or photograph people shot dead on the streets in crossfire of the new hit-squads, hired by taxi drivers and drug dealers who have learnt their tactics from the state hit-squads of the old regime with its range of methods of ‘permanently removing’ political opponents, from blowing them up with car and parcel bombs to knifing their bodies again and again to make bloodily sure bullets have done their work. (157)

The obvious sarcasm denoted by the above statement traces the origin of the violence rampant in post-apartheid society to the earlier atrocities committed by the white regime on blacks. Elsewhere during the final judgment in Duncan’s trial, the judge states: “But that is the tragedy of our present time, a tragedy repeated daily, nightily, in this city, in our country. Part of the furnishings in homes, carried in pockets along with car keys, even in the school-bags of children, constantly ready to hand in situations which lead to tragedy, the guns happen to be there”(267). Echoing similar thought on the nature of violence in The House Gun, David Medalie opines that, “Violence is presented…as a kind of social recidivism, a generalized regression to modes of behavior which have not been discarded with the passing of the apartheid regime”(639).The prevalence of violence in post-apartheid South Africa can be ascribed to the fact that struggles related to economic and political power remain unchanged which undoubtedly served as context for violence in the past regime. But Medalie observes that Gordimer’s approach to murder does not fit into above paradigms for Duncan has no such motive. This fact renders an enigmatic status to violence, which in turn means that “there is to be no convenient attribution to guilt or innocence, no unproblematic ascription of an action to putative circumstances or contexts” (639).

Isidore Diala has observed similar post-apartheid concern on violence in Andre Brink’s novel The Rights of Desire. He quotes from the text: “The newspaper records ‘the daily menu of murder, mayhem, corruption, and scandals’.” Commenting on it, he states that: “Brink treats this violence in part as a legacy of apartheid by drawing attention to the persistence of highhanded, derogatory, and exploitative attitudes on the part of some whites in their contact with blacks” (“Nadine Gordimer” 61). However in The House Gun Gordimer has not specifically exposed such violence as there are no particular white characters who treats a black character in a high handed manner except of course the inevitable recollections of the recent past. But as Diala further observes, and which Gordimer also echoes in her text, that Brink indicates that “the culture of violent resistance itself hardened into the perception that violence is the sole reliable resolution to all problems”(61).

The House Gun also brings into account the aspect of transfer of power in post-apartheid South Africa. Harald and Claudia’s relationship with Hamilton Motsamai assumes great importance in this regard. It makes them aware that “…the position that was entrenched from the earliest days of their being is reversed: one of those kept-apart strangers from the Other Side has come across and they are dependent on him. The black man will act, speak for them. They have become those who cannot speak, act, for themselves (89).The emphasis on ‘they’ brings out the inherent irony of Gordimer to reveal how the earlier positions have been reversed in the new era. Unlike in the past it’s the whites who need a spokesman. Talking about The House Gun in her letter to Kenzaburo Oe, Gordimer writes:

it came to me as the personal tragedy of a mother and father whose son, in a crime of passion, murders their human values along with the man he kills. The parallel theme, placing their lives in the context of their country, the new South Africa, was that they- white people who in the past regime of racial discrimination had always had black people dependent upon them-would find themselves dependent upon a distinguished black lawyer to defend their son (Living 89)

For Harald and Claudia, it is not easy to accept the change so easily. They are skeptical about the “choice of a black man” as they “retain liberal prejudices against the intellectual capacities of blacks” (HG 33). Elsewhere it is mentioned that theirs is a “liberal education-whose liberalism did not extend to admitting blacks…” (69). But as it is observed that the world in which they reside is much different form their past, they eventually find themselves under total “dependency on him” (135). In fact it is this lawyer on whom they are now “dependent on as neither has ever before been dependent on anyone” (40). Post-apartheid situation is inescapable for them. The whites come on equal footing with blacks and whatever the latter went through in the past has come back to the former. The Lindgards come to understand this as Gordimer writes:

Not only had he come from the Other side; everything had come to them from the Other side, the nakedness to the final disaster: powerlessness, helplessness, before the law….The truth of all this was that he and his wife belonged, now, to the other side of privilege. Neither whiteness …nor money that had kept them in safety-that other form of segregation- could change their status. In its way, the status was definitive as the forced removals of the old regime; no chance of remaining where they had been, surviving in themselves as they were. Even money; that could buy for them only the best lawyer available. It could buy Motsamai…. (127-28)

They realize that in the changed circumstances, their earlier assumptions about themselves and their son have proved to be futile. The reality is: “Motsamai, the stranger from the Other Side of the divided past. They are in his pink-palmed black hands” (86). In fact, owing to their strange predicament they become isolated: “Harald and Claudia had close friends, before. Although these are eager to be of use, of support, they cannot be. Harald and Claudia know they have little in common with them now….these few close friends, shocked and genuinely concerned by what has happened, feel left out of the responsibility of human vulnerability…”(85-86). However in their isolation the Lindgard’s experience at Motsamai’s house reveals to them, African fellowship and conviviality:

The different levels of education and sophistication at ease in the gathering were something that didn’t exist in the social life Harald had known; there, if you had a brother-in-law who was a meat packer at a whole sale butchery (the first man had announced his métier) you would not invite him on the same occasion when you expected compatibility with a client from the corporate business world, and an academic introduced as Professor Seakhoa who would drily produce an axiom in ironic correction of naïve humour….(p169)

They get absorbed by the atmosphere and feel liberated albeit as short term consolations Thus Hamilton, as Gordimer has presented, in the capacity of defense counsel “exemplifies the ideal of professionalism” and not only does his best to save Duncan but also help dilute the anguish of the parents by connecting with them outside the formal interaction (Durst 301). It becomes clear when he reasons that:

It was not always necessary or desirable to keep the relationship with clients formal. Taking on a brief means establishing the confidence of human feeling, some sort of give-and-take, with the family of the life to be defended, even while retaining professional objectivity. The white couple didn’t have the resilience that blacks acquired in all their generations of being people in trouble by the nature of their skins. He knows how to handle these two: they’ll feel they’re able to do something for him; that aside about wanting advice on a career for an ambitious son. (Gordimer, HG 163)

On one hand their dependence on a black lawyer brings to mind the dependence of Maureen and Bam Smales on July for their safety, but on the other and a more positive sense the relationship that develops between Lindgards and Hamilton goes beyond a mere lawyer-client one. It gives the reader a strong indication of the existence of harmonious multi-racial community in South Africa, very much as Gordimer has imagined which goes beyond the earlier relationship of that of the master and servant.

Motsamai leaves no stone unturned to save Duncan from getting convicted for the murder. Dealing with the question as to who is responsible for the heinous act, he tries to explain on the basis of the context. The question of responsibility becomes debatable in the novel and one is forced to ask; to what extent an individual may be held responsible for his or her actions. Whether an individual has the right to make private choices, especially in a country where majority of individuals hardly had any control over their private or for that matter, public choices. It is made evident that without the consideration of the prescribed limits of that life’s context there can be no exploration of individual responsibility. The prosecutor holds Duncan responsible for the act of murder for he says “Yes, the gun was there; the crime of vengeful jealousy with which it was committed is by no means excused by, but belongs along with the hijacks, rapes, robberies that arise out of misuse of freedom by making our own rules…”(270). Prosecutor also draws on the homosexuality persistent in the house as one of the factors responsible for the awful event, as he is of the view that the house where “none of the acceptable standards of order…in sexual relations…was maintained” is conducive for such an act (270). But Motsamai repudiates him and instead holds the crime and violence ridden society responsible for the act. He demonstrates “without any doubt that this young man was driven by circumstances to act totally against his nature” (162). He goes on to prove that violence prevalent in the society does have a bearing on Duncan’s act but then Duncan is not responsible for the violence prevalent in the society. In this way Motsamai, owing to his intelligence and impartial behavior is able to dilute the individual responsibility and Duncan gets just seven years imprisonment and is saved from death sentence.

In The House Gun, Gordimer has also dealt with the question whether the Death Sentence should be kept or abolished from the constitution. Greg Rosenberg in his article has informed that capital punishment was used as a weapon by the state to break democratic revolution and instill fear in workers and peasants especially blacks. Death Penalty was abolished in South Africa on 6 June 1995 in a unanimous decision of the constitutional court after a long debate over the issue. Brenna M. Munro points out: “the novels resolution involves both Duncan’s sentencing and the state’s decision to end executions altogether: mercy wins the day in both cases” (412).The text also depicts this fact: “The Last Judgment of the Constitutional Court has declared Death Penalty unconstitutional…” (HG 284). Gordimer deals with the process in detail in the novel and used the issue to bring out further revelations about the Lindgard’s way of life in South Africa. When Duncan goes on trial the death sentence is still on the statute book. Before Duncan’s act, for the Lindgards the decision does not matter because they are not directly concerned with the ruling. He and his wife “have never belonged in the public expression of the private opinions, which he supposes is the transformation of the opinions into convictions…” (134). But attending the session at the constitutional court among many people, Harald feels to be “alone as he never has been alone in his life” simply because now the decision will personally affect him unlike the others sitting in the court (134). As the narrator puts it: “The Death Penalty is a subject for dinner table discussion for those, the others, who will drift back into the Court as Harald will. Their concern, whether they want the State to murder or want to outlaw the State as a murderer, is objective, assumed by either side as a responsibility and a duty owed to society. Nothing Personal” (138).The irony in the words ‘nothing personal’ is quite evident with regard to Harald.

The Lindgards consequently develop a sense of kinship with those who have been disempowered alongwith a heightened perception of their surroundings. Harald is led to a new awareness of God, “Out of something terrible something new, to be lived with in a different way, surely, than life was before? This is the country for themselves, here, now. For Harald a new relation with his God, the God of suffering he could not have had access to, before…” (279). Claudia on the other hand understands that “she is no longer the one who doles out comfort or its placebos for others’ disasters, herself safe, untouchable, in another class. And it’s not the just laws that have brought about this form of equality” (17). It is the suffering and the inescapable truth that there “is a labyrinth of violence not counter to the city but a form of communication within the city itself. They no longer were unaware of it, behind security gates. It claimed them…The context into which their own context, Duncan, Harald and Claudia fits, it’s natural” (141). These lines give clear indication of the fact that whites cannot live remain secluded from the realities of the society in which they live.

The House Gun thus presents violence as a grim reality in post-apartheid South Africa, not just “an aberration passed on by those in whom it mutated out of suffering” but as a “common hell” for all those “who are associated with it” (143). However it can be pointed out that Gordimer, besides presenting the violence ridden society, offers some hopeful and positive picture as well. The house in which Duncan lives becomes significant in this regard. In this house “as the saying goes: no problem, black and white, brothers in bed together” (160). Further, described as an “open house” (22) it is cohabitated by people of different origins. With Khulu, a journalist, who is a black, David Baker and Carl Jesperson, who are Norwegian (all the three are gay), along with Duncan and Natalie, the house stands as a perfect symbol for rainbow nation that South Africa endeavored to become after 1994 elections. The young and gay characters in the novel become a metaphor for a new South African multiracial culture in the making. The house, before the murder takes place, consists of a loose group of friends, gay and straight, black and white sharing the household. As David Medalie suggests, this arrangement “seems to be a new kind of family unit…enacting in a microcosmic way, the society which the new South African constitution is making possible, one in which there is no discrimination on the basis of race, gender or sexual preference” (638). Brenna M. Munro observes that whereas heterosexuality brings disaster and chaos, homosexuality offers an alternative in building “the hoped for new nation” (414).

Khulu’s portrayal is also noteworthy in the building of a new nation. As a black gay character, his presence is significant. He is the only one who visits Duncan in prison and testifies that killing is not in Duncan’s nature. Not just that he also helps Lindgards to communicate with their son. In fact, for Harald and Claudia he becomes a “proxy son” (Gordimer, HG 242). When they ponder “…Who would have thought he’d be the one who’d know we need someone with us every day, and it turns out we’d want nobody but him” (238). These lines acquire significance owing to the fact that earlier the Lindgards had no relation with any black outside their professional requirements. Thus their crossing of line marks a positive change for a better future in South Africa. It is Khulu who approaches the Lindgards with the message of Duncan that they should take care of the child Natalie is bearing, irrespective of the fact whether Duncan or Carl is the father. The vision of a child in itself reveals a new birth. Stephen Clingman discussing triangulation in the novel observes that the triangles in the text give strong indication of the new relationships growing out of the old (“Surviving Murder” 150).

Lindgards treatment of Khulu as his son, irrespective of his origin and also the fact that they might take care of Natalie’s child gives the reader a strong implication of the idea of family that does not worry about the origin. This fact reflects the idea of national ideal of inclusiveness; a dream of new South Africa. As Clingman has further noted that “In the post colonizing world after apartheid, sexual, familial, and racial identities enter into cross-cutting and simultaneously displaced (replaced) combinations” (“Surviving Murder” 155). He stresses on fatherly role that Khulu and Duncan accept towards Natalie’s child and comments that “Beyond genetics, beyond the usual binary pairings, whatever happens, Duncan will in some sense be the father of the child. As will Khulu, in his way: the triangles, instead of closing down for evil, open up for a kind of good” (155). Thus despite all the underlying violence and crime, there is still a better future in store for South Africa. Duncan whose mind remains inaccessible to readers throughout finally reveals his consciousness in the end. Alluding to the question of not showing any remorse for the act he thinks:

The judge stated it as a fact, not a question. ‘He has shown no remorse.’ How could they know, any of them, what they have a word for. How could they know what they are thinking, talking about. Harald and Claudia, my poor parents, do you want your little boy to come in tears to say I’m sorry? Will it all be mended, a window I smashed with a ball? Shall I be a civilized human being again, for the one, and will God forgive and cleanse me, for the other. Is that what they think it is, this thing, remorse. (Gordimer, HG 281)

His realization and consequent feeling of taking the responsibility of Natalie’s child endorses a utopian vision. He recognizes the promise of life incarnate in the child. He says, “…But I have to find a way. Carl’s death and Natalie’s child, I think of one, then the other….They become one, for me. It does not matter whether or not anyone else will understand: Carl, Natalie/ Nastasya and me, the three of us. I have to find a way to bring death and life together” (294). Gordimer, through these lines assures continuity and a vision beyond violence. Stephen Clingman, at this juncture, points out that the imaging of child makes the novel as Gordimer’s most optimistic: “In such a schema- not a triumphalist one by any means- Gordimer figures into this, her first novel set in postapartheid world, the oscillating profusion of voices that must make South Africa’s future, transcending the past by building new relations beyond the fixed geometry of the old, offering a vision of possibility” (“Surviving Murder” 156). To this it can finally be added that such a view also placed Gordimer among the novelists who transcended and defied the doubt about the direction of literary writing in post-apartheid South Africa. The new vision heralded a journey beyond South Africa for Gordimer.

The Pickup (2001) is an attempt by Nadine Gordimer to move beyond the borders of South Africa thereby encompassing a wider perspective on issues concerning South Africa by placing them in a more global context. Julie Summers, a privileged white girl meets Abdu, an illegal immigrant in South Africa working as a mechanic in a garage, when her car breaks down and falls in love with him. When he is caught and is ordered to leave the country she goes with him to his own country which eventually turns out to be a home away from home for her in all true senses, for it is in his country her true self is revealed to her. Gordimer transcends the boundaries of South Africa to capture the ethos of an unknown Arab country. As Ileana Dimitriu in her study “Postcolonialising Gordimer: The Ethics of ‘Beyond’’ and Significant Peripheries in the Recent Fiction” has noted insightfully:

She seems to have renounced her exclusive focus on South Africa which, in the past, she considered to have been ‘the example, the epitome of cultural isolation’…Now that writers feel less moral pressure to engage with the repressive social context, she is keen to offer literary replies to an important question: ‘How, in national specificity, does each country go about moving beyond itself, to procreate a culture that will benefit self and others?’ (159-60)

In an interview, much before any changeover, Gordimer has pointed out about the universality of her writing. She says, “quite a lot of my writing could have come about absolutely anywhere” (Bazin and Seymour 35). With The Pickup she seems to signify that the necessity to focus exclusively on the internal situations of the country is no longer apparent as compared to the need of global contextualization. As Ileana Dimitriu writes that Gordimer “expresses a new interest in the dynamics of the local and the global, of the global beyond the local, and looks at broader issues of postcolonial relevance in the world today: identity and (dis)location, migration and exile, hybridity and liminality- all steeped in the tension between ‘centre and periphery’ as a global phenomena after apartheid, and after the Cold War” (“Shifts” 90). Dimitriu further points out that after the transition and the first few years of grappling with the new South Africa, the burden of social responsibility seems to be lifted from the writer’s shoulders and he/she becomes “freer to engage with the reconstitution of the civil imaginary”(“Shifts” 95). Gordimer seems to have introduced this change in the direction of her writing towards the turn of the last century. The Pickup, as Karina Magdalena Szczurek points out does not boast of a complex plot as most of other plots of Gordimer’s novels but “in its character development, scope and narrative complexity it can certainly be considered a novel”(235). A quick overview of the plot tells the reader that it is simply a boy meets girl story by Gordimer but a close observation brings home other aspects closely related to the post-apartheid South Africa.

In 1999 Thabo Mbeki was sworn in as the new president of South Africa and replaced Nelson Mandela. In his inaugural address on 16 June 1999, Mbeki addressed the vital problems that the country faced and still facing:

Our nights cannot but be nights of nightmares while millions of our people live in conditions of degrading poverty. Sleep cannot come easily when children get permanently disabled, both physically and mentally, because of lack of food. No night can be restful when millions have no jobs, and some are forced to beg, rob and murder to ensure that they and their own do not perish from hunger. […] There can be no moment of relaxation while the number of those affected by HIV/AIDS continues to expand at an alarming pace. Our days will remain forever haunted when frightening numbers of the women and children of our country fall victim to rape and other crimes of violence. Nor can there be peace of mind when citizens of our country feel they have neither safety nor security because of the terrible deeds of criminals and their gangs. […] Neither can peace attend our souls as long as corruption continues to rob the poor of what is theirs and to corrode the value system which sets humanity apart from the rest of the animal world. The full meaning of liberation will not be realized until our people are freed from oppression and from the dehumanizing legacy of depravation we inherited from our past. (qtd. in Szczurek 75)

The speech clearly brings out the problems haunting the post-apartheid society and Mandela’s dream of Rainbow Nation still far-fetched. Mbeki assured to alleviate “indiscipline, permissiveness, corruption and disorder” post-1999 elections but in reality “exactly the opposite was already happening” (R. Johnson 164). Under Mbeki’s leadership the South African political and business arena was becoming an extended family business (169-70). He in his turn continued to play “dirty tricks” by exercising complete control over various policies promulgated and still remained behind the scenes evading any direct responsibility (172). Mbeki’s neo-liberalism policy put the need of reaching the global economy status over the basic needs of his countrymen. The Policy resulted in the rich getting richer and the poor becoming poorer. It also created a wide gap between those working in formal sectors and those working in informal sectors or who were unemployed. The government and its policies created what can be termed as ‘class apartheid’ and the discrimination now existed between the have and the have nots coupled with the problem of “mass illegal immigration that contributes to a rise in unemployment and, consequently crime”(Szczurek 83).

South Africa thus became “the country of two nations- divided by the economic gap” that widened to an alarming extent (Szczurek 85). The capitalist society that emerged perpetuated the earlier horrors that plagued the society. John Pilger in his book Freedom Next Time (2006) points out:

As black capitalists proved they could be as ruthless as their former white masters in labour relation, cronyism and the pursuit of profit, hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost in mergers and ‘restructuring’. Between 1995 and 2000, as the black ‘empowered’ moved into white enclaves of wealth and privilege, unemployment almost doubled and the majority of South Africans fell deeper into poverty. (qtd. in Szczurek 90)

It no longer remained a country divided by blacks and whites but that of affluent and poor. The affluents including both whites and blacks created discontentment among the impoverished. Most affluent people, both black and white disregarded the presence of the deprived lot. They secured themselves by putting fences and installing alarm systems in their houses and cars. The image such description has conjured is that of hopelessness and despair. Despite all the efforts made by the new South African government, the dream of making South Africa a rainbow nation seemed a distant future.

In The Pickup Gordimer captures with a discerning eye, these aspects of post-apartheid South Africa albeit not in a very detailed manner. Nonetheless taking her earlier novel The House Gun into consideration, the readers do get a complete and revealing picture of the same interwoven in the story. The Pickup depicts racial segregation slowly breaking down as the poor flood into the city. Gordimer writes: “Crazed peasants wandered from the rural areas and gabbled and begged in the gutters outside” (5). Immigrants from Nigeria, the Congo, and Senegal ply trade in sex, drugs and tourist souvenirs in a city, where black is no longer excluded from the public space. When Julie’s car breaks down in the middle of the road, she is caught up among “a traffic mob” throwing expletives at her and she is helped by “one of the unemployed black men” and similar other black men who “push her car into a loading bay” (3). Whereas Gordimer’s apartheid-era fiction reveals the stark contrast between black townships and white areas here she explores a world divided between those who are able to move freely anywhere in the world and those who enter them illegally to work in menial jobs at the edge of the global cities. Additionally, one fact that is made evident at the start of the text is that, despite the apartheid laws dissolved long ago, the racial feelings can still be seen as somebody in the crowd called Julie “Idikazana lomlunga” which means “white bitch” as one of Julie’s black friend tells her.

Abdu alias Ibrahim Ibn Musa is an illegal immigrant who despite possessing a degree in Economics from a university of his country of origin, is forced to work as a car mechanic in a garage in this westernized city of South Africa. He belongs to an unknown Arab country identified as Yemen by Maureen Freely in her review of the The Pickup. The idea seconded by Ronald Suresh Roberts although Gordimer herself insisted that it is Saudi Arabia (Roberts 619). However Szczurek identifies the unknown place as Morocco (235). But irrespective of which country it is, Abdu just wants to escape it at any cost. He is aware of the new kind of apartheid between Westernized and non-westernized countries and that of global cities and the surrounding regions. He remarks that the:

World is their world. They own it. It’s run by computers, telecommunications…the West, they own ninety-one percent of these. Where you come from-the whole Africa has only two percent, and it’s your country has the most of that. This one?-not enough to make one figure! Desert. If you want to be in the world, to get what you call the Christian world to let you in is the only way. (Gordimer, Pickup 160).

Abdu is determined to go to any country especially America in order to rise and find his identity in this world. He measures success by the standards of the west and thus is unable to identify himself with his own country which he considers backward, replete with religious conservatism and political corruption. Julie on the other hand wants to escape her own situation of being a privileged white, a legacy of her parents and leaves the posh suburbs to stay in a sort of “backyard cottages adapted from the servants’ quarters” or “modest apartments” which she can afford by her salary (8). She renounced the kind of life her wealthy and well connected father and his new wife represent and joins her group of bohemian friends known as The Table at L.A. Café referred to as “EL-AY Café” (5).

Through the EL AY Café setting, Gordimer seems to depict the globalization taking place in South Africa, and the city of Johannesburg (though not named in the text) getting included in the global network. Gordimer has been continually observing the present in her works. But The Pickup deals with what is termed as Globalization more expansively. Julie and her friends stand for a generation in opposition to her father and his generation. They are the product of globalization, “…who have distanced themselves from the ways of the past, their families, whether these are black ones still living in the old ghettos or white ones in The Suburbs…”(23). The members of The Table have lost all the affiliation to their own cultures; a black member retaining only those traits that can belong anywhere in the world; another member has converted to Buddhism. Even Julie contributes to this global culture in her job as public relations officer for an entertainment company which organizes concerts of celebrities from around the world. But though it suggests globalization yet the members are portrayed mockingly by the narrator. The adoption of other cultures seem superficial, serving just one’s own needs. They are detached from each other’s feelings and are portrayed as unsupportive of each other’s needs in the wake of participating in the global cultural flows. These friends “are not the kind to ask what’s going on, that’s the part of their creed: whatever you do, love, whatever happens, hits you, mate, Bra, that’s all right with me. People come and go among them…” (23).

With globalization, capitalism has entered the country. Gordimer leaves no chance to depict it in The Pickup. It has captured both blacks and whites in this post-apartheid era. The new ruling class and the new elite are shown to be smeared with corruption and their actions are motivated by financial gains. Profit motive is what guides everyone now, as one of the members of The Table remarks:

What happened to Brotherhood, I’d like to ask? Fat cats in the government. Company chairmen. In the bush they were ready to die for each other-no, no, that’s true, grant it- now they’re ready to drive their official Mercedes right past the Brother homeless here out on the street…the one who was battle commander at Cuito, a hero, he’s joined an exclusive club for cigar connoisseurs. (20)

The poet among them quotes Yeats, and says “… ‘Too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart’”. Further, the member puts it “…why should people abandon what they’ve believed and fought for, what’s got into them between then and now…Brotherhood is only the condition of suffering? Doesn’t apply when you have choice, and the choice is the big cheque and the company car, the nice perks of Minister” (21).The inherent sarcasm on the new government is clearly visible in these lines. The oppressed of the past have become the oppressors after getting the power. However, one of the most striking aspects is the reappearance of Hamilton Motsamai of The House Gun at a party in the house of Julie’s parents. One of the guests refers to him as “the black lawyer who saved the son of the Summers’ great friends. Such nice people, awful affair. Got him off with only seven years for that ghastly murder a few years ago- the son shot the homosexual who seduced his girl, and he’d an affair with him himself. Could have been life in prison” (47). A direct reference to Duncan Lindgard and his parents is made here. Gordimer undoubtedly intends to bring out how much things have changed in the new era, for Hamilton Motsamai is now a financier, a more lucrative business in the changed circumstances.

At the same time the attitude of the white upper class is still the same as it was in the apartheid era. It can be gauged by the fact that Julie notices with a surprise, the presence of blacks at her father’s party. She thinks: “…there already was a black couple among the guests-amazing: the innovation showed how long it must have been since she came to one of the Sunday lunch parties in that house….” Later she realizes that the change has to do with her father’s pragmatism because he, “an investment banker in this era of expanding international financial opportunities and the hand-over-fist of black political power on the way to financial power at home, must have to add such names to the guest lists for a balance of his contacts…” (41).The past still lingers which gets further revealed by the narrator’s comment on Motsamai and the whites gathered at the party:

…all these are immigrants by descent. Only the lawyer Motsamai, among them, is the exception. He was here; he is here; a possession of self. Perhaps. Lawyer with the triumph of famous cases behind him, turned financier, what he has become must be what he wishes to be; his name remains in unchanged identity with where his life began and continues to be lived. (48)

The irony in the above lines reveals the true situation in the post-apartheid South Africa. The one who truly belongs to the country and identify himself with this country, ‘perhaps’ has lost his identity in this era. Motsamai belongs to the new era, no longer a lawyer but a financier which is more profitable than the former profession. In the new times the division is no longer based on race and skin color but class, defined by the materialist and capitalist attitudes prevailing in the social upper stratums of the country. Isidore Diala has observed that, “In following the career of this member of the new black elite, Gordimer sets in even starker relief the temptations that befall his group” (“Interrogating” 52). He further discerns that “their compulsion towards the same golden calf that captivated the Boer tends to perpetuate the spectre of the apartheid state” (“Interrogating” 54). The observation undoubtedly underpins the fact that people like Motsamai who belonged to the disadvantaged group, on getting the opportunity to become rich and powerful, have unabashedly joined hands with the suppressors. Julie’s remarks definitely serve to place him the context: “…but does he still practise law? I think he’s given it up for money-making, you saw how he was one of the cronies” (Pickup 64). Shortly afterwards, the narrator confirms her assumption. Motsamai the “…Senior Counsel was an acting judge for a period, and could be permanently His Honour Mr Justice Motsamai on the bench of the High Court now if he had not decided for that other, more profitable form of power over human destiny, financial institutions…” (76-77).

After Abdu has been served the order to leave the country, Julie, on Abdu’s insistence seeks Motsamai’s help in the hope of getting a way out. She is disappointed when Motsamai expresses his inability to help them. His behavior instead serves to confirm Julie’s initial perception of him as belonging to the coterie of upper class, driven by the hunger of money and power which she vehemently tries to cut out of her life. He disapproves her relationship with Abdu. Julie realizes that he“…is one of them, her father’s people and glossy Danielles…it doesn’t help at all that he is black; he’s been one of their victims, he’s one of them now. He, too, expects her to choose one of her own kind- the kind he belongs to” (80). Thus through the portrayal of Motsamai, Gordimer vividly brings out the changed reality in the new South Africa where things changed and still nothing changed. And though Motsamai tries to sympathize with Julie on her predicament, Julie knows quite well that he is just “… claiming his rightful brotherhood of his people’s suffering along with his present successful distancing from it… (80). It can be observed that he might be black but his skin color is of no importance as he too, now belongs to the league of Julie’s father and his wife. He is one of them representing everything that Julie wants to leave behind her in search of a new identity.

Globalization in its wake has brought to the fore, the problem of migration. Residents belonging to the underdeveloped country try to find a place in developing or developed countries of the world in order to pursue their dreams of making big. Not everyone is lucky enough in that case so as to gain a legal entry to the desired place. This off late has become a major problem and Gordimer evidently explores the same in The Pickup. Julie, owing to the fact that she belongs to class of privileged white, can move anywhere freely, very much similar to the people in the Summers’ circle “who may move about the world welcome everywhere” as compared to people like Abdu who have “to live disguised as a grease-monkey without a name” (40). He has to suffer the constraints of being nameless and of having to do manual labour without workers’ rights. Whereas Julie and her kind are the “…right kind of foreigner, one who belonged to an internationally acceptable category of origin…” (140); Abdu and his kind belong to the wrong kind for they are not the part of organized labor. Abdu represents the truly disadvantaged group-either unemployed or underemployed. He is an economist working as a mechanic in a garage illegally because “It’s cheap for the owner; he doesn’t pay accident insurance, pension, medical aid…” (17). People like Abdu are relegated to some decaying inner part of the city away from the limelight of the globalized world, on the periphery to which illegal immigrants are drawn without any name and identity. The author describes these places as “labyrinth to get lost in” rather than getting indulged freely in this global network (86). While Julie is free to choose an identity, Abdu is addressed vaguely as “some sort of black” (40-41), “some sort of Arab” (44), and the “young foreigner (colored, or whatever he is)” (46). He becomes “the Someone” (42) who has no control over his future; for his future in this globalized country depends on whether he is successful in evading the law.

Migration thus becomes one of the thematic concerns for Gordimer in the post-apartheid era. In an interview with Karina Magdalena Szczurek, Gordimer remembers the news of “58 Chinese immigrants who were found suffocated in a lorry on the ferry from Calais to Dover in June 2000” (329). Through Abdu, Gordimer exposes the difficult situation and suffering of the illegal migrants especially from the underdeveloped third world countries. She considers it as “…terrible. Inhuman. Disgraceful” (Pickup19). According to Sue Kossew, The pickup gives evidence how “globalization, rather than leading to more choice for those from ‘underdeveloped’ nations, reduces such choices, while enabling only the already- privileged to participate in the interchange of ideas […]of cultural globalization” (qtd. in Szczurek 253). Julie, her parents and other whites in the text are free to move anywhere around the world whereas Abdu and millions like him belonging to underdeveloped countries and who aspire to achieve economic advancement in the developed countries have to suffer indignities.

Eventually, Abdu gets deported to his country of origin; his desert village which he despises in all its extremity as it has nothing in it: “no work, no development” and suffers from “corrupt government, religious oppression, cross-border conflict” (Pickup14). Since the beginning of coming in contact with Julie, Abdu knows that he “wasn’t one of them” (7). Julie and Abdu are worlds apart; Abdu aspires to become one which Julie wants to escape. Thus the commonality between them is the aspiration to redefine themselves and claim a new identity. Julie does not want to be identified with anything her parent’s wealth and class symbolizes whereas for Abdu the very sense of identity lies in the wealth and class. He is not able to comprehend why Julie wants to leave all this. As Andrew Sullivan, in his review of the novel, suggests, “Julie wants out; he wants in.” Sullivan’s observation becomes evident when Julie takes Abdu to her parents house and notices “…how he listens to this intimate language of money alertly and intently-as he never listens at the EL-AY Café; always absent, elsewhere….She is overcome by embarrassment- what is he thinking, of these people-she is responsible for whatever that may be. She’s responsible for them” (Pickup 45). Julie however fails to realize the extent to which people belonging to her background matter to him. After reaching the cottage from the party, ignorant of Julie’s desire, he remarks: “Interesting people there. They make a success” (51). Despite getting a comment about them, Abdu admires them. For him “They are people doing well in their life. All the time. Moving on always. Clever. With what they do, make in the world, not just talking intelligent. They are alive, they take opportunity, they use the…will, yes, I mean to say, the will. To do .To have” (62).

Julie tries to hide her affiliations with the upper class from Abdu. She takes Abdu to the party at her parents’ house quite unwillingly. As the narrator puts it: “The shame of being ashamed of them; the shame of him seeing what she was, is…this origin of hers now expansively revealed before him, laid out like the margaritas and the wine and the composed still-life of the fish platter, salads and desserts” (45). Hardly does she care to realize that Abdu aspires for the same of which she is ashamed. She refuses to notice all these things which divide them. What is noticeable is the fact that despite being antagonistic to all the greed and snobbishness that her biological clan represents, Julie is unable to realize that Abdu is also one of them, or if not then has a strong desire to be one of them. As Michiel Heyns points out “[a]shamed of her affluent background, she has no way of knowing that to an illegal immigrant this is her main attraction, that she promises access to privileges of the new country” (qtd. in Szczurek 243). They unknowingly aspire to take each other’s status in the society. They perhaps share mutual unintelligibility about each other: “She is ashamed of her parents; he thinks she is ashamed of him. Neither knows either, about the other” (Pickup 38).

Despite all the difference, they become lovers and the one thing that seems to unite them is sex. Sexuality has always been part of Gordimer’s writing. In The Pickup it serves as a mode of communication and “a language of its own which transcends other barriers dividing people” (Szczurek 241). Not only that, sex also serves as a place where the two protagonists can escape from their respective worlds. Julie locates herself in sex with Abdu. She describes it as “…the kind of love-making that is another country, a country of its own, not yours or mine” (Pickup 96). For Julie it is blissfully satisfying but for Abdu it remains a mere “fuck. That’s the word that comes to him…”and he remains detached from her, trying to resist the “feelings of tenderness towards this girl. That temptation” (28). Abdu never gives in to that temptation. Julie thinks that she has the power to understand Abdu in spite of the lack of common language between them, “…she thinks she lovingly has taught herself to interpret him instinctively” (62). In reality she never perceives him correctly, rather she misinterprets him which is revealed by the narrator and which they never really overcome. Abdu seems to realize this discrepancy but preferred to keep up the appearances for he somewhere knows that Julie might be of use to fulfill his ambitions. Julie and Abdu represent Gordimer’s couples who in her post-apartheid novels are drawn towards each other in the sexually “joyous revelation” despite their apparent mismatch (Gordimer, HG 64).

J.M Coetzee observes that the reason behind Julie’s action of following Abdu in his deportation lies in sex. He says, “Since sex with Abdu continues to be profoundly satisfying, there must be deeply hidden potential to the relationship” (qtd. in Szczurek 248). It can be mentioned here that in case of lovers belonging to different cultural background, love often takes the metaphor of land, but in Julie and Abdu’s case the understanding of this aspect of love remains one sided and illusionary. Abdu does not share such emotion with her. When Julie’s poet friend hands her over a poem by William Plomer which reads: “Let us go to another country/Not yours or mine/ And start again. /To another country? Which? One without fires, where fever/Lurks under leaves, and water/Is sold to those who thirst?/ And carry dope or papers/In our shoes to save us starving? /Hope would be our passport,/ The rest is understood/Just say the word”(Pickup 88-89). The poem, of course, has meaning to her only. The country is not simply a physical space but a way that leads to understanding not through verbal language but that of love and sexuality. Abdu however creeps away from such ideas as love, he knows, will be a hindrance in what he wants to achieve. He remains practical in his approach rather than acting emotionally:

Dumb.

Might as well be. When they are talking about matters you know better than they do or ever will. You are dumb if you can’t speak-speak their language as they do. You have to use your lips and tongue for the other purpose, your penis and even soles of your feet, caressing hers in the bed, in place of your opinions, convictions./What use is that, now?

He can’t make love…. (90)

In order to maintain the sense of sexual location, Julie relocates with Abdu alias Ibrahim Ibn Musa (his real name) to his desert country much to the dismay of her father. Even Abdu is reluctant to take her along which reveals his selfishness: “What’m I expected to do with her. There….What use will she be. To herself, to me. She’s not for me, can’t she realize that?” (95). Unlike other white South Africans who migrate to Australia, Canada and Britain, Julie’s journey brings her to this impoverished country which in fact bestows on her a consciousness of self that makes her seem “strangely new to herself” (117). Abdu on the other hand is unable to understand the reason behind her coming to this country, where he thinks it is better to be “dead” than to “live there” (95). Julie on the contrary finds home here. As Michiel Heynes points out: “it is a horrible irony that Julie should through her involvement with Abdu follow him to his desolate desert community, whereas he had hopes of being given access to her prosperity” (qtd. in Szczurek 252).While Abdu argues that she will find nothing in his country, for Julie there is nothing in Johannesburg. She has long transferred her affiliation from the members of The Table to her lover:

The struggle stays clenched tightly inside her. It possesses her, alien to them, even to those she thought close; and makes them alien to her. She feels she never knew them, any of them, in the real sense of knowing that she has now with him, the man foreign to her who came to her one day from under the belly of a car, frugal with his beautiful smile granted, dignified in a way learnt in a life hidden from her, like his name. Her crowd, Mates, Brothers and Sisters. They are the strangers and he is the known. (91-92)

Unlike Abdu, Julie by virtue of being a privileged white has the choices opened to her, as Anthony York, in his review of The Pickup, suggests that the freedom of making choices is accompanied with class privilege. He opines: “Through Julie, Gordimer illustrates how privilege is not something that can easily be renounced. The latitude it allows to those born to it persists even when their circumstances change….It is this unequal ability to experience freedom that remains the gulf between the two lovers.” Gordimer has also validated this point in the text when the narrator says “…She was the one with choices. The freedom of the world was hers” (Pickup 115). Out of her own volition, Julie chooses to stay in a place bound by various restrictions imposed on the females of the community. While Abdu remains alienated to his own society, Julie finds fulfillment and integrates with the same.

Gordimer provides a sort of detailed description of the small underdeveloped country with a male dominated society, where people live according to the rules of Koran, where should Abdu take Julie he must marry her. Abdu has to conform to the rules of his society. So “he even married her; had to, couldn’t take her to his mother as if she’d some whore he’d picked up in his loneliness…” (174). These lines, besides confirming the aforementioned observation also throws light on Abdu’s perception of his relationship with Julie, for him there is no love, just a kind of moral obligation of his society that forces him to marry her. Right from the onset Abdu tries to hide his origin from Julie because, as Maureen Freely in her review of the novel points out: “Abdu is as ashamed of his origins as she is of hers.”

Quite contrary to what Abdu thinks and interprets about Julie’s perception of his place, she is shown adaptive to the new environment and new customs. She is not bothered by the strange people, language and culture. Earlier in the novel there is a discussion about relocation and the narrator reveals that to locate means “…to discover the exact locality of a person or thing; to enter, take possession of” but the question remains “…where to locate the self?...” (Pickup 47). The narrator further explains “…To discover and take over possession of oneself, is that secretly the meaning of ‘relocation’… (48).In the new country, Julie takes possession of the self and which eventually becomes her home. She develops a bond with the females of the family, especially Maryam, Abdu’s sister. In order to create a bond with the community especially with Abdu’s mother she learns their language and in return teaches them hers. She thinks “Why sit among his people as deaf-mute? Always a foreigner where she ate from the communal dish…” (143). She begins to teach English to children and the other ladies at the house of Maryam’s employer in exchange of learning their language. Despite the fact that she does not possess any qualification to teach, she discovers the skill within her. Not only that, she finds a purpose in life in the pursuance of this service which she never found in her earlier profession:

Almost a year since they arrived at his home. She was fully occupied now. Strange; she had never worked like this before, without reservations of self, always had been merely trying out this and that, always conscious that she could move on, any time, to something else, not expecting satisfaction, looking on at herself, half amusedly, as an ant scurrying god knows where….(195)

All this while Abdu has been trying his best to escape out of the “hell” (98) he has come back to and dismisses Julie’s efforts as one of her “adventures” (153). For him the desert is “desolation” and “the denial of everything he yearns for” (262); he shuns it, trying to “…apply for visas for emigration to those endowed countries of the world….Australia, Canada, the USA, anywhere, out of the reproach of this dirty place that was his” (137-38). He finally succeeds in getting a visa to United States of America. On the other hand for Julie desert is “eternity” (172). Besides, she “…has come to be accepted as one of the women who share household tasks, and she makes use of her education to teach English to schoolchildren and anyone else in the village…who would like to improve their chances in what (he has said) is the world….she thinks it’s the first time that expensive education has been put to use” (169-70). She has come to find warmth of family here in this desert country which is missing in that global country. Gordimer probably wants to suggest that in this era of globalization the countries are trying their best to become the most advanced. But unfortunately, in their efforts, they have become places where human relationships, feelings and emotions no longer reside. In this global world, people lose a sense of connection to others even as they try to connect with the people across the globe. Thus Gordimer portrays Julie returning from her solitary forays into the desert to the closeness of Abdu’s family. Eventually she refuses to accompany Abdu to USA and says, “I am staying here” (253). She decides to stay in his country and as Maureen Freely writes: “Julie falls in love again-with the world her husband is so keen to leave”, it goes without saying that she has found her abode here.

In The Pickup Gordimer also exposes the false glamour these ‘Promised Lands’ promise to the immigrants which in fact, is one of the reasons why Julie does not want Abdu to go. She refuses to see Abdu degraded in America, where he would lose his self respect without gaining much material rewards. She thinks: “Again. Living in a dirty hovel…with Christ knows what others of the wrong colours, poor devils like himself (as he used to say), cleaning American shit…doing the jobs that real people, white Americans, won’t do themselves.” She further thinks: “…America, America. The great and terrible USA….The harshest country in the world. The highest buildings to reach up to in corporate positions (there he is, one of the poor devils, the beloved one, climbing a home-made rope ladder up forty storeys); and to jump off from head- first. That’s where the world is. He thinks I don’t know; he doesn’t know…” (230).

Nadine Gordimer at this juncture wants to put forward the fact that discrimination exists even in the most advanced economies of the world but at the same time she does not want to portray that it has vanished in her country. It becomes evident through Abdu’s take on the subject when he angrily retorts back to Julie: “…in your city? Your country? All real people by law now, but who still does the shit work, neither Nigel Ackroyd Summers nor his daughter Julie…” (230).The lines give a clear indication of the earlier division still persisting. However if Abdu stays and agrees to the partnership with his uncle then he must participate in an economy that is based on nepotism and bribery as is evident from the shady arms deal. This proves the point that corruption that has seeped into the post-apartheid South Africa is not exclusive to this country alone. Gordimer hints at the universal nature of corruption and discrimination brought about by capitalism. J. M. Coetzee echoes similar thoughts and has called it the novel’s ‘political thrust’:

not only in its exploration of the mind of the economic migrant, or one type of economic migrant, but in its critique and ultimately dismissal of false gods of the West, presided over by the god of market capital, to whose whims Julie’s South Africa has abandoned itself so unreservedly and who has extended his sway even into Ibrahim’s despised patch of sand…. (qtd. in Szczurek 268)

Unlike Helen Shaw of The Lying Days and Rosa Burger of Burger’s Daughter, Julie Summers leaves South Africa but does not return to it at the end of the novel, which makes The Pickup unusual among Gordimer’s novels. After Apartheid, Gordimer can now create characters who foray beyond the borders of South Africa for in this globalized world Gordimer’s concern is the global discrepancy between rich and poor. Gordimer here traverses the borders not to tell about the rich developed countries but the underdeveloped countries of migrants on whom the rich countries depend to a great extent. Similar to her earlier task of describing the townships that are separated from the white world, here she takes on the exploration of marginalized countries away from the glamour zone of the globalized world. At the same time by depicting Julie adopting people and adapting culture in a foreign shore, Gordimer gives a strong indication of the true meaning of globalization which includes synthesis of different cultures. For Gordimer the globalization of culture either emphasize “the unity, the oneness of cultural expression” or to “value the differences, bring them into play across aesthetic frontiers and thus disprove the long-held sovereignty of national and political divisions over the development of human potential” (Gordimer, Living 209). In that case, Julie undoubtedly is the apostle of Gordimer’s belief for she not only transcends her cultural frontiers but also negotiates a new place for herself in the community.