WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.919 The image that always comes to mind when I think 00:00:01.919 --> 00:00:04.559 of a plectide South Africa is noise. It's a history 00:00:04.559 --> 00:00:08.880 of a volume. You hear the shouting of protests, 00:00:09.179 --> 00:00:11.740 the barking of police dogs, the chanting of crowds, 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.800 the crack of gunfire. It's a chaotic, deafening, 00:00:15.800 --> 00:00:19.739 sonic landscape. But today we are looking at 00:00:19.739 --> 00:00:23.449 a figure who operated in the quiet. Someone whose 00:00:23.449 --> 00:00:26.370 power didn't come from shouting into a megaphone, 00:00:26.370 --> 00:00:29.649 but from sitting in a room alone staring at a 00:00:29.649 --> 00:00:31.670 blank page. And yet that silence was arguably 00:00:31.670 --> 00:00:34.750 louder than the gunfire. We are talking, of course, 00:00:34.770 --> 00:00:36.909 about Nadine Gordimer. The first South African 00:00:36.909 --> 00:00:38.770 and the first African woman to win the Nobel 00:00:38.770 --> 00:00:41.490 Prize in Literature. That happened in 1991. But 00:00:41.490 --> 00:00:43.890 to treat her just as a writer feels like a category 00:00:43.890 --> 00:00:46.670 error. Well, it feels too small. It does. Based 00:00:46.670 --> 00:00:49.130 on the biography and the stack of literary analysis 00:00:49.130 --> 00:00:50.969 we've gone through for this deep dive, she seems 00:00:50.969 --> 00:00:53.750 more like a spy or maybe a witness of the prosecution 00:00:53.750 --> 00:00:56.130 in the trial of her own country. That is a very, 00:00:56.149 --> 00:00:58.729 very accurate framing. The sources we have today, 00:00:58.909 --> 00:01:01.130 including a comprehensive biography and several 00:01:01.130 --> 00:01:03.929 critical essays, paint a picture of a woman who 00:01:03.929 --> 00:01:06.250 is effectively living a double life. Right. On 00:01:06.250 --> 00:01:09.409 the surface, she is this petite. bourgeois white 00:01:09.409 --> 00:01:11.909 woman living in the suburbs of Johannesburg. 00:01:12.069 --> 00:01:14.250 She's attending dinner parties. She's wearing 00:01:14.250 --> 00:01:17.370 elegant clothes. But beneath that veneer, she 00:01:17.370 --> 00:01:19.569 is editing Nelson Mandela's defense speeches 00:01:19.569 --> 00:01:22.310 and hiding fugitives in her guest room. It's 00:01:22.310 --> 00:01:24.530 the intersection of high art and high treason. 00:01:24.629 --> 00:01:27.370 And that's our mission for this deep dive. We 00:01:27.370 --> 00:01:29.090 want to understand the mechanics of that life. 00:01:29.640 --> 00:01:32.980 How does a girl born in a dusty mining town with 00:01:32.980 --> 00:01:35.000 a so -called weak heart and a repressive mother 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:37.819 become the moral conscience of a nation? Yeah. 00:01:37.900 --> 00:01:40.019 How does that happen? How do you go from a colonial 00:01:40.019 --> 00:01:42.859 backwater to the Nobel Prize? It's a remarkable 00:01:42.859 --> 00:01:45.879 trajectory. And to understand it, we have to 00:01:45.879 --> 00:01:48.200 look at the key themes that emerge from her life 00:01:48.200 --> 00:01:50.359 and from her work. We're going to look at the 00:01:50.359 --> 00:01:53.040 intersection of art and politics. Can you ever 00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:54.920 really separate them? I don't think she thought 00:01:54.920 --> 00:01:57.280 you could. No. We're also going to talk about 00:01:57.280 --> 00:01:59.260 the concept of the white witness. What it means 00:01:59.260 --> 00:02:02.079 to document a struggle that is in many ways not 00:02:02.079 --> 00:02:04.599 your own. It's a very complicated position to 00:02:04.599 --> 00:02:06.959 be in. And censorship. We have to talk about 00:02:06.959 --> 00:02:08.840 censorship. The power of the written word and 00:02:08.840 --> 00:02:11.300 why the government was so terrified of her books. 00:02:11.400 --> 00:02:13.879 Absolutely. And finally, the tension of identity. 00:02:14.659 --> 00:02:17.240 Gordimer was Jewish. She was white. She was African. 00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:19.860 She was English speaking. She was a Venn diagram 00:02:19.860 --> 00:02:22.680 of conflicting identities. And she lived right 00:02:22.680 --> 00:02:25.370 in the messy middle of it all. So let's start 00:02:25.370 --> 00:02:26.889 at the beginning. You have to understand the 00:02:26.889 --> 00:02:28.909 geography to understand the woman. She wasn't 00:02:28.909 --> 00:02:31.110 born in the cosmopolitan circles of Cape Town 00:02:31.110 --> 00:02:33.830 or, you know, the political heat of Soweto. She 00:02:33.830 --> 00:02:37.729 was born in 1923 in a place called Springs. Springs. 00:02:38.009 --> 00:02:39.949 The name sounds so pastoral, doesn't it? Like 00:02:39.949 --> 00:02:42.009 a spa town or something out of a Jane Austen 00:02:42.009 --> 00:02:43.909 novel? It really does. I picture green hills 00:02:43.909 --> 00:02:46.129 and, well, springs. But the reality described 00:02:46.129 --> 00:02:48.849 in the notes is anything but. Springs was a mining 00:02:48.849 --> 00:02:51.310 town on the East Rand, just outside Johannesburg. 00:02:52.349 --> 00:02:54.610 In the 1920s and 30s, this was a place defined 00:02:54.610 --> 00:02:57.669 entirely by extraction, by what was under the 00:02:57.669 --> 00:03:00.189 ground. Gold. Gold. So you have these massive 00:03:00.189 --> 00:03:02.330 gold mines, these huge white slag heaps that 00:03:02.330 --> 00:03:04.629 look like snow from a distance, but were actually 00:03:04.629 --> 00:03:07.110 toxic waste. The whole landscape was industrial, 00:03:07.409 --> 00:03:10.150 scarred. And the social structure was just as 00:03:10.150 --> 00:03:13.280 rigid, just as mechanical. perfectly. It was 00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:15.680 a colonial machine designed to pull wealth out 00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:17.840 of the ground. And the social structure, the 00:03:17.840 --> 00:03:20.800 racial hierarchy, reflected that perfectly. There 00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:22.560 were the white mine managers, the white shop 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:25.360 owners, and then at the bottom, the massive population 00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:28.120 of black laborers living in townships. And inside 00:03:28.120 --> 00:03:30.060 this machine, you have the Gordimer household. 00:03:30.479 --> 00:03:33.500 And looking at the profile of her parents, this 00:03:33.500 --> 00:03:35.639 seems to be a study in contradictions from the 00:03:35.639 --> 00:03:38.680 very beginning. A huge study in contradictions. 00:03:39.159 --> 00:03:41.479 We talk about her identity as a white African, 00:03:41.659 --> 00:03:44.300 but her roots are actually quite complicated. 00:03:44.580 --> 00:03:47.379 She is a product of immigration. Which puts her 00:03:47.379 --> 00:03:49.520 slightly outside the main power structures, right? 00:03:49.639 --> 00:03:51.719 She's not Afrikaner. She's not really part of 00:03:51.719 --> 00:03:53.400 the British colonial establishment. Exactly. 00:03:53.699 --> 00:03:56.979 She's in that other category. Her father, Isidore 00:03:56.979 --> 00:04:00.159 Gordimer, was a Jewish watchmaker. And he wasn't 00:04:00.159 --> 00:04:02.699 just an immigrant. He was a refugee. A refugee 00:04:02.699 --> 00:04:06.750 from where? He had fled Tsarist Russia. specifically 00:04:06.750 --> 00:04:10.250 from a town called Igorai in what is now Lithuania, 00:04:10.349 --> 00:04:11.810 I believe. It was part of the Russian Empire 00:04:11.810 --> 00:04:15.030 then. And he fled young. He left at the age of 00:04:15.030 --> 00:04:18.209 13 to escape the pogroms and the rampant anti 00:04:18.209 --> 00:04:21.810 -Semitism. Thirteen? That's a child. A child 00:04:21.810 --> 00:04:23.730 on his own. It's an incredible story of survival. 00:04:24.120 --> 00:04:25.980 And this is one of those psychological puzzles 00:04:25.980 --> 00:04:29.060 I found most fascinating in the reading. You 00:04:29.060 --> 00:04:31.839 have a man who fled state -sanctioned persecution. 00:04:32.100 --> 00:04:34.439 He knows what it's like to be the underdog. He 00:04:34.439 --> 00:04:36.879 knows what it's like to be hated for your ethnicity. 00:04:37.600 --> 00:04:40.079 You would think, logically, that he would look 00:04:40.079 --> 00:04:42.160 at the racial oppression in South Africa and 00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:44.319 see a mirror of his own trauma. You'd think he'd 00:04:44.319 --> 00:04:46.019 be the first one to say, this is wrong. I've 00:04:46.019 --> 00:04:48.199 seen this before. You would think so. Yeah. It 00:04:48.199 --> 00:04:50.379 seems like the natural empathetic bridge to make. 00:04:50.839 --> 00:04:54.079 But the biography highlights a stark... Somewhat 00:04:54.079 --> 00:04:58.139 tragic irony here. Isidore Gordimer had almost 00:04:58.139 --> 00:05:00.339 no sympathy for the plight of black South Africans. 00:05:00.519 --> 00:05:02.500 Not at all. The sources describe him as being 00:05:02.500 --> 00:05:06.399 completely apolitical, even conservative. He 00:05:06.399 --> 00:05:09.079 wasn't an activist. He was a survivor. His focus 00:05:09.079 --> 00:05:12.379 was entirely on assimilation, on safety, on his 00:05:12.379 --> 00:05:15.220 trade as a watchmaker. His goal was to not make 00:05:15.220 --> 00:05:18.180 ways. It's almost as if the trauma made him close 00:05:18.180 --> 00:05:20.920 ranks rather than open up, build a wall around 00:05:20.920 --> 00:05:24.370 himself and his family. Precisely. It's a common, 00:05:24.389 --> 00:05:27.529 if uncomfortable, psychological phenomenon. The 00:05:27.529 --> 00:05:30.410 oppressed becoming indifferent to other oppressions 00:05:30.410 --> 00:05:32.769 in their quest for security. He wanted to be 00:05:32.769 --> 00:05:35.589 a good South African, which in that context meant 00:05:35.589 --> 00:05:38.089 adhering to the racial hierarchy. He built a 00:05:38.089 --> 00:05:40.209 little fortress around his family. So the father 00:05:40.209 --> 00:05:42.589 keeps his head down, but the mother, Hannah... 00:05:42.759 --> 00:05:44.899 Everyone called her Nan. She is the complete 00:05:44.899 --> 00:05:47.379 opposite energy in the house. Completely different. 00:05:47.560 --> 00:05:50.079 Nan Myers was British, also Jewish, but from 00:05:50.079 --> 00:05:52.300 a comfortable, assimilated background in London. 00:05:52.439 --> 00:05:54.480 And she was the one looking out the window of 00:05:54.480 --> 00:05:56.399 that fortress Isidore had built. And what did 00:05:56.399 --> 00:05:59.379 she see? She saw the poverty. She saw the systemic 00:05:59.379 --> 00:06:01.839 cruelty of the past laws and the segregation. 00:06:02.660 --> 00:06:04.920 And unlike her husband, she felt compelled to 00:06:04.920 --> 00:06:07.660 do something. She actually founded a Crescia 00:06:07.660 --> 00:06:10.629 daycare for black children in their area. So 00:06:10.629 --> 00:06:13.550 she was an activist in her own right. In a limited 00:06:13.550 --> 00:06:16.610 charitable sort of bourgeois way, yes. It wasn't 00:06:16.610 --> 00:06:19.310 radical political action, but it was engagement. 00:06:19.329 --> 00:06:22.189 It was a recognition of the humanity of the people 00:06:22.189 --> 00:06:24.870 her husband was trying to ignore. So inside young 00:06:24.870 --> 00:06:27.029 Nadine's living room, you have a dialectic playing 00:06:27.029 --> 00:06:30.490 out every single day. Indifference versus action. 00:06:30.870 --> 00:06:33.350 Survival versus compassion. Keep your head down 00:06:33.350 --> 00:06:36.250 versus reach your hand out. And watching all 00:06:36.250 --> 00:06:38.959 of this is Nadine. But she's not just watching 00:06:38.959 --> 00:06:40.899 because she's naturally curious. She's watching 00:06:40.899 --> 00:06:43.060 because she's trapped. And we have to talk about 00:06:43.060 --> 00:06:45.339 the weak heart. This part of her story feels 00:06:45.339 --> 00:06:47.199 like something out of a Tennessee Williams play 00:06:47.199 --> 00:06:49.980 or a Victorian novel. It does have a gothic quality 00:06:49.980 --> 00:06:52.439 to it. It's so strange. I mean, what actually 00:06:52.439 --> 00:06:55.319 happened? When Nadine was a child, she was attending 00:06:55.319 --> 00:06:57.860 a Catholic convent school. But then when she 00:06:57.860 --> 00:07:00.339 was around 10 or 11, her mother abruptly pulled 00:07:00.339 --> 00:07:03.060 her out. Just like that. Just like that. Nan 00:07:03.060 --> 00:07:06.139 claimed Nadine had a weak heart. Specifically, 00:07:06.259 --> 00:07:08.819 a thyroid condition that made physical exertion 00:07:08.819 --> 00:07:11.740 dangerous. She basically said, you are too sick 00:07:11.740 --> 00:07:14.040 to go to school. You are too sick to run and 00:07:14.040 --> 00:07:16.180 play with other children. You must stay home. 00:07:16.439 --> 00:07:19.879 But was it true? Or was this, I don't know, Munchausen 00:07:19.879 --> 00:07:22.620 by proxy? Was the mother projecting her own anxieties? 00:07:23.079 --> 00:07:25.139 The sources leaned very heavily toward the latter, 00:07:25.240 --> 00:07:28.319 or at least a severe, severe exaggeration. Nan 00:07:28.319 --> 00:07:30.439 had her own anxieties. She was in a very unhappy 00:07:30.439 --> 00:07:33.000 marriage to Isidore, and it seems she projected 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:36.370 that need for control onto Nadine. She effectively 00:07:36.370 --> 00:07:38.329 placed her daughter under house arrest for the 00:07:38.329 --> 00:07:40.629 most crucial years of her adolescence. So from 00:07:40.629 --> 00:07:43.529 age 11 to 16, roughly. Yes. She was cut off from 00:07:43.529 --> 00:07:45.949 her peers, cut off from the world. That is a 00:07:45.949 --> 00:07:47.990 lifetime for a teenager. Those are the formative 00:07:47.990 --> 00:07:50.610 social years. No dances, no sports, no passing 00:07:50.610 --> 00:07:53.589 notes in class, just home. Just home. And her 00:07:53.589 --> 00:07:55.930 mother. But think about the unintended consequence 00:07:55.930 --> 00:07:58.889 of that, well, that totalitarian maternal control. 00:07:59.290 --> 00:08:02.170 What does a brilliant, lonely child do when she 00:08:02.170 --> 00:08:04.509 is locked in a house in a dusty mining town? 00:08:04.709 --> 00:08:07.170 She reads. She devours books. She lives in other 00:08:07.170 --> 00:08:10.029 worlds. She reads everything in the local library. 00:08:10.389 --> 00:08:12.810 And more importantly, she dissects the people 00:08:12.810 --> 00:08:15.800 around her. That isolation was the crucible. 00:08:15.879 --> 00:08:18.779 It forced her to develop a capacity for observation 00:08:18.779 --> 00:08:21.779 that was almost forensic. She couldn't be a participant, 00:08:21.879 --> 00:08:24.339 so she became a spectator. A professional spectator. 00:08:24.420 --> 00:08:26.620 She wasn't alone in life. She was watching it. 00:08:26.699 --> 00:08:28.959 She was looking at the adults at her parents' 00:08:29.079 --> 00:08:31.519 dinner parties, looking at the servants, looking 00:08:31.519 --> 00:08:34.299 at the dynamics of power in her own kitchen. 00:08:35.100 --> 00:08:38.000 She was studying the human animal in its cage. 00:08:38.360 --> 00:08:41.580 So the mother in trying to keep her weak and 00:08:41.580 --> 00:08:44.399 dependent and close actually sharpened her mind 00:08:44.399 --> 00:08:47.940 into a weapon exactly the weak heart didn't kill 00:08:47.940 --> 00:08:50.720 her it made her a writer and a fiercely independent 00:08:50.720 --> 00:08:53.639 one eventually She published her first story, 00:08:53.759 --> 00:08:56.600 The Quest for Seeing Gold, at age 13 in the Children's 00:08:56.600 --> 00:08:59.580 Sunday Express. Thirteen. By 16, she was publishing 00:08:59.580 --> 00:09:02.139 adult fiction in national magazines. She basically 00:09:02.139 --> 00:09:03.960 skipped childhood and went straight to being 00:09:03.960 --> 00:09:05.960 an observer of the human condition. And there's 00:09:05.960 --> 00:09:09.080 another layer to this early exposure to repression. 00:09:09.379 --> 00:09:12.179 It wasn't just her mother repressing her. She 00:09:12.179 --> 00:09:14.159 saw the state doing it, too, in a very direct 00:09:14.159 --> 00:09:16.399 way. There's a mention of a police raid on her 00:09:16.399 --> 00:09:19.120 home. Yes, this is a pivotal memory she talks 00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:22.190 about. As a teenager, she witnessed a police 00:09:22.190 --> 00:09:25.590 raid on her family home. But again, the police 00:09:25.590 --> 00:09:27.669 weren't there for the White family. They weren't 00:09:27.669 --> 00:09:29.830 there for Isidore or Nan. They were there for 00:09:29.830 --> 00:09:31.610 the servants. They were raiding the servants' 00:09:31.750 --> 00:09:34.269 quarters in the backyard. Under the past laws 00:09:34.269 --> 00:09:36.750 and liquor laws, they could basically invade 00:09:36.750 --> 00:09:40.039 those spaces at will. They were looking for illicitly 00:09:40.039 --> 00:09:43.559 brewed alcohol or seditious documents. And they 00:09:43.559 --> 00:09:46.139 confiscated letters and diaries from a servant's 00:09:46.139 --> 00:09:47.899 room. That must have been a violation that stuck 00:09:47.899 --> 00:09:51.000 with her. The idea that your private words, your 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:53.139 thoughts on a page could be seized by the state. 00:09:53.379 --> 00:09:56.419 It was a profound early lesson in the total reach 00:09:56.419 --> 00:09:59.159 of the apartheid state. It showed her that privacy 00:09:59.159 --> 00:10:01.460 was a privilege of whiteness. And even that was 00:10:01.460 --> 00:10:04.299 fragile. It's not a huge leap from seizing a 00:10:04.299 --> 00:10:07.019 servant's diary to banning a novelist's book. 00:10:07.279 --> 00:10:09.879 So, she's the girl in the bubble, but the bubble 00:10:09.879 --> 00:10:12.299 is made of colonial anxiety and maternal control. 00:10:13.039 --> 00:10:15.860 Eventually, though, the bubble has to pop. For 00:10:15.860 --> 00:10:18.820 Gordimer, that pop seems to be university. Yes, 00:10:18.860 --> 00:10:21.840 she spends a year at the University of the Witwatersrand, 00:10:21.980 --> 00:10:25.470 or WITS, as it's known in South Africa. And for 00:10:25.470 --> 00:10:28.070 a white girl from Springs who has been homeschooled 00:10:28.070 --> 00:10:30.269 and isolated for years, this was like stepping 00:10:30.269 --> 00:10:32.850 onto another planet. Because Springs was a white 00:10:32.850 --> 00:10:35.389 silo, the interactions with black people were 00:10:35.389 --> 00:10:37.710 purely on a master -servant basis. Completely. 00:10:37.970 --> 00:10:40.669 But at WITS, for the very first time, the color 00:10:40.669 --> 00:10:43.309 bar wasn't just a law. It was something people 00:10:43.309 --> 00:10:45.490 were actively intellectually challenging and 00:10:45.490 --> 00:10:48.610 crossing. She met black intellectuals, artists, 00:10:48.909 --> 00:10:52.029 writers, lawyers, people on her own level. And 00:10:52.029 --> 00:10:54.129 she drifted into the orbit of Sophia Town. She 00:10:54.129 --> 00:10:56.190 did. Sophia Town is legendary. We should probably 00:10:56.190 --> 00:10:57.789 explain what that was for listeners who might 00:10:57.789 --> 00:10:59.470 not know. It was sort of the Harlem Renaissance 00:10:59.470 --> 00:11:01.809 of South Africa, right? Exactly. Before the nationalist 00:11:01.809 --> 00:11:04.509 government bulldozed it in the 1950s, specifically 00:11:04.509 --> 00:11:07.590 to crush black urban culture, Sophia Town was 00:11:07.590 --> 00:11:10.710 this vibrant, jazz -soaked, intellectually rigorous 00:11:10.710 --> 00:11:13.539 Johannesburg suburb. It was a place where black 00:11:13.539 --> 00:11:16.200 and white bohemians mixed. You had writers like 00:11:16.200 --> 00:11:19.559 Ezekiel and Philele, artists, musicians. For 00:11:19.559 --> 00:11:22.259 Gortimer, this dismantled the lie she had been 00:11:22.259 --> 00:11:25.139 raised with. The lie that black people were inherently 00:11:25.139 --> 00:11:28.179 inferior or different. She was in rooms with 00:11:28.179 --> 00:11:31.220 people who were smarter, funnier, and more talented 00:11:31.220 --> 00:11:34.210 than anyone she knew from Springs. She realized 00:11:34.210 --> 00:11:36.370 that the barriers she saw every day were political 00:11:36.370 --> 00:11:39.389 constructs, not natural laws. This is the awakening 00:11:39.389 --> 00:11:42.250 phase of the hero's journey. And it coincides 00:11:42.250 --> 00:11:44.789 with her professional ascent. It's actually surprising 00:11:44.789 --> 00:11:46.809 how early she broke into the American market. 00:11:47.090 --> 00:11:51.070 In 1951, The New Yorker accepted her story, A 00:11:51.070 --> 00:11:53.110 Watcher of the Dead. That cannot be overstated. 00:11:53.110 --> 00:11:56.289 In 1951, for a young writer in Johannesburg to 00:11:56.289 --> 00:11:59.139 get into The New Yorker? That is a golden ticket. 00:11:59.220 --> 00:12:01.379 It's like being an indie band and getting a call 00:12:01.379 --> 00:12:03.159 from the Rolling Stones. It changed everything. 00:12:03.320 --> 00:12:05.000 It gave her financial independence, which is 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:08.740 crucial for a female writer in the 50s. But maybe 00:12:08.740 --> 00:12:10.440 more importantly, it gave her a kind of international 00:12:10.440 --> 00:12:14.159 immunity. A shield. A shield. When you are a 00:12:14.159 --> 00:12:16.299 New Yorker contributor, when you are famous in 00:12:16.299 --> 00:12:18.600 London and New York, the South African police 00:12:18.600 --> 00:12:21.000 have to think twice before dragging you away 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:23.419 in the middle of the night. It gave her a platform 00:12:23.419 --> 00:12:26.159 from which she could be. The White Witness. She 00:12:26.159 --> 00:12:28.820 had a very specific philosophy about short stories, 00:12:28.899 --> 00:12:30.720 didn't she? The sources say she called the short 00:12:30.720 --> 00:12:34.000 story the literary form for our age. Why do you 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.019 think she felt that way? Well, think about the 00:12:36.019 --> 00:12:39.240 nature of life under apartheid. It was fragmented. 00:12:39.299 --> 00:12:41.840 It was tense. People were living in moments of 00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:44.919 collision, not long flowing narratives. So a 00:12:44.919 --> 00:12:47.320 novel implies a certain stability of society 00:12:47.320 --> 00:12:50.179 that just didn't exist. I think so. A novel implies 00:12:50.179 --> 00:12:52.860 a long, coherent history, but a short story. 00:12:53.500 --> 00:12:56.240 That captures the flash of lightning. It captures 00:12:56.240 --> 00:12:58.740 the specific fleeting interaction between a white 00:12:58.740 --> 00:13:01.559 mistress and a black servant in a kitchen or 00:13:01.559 --> 00:13:03.600 a moment of police violence on a street corner. 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:06.159 She felt it was the most honest way to document 00:13:06.159 --> 00:13:08.419 a fractured society. That makes a lot of sense. 00:13:08.460 --> 00:13:10.460 It's like a snapshot of a car crash rather than 00:13:10.460 --> 00:13:12.759 a long history of the road. But she did write 00:13:12.759 --> 00:13:15.039 novels, of course. Her first one, The Lying Days, 00:13:15.279 --> 00:13:19.279 came out in 1953. The Lying Days. A very telling 00:13:19.279 --> 00:13:22.190 title, isn't it? This book really acts as a bridge 00:13:22.190 --> 00:13:24.350 between her early life and her mature political 00:13:24.350 --> 00:13:27.610 work. It's a buildings Roman, a coming -of -age 00:13:27.610 --> 00:13:30.710 story set in a mining town suspiciously like 00:13:30.710 --> 00:13:33.590 Springs. So it's semi -autobiographical. Deeply. 00:13:33.610 --> 00:13:37.230 The protagonist, Helen, wakes up to the reality 00:13:37.230 --> 00:13:40.009 of racism around her. It's essentially Gordimer 00:13:40.009 --> 00:13:42.730 documenting her own shedding of innocence. She 00:13:42.730 --> 00:13:44.649 realizes that her comfortable white life, her 00:13:44.649 --> 00:13:47.490 lying days of childhood, are built on a foundation 00:13:47.490 --> 00:13:50.149 of lies and exploitation. But realizing it is 00:13:50.149 --> 00:13:52.490 one thing, doing something about it is another. 00:13:52.750 --> 00:13:55.690 Usually in these repressive regimes, intellectuals 00:13:55.690 --> 00:13:57.629 have, what, three choices. You leave, you go 00:13:57.629 --> 00:14:00.210 into exile, you shut up internal exile, or you 00:14:00.210 --> 00:14:02.330 get involved and go to jail. But Gortimer found 00:14:02.330 --> 00:14:05.000 a fourth way. The Activist in the Shadows. This 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:07.480 is where the biography reads less like a literary 00:14:07.480 --> 00:14:09.960 review and more like a spy thriller. Because 00:14:09.960 --> 00:14:11.740 I think people today might assume she was just 00:14:11.740 --> 00:14:13.980 a writer -activist, you know, signing petitions, 00:14:13.980 --> 00:14:15.940 writing stern letters to the editor. Right, the 00:14:15.940 --> 00:14:18.820 champagne socialist idea. Attending fundraisers 00:14:18.820 --> 00:14:22.019 in fancy clothes. Exactly. But she was in the 00:14:22.019 --> 00:14:24.820 trenches. The big shift seems to happen around 00:14:24.820 --> 00:14:28.679 1960. Two things happen. First, the arrest of 00:14:28.679 --> 00:14:31.019 her best friend, Betty Dutois, who was a trade 00:14:31.019 --> 00:14:33.759 unionist. And that made it personal. It wasn't 00:14:33.759 --> 00:14:35.940 an abstract injustice anymore. It was her friend 00:14:35.940 --> 00:14:38.659 being taken away. And then the Sharpeville Massacre. 00:14:38.799 --> 00:14:42.899 Sharpeville. March 21st, 1960. That was the turning 00:14:42.899 --> 00:14:45.460 point for the whole country. Police opening fire 00:14:45.460 --> 00:14:47.860 on peaceful protesters who were burning their 00:14:47.860 --> 00:14:51.419 passbooks. Sixty -nine people killed. Most of 00:14:51.419 --> 00:14:53.159 them shot in the back as they tried to flee. 00:14:53.379 --> 00:14:55.740 It was the moment the gloves came off. The state 00:14:55.740 --> 00:14:58.600 showed its true face. And that spurred Gordimer 00:14:58.600 --> 00:15:01.830 into direct action. She joined the African National 00:15:01.830 --> 00:15:04.830 Congress, the ANC. And we absolutely need to 00:15:04.830 --> 00:15:07.590 remind the listener, at this time, the ANC was 00:15:07.590 --> 00:15:10.090 not the ruling party. It was a banned organization. 00:15:10.509 --> 00:15:12.990 The government had declared it a terrorist group. 00:15:13.129 --> 00:15:15.309 It was illegal. Being a member was a criminal 00:15:15.309 --> 00:15:17.769 act. She was risking years in prison, possibly 00:15:17.769 --> 00:15:19.889 worse. This wasn't like joining a political party 00:15:19.889 --> 00:15:22.629 today. This was joining the resistance. And she 00:15:22.629 --> 00:15:24.490 wasn't just a card -carrying member, was she? 00:15:24.909 --> 00:15:28.269 She was using her house, her middle class white 00:15:28.269 --> 00:15:33.029 suburban house, as a safe house. Yes. This is 00:15:33.029 --> 00:15:36.690 incredible. She hid ANC leaders who were on the 00:15:36.690 --> 00:15:39.350 run in her own home to help them escape arrest. 00:15:39.710 --> 00:15:42.330 Can you imagine the tension? The police had already 00:15:42.330 --> 00:15:44.690 raided her home once as a child for a servant's 00:15:44.690 --> 00:15:48.470 letters. Now she is hiding fugitives of the state 00:15:48.470 --> 00:15:50.450 in her guest room. While her neighbors are what? 00:15:50.529 --> 00:15:52.409 Having barbecues and complaining about their 00:15:52.409 --> 00:15:55.029 gardeners? The sheer nerve of it. She was also 00:15:55.029 --> 00:15:57.250 driving people to the border, to Swaziland or 00:15:57.250 --> 00:15:59.789 Botswana to get them out of the country. She 00:15:59.789 --> 00:16:01.909 was effectively trafficking revolutionaries. 00:16:02.090 --> 00:16:04.009 under the nose of one of the most efficient police 00:16:04.009 --> 00:16:06.289 states in the world. And she wasn't blindly loyal 00:16:06.289 --> 00:16:08.710 either. The sources say she joined in part to 00:16:08.710 --> 00:16:10.970 address the organization's flaws from the inside. 00:16:11.190 --> 00:16:13.230 That is so characteristic of her intellectual 00:16:13.230 --> 00:16:15.690 rigor. She didn't do blind faith. She supported 00:16:15.690 --> 00:16:18.269 the goal freedom, a non -racial democracy. But 00:16:18.269 --> 00:16:20.169 she wasn't afraid to critique the methods or 00:16:20.169 --> 00:16:22.789 the internal politics of the ANC. She was a critical 00:16:22.789 --> 00:16:26.269 supporter, not a follower. But the most stunning 00:16:26.269 --> 00:16:28.710 connection, the one that really cements her place 00:16:28.710 --> 00:16:31.610 in history, is her relationship with Nelson Mandela. 00:16:32.149 --> 00:16:34.690 This just blew my mind. I knew they were friends 00:16:34.690 --> 00:16:37.549 later in life, but I didn't realize how deep 00:16:37.549 --> 00:16:39.529 and how far back the connection went. It went 00:16:39.529 --> 00:16:41.549 all the way to the heart of the struggle. She 00:16:41.549 --> 00:16:43.830 became very close friends with his defense attorneys, 00:16:44.009 --> 00:16:46.830 particularly Bram Fisher and George Bezos. These 00:16:46.830 --> 00:16:49.429 were legendary figures in the anti -apartheid 00:16:49.429 --> 00:16:51.899 legal fight. And through them, she gets involved 00:16:51.899 --> 00:16:55.259 in the 1964 Rivonia trial. This is the trial 00:16:55.259 --> 00:16:57.740 where Mandela and the other ANSI leaders were 00:16:57.740 --> 00:17:00.299 facing the death penalty for sabotage. They were 00:17:00.299 --> 00:17:02.740 expected to be executed. And it's during this 00:17:02.740 --> 00:17:05.400 trial that Gordimer played a clandestine role. 00:17:05.660 --> 00:17:07.700 This is the major reveal from the biography. 00:17:08.279 --> 00:17:10.640 She helped to edit Mandela's speech from the 00:17:10.640 --> 00:17:13.400 doc. The I am prepared to die speech. One of 00:17:13.400 --> 00:17:15.880 the most famous, most powerful political speeches 00:17:15.880 --> 00:17:18.519 of the 20th century. And Nadine Gordimer, the 00:17:18.519 --> 00:17:21.369 novelist. offered advice and edits on that text. 00:17:21.549 --> 00:17:23.769 She helped him shape the language to have the 00:17:23.769 --> 00:17:26.190 maximum impact, not just in the courtroom, but 00:17:26.190 --> 00:17:29.170 for the entire world. Imagine holding that draft 00:17:29.170 --> 00:17:31.809 in your hands, knowing that if the police walk 00:17:31.809 --> 00:17:34.710 in and find it, you're done for treason, and 00:17:34.710 --> 00:17:36.849 knowing that the man who will read it might be 00:17:36.849 --> 00:17:39.210 hanged the next day. The weight of that must 00:17:39.210 --> 00:17:41.390 have been immense. It speaks to the incredible 00:17:41.390 --> 00:17:44.549 trust Mandela and his team placed in her. Her 00:17:44.549 --> 00:17:47.529 literary skill was seen as a weapon in the struggle. 00:17:47.630 --> 00:17:50.640 And that trust endured. When Mandela was finally 00:17:50.640 --> 00:17:53.420 released from prison in 1990 after 27 years, 00:17:53.680 --> 00:17:55.740 she was one of the very first people he wanted 00:17:55.740 --> 00:17:58.400 to see. That image of them together after his 00:17:58.400 --> 00:18:01.240 release is so powerful. It's the culmination 00:18:01.240 --> 00:18:04.019 of decades of secret collaboration. I love that. 00:18:04.180 --> 00:18:06.740 But despite all the shadow work, all this secret 00:18:06.740 --> 00:18:09.579 activism, she did step into the light eventually. 00:18:09.740 --> 00:18:13.640 The Delmas treason trial in 1986. Yes. This was 00:18:13.640 --> 00:18:15.779 late in the apartheid era. The regime was starting 00:18:15.779 --> 00:18:18.059 to crumble but was lashing out violently. She 00:18:18.059 --> 00:18:20.960 testified on behalf of 22 anti -apartheid activists. 00:18:21.279 --> 00:18:23.900 She went to court, got on the stand, and publicly 00:18:23.900 --> 00:18:25.980 aligned herself with them. What'd she say? She 00:18:25.980 --> 00:18:29.079 basically gave a lecture on the morality of resistance 00:18:29.079 --> 00:18:32.099 literature and why these activists, who were 00:18:32.099 --> 00:18:34.579 accused of treason, were acting out of conscience. 00:18:35.180 --> 00:18:38.720 She used her status as a literary icon to defend 00:18:38.720 --> 00:18:41.700 them. She later called it the proudest day of 00:18:41.700 --> 00:18:43.819 her life. Prouder than winning the Nobel Prize. 00:18:44.019 --> 00:18:47.000 It seems so. Because that was action. That was 00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:49.319 putting her body and her reputation on the line 00:18:49.319 --> 00:18:52.779 for justice in a very direct way. The Nobel is 00:18:52.779 --> 00:18:55.240 an award for past work. This was about saving 00:18:55.240 --> 00:18:57.099 people's lives in the present. It wasn't about 00:18:57.099 --> 00:18:59.759 literature. It was about solidarity. But her 00:18:59.759 --> 00:19:02.940 primary weapon was still the typewriter. And 00:19:02.940 --> 00:19:05.339 the government knew it. This leads us to the 00:19:05.339 --> 00:19:07.819 war on words. Because the South African government 00:19:07.819 --> 00:19:10.490 didn't just arrest people. They arrested books. 00:19:10.769 --> 00:19:13.009 Oh, the censorship was a massive bureaucratic 00:19:13.009 --> 00:19:15.809 apparatus in apartheid South Africa. It was whole 00:19:15.809 --> 00:19:18.430 government department dedicated to silence. And 00:19:18.430 --> 00:19:20.990 Gordimer was a frequent target. They saw her 00:19:20.990 --> 00:19:23.250 as incredibly dangerous. Let's look at the list 00:19:23.250 --> 00:19:25.470 from our notes. The late bourgeois world banned 00:19:25.470 --> 00:19:28.519 for a decade. A world of strangers ban for 12 00:19:28.519 --> 00:19:31.740 years. And Burger's Daughter, published in June 00:19:31.740 --> 00:19:35.259 1979, was banned just one month later. They moved 00:19:35.259 --> 00:19:37.299 fast on that one. But then something very strange 00:19:37.299 --> 00:19:39.720 happened with Burger's Daughter, right? The censorship 00:19:39.720 --> 00:19:42.700 board changed its mind. This is a fascinating 00:19:42.700 --> 00:19:46.140 glimpse into the twisted, cynical logic of the 00:19:46.140 --> 00:19:49.640 late apartheid regime. Three months after banning 00:19:49.640 --> 00:19:53.599 it, the publication's appeal board unbanned Burger's 00:19:53.599 --> 00:19:56.400 Daughter. Why? Did they suddenly develop a taste 00:19:56.400 --> 00:19:59.400 for literary fiction? No. Their reasoning is 00:19:59.400 --> 00:20:01.720 one of the most twisted insults in literary history. 00:20:02.019 --> 00:20:04.579 They claimed the book was, and I'm quoting the 00:20:04.579 --> 00:20:07.779 sentiment here, too one -sided to be subversive. 00:20:07.859 --> 00:20:10.319 Too one -sided to be subversive? What does that 00:20:10.319 --> 00:20:12.319 even mean? It sounds like nonsense. It was a 00:20:12.319 --> 00:20:14.619 very cynical, tactical pivot. They were essentially 00:20:14.619 --> 00:20:17.299 saying, this book is so biased against us, so 00:20:17.299 --> 00:20:20.019 filled with leftist propaganda, that no thinking 00:20:20.019 --> 00:20:22.200 person would take it seriously. It's not a real 00:20:22.200 --> 00:20:24.480 threat. Therefore, we can afford to allow it. 00:20:24.799 --> 00:20:26.599 They tried to frame their censorship reversal 00:20:26.599 --> 00:20:29.079 as a literary critique. They were gaslighting 00:20:29.079 --> 00:20:30.920 her. They were trying to dismiss her work as 00:20:30.920 --> 00:20:33.900 unserious polemic. Precisely. It's not dangerous. 00:20:34.019 --> 00:20:37.380 It's just shrill. Wow. How did Gordimer react 00:20:37.380 --> 00:20:39.519 to that? I imagine I'd be furious. It's more 00:20:39.519 --> 00:20:41.759 insulting than just banning it. She saw right 00:20:41.759 --> 00:20:43.839 through it. In her book of essays, Essential 00:20:43.839 --> 00:20:46.700 Gesture, she called them out. She noted that 00:20:46.700 --> 00:20:49.319 they unbanned her, a white writer with a huge 00:20:49.319 --> 00:20:51.799 international reputation, while at the exact 00:20:51.799 --> 00:20:54.460 same time, they were still banning books by black 00:20:54.460 --> 00:20:56.680 authors left and right. So it was a PR move. 00:20:56.920 --> 00:20:58.500 It was pure public relations. They were trying 00:20:58.500 --> 00:21:00.579 to use her to show the world how liberal and 00:21:00.579 --> 00:21:03.539 tolerant they were becoming. She refused to be 00:21:03.539 --> 00:21:06.400 used as a token of the regime's fake tolerance. 00:21:07.079 --> 00:21:09.359 That is integrity. But here's where the story 00:21:09.359 --> 00:21:11.880 gets really complicated and I think very painful. 00:21:12.099 --> 00:21:15.539 Fast forward to 2001. Apartheid is over. The 00:21:15.539 --> 00:21:18.579 ANC is in power. The revolution she fought for 00:21:18.579 --> 00:21:21.740 has been won. And suddenly, Nadine Gordimer is 00:21:21.740 --> 00:21:24.420 being accused of racism. Yes, this is a deeply 00:21:24.420 --> 00:21:26.720 painful episode for her. The Gauteng Provincial 00:21:26.720 --> 00:21:29.180 Education Department temporarily removed her 00:21:29.180 --> 00:21:31.279 novel, July's People, from the school curriculum. 00:21:31.579 --> 00:21:34.779 They called it deeply racist, superior, and patronizing. 00:21:34.900 --> 00:21:37.240 The very people she fought for. the new Democratic 00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:40.920 government were now censoring her. Yes, and Gortimer's 00:21:40.920 --> 00:21:44.619 took this as a grave, grave insult. But it highlights 00:21:44.619 --> 00:21:47.240 the complexity of her position. For decades, 00:21:47.380 --> 00:21:49.400 she was a white woman writing about black lives 00:21:49.400 --> 00:21:51.799 under apartheid, and she was celebrated for it. 00:21:52.099 --> 00:21:55.359 But in a post -apartheid world, that voice, that 00:21:55.359 --> 00:21:58.140 perspective, began to be scrutinized in a completely 00:21:58.140 --> 00:22:00.480 different way. It's the white witness dilemma 00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:03.619 again. Can you ever truly step outside your own 00:22:03.619 --> 00:22:06.160 privilege to tell someone else's story? And who 00:22:06.160 --> 00:22:08.519 gets to decide? And that is exactly the question 00:22:08.519 --> 00:22:11.299 her books grapple with. So shall we dive into 00:22:11.299 --> 00:22:13.420 the books themselves? Because to understand the 00:22:13.420 --> 00:22:15.400 controversies, you have to understand the stories. 00:22:15.640 --> 00:22:18.119 Her books are not simple morality plays. They 00:22:18.119 --> 00:22:21.940 are messy, ambiguous, and deeply unsettling. 00:22:22.059 --> 00:22:24.059 Let's do it. We've got five key works to cover. 00:22:24.180 --> 00:22:26.160 First up, the one that won the Booker Prize in 00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:30.720 1974, The Conservationist. This is a dense, poetic... 00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:33.400 difficult novel. It follows a character named 00:22:33.400 --> 00:22:36.259 Maring, a wealthy white industrialist, and he's 00:22:36.259 --> 00:22:38.480 very much an antihero. He buys a farm outside 00:22:38.480 --> 00:22:41.160 the city, not to farm it, but to conserve nature. 00:22:41.539 --> 00:22:43.619 Conserve. I feel like that word is doing a lot 00:22:43.619 --> 00:22:46.079 of heavy lifting there. It is. It's the central 00:22:46.079 --> 00:22:48.619 metaphor. He wants to keep things as they are. 00:22:48.740 --> 00:22:51.759 He wants to preserve his piece of pristine African 00:22:51.759 --> 00:22:54.740 landscape. Just like he wants to keep apartheid 00:22:54.740 --> 00:22:57.440 South Africa as it is, he wants to conserve his 00:22:57.440 --> 00:23:00.609 white paradise. But there's a problem on his 00:23:00.609 --> 00:23:04.369 farm. A body. An unidentified black corpse is 00:23:04.369 --> 00:23:06.950 found on the land. A man who is likely a migrant 00:23:06.950 --> 00:23:10.210 worker, nobody knows. Merring does the decent 00:23:10.210 --> 00:23:12.410 thing. He arranges for the police to take it 00:23:12.410 --> 00:23:14.490 away, gets a pauper's burial. He tries to smooth 00:23:14.490 --> 00:23:17.930 it over. But the dead body haunts the work, as 00:23:17.930 --> 00:23:21.279 critics say. It refuses to stay buried. Metaphorically. 00:23:21.359 --> 00:23:23.720 That is such a powerful symbol, the black body 00:23:23.720 --> 00:23:25.880 that white privilege is built on top of. You 00:23:25.880 --> 00:23:27.579 can try to bury it. You can try to look at the 00:23:27.579 --> 00:23:29.940 pretty landscape and the wildlife, but the body 00:23:29.940 --> 00:23:33.039 is always there under the soil. Exactly. It undermines 00:23:33.039 --> 00:23:34.980 his sense of ownership. It says this land is 00:23:34.980 --> 00:23:37.160 not yours. It belongs to the people who have 00:23:37.160 --> 00:23:39.259 died here, the people who are buried in it. It 00:23:39.259 --> 00:23:41.220 challenges the very concept of white ownership 00:23:41.220 --> 00:23:44.599 in Africa. It's a brilliant haunting book. OK, 00:23:44.680 --> 00:23:47.440 next one. Berger's daughter. This is the one 00:23:47.440 --> 00:23:49.259 that got banned and then unbanned, published 00:23:49.259 --> 00:23:52.980 in 1979. Yes. The story follows Rosa Berger. 00:23:53.599 --> 00:23:56.440 And she is the daughter of a famous white anti 00:23:56.440 --> 00:23:59.220 -apartheid martyr, Lionel Berger, who died in 00:23:59.220 --> 00:24:01.200 prison. Which sounds a lot like the family of 00:24:01.200 --> 00:24:03.000 Bram Fisher, the lawyer we mentioned earlier, 00:24:03.140 --> 00:24:05.640 who defended Mandela. It was widely seen as a 00:24:05.640 --> 00:24:08.539 coded homage to Bram Fisher and his daughter. 00:24:09.019 --> 00:24:11.460 The novel explores the immense burden of that 00:24:11.460 --> 00:24:13.900 legacy. Rosa is trying to figure out who she 00:24:13.900 --> 00:24:16.700 is. Separate from her father's heroic martyrdom. 00:24:16.819 --> 00:24:18.880 It's asking the question, do I have to be a revolutionary 00:24:18.880 --> 00:24:21.759 just because my parents were? And can I have 00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:24.440 a private life when the public struggle is so 00:24:24.440 --> 00:24:26.519 demanding? Am I allowed to just be a person? 00:24:27.000 --> 00:24:29.200 It was written right after the Soweto uprising 00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:32.960 of 1976. So the tension in the book is palpable. 00:24:33.160 --> 00:24:35.279 It captures that feeling of being swept up by 00:24:35.279 --> 00:24:37.700 history, whether you want to be or not. Then 00:24:37.700 --> 00:24:40.480 we have July's People from 1981. This is the 00:24:40.480 --> 00:24:42.799 one that got called racist later on. So what's 00:24:42.799 --> 00:24:45.200 the plot here? This one is a speculative novel. 00:24:45.299 --> 00:24:48.140 It imagines a future, which was a terrifyingly 00:24:48.140 --> 00:24:50.400 real possibility at the time of the full -blown 00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:52.920 Civil War, a bloody revolution where whites are 00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:55.160 being hunted in the cities. Okay, so it's dystopian. 00:24:55.220 --> 00:24:57.900 It's dystopian, but it felt like prophecy to 00:24:57.900 --> 00:25:01.980 many readers in 1981. The story follows a liberal 00:25:01.980 --> 00:25:04.539 white couple, the Smales, as they are forced 00:25:04.539 --> 00:25:06.880 to flee the city, and they go to hide in the 00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:08.720 rural village of their former servant, July. 00:25:09.240 --> 00:25:11.680 So it's a total role reversal. The master becomes 00:25:11.680 --> 00:25:13.759 the dependent. The servant holds all the power, 00:25:13.819 --> 00:25:16.460 all the knowledge of how to survive. Exactly. 00:25:16.660 --> 00:25:19.599 They're living in July's mother's hut, completely 00:25:19.599 --> 00:25:22.900 dependent on him for food, for safety, for information. 00:25:23.079 --> 00:25:25.700 And the novel just strips away the veneer of 00:25:25.700 --> 00:25:28.740 their white liberalism. It exposes the deep, 00:25:28.740 --> 00:25:31.299 unspoken dependency that actually existed under 00:25:31.299 --> 00:25:34.299 apartheid. Whites were always dependent on black 00:25:34.299 --> 00:25:36.700 labor, but they pretended they weren't. In this 00:25:36.700 --> 00:25:39.119 book, the pretense is gone. So why the accusation 00:25:39.119 --> 00:25:42.400 of racism in 2001? Well, from a post -apartheid 00:25:42.400 --> 00:25:44.839 perspective, some critics felt that the way July 00:25:44.839 --> 00:25:46.740 and the other black characters were depicted 00:25:46.740 --> 00:25:50.319 still centered the white gaze. That July was 00:25:50.319 --> 00:25:52.900 seen as this inscrutable, mysterious figure and 00:25:52.900 --> 00:25:55.240 that the story never truly enters his consciousness. 00:25:55.579 --> 00:25:57.680 The argument was that it was still a story about 00:25:57.680 --> 00:25:59.880 whiteness and crisis. I see. It's a book about 00:25:59.880 --> 00:26:02.700 terrible choices forced by hate. It sounds deeply 00:26:02.700 --> 00:26:04.799 uncomfortable. It is meant to be uncomfortable. 00:26:05.400 --> 00:26:07.660 She wasn't writing a roadmap for racial harmony. 00:26:07.799 --> 00:26:10.440 She was holding up a mirror to the fear and the 00:26:10.440 --> 00:26:13.140 prejudice that lurked even within the most well 00:26:13.140 --> 00:26:16.200 -meaning white liberals. Moving to the post -apartheid 00:26:16.200 --> 00:26:20.099 era, The House Gun from 1998. This is a fascinating 00:26:20.099 --> 00:26:24.000 shift. Apartheid is gone, but the dream of a 00:26:24.000 --> 00:26:26.680 peaceful rainbow nation hasn't quite arrived. 00:26:26.900 --> 00:26:29.660 The story is about an educated liberal couple, 00:26:29.859 --> 00:26:33.019 an architect, and a doctor whose son murders 00:26:33.019 --> 00:26:35.859 his housemate. So it's about crime. It's about 00:26:35.859 --> 00:26:38.200 crime, but it's also about the legacy of violence. 00:26:38.809 --> 00:26:40.990 It deals with the rising crime rates in the New 00:26:40.990 --> 00:26:43.849 South Africa and the ubiquity of guns in people's 00:26:43.849 --> 00:26:46.109 homes for protection. The house gun of the title. 00:26:46.190 --> 00:26:48.390 It's interesting that she didn't just stop writing 00:26:48.390 --> 00:26:50.890 or write celebratory novels when the ANC won. 00:26:50.990 --> 00:26:53.009 A lot of struggle writers ran out of steam when 00:26:53.009 --> 00:26:55.170 the struggle ended. But she turned her unflinching 00:26:55.170 --> 00:26:57.970 eye to the new problems. She was a realist. She 00:26:57.970 --> 00:26:59.789 understood that the violence of the past doesn't 00:26:59.789 --> 00:27:02.150 just evaporate. It morphs. It moves from political 00:27:02.150 --> 00:27:04.490 violence to criminal violence. But the roots 00:27:04.490 --> 00:27:06.970 are the same. And finally, the pickup from 2001. 00:27:07.210 --> 00:27:09.829 This one feels more global in its scope. It is. 00:27:09.890 --> 00:27:12.549 It's a romance of a sort between a wealthy white 00:27:12.549 --> 00:27:15.630 South African woman, Julie, and an illegal Arab 00:27:15.630 --> 00:27:18.509 immigrant, Abdu. He's a car mechanic. He's undocumented. 00:27:18.990 --> 00:27:21.109 Another story about crossing boundaries. Always. 00:27:21.210 --> 00:27:24.250 And another reversal. When Abdu is inevitably 00:27:24.250 --> 00:27:27.170 caught and deported, Julie decides to go with 00:27:27.170 --> 00:27:30.759 him to his unnamed homeland. presumably a poor, 00:27:30.940 --> 00:27:33.380 religiously conservative North African or Middle 00:27:33.380 --> 00:27:37.180 Eastern country. And suddenly, she is the alien. 00:27:37.380 --> 00:27:39.220 She is the one who doesn't speak the language, 00:27:39.359 --> 00:27:41.599 doesn't understand the customs, has no status. 00:27:41.740 --> 00:27:44.440 She becomes the immigrant. Yes. It explores displacement, 00:27:44.900 --> 00:27:47.920 globalism, and again, the profound difficulty 00:27:47.920 --> 00:27:51.190 of truly understanding the other. even when you 00:27:51.190 --> 00:27:53.170 love them. It seems like she was obsessed with 00:27:53.170 --> 00:27:55.049 that idea, what it means to be an outsider, even 00:27:55.049 --> 00:27:57.069 in your own life. Which brings us back to her 00:27:57.069 --> 00:27:59.150 own identity. We mentioned her parents were Jewish, 00:27:59.190 --> 00:28:01.190 but we haven't really dug into how that shaped 00:28:01.190 --> 00:28:03.029 her because the critics have some thoughts on 00:28:03.029 --> 00:28:04.789 this. Yeah, let's talk about what the sources 00:28:04.789 --> 00:28:08.710 call her repressed identity. Many critics noted 00:28:08.710 --> 00:28:11.109 that her Jewishness was often absent or repressed 00:28:11.109 --> 00:28:13.809 in her work. She didn't write Jewish novels in 00:28:13.809 --> 00:28:16.970 the way, say, Phil Broth in America or Sol Bello 00:28:16.970 --> 00:28:19.619 did. It wasn't the central theme. Was she trying 00:28:19.619 --> 00:28:22.079 to hide it or was she just not interested in 00:28:22.079 --> 00:28:25.700 it? It's complex. Not hide it, perhaps, but she 00:28:25.700 --> 00:28:27.740 certainly didn't center it. Gordimer identified 00:28:27.740 --> 00:28:31.019 as an atheist. However, in interviews, she admitted 00:28:31.019 --> 00:28:33.160 to having a religious temperament. That's a great 00:28:33.160 --> 00:28:35.400 phrase. Atheist with a religious temperament. 00:28:35.519 --> 00:28:38.279 What does that mean in her context? It means 00:28:38.279 --> 00:28:41.339 she felt her moral values, her intense sense 00:28:41.339 --> 00:28:43.660 of justice, her drive to distinguish right from 00:28:43.660 --> 00:28:46.200 wrong, came directly from the Judeo -Christian 00:28:46.200 --> 00:28:49.069 ethical tradition she was raised in. She said 00:28:49.069 --> 00:28:50.869 she couldn't take the leap of faith into belief 00:28:50.869 --> 00:28:53.190 in God, but the ethical structure was deeply 00:28:53.190 --> 00:28:56.309 embedded in her. So did she use Jewish characters 00:28:56.309 --> 00:28:59.490 in her books? She did, but they often functioned 00:28:59.490 --> 00:29:02.210 as mirrors or moral compasses for her white, 00:29:02.329 --> 00:29:05.670 Gentile protagonists. In The Lying Days, her 00:29:05.670 --> 00:29:07.970 first novel, there's a character named Joel Aaron. 00:29:08.430 --> 00:29:11.329 He's Jewish, and he acts as the voice of conscience 00:29:11.329 --> 00:29:14.250 for the protagonist, Helen. He's the one who 00:29:14.250 --> 00:29:16.009 helps awaken her to the political realities. 00:29:16.190 --> 00:29:18.549 And what about in A Sport of Nature? There's 00:29:18.549 --> 00:29:21.470 a character named Hillela. Yes, Hillela. A very 00:29:21.470 --> 00:29:23.650 significant name. Her name directly represents 00:29:23.650 --> 00:29:26.190 the Jewish moral tradition. Think of the great 00:29:26.190 --> 00:29:29.009 rabbinical sage Hillel. Yet the character is 00:29:29.009 --> 00:29:31.650 described in the novel as the Jew that went away. 00:29:32.170 --> 00:29:34.650 She abandons her tribe, her specific identity, 00:29:34.849 --> 00:29:37.369 to join the broader African liberation struggle. 00:29:37.609 --> 00:29:40.309 So for Gordimer, it seems like the particularism 00:29:40.309 --> 00:29:43.210 of Jewish identity had to be shed for the universalism 00:29:43.210 --> 00:29:45.349 of the human struggle. That seems to be the message. 00:29:45.589 --> 00:29:47.529 There's also a fascinating note in the sources 00:29:47.529 --> 00:29:50.029 about her father. Remember, we said he wasn't 00:29:50.029 --> 00:29:52.250 sympathetic to black South Africans, despite 00:29:52.250 --> 00:29:54.569 being a refugee himself. Yes, the great contradiction. 00:29:54.910 --> 00:29:56.549 Well, in one of her short stories, My Father 00:29:56.549 --> 00:30:00.089 Leaves Home, she directly connects. European 00:30:00.089 --> 00:30:03.730 anti -Semitism to South African racism. She writes 00:30:03.730 --> 00:30:05.809 about how her father's experience as a refugee 00:30:05.809 --> 00:30:08.829 should have made him more sensitive to the suffering 00:30:08.829 --> 00:30:11.690 of black people, but instead it perhaps made 00:30:11.690 --> 00:30:15.450 him more fearful, more insular. He was dissecting 00:30:15.450 --> 00:30:18.269 her own father's moral failure on the page. But 00:30:18.269 --> 00:30:20.450 she refused to claim victimhood for herself, 00:30:20.650 --> 00:30:22.890 though. That's the absolute key to her mindset. 00:30:22.930 --> 00:30:25.049 She got very annoyed when people suggested her 00:30:25.049 --> 00:30:27.529 activism came from her being Jewish, from a history 00:30:27.529 --> 00:30:34.920 of oppression. She famously said, to be opposed 00:30:34.920 --> 00:30:37.319 to it. That is a powerful and very demanding 00:30:37.319 --> 00:30:39.859 moral stance. She believed you fight evil because 00:30:39.859 --> 00:30:42.000 you're a decent human being, not because you're 00:30:42.000 --> 00:30:44.079 a member of a specific tribe that has also suffered. 00:30:44.279 --> 00:30:46.579 Precisely. For her, it was about universal morality 00:30:46.579 --> 00:30:49.259 over tribal loyalty. She didn't want her anti 00:30:49.259 --> 00:30:51.900 -apartheid stance to be seen as just Jews helping 00:30:51.900 --> 00:30:54.259 the oppressed. She wanted it to be seen as humans 00:30:54.259 --> 00:30:57.140 helping humans. So we've covered the writer, 00:30:57.259 --> 00:31:00.420 the activist, the witness. What about the woman 00:31:00.420 --> 00:31:02.980 at home? We know about the Weakheart childhood, 00:31:03.259 --> 00:31:06.039 but what about her adult life, her relationships? 00:31:06.480 --> 00:31:08.619 Well, she was married twice. Her first marriage 00:31:08.619 --> 00:31:11.640 was to a local dentist named Gerald Gavron. It 00:31:11.640 --> 00:31:13.920 was very brief and ended in divorce after only 00:31:13.920 --> 00:31:18.019 a few years. But then in 1954, she married Reinhold 00:31:18.019 --> 00:31:20.339 Kessler. And this was the big one. This was the 00:31:20.339 --> 00:31:22.460 defining relationship of her life. Who was he? 00:31:22.960 --> 00:31:25.720 Reinhold was another refugee, but from a very 00:31:25.720 --> 00:31:28.279 different world than her father. He was a refugee 00:31:28.279 --> 00:31:31.099 from Nazi Germany, a member of the famous Kasserer 00:31:31.099 --> 00:31:33.440 family in Berlin who were major art dealers and 00:31:33.440 --> 00:31:36.059 publishers. He was highly cultured, sophisticated. 00:31:36.619 --> 00:31:39.079 He actually established the South African branch 00:31:39.079 --> 00:31:41.799 of Sotheby's. So he brought a world of European 00:31:41.799 --> 00:31:44.079 high culture to her. He did. Gordimer described 00:31:44.079 --> 00:31:46.400 it as a wonderful marriage. It was a true partnership 00:31:46.400 --> 00:31:48.880 of equals that lasted until his death in 2001. 00:31:49.619 --> 00:31:52.220 It seems he provided the stable, supportive home 00:31:52.220 --> 00:31:54.180 life she needed to do her dangerous political 00:31:54.180 --> 00:31:57.420 work and her demanding creative work. It sounds 00:31:57.420 --> 00:32:00.579 like he provided the stability she needed to 00:32:00.579 --> 00:32:03.119 do her dangerous work. He brought a European 00:32:03.119 --> 00:32:05.980 cosmopolitanism into her life that balanced the 00:32:05.980 --> 00:32:08.940 gritty South African reality. Absolutely. A true 00:32:08.940 --> 00:32:12.099 partnership. But her personal life wasn't without 00:32:12.099 --> 00:32:14.490 drama. We have to talk about the unauthorized 00:32:14.490 --> 00:32:18.089 biography. Ah, yes. The Ronald Suresh Roberts 00:32:18.089 --> 00:32:21.130 Affair. This is a literary scandal that really 00:32:21.130 --> 00:32:24.170 shows her fiercely protective, maybe even controlling 00:32:24.170 --> 00:32:27.329 side. It does. Gordimer authorized Roberts to 00:32:27.329 --> 00:32:29.569 write her biography. She gave him hundreds of 00:32:29.569 --> 00:32:31.990 hours of interviews, gave him exclusive access 00:32:31.990 --> 00:32:34.049 to her papers and letters. It was supposed to 00:32:34.049 --> 00:32:36.289 be the definitive official account of her life. 00:32:36.430 --> 00:32:39.170 So she authorizes him, gives him access, and 00:32:39.170 --> 00:32:41.150 then... And then she reads the manuscript and 00:32:41.150 --> 00:32:43.579 hates it. Absolutely hates it. She completely 00:32:43.579 --> 00:32:45.920 disowned the book, which was called No Cold Kitchen. 00:32:46.180 --> 00:32:48.259 She even tried to block him from quoting her 00:32:48.259 --> 00:32:51.819 letters. It got very messy in public. Why? What 00:32:51.819 --> 00:32:54.380 was in it that she objected to so strongly? She 00:32:54.380 --> 00:32:56.359 felt he had breached her trust on a number of 00:32:56.359 --> 00:32:59.140 very personal points. He wrote in detail about 00:32:59.140 --> 00:33:01.380 her husband Reinhold's final illness and death, 00:33:01.579 --> 00:33:04.619 which she felt was an invasion of privacy. He 00:33:04.619 --> 00:33:06.319 wrote about an affair she allegedly had in the 00:33:06.319 --> 00:33:09.720 1950s, and he delved into her evolving and sometimes 00:33:09.720 --> 00:33:12.619 critical views on the Israel -Palestine conflict. 00:33:12.920 --> 00:33:15.940 It's the classic battle, isn't it? A public figure 00:33:15.940 --> 00:33:18.380 wanting to control their narrative and the biographer 00:33:18.380 --> 00:33:21.220 wanting to expose the unvarnished truth. And 00:33:21.220 --> 00:33:24.099 for a woman who spent her entire life exposing 00:33:24.099 --> 00:33:27.420 the uncomfortable truths about her society, she 00:33:27.420 --> 00:33:29.700 was fearfully, fiercely protective of the truth 00:33:29.700 --> 00:33:31.720 about herself. She wanted to be the observer, 00:33:31.859 --> 00:33:33.859 not the one being observed under a microscope. 00:33:34.160 --> 00:33:36.440 She lived in the same house in Parktown, Johannesburg 00:33:36.440 --> 00:33:38.920 for over 50 years. That famous Herbert Baker 00:33:38.920 --> 00:33:41.470 designed house. But the harsh reality of the 00:33:41.470 --> 00:33:43.430 new South Africa eventually came right through 00:33:43.430 --> 00:33:46.710 her front door. The 2006 attack. It's a shocking 00:33:46.710 --> 00:33:49.990 story. She was 82 years old at home. Three men 00:33:49.990 --> 00:33:52.250 broke in. They robbed her of cash in her car. 00:33:52.390 --> 00:33:54.450 They locked her in a dressing room. This is just 00:33:54.450 --> 00:33:56.509 heartbreaking. The woman who fought for the rights 00:33:56.509 --> 00:33:59.599 of the disenfranchised her whole life. And then 00:33:59.599 --> 00:34:01.759 she becomes a victim of the violent crime that 00:34:01.759 --> 00:34:04.440 plagued the new nation. Many of her white friends 00:34:04.440 --> 00:34:06.519 had already emigrated because of the crime rates. 00:34:06.759 --> 00:34:09.179 They had. They'd moved to safer countries like 00:34:09.179 --> 00:34:11.780 Australia or the UK. Or at the very least, they'd 00:34:11.780 --> 00:34:14.500 moved into gated communities, these fortresses 00:34:14.500 --> 00:34:17.719 with high walls and electric fences. But Gordimer 00:34:17.719 --> 00:34:20.760 refused. She wouldn't move even after being attacked. 00:34:20.960 --> 00:34:23.800 She refused to move to a gated complex. And she 00:34:23.800 --> 00:34:26.679 absolutely refused to leave South Africa. She 00:34:26.679 --> 00:34:28.539 gave an interview where she said, it's always 00:34:28.539 --> 00:34:31.099 been a nightmare in my mind to be cut off. That 00:34:31.099 --> 00:34:32.840 goes right back to her childhood, doesn't it? 00:34:32.840 --> 00:34:35.360 The weak heart, isolation. Her mother put her 00:34:35.360 --> 00:34:38.239 in a box. Exactly. She spent her whole adult 00:34:38.239 --> 00:34:41.119 life trying to break out of isolation, to connect 00:34:41.119 --> 00:34:43.699 across barriers. She wasn't going to let fear 00:34:43.699 --> 00:34:45.719 put her back in a box at the end of her life. 00:34:45.980 --> 00:34:48.239 Even when the reality was harsh and dangerous, 00:34:48.420 --> 00:34:50.960 she wanted to be in it. She accepted the risk 00:34:50.960 --> 00:34:53.360 of living in the real South Africa rather than 00:34:53.360 --> 00:34:56.199 the safety of a self -imposed prison. And she 00:34:56.199 --> 00:34:57.880 didn't stop critiquing the government either. 00:34:58.039 --> 00:35:01.099 Her loyalty to the ANC didn't mean she went silent 00:35:01.099 --> 00:35:03.539 once they took power. Not at all. She was very 00:35:03.539 --> 00:35:05.719 publicly critical of the protection of state 00:35:05.719 --> 00:35:09.280 information bill, which critics called the secrecy 00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:12.639 bill. She saw it as a dangerous return to the 00:35:12.639 --> 00:35:15.000 censorship and state control of information that 00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:16.739 she had fought against her whole life. And the 00:35:16.739 --> 00:35:19.380 HIV AIDS crisis. She was absolutely fierce on 00:35:19.380 --> 00:35:21.960 this. She directly criticized President Thabo 00:35:21.960 --> 00:35:25.239 Mbeki for his denialist stance on AIDS. You remember 00:35:25.239 --> 00:35:27.860 that tragic era when the government was questioning 00:35:27.860 --> 00:35:30.920 whether HIV even caused AIDS? It was a catastrophe. 00:35:31.019 --> 00:35:34.000 It cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Gordimer 00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:36.599 organized writers from around the world to contribute 00:35:36.599 --> 00:35:39.320 to Telling Tales, a fundraising book for AIDS. 00:35:39.469 --> 00:35:41.730 treatment. She said she approved of everything 00:35:41.730 --> 00:35:44.590 Mbeki did except his stance on AIDS. But that 00:35:44.590 --> 00:35:46.510 one exception was a matter of life and death 00:35:46.510 --> 00:35:49.210 for millions. She proved that loyalty to the 00:35:49.210 --> 00:35:51.929 cause did not mean silence in the face of failure. 00:35:52.130 --> 00:35:54.349 She really was a thorn in the side of anyone 00:35:54.349 --> 00:35:56.789 in power, wasn't she? Whether it was the apartheid 00:35:56.789 --> 00:35:58.949 government or the liberation heroes who had become 00:35:58.949 --> 00:36:01.210 the new establishment. That is the true role 00:36:01.210 --> 00:36:03.130 of the intellectual, isn't it? To speak truth 00:36:03.130 --> 00:36:05.469 to power, regardless of who holds the power. 00:36:05.610 --> 00:36:08.349 So she passed away in 2014 at the age of 90. 00:36:08.510 --> 00:36:11.730 A long life. A full life. A monumental life. 00:36:11.889 --> 00:36:14.349 When you look back at it all, from the little 00:36:14.349 --> 00:36:16.170 girl with the weak heart peering out the window 00:36:16.170 --> 00:36:19.070 in springs to the Nobel Prize winner being celebrated 00:36:19.070 --> 00:36:22.730 on the world stage, what is the central takeaway? 00:36:23.070 --> 00:36:25.210 I think the takeaway is right there in that concept 00:36:25.210 --> 00:36:28.139 of the weak heart. She was told she was too weak, 00:36:28.199 --> 00:36:30.900 too fragile to participate in the world. So she 00:36:30.900 --> 00:36:33.019 developed a different kind of strength, a strength 00:36:33.019 --> 00:36:36.739 of observation, a moral clarity, a laser focus 00:36:36.739 --> 00:36:39.199 on the ambiguities of life. She didn't just see 00:36:39.199 --> 00:36:41.619 black and white, good and evil. She saw the gray. 00:36:41.780 --> 00:36:44.340 She saw the terrible choices that people are 00:36:44.340 --> 00:36:46.739 forced to make. She documented the psychology 00:36:46.739 --> 00:36:49.400 of racism, not just the laws and the protests, 00:36:49.679 --> 00:36:52.139 but what those laws did to the human soul, both 00:36:52.139 --> 00:36:54.940 the oppressor and the oppressed. She looked at 00:36:54.940 --> 00:36:58.159 the corrosion within. 15 honorary degrees. The 00:36:58.159 --> 00:37:01.300 Nobel Prize. A legacy that is complicated, sure, 00:37:01.360 --> 00:37:04.099 but absolutely undeniable. She was a witness 00:37:04.099 --> 00:37:07.699 who refused ever to look away. You know, Gordimer 00:37:07.699 --> 00:37:09.739 once said something in an interview that really 00:37:09.739 --> 00:37:12.460 stuck with me. The interviewer suggested her 00:37:12.460 --> 00:37:15.179 books made people uncomfortable. And she said 00:37:15.179 --> 00:37:17.599 she resented that because they should be uncomfortable. 00:37:18.039 --> 00:37:21.119 Yes. She believed that comfort was a state of 00:37:21.119 --> 00:37:24.400 ignorance. If you're comfortable, you're not 00:37:24.400 --> 00:37:26.360 paying attention. And that's the provocative 00:37:26.360 --> 00:37:28.380 thought I want to leave our listeners with today. 00:37:28.820 --> 00:37:31.800 We live in a world of algorithms that are designed 00:37:31.800 --> 00:37:35.440 to feed us what we already like. We live in social 00:37:35.440 --> 00:37:38.559 media bubbles of confirmation bias. Gordimer's 00:37:38.559 --> 00:37:41.760 entire body of work was designed to pop the bubble. 00:37:41.920 --> 00:37:44.860 It raises the question, in a world of increasing 00:37:44.860 --> 00:37:48.000 polarization and self -sorting, do we need more 00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:51.139 literature, more art that actively makes us uncomfortable? 00:37:51.769 --> 00:37:54.090 Is comfort the enemy of truth? I think Nadine 00:37:54.090 --> 00:37:56.170 Gordimer would say yes, absolutely. I think she 00:37:56.170 --> 00:37:58.309 would. If you are comfortable, you probably aren't 00:37:58.309 --> 00:38:00.570 paying close enough attention. That's it for 00:38:00.570 --> 00:38:01.829 this deep dive. Thanks for listening.