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I finished reading Andre Brink’s Philida a while ago and it’s taken a
long time to process the violence of the relationship between slave and master
in the Cape during the 19th century. I remember hearing that the
slaves in South Africa never had it has bad as their counterparts in
America. Of course, I knew that this was
propaganda along with other things we were told about the benign nature of our
history. However reading the details of rape, whipping, impaling on top of the
humiliation of being sold/auctioned, objectification, and the cruelty the
slaves were subjected to, was nothing short of distressing.
Brink was inspired by the story of a relative
who had owned the farm, Zandvliet, which is now Solms-Delta*. Francois Brink had fathered four children
with his father’s slave, Philida. He had promised that he would marry Philida
but the farm is in trouble and his father orders him to marry a white woman
from an important family in Cape Town. It wouldn’t do to have reminders of his
former transgressions. So Philida is sold and separated from Ouma Nella, the
only mother she has known.
The story unfolds in 1830s just before
emancipation. Brink, the writer, skilfully juggles with religion, the tensions
between the English and Dutch, and relationship between the landowners and the
slaves. There were places in the book, though, where I wasn’t sure that a woman
would say something quite in the voice that he uses.
There’s a poignant scene in the book which has
stuck with me. Slaves were not allowed to wear shoes and one of the slaves on
Philida’s new farm secretly makes a pair for each of them so that they can celebrate
the emancipation with shoes. And celebrate they do, “…running up and down the street…singing and dancing and kicking up the dust...from
now on everything will be different.” Of course they weren’t really free as
they were forced to spend a further four years serving an “apprenticeship” on
the farm.
Andre Brink was the first Afrikaans writer to
have a book banned by the South African government during the apartheid era. He
challenged the policies of the Nationalist Party through his writing in books
such as A Dry White Season and A Chain of Voices. He died almost a year
ago today, aged 79. Philida was
long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2012.
Philida reflects near the end of the book that “Ouma Nella’s stories… are all that remain
now. Perhaps, when the end comes, they are all that can go on living.”
*When Mark Solms bought the farm in 2002, he
set about uncovering its history, revealing not only the foundations of the
first house built there, but also the remnants of a Stone Age site dating back
about 5 000 years ago, and the story of Philida. A museum has been established
to preserve the history of the farm as well as the musical heritage of the
Cape.
