Cry, the Beloved Country

زمانی‌ که ترس بر ملتی حکومت می‌کند؛ کیست که بتواند از سرزمین محبوب خود لذتی ببرد؟

آلن بيتون

و کوره‌راه به خاک سرخ ایندوتشنی می‌انجامد. سرزمین فقیری است . سرزمین پیرمردها و پیرزن‌ها و بچه‌ها، اما وطن این جاست. ذرت به سختی به اندازه ی قد آدمی می‌رسد . اما وطن همین جاست.

کتاب جزو لیست صدتایی رمان‌های پیشنهادی رضا امیرخانی بود. اسم‌ش گیراست و در پایین‌ترین طبقه‌ی قفسه‌ی یک کتاب‌فروشی، نزدیک پارکت به وضوح خاک می‌خورد که چشمم روی عنوانش توقف کرد.
برایم جالب است که آخرین چاپ این کتاب مربوط به سال 1373 است و بعد از آن تجدید چاپ نشده‌است.
داستان در آفریفای جنوبیِ اوایل دوران صنعتی شدن اتفاق می‌افتد. وقتی اروپایی‌ها ساکنان غیر بومی این کشور بر معادن و منابع آفریقای جنوبی سیطره پیدا کرده‌اند. شهرهای جدید با نام‌های اروپایی ساخته‌اند و بومیان را به بیگاری گرفته‌اند.
یک کشیش در جستجوی خواهر و برادر و پسرش که پس از مهاجرت از قبیله به ژوهانسبورگ نامه‌ای برایشان نفرستاده‌اند، راهی این شهرمی‌شود. پسرش سفیدپوستی را کشته‌است و او درگیر مسائل و مشکلات او می‌شود.
از نظر من این کتاب بیش از این که یک داستان باشد، یک صدای اعتراض است برای آن چه که سفیدپوست‌ها و رفتار و قانون‌شان بر سر بومیان آفریقای جنوبی آورده‌است. این کتاب، ضداستعماری نیست و تقبیحی علیه تجاوز اولیه‌ی اروپاییان به آفریقای جنوبی در آن دیده نمی‌شود. اما چیزی که می‌شود به وضوح در آن حس کرد این است که استعمارگری با یک جامعه چه می‌کند. این کتاب بیش از آن که یک داستان باشد، یک راهکار است، یک نقد است بر عملکرد اروپاییان. نویسنده با توسعه مخالف نیست، او می‌گوید ما رفتارهایی را با بومیان داشتیم، که درست نبود، اما ما نمی‌دانستیم که این رفتارها درست نیست، حالا که می‌دانیم و حالا که پیامدهایش را دیده‌ایم، رفتارمان را اصلاح کنیم. نویسنده منتقد رفتارهای اروپاییان می‌شود. جوانان بومی روزبه روز بزهکار تر می‌شوند و اروپاییان مخالف آموزش آن‌ها هستند و برای آن که مخالفت خورد را توجیه کنند به آن رنگ دینی می‌بخشند و پای تقدیر و خدا را به موضوع باز می‌کنند، در حالی که نیت واقعی آن است که آگاهی باعث می‌شود بومیان علیه سیاست‌های استعماری اروپاییان بشورند.
در این کتاب شخصیت‌های متفاوتی وجود دارند که هر کدام نماد نوعی طرز فکر در جامعه‌ی آفریقای جنوبی یا هر جامعه‌ی دیگری هستند. جالب آن است که این داستان و طرز تفکرها منحصر به آفریقای جنوبی نیستند و قرابت‌هایی که بین آفریقای جنوبی و کشورهایی شبیه کشور ما وجود دارد، خواندن این کتاب را دلپذیرتر می‌کند.
شاید این کتاب غم‌انگیزترین و در عین حال امیدبخش‌ترین کتابی باشد که خوانده‌ام. اما یکی از دوست‌داشتنی‌ترین‌ها نیز هست.
+ در دسته کتاب‌هایی قرار می‌گیرد که همه باید بخوانند.

An ambitious book that would have benefitted from being much longer. Paton tries to portray the complex nation that is South Africa - criminologically, ethnically, linguistically, economically, even ecologically - and gives us a snapshot in just 240 pages.

His attempts at rendering the language problem in South Africa make the novel difficult to read. It took me sometime to realise that the writer was using different styles in English to indicate when speakers are using different languages. Later on, Paton gets overwhelmed by this and resorts to telling us which language is being used. However the damage has already been done. Nearly all the dialogue in book one is uttered in Zulu, and there is hardly a complex sentence in it. This is wearing for English speakers, and also a sign of 'unsophisticated' English speech. My interpretation was that Paton was portraying Africans - even ordained priests - as uneducated and that this was patronising, an aspect of the white racial paternalism that the book seemed to be upholding almost to the end.

I don't know if Zulu allows of the construction of complex sentences, but the issue of style shifting and code switching was much better handled in  A Brief History of Seven Killings where it was made apparent the characters were exploiting degrees of creolization of English for their own communicative needs. That was also a difficult read, but my impression was that that was my fault rather than the author's.

The ethos of white racial paternalism runs through the economic and ecological strands of the story. It gives us a summary of the significance of gold mining to the South African economy and how it was dependent on heavily coerced African labour. Less well done is the explanation of the ecological problems that are driving African labour off the land and into the cities in the first place. The fault is placed with traditional African methods; over dependence on cattle, not planting wood for fuel. and ploughing down hill rather than on the level. Luckily, the benevolent white man is around to educate and finance the African farmer. However, I find it hard to accept that methods that were adequate for millenia should suddenly fail once the white man arrives. More historical perspective is required for this story to be persuasive, not least the the realisation that rapid industrialisation brought exactly the same societal problems of family failure, substance abuse and criminality to Europeans as it did to Africans. But in South Africa that is hidden under the veil of racial politics.

One thread of the story I found compelling has the presence of 'hundreds of books' on Abraham Lincoln in Arthur Jarvis's library. Explicitly drawing the parallel between the racial politics in the United States and the Union of South Africa. But this wasn't explored. In the US slavery took root as a means of legitimizing the restriction of economic opportunities among different ethnic groups. One the outcomes of Apartheid was a means of preventing Afrikaners from facing economic competition from Blacks. But this relationship between economic pecking orders and racial pecking orders is much more thoroughly explored in  The Grass is Singing.

More historical or at least narrative perspective is also required in the treatment of the Reverend Stephen Kumalo and his family. How was it exactly that his son, Absalom, left home and fell into a life of crime? Is that a usual outcome for the sons of African clergy? How is it his brother, John became an influential labour leader but has no religious faith? How did these brothers take such different paths? A bigger novel could have told us how (Wilbur Smith certainly would have). It could also have explained the ecological degradation of Ixópo, after all it happened in Kumalo's lifetime. The treatment of John Kumalo also adds to the white paternalist ethos. Here is a man who has risen to a position of leadership among Africans independently of white support, but he is shown as morally weak, disloyal and as a danger to his own followers. It's worth pointing out that powerful oratory was the hallmark of the pre-imprisonment Nelson Mandela. The man who ultimately prevented black South Africans "from turning to hating", when white South Africans had finally "turned to loving".

But of that was in the future when this book was written, it was published on the eve of the introduction of Apartheid. This gives the modern reader a terrible sense that things are going to get a lot worse before they got better. A sense that the writer doesn't seem to share until the final, brilliant closing section of book, when Kumaló goes up to the mountaintop. Here his story is narrated in third person English and not a bad first person translation of Zulu. Here he recognises that his career in the Church of England lets others see him as "a white man's dog", that European culture and technology is not just seen as the salvation of the African people, but may be the cause of their immediate problems. Here the darkness that still awaits Africa is finally apprehended.

Another central challenge this book presented me with is that it is written from the perspective of a confirmed and active Christianity, one that like Rev. Kumaló strikes me as naive. Yet when you get up onto the mountaintop you get to appreciate how faith can be a way to give focus to the complexity of life in South Africa. Christianity is after all the ultimate paternalist ethos.

Personally, I did not find this worked super well as an audio book, but I am not sure whether that stemmed from the book itself or the way I listen to audio books (3x).
Still, as you can tell from my rating, I enjoyed it! I really need to go back because I think in print it would garner 5 stars.
It was a very moving book. A little bit angsty, perhaps, but never to the point of distraction. The grief and family dynamics really shine through.
Been on my to-read list for a very long time and I am glad I finally got to it.

I read this book in high school and loved it for the story. That was in the 1960's when apartheid was in full swing and Mandela was in prison. This time I loved the story (fortunately some of the racial and political problems have been solved) but was also able to appreciate the beautiful, lyrical prose. I have shed many tears while reading this, most in last section of the book, which is the section that brings some hope to the situation in a 1940's South Africa that is pre-apartheid but a country that is mostly inhabited by poor blacks under the thumb of a few rich whites. Despite the inequities which are abundantly shown, this book also embodies courage, compassion and Christian values. On a personal level, I thought many times while reading this on the aptness of the title for the situation in my country today. Cry, The Beloved Country for the state of race relations and political civility that seem to be tearing us apart in this presidential election season.

Just arrived from France through BM.

Page 105:
Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry laud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end.

Page 109:
And some cry for the cutting up of South Africa without delay into separate areas, where white can live without black, and black without white, where black can farm their own land and mine their own minerals and administer their own laws.

Page 111:
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

Page 187:
We say we withhold education because the black child has not the intelligence to profit by it; we withhold opportunity to develop gifts because black people has no gifts; we justify our action by saying that it took us thousands of years to achieve our own advancement, and it would be foolish to suppose that it will take the black man any lesser time, and that therefore there is no need for hurry.

What the..?!?!
Why is this rating so high?
This book was tortuous to read. Every page, DESPITE the wordings was worse than getting my eyelashes pulled.

Oprah.
Seriously? Seriously Oprah?

Here's my summary of it:
Man goes to find son who dies because he killed some guy, man goes back home.

The end.

The story follows a reverend as he travels from his protected village into the bustling city of Johannesburg, in search of his son and his sister, both of whom have encountered troubles. He finds that his sister has become a prostitute, and his son is on trial for murder. The sentence of death for his son is devastating for the reverend. He returns home to his village with the bastard son of his sister (as she has disappeared), as well as the pregnant girlfriend of his soon-to-be executed son. With his wife, they hope to do right by both their new charges, in their simple village ways.

His journey also provides insight into the economic divisions splitting the country, as black-and-white issues threaten to erupt. Inequities abound, and this is the way it has been for many years, but many are refusing tradition and demanding change.

In his return home, his heart breaks over the loss of his beloved son, as has new experiences with which to view his beloved country.

I found the book too “folksy” for my taste. I mostly just wanted the book to end.

I can’t recommend this book.