Presented by: Selma Methnani

This presentation focuses on Apartheid as

historically was in South Africa and as
fictionally viewed and written by J.M
Coetzee in his historiographic novel AGE
OF IRON that provides a vivid portrayal of
life in South Africa during the apartheid
era.
 OUTLINE
 What’s Apartheid
 Apartheid Acts
 Resistance to Apartheid
 The End of Apartheid
 Apartheid in the novel AGE OF IRON
 Apartheid themes in the novel
 What is Apartheid
 Apartheid (Afrikaans “apartness”) is the name of the policy
that governed relations between the white minority and
the nonwhite majority of South Africa during the 20th
century.
 A system of legal racial segregation enforced by the
National Party government under which the population is
classified into 4 racial categories : white / Black African /
Colored(mixed race) / Indian
 Lasted from 1948 to 1994
 Created to keep economical, political and social power with
the minority white people of European descent
 Apartheid
Acts

 Land Acts set aside more than 80 % of South Africa’s land for the white minority to help enforce the
segregation of the races and prevent Blacks from encroaching on white areas

 Population Registration Act of 1950, which classified all South Africans as either Bantu (all

Black Africans), Coloured (those of mixed race), or white. fourth category Indian was later
added.
 “Pass” laws, which required nonwhites to
carry documents authorizing their presence
in restricted areas.
 Bantu Education Act (1953) provided for the
creation of state-run schools, which Black
children were required to attend, with the
goal of training the children for the manual
labor and menial jobs that the government
deemed suitable for those of their race.
 The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act
(1949)
 Opposition to APARTHEID
 The resistance took many forms over years from non-violent demonstrations, protests and
strikes to political action and armed resistance.
 One of the first—and most violent—demonstrations against apartheid took place
in Sharpeville on March 21, 1960 when the police response to the protesters’ actions was to
open fire, killing about 69 Black Africans and wounding many more.
 Soweto, 1976 as a resistance attempt to enforce Afrikaans
language requirements for Black African students, thousands of
people were injured, and hundreds died
 Apartheid received international censure. SA was forced to withdraw
from the Commonwealth in 1961.
 The UN General Assembly denounced Apartheid in 1973, four years
later the UN Security Council voted to impose a mandatory embargo
on the export of arms to SA.
 In 1985 both the UK and the US imposed selective
economic sanctions on SA.
The END of legislated APARTHEID
 In response to these pressures, the South African

government abolished the “PASS LAWS” in 1986

 the government of South African President F.W. de Klerk in

1990–91 repealed most of the social legislation that provided

the legal basis for Apartheid, including the Population

Registration Act.
 A new constitution that enfranchised Blacks and other

racial groups was adopted in 1993 and took effect in 1994.

 All-race national elections, in 1994, produced a coalition

government with a Black majority led by antiapartheid

activist Nelson Mandela, the country’s first Black president.

APARTHEID IN THE NOVEL AGE OF IRON
 J.M. Coetzee was a well-known critic of Apartheid. He ultimately left South Africa for Australia
in 2002 and became an Australian citizen in 2006. Nevertheless, most people seem to know
Coetzee as a writer whose works focus mainly on the problems facing South Africans, and that
illuminate his somewhat ambivalent attitude towards the country in which he was raised.

 Age of Iron, like many of Coetzee's novels, takes on the subject of South Africa under Apartheid.

Age of Iron takes place in the middle of a nationwide State of Emergency in which anti-Apartheid
sentiment was at its height and violence was spiraling out of control. Age of Iron illustrates how,
during Apartheid, two different realities exist for white and Black citizens. The apartheid system,
originally launched for the benefit of whites, ultimately became a burden for them as white
individuals suffer psychologically due to feelings of guilt stemming from their imposition of
apartheid policies.
 APARTHEID IN THE NOVEL AGE OF IRON
 As a whole, J. M. Coetzee's Age of Iron (1990) is a
picture of an inner journey of an aging classics
professor, Elizabeth Curren, who lives in Cape Town
and witnesses the repercussion of apartheid, a
system she apparently opposed only intellectually.

 The novel's narrator is Mrs. Curren who's now dying

of cancer. As Mrs. Curren faces her impending
death, some rather crazy things start happening
around her. She's spent most of her life feeling
pretty separated from the effects that Apartheid
has on the society around her. All of a sudden,
though, the outside world starts creeping into her
private world, beginning when Vercueil, a homeless
man, starts living in her yard.
The Theme Tracker below shows where, and to what degree,
the theme of Apartheid in South Africa appears in each
chapter of Age of Iron.
It is more emphasized in the second and third chapter of the
novel.
 APARTHEID THEMES
IN AGE OF IRON
1- Displacement and homelessness
 Black people have been the primary victims of the apartheid government, leading to widespread
homelessness and displacement. Some of these displaced individuals are Verceuil, Mrs. Florence and her
children Hope, Beauty and Bheki. Florence and her family are forced to constantly move from place to
place within their own country to escape the harsh conditions. They find temporary shelter with Mrs.
Curren.

 Upon returning from a doctor's appointment, Mrs. Curren finds also a homeless man in her yard: “[I]
came upon a house of cartoon boxes and plastic sheeting and a man curled up inside, a man I recognized
from the streets:"
2- Racism
Vercueil, a black housekeeper, lives in her home in a servile capacity. When a
neighbor questions Vercueil's presence in the area, suspecting him as an
intruder, Mrs. Curren replies: “He is a man who works for me.

Mrs. Curren's household, Florence, a black woman, resides there with her young
children, serving as a domestic worker. Florence's situation epitomizes the
plight of marginalized black women in South Africa, as she is exploited due to
the changing circumstances in her hometown of Guguletu. Fleeing violence,
Florence seeks refuge with her children in Mrs. Curren's home, where she takes
up employment as a servant

Florence is back, bringing not only the two little girls but her fifteen- year-old
son Bheki. ‘Is he going to be staying long, Florence?’ I asked. ‘Is there going to be
room for him?’ ‘If he is not with me he will get into trouble,’ Florence replied. ‘My
sister cannot look after him any more. It is very bad in Guguletu, very bad.
 3- violence
 As the novel progresses, Mrs. Curren begins to witness the kinds of horrible violence that she's long
heard about but has never before seen. She starts to understand those around her in a completely
new way. She feels an increasing sense of guilt and a deepening hatred for the world around her.
These feelings only become more complicated as people close to her fall prey to the system. Mrs.
Curren knows that the system she lives in is to blame for the pain and hatred that surround her, but
she feels powerless to do anything about it.
 Mrs. Curren details a series of events that disrupted her protected middle class life. Moreover, her
daughter departed from South Africa to America due to the political instability and spreading
violence in the region . As Mrs. Curren writes, “I have a daughter in America. She left in 1976 and
hasn’t come back. She is married to an American. They have two children of their own”
 Mrs. Curren got robbed three years ago "three years ago, I had a burglary" It makes her feel like an
endangered animal " sleeping with an eye open". Under apartheid regime, everything is
unsystematic resulting to " a dead place ,waste, without use"
 The schools became the center of violence as students rebelled against the
education system built on racial policies. They began burning down schools as
a form of protest against the racist system that aimed to keep black South
Africans in subordinate positions. Mrs. Curren says "We would have thought it
madness to burn a school down. ‘It is different today,’ replied Florence. ‘Do you
approve of children burning down their schools?’ ‘I cannot tell these children
what to do,’ said Florence. ‘It is all changed today. There are no more mothers
and fathers."
Coetzee depicts instances of police brutality through Florence, who warns
Mrs. Curren against questioning why the police are mistreating them: “You
must not ask me, madam, ‘she declared, ‘why the police are coming after the
children and chasing them and shooting them and putting them in jail. You
must not ask me”
 Additionally, Mrs. Curren herself becomes a victim of police aggression. She shelters
John, a black boy who is Bheki's friend, from the police who are trying to arrest and kill
him. Despite her efforts as a white woman to intervene, the police ignore her pleas and
start to break the window’s glass of her kitchen room. One of the men, without
warning, picks up Mrs. Curren: “His fingers closed in my arm. I resisted, but he was too
strong . . . They guided me back to the kitchen and closed the door on me” (139). The
police officer locks her inside the room to prevent her from interfering .However, she
comes out and persists in challenging their actions and says he is just a child and why
the police are after him.

 The police officers showed no regard for Mrs. Curren's race; their sole objective was to
apprehend the black boy hiding in her house. In this situation, Mrs. Curren experiences
the injustices of police misconduct, becoming a victim of their actions. They disregard
her status as a respected white woman and treat her without respect.
 4-Turmoil, Guilt and Complicity

of white people
The novel depicts the psychological turmoil experienced by Mrs. Curren, a white woman who serves as a
representative of South African whites suffering from feelings of guilt. The apartheid system, initially established
as a legacy of British colonization with the intention of subjugating black people for their supposed
improvement, ultimately backfired, leading to turmoil and crisis in the country. Mrs. Curren, in a letter to her
daughter, expresses the ongoing violence and instability, highlighting the constant fear and uncertainty
pervading the lives of whites. “The killings are going on all the time anything can happen here”

She acknowledges the psychological pain of living amidst this unrest." Through me alone do you find yourself
here on those desolate flats, smell the smoke in the air, see the bodies of dead, and hear the weeping, shiver in
the rain . . . stranger’s voice sounding in your ear, but the fact is, there are no one else. I am only one, I am the
one writing: I, "
As Mrs. Curren is symbolically suffering from cancer and estranged from her family,
she comes to realize the consequences of her actions. Her daughter has distanced
herself due to the country's instability, a result of the policies implemented by
whites. Trapped by her past deeds, Mrs. Curren grapples with the trauma inflicted
upon her "I have intimations older than any memory, unshakable, that once upon a
time I was alive. Was alive and then was stolen from life. From the cradle a theft tool
place: a child was taken and a doll left in its place to be nursed and reared, and that
doll is what I call I”

Identifying herself as a 'doll' stolen from life, Mrs. Curren recognizes the irony of the
situation: the apartheid system, originally intended to dehumanize black people,
and to make blacks doll , now whites have become doll. What was once seen as a
tool of white superiority has become a burden, trapping them in a cycle of suffering.
The novel thus underscores the tragic irony of white South Africans' complicity in
their own victimization.
REFERENCES
https://www.britannica.com/topic/apartheid

https://www.academia.edu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid

Thornton, L. (1990). Apartheid’s last vicious gasps. The New York Times. A
book review of Age of Iron by J. M.

C. HILL, Bantustans. The Fragmentation of South Africa, Oxford, 1964

R. DAVIES, D. O'MERA & S. DLAMINI, The Struggle for South Africa, Zed
Books, Londres, 2e éd. 1988