Tales of transition

In this article the rationale of this special issue is provided and the different contributions are introduced. The assumption is that there are strong similarities between the recent political and social transitions in South Africa and Germany and the reactions, both emotional and literary, of the people involved. Broadly, the transitions are described as a movement from external (or violent) to internal (or ideological) social control, though this must be modified by the various constructions the contributors put on the transition. The main themes and questions of the transitions are synthesized, highlighting the marked similarities the different contributions reveal. The most important of these are the relation to the past, problems of identity, projections of the new and the internal contradictions of nationalist discourse (which informs the process of transition). In conclusion, the similarities and differences between the two transitions indicated by this special issue, are discussed. The assumption of strong similarities between the two seems to hold, it is argued, but much more research into the matter is needed.

1.The rationale of this special issue ... official history is a production, but also an erasure of an alter native history (Horn, p. 28).
The word "possible" excludes all the possibilities which according to the (falsified) record o f the past have been judged "impossible" (Horn,p 33).
The state can never admit that the ideological operations which it produces in order to maintain its sovereignty can be wrong (Horn,p. 38).
Literature will not cease to write about the things which happened before 1990, neither in Germany nor in South Africa (Horn, p 38).
The assumption behind this collection o f essays is that there are strong parallels between these two transitions and the ways in which they w ere dealt with in the literature and other writings o f the tw o countries.O f course there are differences and contrasts, too, and perhaps more glaring than the similarities.To recall but one: the differences between a European and an African country.
The democratisation process in both East Germany and South Africa can broadly and reductively be described as a shift from relying for political control primarily on the repressive state apparatus (the police, the judicial and penal system and the army) towards relying mainly on ideological state apparatuses (schools, universities, churches, commissions, the media, literature, art) (Althusser, 1969: 54-55) -a shift from an external locus o f control tow ards an internal locus o f control.To put it crudely: a shift from a police state tow ards the rule o f law.
The transformations are parallel in that institutions have changed radically; different cultures have to be integrated; radical new ways o f thinking have to be learnt; old certainties have disappeared; and new (and frightening) challenges or problems have to be overcome.Profound changes in the framing conditions o f personal and cultural life are occuring -changing from a secure (though repressive) situation into a hard-edged, com petitive and often unfriendly freedom.
In such uncertain times people turn back to the familiar, as M onika M aron w rites in A nim al triste (see Van Luxemburg,p. 138).That partly explains why the stories o f these post-totalitarian cultures are dominated by debates about the past and the rhetorics o f memory, mourning, and nostalgia.Perhaps the most important question o f all is: W hat is to becom e o f the past?
There are a lot o f other important questions: W hat is the nature o f such transitions?How do the different authors and critics describe or construct the transition?How are these transitions reflected or represented in literature and culture?How is language itself affected by the transition?And culture?Can traces o f change be found in value systems and social and literary norms and models?Can literature bridge the gulf o f separation between people and open up new possibilities that would heal and reconcile?Another central concern is that o f identity and the role that images o f the self and the other play in constructing an identity.In the construction o f identity the influence o f literature and the m edia is crucial.Self-image is also closely linked to one's image o f one's own country and o f other countries.This is particularly topical in an African context.How is Africa constructed?As a hard, arid wilderness, a Biblical desert or a place w here one can feel at home?Questions like these are (partly) answered in this special edition o f Literator.It is special, not only in the sense that it concentrates on the special topic o f transitional literature, but also because authors from South Africa, Germany and the Netherlands contributed to this first 'international' issue with a w ide range o f essays.
The critics tell and respond to a kaleidoscope o f stories against backdrops that vary from townships to metropolises.They are stories o f people caught between changing political spheres, between the old and the new , and their reactions to these: alienation, uncertainty, fear; their fate clearly dem onstrating the intertwining o f the political and the private.D anto's definition o f narrative as "an explanatory account o f changing, coherent past events" (cf.Steenberg, p. 93) can serve as a guideline for drawing together the diverse contributions to this special issue.Together they form multiple narratives o f the tw o transitions in question.At least four different w ays o f writing such explanatory accounts can be discerned: fictional narratives, historical narratives, narratives in the media and, o f course, narratives by the critics and academ ics themselves.The poems by Peter Horn concluding this issue capture much o f the hope and uncertainty o f transition.

Peter Horn -"Parallels and contrasts -Wendezeit in South
African and German literature" Peter H orn's thoughtful and densely argued contribution articulates important differences betw een historical and fictional accounts o f events.He takes up a num ber o f the Leitm otifs o f transitional literature, especially the central question o f how to deal with the past.Hom argues that the past is much deeper than official history allows and that the truth that is forgotten -or rather, repressedby official history, forcefully keeps emerging in our language, stories, dreams and actions (p.26).Historical documents and official history are therefore full o f gaps and lacunae.
In the transition a new official history emerges, memory becom es selective, the m isdeeds o f the past are ignored or forgotten.People get tired o f hearing the litany o f the past.However, the ghosts o f the past cannot be laid to rest so easily.As B rink's O n the contrary dem onstrates for Horn, official history is "a pro duction but also an erasure o f alternative history" (p.28 Yet here is a danger, too -the danger that art will be so taken up with nostalgia that it loses touch with reality and becom es repugnant.It is already custom ary for writers to deny that they are making art.For South Africa this means the end o f an "aesthetics o f conviction" that includes writing about the injustices o f the past.
Here Hom reminds us that reading or writing about torture is not innocent, but implicates the reader-spectator as a voyeur in the act o f torture, suggesting that violence is intimate, personal.This yet again illustrates how deeply the political impinges on the private.
Hom finds a further unbearable question in C oetzee's novel: Is it at all possible to tell the truth about yourself?This question calls the very possibility o f truth in question, suggesting that the m ost relentless confession might be but "a desire o f the self to construct its own truth", to construct "a self-serving fiction", as H om quotes from C oetzee's essay on confession (p.35).
In desiring to tell the truth the writer becom es a voyeur, a spy, transgressing the very idea o f privacy.As C oetzee's character abundantly discovers, spying is part o f the art o f writing.That is the reason why "writing necessarily transgresses the boundaries o f w hat is perm issible" (p.36).
The close connection between telling and desire means for H om that both telling the truth and violence is intimately connected to the very desire for a unified ISSN 0258-2279 Coetzee seems to construct the transition as the em ergence o f a new hegemonic discourse o f the nation.He, how ever, also points out that South African literature has already shown a consciousness o f political crisis, o f living in an interregnum, since the 7 0 's and that the transition cannot be limited to the period since 1994.This indicates that our constructions o f language, South African literature, identity, the past, o f Africa itself (important themes that other contributors also take up) are bound to be relative and exclusive in their own way.
The discursive construction o f the past, but also o f South Africa, Africa and identity, are central concerns in Karel Schoem an's new novel, Verkenning (Reconnaissance).Yet, one may strongly doubt that it is a transitional novel at all, since it is (in a literal sense) an exploration o f the Cape Colony during the Batavian Period (1803-1806) and appears to have little to say about the transition o f the 1990's.Van Vuuren, however, shows that the narrator is extremely conscious o f the distance between now and then; o f the difficulty, even the inability o f fully understanding the past, as the recurring image o f pushing open the heavy door suggests.It is a metafictional novel, fully conscious o f the provisional and tentative nature o f its discursive construction o f the past; its intermingling o f "fact" and "fiction" .The narrator makes it very clear that his representation o f the facts is a construction that in some places conflicts with known historical facts -calling into question the possibility o f distinguishing between historical " facts" and "fiction" at all.
To reread and rew rite history, to reinterpret it, may be likened to turning back to the familiar that is characteristic o f periods o f transition.It is a kind o f nostalgia.But rewriting history is also a defamiliarisation o f known history; reading it with a m odem sensibility that foregrounds burning concerns o f our own time, such as giving voice to marginalised and voiceless groups like the slaves and the San.A m odem sensibility also enacts the way in which European voices and con structions o f Africa as an empty and arid w ilderness (see the motto o f this section) lose their relevance at the outer limits o f the colony and are replaced by African voices and an African sense o f being at home.In these w ays the novel echoes present-day concerns, concerns o f the transition.
The novel is a rich polyphony o f voices, a veritable collage o f intertexts, ranging inter alia from Lichtenstein to Herder and Flavius Josephus.In reaching back to the past, the roots o f present-day South African society, the novel also carries in its intertexts, as Van Vuuren points out, a very strong consciousness o f transition and especially o f the coming o f the new.As collage, in the numerous fragments o f different voices and texts it presents us, in its reflection o f different forms o f language, o f discourse, the novel is almost Foucauldian in method: the discontinuous fragment is dominant.In other words, it exemplifies the method Ampie C oetzee is propounding.
Lileralor 18(3) Nov. 1997:1-23  ISSN 0258-2279 It is as if the novel is suggesting that periods o f transition are predominantly extremely chaotic and polyphonic: a plethora o f contradictory voices vying for attention, reflecting (for the present-day reader) ironically on the continuity o f racist attitudes and practices.By exposing different constructions to dialogue with other voices, through its heteroglossic structure (Bakhtin, 1989) the novel is constantly relativising pretensions o f absolute truth.The surfacing o f historically repressed voices in this novel is a reminder o f our complicity in history and o f the relativity o f our own constructions o f the past and o f the present, too, specifically o f the transition itself; in H orn's terms: o f w hat official history excludes.

Johan van Wyk -"Catastrophe and beauty: Ways o f dying, Zakes Mda's novel of the transition"
The return o f the repressed is a basic Freudian tenet.The fact that Johan van Wyk construes transition and transitional literature in Freudian terms, specifically using Freud's essay on "Group psychology", also illustrates the relativity o f our constructions.
Van Wyk situates the novel in the period o f negotiations betw een 1990 and 1994 in which the state has lost control and legitimacy.As the repressive pow er o f the state vanes, there is a resurgence o f repressed instincts.The reality principle is lost, making room for dreams and mysticism.The m asses feel omnipotent.Amidst violent death, birth, sexuality, morbid symptoms, the new is bom.The transition is therefore characterised by the inversion o f pow er, evoking camivalesque elements.As Van W yk points out, it is significant that the novel ends with N ew Y ear's celebrations that also symbolically celebrate the imminent freedom.The death o f the old also means rebirth.
Van Wyk dem onstrates the importance o f oedipal factors and dream s in the novel.He cites different examples o f condensation.T oloki's father e.g. is both his ideal and his opponent, w hose death he desires.His desire for N oria, the woman who inspired his father and whom he fears, is shameful as it is akin to a desire to sleep with his mother.
Van Wyk also makes a case for viewing the transition as the terrible carnival o f Halloween, inter alia because it links arbitrary killing and laughter.From the examples van W yk cites, it is clear that the reality principle has becom e weakened and that people cannot distinguish betw een their fantasies (ideologies) and reality.That is why children, supposedly innocent, becom e instruments o f death.
Transition means alienation, loss o f identity and security, the loosening o f restrictions and chaos.It is a nightmare and it also m eans death.rather, the social boundaries are reaffirmed.Steenberg's rather optimistic reading o f these novels seems to lack a sense o f the interference o f the political and the personal which plays such an important role in all these novels.
In Die stoetm eester (The master stud farmer), black and w hite meet each other on an equal footing, as professionals.This constitutes for Steenberg the basis for a rapprochement between black and white.In his opinion the (rather melo dramatic) scene at the end o f the book w here the tw o strong w omen o f the book take each other's hands in the river, gives hope for the future.G aylard reads one o f the stories as cautioning "against simplistic or naïve assumptions o f transformation and acceptance" (p.114).He is well aw are o f the danger that the discourse o f nation-building can create new insiders and outsiders.His essay, however, makes explicit another element o f transitional literature, namely the rhetorics o f the new beginning.For him, the 1994 elections marks a turning point in literary history, too, since he argues (against C oetzee's view) that the literature o f the interregnum (like G ordim er's J u ly 's People, which could imagine the future only in apocalyptic term s) has made w ay for an imaginative record, a w itness, o f the transition that w as unimaginable a few years ago.To record history as people personally lived and experienced it, to build on shared experience that can lead to a feeling o f common citizenship, w as one o f the aims o f the com pilers o f this anthology.In G aylard's opinion these stories illustrate a "rediscovery o f the ordinary" (Ndebele, 1991:50), writing about a common subjectivity.
Gaylard admits, though, that the collection's celebration o f the new is " already tinged with nostalgia" in the light o f the realities (like a high crime rate) o f the new South Africa.

A.M. Rauch -"Die geistig-kulturelle Lage im wiedervereinigten Deutschland"
On this note w e can turn to the German transition, since nostalgia w as an important reaction to the event that forms R auch's point o f departure for considering the mental and cultural situation in the reunified Germany.This event is an exhibition, held in Berlin in 1993, that depicted the stations o f life, important life events like baptism, communion, marriage, entrance in professional life, retirement, etc., in The guest-books reveal that for people from the W est the exhibition served the purpose o f getting to know and understand each other, w hereas people from the East regarded it as a mirror in which they saw their own life history reflected.Rauch finds it remarkable that there w as very little evidence that people from the East regarded reunification as a liberation or could see the new possibilities for self-realisation in the new Germany.In comments by visitors from the East the predominant feelings were nostalgia, feelings o f betrayal by history, feelings o f having been victim to two consecutive totalitarian systems: National Socialism followed by the GDR Regime.
On both sides a feeling existed that people were not prepared for the problem s o f reunification.The initial feelings o f euphoria w ere quickly replaced by a consciousness o f how far people have grown apart from each other -a mental alienation that Rauch believes would not easily be overcome by the m ass media or by portraying a unified Germany as it can still be detected by sociological studies.
Vergangenheitsbewáltigung on the Eastern side not only has to do with the feelings o f betrayal by history, but very much also with the disruption o f the own life story.For many Ossis the Wende means loss o f security, identity and career prospects, loss o f a predictable and clear vision o f the future; loss o f the past.Rauch believes the new future overtaxes them, leading to resignation and passivity.These feelings are very similar, w e think, to the feelings o f many white South Africans, particularly Afrikaners, today: they are showing the same reactions to their country's profound transition.
In contrast to the reorientation that people from the East are concerned with, in the W est the confrontation with the past takes another turn: that o f a new confrontation with the N azi past, as Rauch illustrates with the exam ple o f U. W oelk's novel Ruckspiel.This novel indicates for him firstly, the influence o f irrational emotions on history and politics: turning points in life are influenced more by women than by politics (a theme also explored by Van Luxemburg).Secondly, it illustrates that a life history can be told and interpreted in multiple ways: every telling means a new life.This postm odern notion has already been illustrated by Verkenning and by the historiographic metafiction Steenberg mentions.
For Rauch it is evident that there remain deep existential and philosophical differences between East and W est. The wall still seems to exist in the minds o f people.There is political unity, but no mental-cultural unity.In the East there is a lack o f identification with Germany and with the European integration process, since the W est European world is unknown there.
On the other hand Rauch regards language, culture and history as strong unifying forces.Another unifying force is a common search for meaning and value.One o f the m ost interesting indications o f this trend is the surging popularity o f valueorientated literature like M tirchen.Significant in this regard is that Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince has become a best-seller in both East and W estmore than 10 million copies have been sold in the last few years.The popularity o f The Little Prince indicates for Rauch that people are realising again that life needs meaning and purpose; that there are certain really important (if invisible) things in life.
The shared realisation that dem ocratic values must be kept in and that totalitarianism should never again be allowed to replace it, is also a strong unifying element, but in R auch's opinion it is the G erm ans' shared longing for meaning and purpose that affords the strongest hope for unity and a common identity in future.

Jan van Luxemburg -"Monika Maron: Love and writing in a political climate"
The w ay in which people have grown apart during the separation, is one o f the things that illustrates the interwovenness o f love story and official history, of personal history and politics.This interwovenness is the theme o f Jan van Luxem burg's discussion o f Anim al triste, the novel by M onika M aron that has been hailed as the most impressive novel o f the transition ( W enderoman) yet.
Van Luxemburg outlines the mixed reception o f the book: on the one hand it has received high praise for its "intense and poetic description o f physical desire"; on the other hand it has been condemned as kitsch.The author's intention was indeed to write a love story that subordinates politics to love.O r rather, a love story that show s the intricate interactions between politics and love.
This move is significant against the background that Van Luxem burg sketches o f the problem atic relations between private love and public affairs in M aron's earlier novels.H ere love stories serve as background to political actions or concerns and are often related with irony and distance.Stille Zeile Sechs, for example, w as described as " an epic settlement with communism" .It is mainly a political novel with two stories o f absolute love in the background.
As the title suggests, absolute love is the theme o f A nim al triste.This is also articulated in one important phrase, " Man kann im Leben nichts versáum en als die Liebe" (W hat can one miss in life besides love?).But politics, the Wende in particular, is no mere background, but in fact the precondition for this love: the

Wolfgang Gabler -"Die Wende als Witz; komische Darstellungen eines historischen Umbruchs"
The longing for an empty lost object is a central hypothesis in G abler's view o f the transition as jo k e or wit.His contribution focuses on recent texts that present the political transition in East Germany as a comical event.Like Van W yk G abler utilises Freudian insights, but, com pared to Van W yk, he underestim ates the importance o f Bakhtin's (1984:18 ff.) ideas about the cam ivalesque inversion and the grotesque body in the novels he discusses.
In Freud's theory, as Gabler explains it, jo k es are understood as acts o f social communication between a subject (narrator), an object (narrative) and an addressee.The comical effect results from the reduced or isolated observation o f a com plex object.The psychological explanation o f the necessity o f an addressee -in contrast to humour and comedy -is to be found in the nature o f wit itself.
Freud observed that the subject him self does not laugh at his witty thought(s), but at the same time needs a 'third person' with whom he can share the joke.From this he concludes that the joke entails a transgression o f a taboo, and that the narrator then needs to w ard off the ensuing feelings o f guilt by letting the addressee, through his laughter, share in the transgression, thereby covering it up and excusing it.G abler exemplifies this hypothesis by analysing the w it in tw o recent (and extremely popular) novels, Thomas Brussig's H elden wie w ir and Jens Sparschuh's D er Zim m erspringbrunnen.In the tradition o f the picaresque the "heroes" o f both novels act as "antiheroes", as fools, as products o f the realities o f life in the GD R, thereby denying the ideology o f hum aneness, social togetherness, collectivity, order, duty and commitment the G D R itself propagated.In an adverse reaction to these utterly meaningless cliches, both characters resort to irrational, ridiculous acts o f perversion and subversion with grotesque effects.By making taboos public these acts liberate both the actors and their audiences.These acts o f wit transform the extreme negative traits (perverse, evil, infantile) o f their subjects into the positive attributes o f liberators and redeem ers, but at the same time expose their own dialectic nature: em ancipation, but with the loss o f love; dem ocracy, but with the death o f M other GD R. The structure o f wit therefore can be seen as repressed or isolated feelings o f mourning and nostalgia for an empty lost object.In both novels the heroes becom e tragic characters.Nostalgia as symptom o f mourning is also the theme o f E ster's essay.He echoes many o f the issues already raised by Rauch and Gabjer, but also accentuates the role o f language in the estrangem ent betw een O ssis and W essis.The fall o f the Wall did not end this estrangement, but rather has made the separation visible to an extent that has turned the initial euphoria into lamentation over the loss o f the familiar (and therefore reliable) reality.
The hypothesis that the struggle against the oppression o f the GD R-regim e is over and thus that the memories about the G D R must be erased, does not accord with the human need to remember, Ester writes.This view is similar to Peter H orn's, who reminds us o f H egel's distinction betw een rem em brance, which subjects itself to the dem ands o f the consciousness, and memory, which transports from unconsciousness to consciousness those events and facts against which consciousness creates boundaries (Horn, p. 32).
Hans Ester argues that it is o f the utmost importance for the entire new Federal Republic o f Germany to understand that many citizens o f the form er G D R cannot and do not subscribe to the am nesia which is expected o f them, because that would rob them o f their (private) inner life, o f their (private) past, o f their (private) language which w as not the (official) language o f the state; in short, o f their identity.The dilemma o f their own privateness, the impingement o f the state security apparatus (the Stasi) on private life, is evident, not only in the case o f well-known authors like Christa W olf (mentioned by Peter Horn) and M onika Maron (mentioned by Van Luxemburg), but also in less known cases like that o f Reverend Friedrich Schlorlemmer, w ho discovered only after the dism antling o f the Stasi that his congregation had been full o f informers.D espite his aversion to its political system, he can still moum the passing aw ay o f w hat w as valuable in the GDR.
Schlorlemmer pleads that East and W est should not forget their past and regrets that there had been no time for a proper self-confrontation and self-purification, for a dialogue between the people, that would have enabled them to adjust mentally and em otionally to the Wende.Valuable in the G D R has been for him truth and solidarity -the truth created by censorship.Declaring the heritage o f 40 years null and void in an instant, leads to skepticism and amorality, he believes.This might be one explanation o f the longing for meaning and purpose that Rauch observes in Germany today.
Reconciliation is only possible if communication is restored through learning each other's language, Ester argues.It is the same German language indeed, but with a w ide range o f lexical variations which relate to different interpretations and therefore often causes a break-down o f communication betw een East and West.In the East many w ords were filled with an ideological content which distorted their original denotation, while the preference for abbreviations created a kind o f secret language.W ords from communism and the international w orkers' move ment w ere taken over from Russian.Religious w ords w ere filled with a pseudo religious content.
The divergence o f East and W est German is not a m atter o f vocabulary only, but, as Ester points out, it affected core areas o f thinking, feeling and believing, as we saw portrayed in A nim al triste.Hans Ester identifies these obstacles o f communication as the root o f the still existing alienation betw een East and W est and sees the reciprocal reading o f literary and other texts from the two Germanies o f the years after 1945 as essential for working through the past and as an instrument o f reconciliation.This need to grapple with the past, to w ork through it in order to reach reconciliation, is essentially what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is trying to do in South Africa.One o f its paradoxical effects is that it is encouraging am nesia among Afrikaners, who cannot bear to hear o f more horrors com mitted by fellow-Afrikaners.H orn's image in the motto o f this section is terribly apposite here.A similar denial o f Afrikaner past is taking place.Their very language is being denied and replaced by English.E ster's plea for the mutual reading o f each other's books and docum ents seems ju st as valid for South Africans -for both black and white, as N adine Gordimer reminds us.The big archive o f South A frica's recent past is now opening for the first tim e, enabling us to recover the missing context and experience o f fellow South Africans, she w rites (1995:13), citing the famous w ords o f M ilan K undera's that "the struggle o f man against pow er is the struggle o f memory against forgetting" .In her opinion (ib id ), " [t]he archive o f the time rests in Security Police files"; much has been shredded in the meantime, perhaps lost for ever.
Is there in South Africa a com parable nostalgia for the past?It seems probable, but w e do not really know; the reaction o f South Africans to the transition would have to be researched.A recent prediction by the A frikaans author, Elsa Joubert, Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:1-23  ISSN 0258-2279 does indicate such a nostalgia.Speaking at a colloquium on "Afrikaans w riters in a changing context" in Stellenbosch, Joubert said that A frikaans readers no longer find the horrors o f the past gripping, but now rather w ant to read books about the good old days when they felt safe and secure (Anon. 1997:7).
12. Stefan FrOhlich -"Images of America in unified Germany" In this article Fróhlich puts forward another perspective on the roots o f the alienation between East and W est, namely the development o f different images o f America since the Second W orld War.He regards images o f Am erica in Europe mostly as stereotypes -but then as stereotypes that serve as a huge screen on which European fantasies can be projected.
The exposure o f W est Germans to American culture since 1945 and the development o f a mostly positive A m erikabild merged into an understanding o f American culture as not foreign, but rather as similar to the (W est) German Selbstbild.It w as not the N ew W orld that w as foreign to W est Germany, but rather Eastern Europe.This w as the case until the collapse o f the East Blocksomething which also put an end to many a Frem dbild.But the W ende, the reunification o f Germany, also meant an end to traditional F reundbilder and the "natural" relationship to America.A new German Selbstbild and new internal Feindbilder emerged, which have a profound influence on German society, as can be seen in manifestations like A uslánderfeindlichkeit.
Fróhlich points out that the different Selbstbilder o f W essis and O ssis are products o f post-w ar history and that their consequent F rem dbilder are an important source o f alienation from each other -a phenom enon w hich is also reflected in the texts o f authors like Stefan Heym, F.C. Delius and, m ost o f all, Gunter Grass.The reason for this is that the O ssis are rather m ore reserved and critical o f American culture; rather ambivalent tow ards A merican m ass culture.
Fróhlich does not mention G rass' most recent work, Ein weites F eld (1995, translated as A fa r fie ld ), but it could be included here, since it deals extensively with the reunification o f Germany.Before reunification G rass vehemently defended his political conviction that history m ade the growing together o f W est and East impossible and that a confederation would therefore be more appropriate than a united Germany.The same conviction underlies his depiction o f the "far fields" o f German history in the 19th and 20th century, which render the historical continuity after the Wende not only impossible, but also fatal.
Frfthlich believes though, that Americanisation could in time becom e one o f the common grounds between East and W est and, like art, music, and m ass culture, ease the transformation.
Reading this article one is struck by strong similarities betw een the South African and German images o f America.W e find the same stereotyping here -America is the land o f opportunity, a country without culture, etc.South Africa has becom e one o f the most Americanised societies today (if one can believe press reports), and if one can take the wearing o f base-ball caps as an index o f that, it seems to be true.It seems reasonable to suppose that America has, in the same w ay as in Germany, become part o f the South African self-image.There is probably a parallel in the development o f self-image and images o f enemies and foreigners, too.After 1994 South Africa has no enemies left in the world.That South Africans no longer regard each other as enemies, is probably too optimistic a view.But there is an internal enemy image developing, as press reports o f increasing intolerance o f foreigners from Africa attest.The construction o f an other in order to unify the nation, is taking its toll.
In any case, Fróhlich reaffirms the importance o f literature and the m edia in creating self-image and identity.The influence o f media in this regard, is a theme that M aria von Harpe also addresses in her article.

Maria von Harpe -"East German media in transition after reunification"
That the m edia could also help to build common ground betw een East and W est, is one o f Von H arpe's arguments.She thinks the biggest challenge for the media in the next decade is to help the Germans overcome the idea o f the Berlin Wall, agreeing with Rauch that big differences between East and W est Germ ans still remain.
In the G D R, as Von Harpe explains, the central government absolutely controlled the m edia -not only new spapers, radio and television, but also the training o f journalists and the language used by the media.The only "window to the W est" East Germ ans had, w as W est German TV and radio stations.This situation ended soon after reunification, as East German journalists saw in the privatisation o f the m edia a w ay to overcome state control.The m edia w ere sold and W essis moved into leading m edia positions, which estranged the O ssis, causing the failure o f a lot o f ventures.As a consequence, ow nership o f the m edia is becoming concentrated in the hands o f only a few.Such m onopolies are a problem , since they tend to steer the m edia into infotainment for the sake o f revenue, providing very little solid information.
Von H arpe thinks it necessary that civil society should be rebuilt.For that the public needs both information and entertainment and freedom o f communication.She therefore advocates a good balance between private ownership and public regulation.In her opinion reunification has created favourable conditions for In cultural reporting some editors are talking about a cultural revolution away from the domination by politics in the past.The new ownership that Froneman outlines is likely going to lead to less attention to "w hite" affairs and cultural concerns in favour o f "black" concerns.But it is also possible that the cultural pages could serve a unifying purpose by bringing together the different languages and cultures o f the rainbow people.This could, in his opinion, have an enriching effect on literature and cultural life in general.
Looking at the broad picture, Froneman finds it probable that the future will be determ ined by the question whether ideology (as provided for by the developmental model) will dominate market principles (as em bodied in the social responsibility model), or vice versa.The first scenario could lead to an authoritarian or even M arxist model, which would inhibit reporting and impoverish the intellectual climate.In the second scenario the social responsibility model probably would, in his opinion, acquire more characteristics o f the dem ocratic participatory model, which could lead to a maximum o f freedom o f expression and diversity in which art, literature and culture could flourish.
Com paring the situations in Germany and in South Africa, it is clear that different degrees o f authoritarianism were prevalent in the two countries.A striking resem blance, though, is that the m edia in both countries w ere mainly controlled by having the "right" people in editorial positions.W hereas the struggle for dem ocracy seem s to have been decisively won in Germany, in South Africa the struggle continues and the em ergence o f a new authoritarianism cannot be ruled out, especially since the policy o f affirmative action is again putting the "right" people in leading positions.Nation building carries the germ o f totalitarianism within itself.A striking difference is that in the G D R W est G erman TV and radio played an important role in creating an aw areness o f the different standards of living in the two G ennanies, bringing about change, w hereas in South Africa the former SABC w as strongly inhibited by government control and came close to being a government propaganda machine.Some would say it is again the case today.
Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:1-23 ISSN 0258-2279 The diversification o f media ownership and content in both countries underlines the fact that people need media that fit their own interests and identity.

Conclusions
1 am going to write it all down anyway (Horn, p. 226).
Looking at this special issue as a whole, the assumption that there w ould be similarities between the two transitions seems justified.Very similar emotional reactions to the transitions have been indicated.Feelings o f estrangem ent and loss o f identity seem to be central to the people's reactions to both situations.Similarly, there still exists a gulf between the different groups in the new South Africa that has to be overcome.It is difficult to say w hether South Africans have a comparable common longing for meaning and purpose in life that could bridge this gap.
Whether the orientations to the past are also similar, w hether w e find the same kind o f nostalgia in South Africa than in East Germany, is not very clear.A similar process o f repressing and forgetting the past is going on in South Africa.Few people in South Africa seem to long for the apartheid past, but the lost o f security, personal history and a sense o f predictability and control, is probably just as severe for many Afrikaners (and many w hites, too).In any case, different groups probably experience the transition differently.N ostalgia am ong the black population cannot be ruled out and could be strong among the coloured people.Whether these suppositions really hold would have to be researched.
There seems to be differences in the nature o f the transition.In Germany it took place quickly, nearly overnight, w hereas in South Africa it w as a long draw n out process through a long interregnum full o f morbid symptoms.There does not seem to be the same sense o f a clear-cut transition in South Africa; it is more o f a process.That w e lack a name for the transition in South Africa indicates this.
In South Africa the sense o f new ness and the celebration o f the new seem s to be stronger, perhaps because the transition has been such a long and painful process.O f course, not everybody is celebrating the new South Africa.This sense o f the new, o f celebrating the transition as point zero, is probably going to mean that we would have to rew rite literary history, too; that the social and political transition would bring about a literary transition in its wake.It seem s as if the literature o f the interregnum -marked by the spectacular, protest, w ar, struggle, violence, bloodshed -is making w ay for a literature o f the transition -m ore human-like, focusing on the ordinary lives and concerns o f ordinary people.
This special issue really raises more questions than it answers.If anything, it underlines the need for more comparative literary, political, media and sociological studies o f these two periods o f transition, and people's reactions to them.Perhaps, on the most abstract level, what w e are witnessing in the two transitions is a clash between a postmodern and a modernist (modernising) Zeitgeist, as the exhibition o f German stations o f life suggests.W e should remember, however, that the results o f official research are going to be full o f lies.As Peter H om stressed, the suppressed truth o f the past would only resurface in art and literature.
H orn's poem, "The song o f the Diederik Cuckoo" (p.227), ends with a complex image that sums up our conflicting experiences o f transition.Rising from pain and horror, the song o f the cuckoo combines feelings o f sw eetness and light, hope, overcoming the "bitter root" o f murder.Light and beauty, as symbolised by the cuckoo's song and the wing o f a butterfly, form essential parts o f the selfimage with which the poems ends: "my face in the mirror o f marble" .This is a highly ambiguous phrase.One reading is that the speaker confronts his own death and his own guilt in the shining marble o f a tombstone: he is guilty of complicity in the horrors o f the past, but also o f experiencing (and dreaming of) saving beauty in the midst o f death.Another reading is that he sees, in an imaginary mirror, his face turning into stone for the same reasons.The past speaks in his innermost experience o f himself.

7.
Rob Gaylard -"Crossing over: Stories of the transition, or 'history from the inside'"Crossing boundaries is a central m etaphor o f the review article by Rob Gaylard o f the collection o f South African transition stories, C rossing over.This collection is unique as it w as published in Afrikaans, too (under the title K eerpunt,Rode &  Gerwel, 1995), and collects responses to the transition by mainly younger w riters for younger readers.Gaylard shows that the prominent themes o f transitional literature also occur in this collection.Some stories are concerned with the continuing presence o f the past.Others underline the big differences betw een the life w orlds o f suburb and informal settlement, differences in the material circum stances o f life.M ost o f them demonstrate the intersection o f the political and the personal.M ost interesting for our purpose is the w ay in w hich some o f the stories commemorate the 1994 elections as a new beginning.G aylard points out a new fluidity and a willingness o f people to reinvent them selves and a renew ed aw areness o f self and others that is undoing racism and stereotyping in the stories.By enacting the inclusion o f the white outsider in the making o f the new nation, one o f the stories contribute to the making o f an inclusive nation and to lifting the burden o f past guilt.Another one dem onstrates how voiceless people get a voice (a vote) for the first time.Yet Gaylard is also aw are that celebrating 10 ISSN 0258-2279 /,iterator 18(3) Nov. 1997:1-23 the new does not solve the concrete problems o f poverty, inequality and home lessness that is revealed in the gaps and silences o f the stories.
Germany from 1900Germany from  -1993. .Nearly h alf o f the exhibition depicted the difference in the development o f the life histories o f people in East and W est Germany.From the wall that separated the two sections the visitor could look down upon the two Germanies and com pare the effects o f different political, economical and educational systems upon private life histories.On the G D R side the design was linear with clear divisions and marked transitions according to a fixed plan, expressing a strongly organised life history from birth to old-age.The BRG side was a labyrinth with multiple entrances and exits and flowing transitions, which suggested that the Bildungszeit in the W est w as open, subject to change.M ost revealing about the exhibition w ere the guest-books in which the visitors could express their opinions about each other and about their experience o f the I.iterator 18(3) Nov. 1997:1-23 ISSN 0258-2279 time since the Wende and the possibilities o f the future: "Und heute -1993?" Stemming from the realm o f the unconscious, wit can bring ostracised thoughts/ taboos to the surface o f consciousness, thereby overcoming the hindrances o f shame and guilt.But wit can only becom e G estalt if the third person has the same repressions as the wit-teller.If -in analogy to Freud's interpretation o f the dream as the via regia to know ledge o f the individual unconscious -jokes are the expressions o f collective repressions, then, Gabler argues, analysing them should reveal insights into the realm o f the collective unconscious.But the essence o f jo k es is the laughter o f the first and the third person, w ho share the same codes o f values, experiences, taboos, fears, anxieties.Their laughter is a w ay o f dealing collectively with fears and threats.The greatest threat is death, but the expression o f this fear through jok es is at the same time com pensated for by the laughter which dispels its m enace (Schiller's " Abschreckung des Schreckens").Jokes thus also constitute a degree o f liberation.
). Authentic w itness is rewritten according to what is officially acceptable.Historians are limited to the possible, H om argues, to what can be proven by authentic docum ents, but because literature lacks this authority o f history, it can transcend the boundaries o f the possible, that what is excluded from language, and enter the realm o f This does not relieve the writer o f the burden to write about the horrors in the cellars o f society, Horn writes, citing as examples J.M .C oetzee's The M a ster o f Petersburg and Christa W o lfs M edea.In both novels the characters discover, as it were, the dark hidden secrets, the dark counter-images o f societies that portray themselves as light and glittering and consider themselves happy, believing the lie they secretly wish to believe.Both novels can be images o f the new Germany and the new South Africa, but are also more than that.Knowing the dark secrets o f the past is a heavy burden, a kind o f guilt.W riting the past, as C oetzee's novel illustrates, is therefore a kind o f necrom ancy -the art o f raising the dead.Hom believes that the truth that em erges through processes possibility -the realm o f the 'might have been'.That is why H om w rites that " fiction deals with the possibilities which are excluded from official docum ents" Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:1-23 ISSN 0258-2279 (p.28).W hat is possible excludes all the possibilities which have been officially judged impossible.o f reconciliation like the TRC will be the truth w e can bear, since m emories o f the holocaust or o f apartheid are like the memories o f another person -big transitions also leave "fissures in our own biography" (p.26), making us different persons.The unconscious truth can emerge only in literature and art.It will emerge, in the striking image from H orn's poem "From the brink o f disaster", like "a sobbing cry in the hollow o f a flute" or keep echoeing " in the dark wells o f death" like the song o f the Diederik cuckoo.

3. Ampie Coetzee -"Oorgangsliteratuurgeskiedenis: die illusie van 'n nasionale Suid-Afrikaanse letterkunde"
The dream o f the rainbow nation will absorb all differences, w e think.Yet, on the other hand, racist abuse and hatred o f foreigners are spreading.These considerations lead Horn to a critique o f nationalism and the nation state."The state lives inside you", he quotes Breyten Breytenbach.To maintain the nation state one has to create a unified subject by constructing it in opposition to others, non-mem bers o f such a unity.This is a phantasm agoric (and empty) subjectivity, since it is constructed against an imaginary other.N ationalist discourse in this w ay defines the state as the true self and its opponents as others, he writes.
restored and the new can be bom , as the novel suggests: Toloki starts drawing again under the influence o f N ora's singing and the seemingly useless figurines his father made, resurface as objects o f art.For Van W yk "they represent the material manifestation o f the past speaking silently as objects to the present" (p.83), but their meaning remains ambiguous.D o they signify a return to w holeness by creativity or the revalidation o f the tribal life and art o f the past?W hatever the case may be, they em body the powerful theme o f the presence o f the past in transitional literature.Van Wyk praises the author for also "exploring the oedipal dynamics o f the family and the broader society" (p.90) and thinks that this enables him to deconstruct both the past and the future.Van W yk interprets the aftermath o f the meeting with the leaders o f the freedom movement as a dem and for "silence, repression, complete unity" (p.82), criticising the idea o f unity and nation building.This is one instance where M da's work deconstructs the future: the future is likely to continue the repressions o f the past.Juffrou Sophia vlug vorentoe (M iss Sophie flees ahead), suggests to him that hate and estrangem ent can be reconciled through em pathy, understanding and forgiveness.In Foxtrot van die vleiseters (Fox-trot o f the m eat-eaters) by Eben Venter another such a glimpse is the com plex relationship between the young white narrator and a black girl.Trying to cross the lines o f social injustice, he silently pleads for the girl's forgiveness.
But through g ISSN 0258-2279 Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:1-23 chaos creativity is 6.D.H. Steenberg -"Flitse van sosiale verandering in enkele postmodernistiese Afrikaanse romans" D.H. Steenberg also highlights the theme o f the restorative pow er o f art.Going against the popular notion that Postmodernism has nothing to say about reality, Steenberg argues in this article that a number o f recent postm odernist Afrikaans novels do indeed give us glimpses o f a new social order beyond apartheid and its divisions, because art can propose constructions that project new possibilities, new life.History, after all, is a construction.In André Letoit's novel, Suidpunt-jazz (Southern tip jazz), Steenberg already finds a pioneering positive identification with Africa and an optimistic construction o f Africa as continent o f promise.Letoit actively popularised his fiction and shifted characters and events across traditional boundaries between people, thereby, Steenberg reasons, preparing social change.In a num ber o f other novels Steenberg also sees glimpses o f such new , restorative constructions.Berta Smit's novel, The crisis in their relationship is a scene o f youthful play in a swimming-pool under the stem eyes o f his mother and father that he feels w atch them from the clouds.The situation is too complex, however, to allow a sexual relationship; Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:1-23 ISSN 0258-2279 This novel does not accentuate violence; it is rather a balancing act between darkness (death o f the siener) and light (understanding and readiness to forgive).That some o f the characters are open for interaction with all the other peoples is here another glimpse o f the breaking down and crossing o f boundaries and socioeconomic differences between people; explorations o f a new social order.The stress on development suggests that Steenberg constructs the transition as a slow and gradual evolution o f society in which art and literature play a pathbreaking role.
The novel documents various effects o f the transition: people lost all certainty, everything familiar changed.In reaction, people clung to w hat they knew (especially in personal relations) or fell back on trusted aspects o f life.This is repeated by the narrator in looking back at her love affair shortly after the Wende, recounted or remembered 40 odd years later.Tim elessness, signified by the im portant image o f the brachiosaurus, serves as a counterpoint to the transitoriness o f political regimes, human life and love.Love cannot be protected from the effects o f place and time, nor o f memory, belying the idea that love is timeless: it is in fact, Van Luxemburg feels, intimately connected to the time o f the Wende.Hadrian's wall, which separated civilization from barbarism , sym bolises in this novel how far East and W est have grown apart during 40 years o f separation.This em erges in an important incident in the novel.The narrator and Franz like to sing together, but due to her communist upbringing, she know s no religious songs.O ne night she sings a Stalinist version o f a hymn, but realises that it w as a Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:1-23 ISSN 0258-2279narrator often believes that the Wall w as destroyed simply so that she could meet Franz.He w as, after all, one o f the W essis sent to reorganise East Germany.mistake-a double treason: o f God and o f herself -and that Franz finds it shocking and blasphemous.For Van Luxemburg this is another exam ple o f how politics has permeated even the most intimate relation betw een people: that o f love.However, Van Luxemburg argues that her kneeled singing o f the hymn can be read as a canonisation o f the narrator's love.She sings a hymn o f love, he thinks, "hallowing love into a true eternity through the derision o f the tim eless pretenses o f the communist period" (p.139).H er love is restricted to a specific time and place, perm eated by a specific political system, yet a belief in the eternity o f love overcomes this temporalness.Ironically, this eternal love is em pty, since she loses Franz.
She is, in Fronem an's terms, propagating a mix o f the social responsibility and the democratic participatory model.Von H arpe's observation that the East German reader prefers a different type o f newspaper and magazine to his W est German counterpart, is hardly surprising in the light o f R auch's views on the big differences in life orientation betw een East and West.It also ties in with Fróhlich's opinion that "fresh looks through East German eyes" (p.182) could bring about new or revised images o f the W est, o f the other but also o f the self.This again underlines the role o f the m edia in the constructing o f identity.Like Von H arpe's depiction o f the German m edia scene, Froneman also describes and tries to understand the transformation o f the South African m edia since the transition.He argues that this process can be understood as the effect o f three interacting theoretical models o f the m edia that determine new s values and preferences.The social responsibility model emphasises professionalism and objectivity and the responsible independence o f the media.This has been the guiding idea behind especially the English press, formerly mostly controlled by English mining houses.The Afrikaans press has for decades exclusively prom oted Afrikaner interests.The process o f transformation, as Froneman expounds it has, generally speaking, led to a greater diversity in ownership, the em powerment o f black groups and a greater sensitivity for the interests o f black readers.But the challenge for editors is to win over more black readers without estranging their traditionally w hite (and more conservative) readers.