Crossing Over . Stories of the transition , or “ history from the inside ”

Crossing Over: stories of the transition, or “history from the inside” The collection o f stories entitled Crossing Over: New Stories fo r a New South Africa (1995) commemorates a remarkable turning point in this country's history, the election o f South Africa's first-ever democratic government. By inviting contributions from writers from a variety o f backgrounds, and in any o f the eleven official languages, the compilers hoped to provide "a rounded picture o f our times ” and to contribute to the making o f a new South African culture o f inclusivity. Contributors were asked for stories dealing with "some kind o f crossing over, " and exploring the response o f young people to the transition. In spite o f limitations as regards representativeness, the collection does bring together an unusually varied group o f writers. This article explores the extent to which, by promoting a renewed awareness o f " self in relation to "others", the anthology goes some way towards uncovering and undoing the racism and stereotyping that have been endemic to our society. In doing so, it provides us with a kind o f "history from the inside However, the collection also demonstrates the continuing presence o f the past, and suggests the extent to which the lives o f many ordinary people have not changed significantly.


Introduction
The collection o f stories entitled Crossing O ver: Stories f o r a New South Africa (1995) is designed to commemorate a remarkable turning point in our history, the election o f South A frica's first-ever dem ocratic government.Jakes G erw el, co com piler o f the collection, and author o f the Foreword, rem arks as follows: The inspiring coming together of a divided nation during and immediately after the April elections, signalled the crossing o f a divide which had liberating effects far beyond the obviously political: the awakening o f an awareness of others, a loosening of the paralysing bonds o f fear and suspicion, the dawning sense of self, the possibility o f remembering and speaking about pain without unleashing destruction, the emancipation of the personal from the overbearing domination of the political.
The compilers hoped to attract contributions from w riters w hose backgrounds reflected the diversity o f South African society; in this w ay their stories would provide "a rounded picture o f our tim es" and "a w indow on the world o f others."This effort w as, however, only partly successful.Gerwel notes that although contributions were encouraged in any o f South A frica's eleven official languages, all the stories submitted w ere in either English or Afrikaans.The com pilers o f the anthology have succeeded in attracting a num ber o f new , previously unknown young writers, for some o f whom this is their first published story.This gives the collection a freshness and interest often lacking in other anthologies o f South African short stories.A salient characteristic o f this collection is that it mixes writers who normally write for a "young adult" readership with those w ho usually write for an adult audience.There is, o f course, no clear dividing line betw een the two, but exam ples o f the former w ould be D iane C ase, Lesley Beake, Michael Williams and M arguerite Poland, and o f the latter M arita van der Vyver, Miriam Tlali, K aiser Nyatsum ba and Elsa Joubert.Contributors w ere asked for stories dealing with "some kind o f crossing over," and specifically for stories which "give insight into the w orld o f young people entering adulthood am idst the wide-ranging changes in South Africa today" (Gerwel in the Foreword).By cutting across the old apartheid divides, the collection represents a conscious attempt to contribute to the making o f a new South African culture o f inclusivity.It is those young people w hose coming o f age coincides with the transition to democracy who will help to shape our collective future.Given that the culture from which w e are emerging w as experienced by many as " a culture o f inequality, silence and coercion", this collection is an attem pt to contribute to the shaping o f a culture that "permits, indeed celebrates, a multiplicity o f voices" (Sole, 1994:2, 4).By exploring the responses of, in particular, the new generation o f young adults to the seismic changes occurring in their society, these stories provide us with a kind o f "history from the inside" .1

The legacy o f the past
Tw o stories -by Jenny Hobbs and Jimmy M atyu -may be taken as representative o f the two main traditions o f South African writing in English: that o f w hite writing, where writers work from a condition o f relative privilege, and w here forms and styles are often strongly influenced by literary trends in the First W orld, and that o f black writing, which reflects the very different perspectives o f those confined by law to the ghettos o f apartheid.2These tw o stories give one some idea o f w here South African writing is coming from, and some measure against w hich to judge other stories in the anthology.
"Two Fishermen," by Jenny Hobbs, is reminiscent o f w hat has loosely been called the 'liberal realist' tradition o f South African writing,3 and in particular o f the writing o f the early N adine Gordimer.The protagonist in H obbs's story is Helen, an adolescent girl on holiday with her parents on the N atal south coast.The story explores the tension between her need to explore beyond the limits defined for her by parents and society, and her fear o f venturing beyond these limits.H er encounter with a young black fisherman on the beach first prom pts an escapist reverie in which he features as the exotic descendent o f an Arab slave trader.This is replaced by confusion and aw kw ardness as he stops and looks directly at her: She was staring at the fisherman as he neared her rock, rapt in her fantasy, when he slowed down to get a better grip on his rod and lifting his head, looked directly at her.
Unable to look away quickly enough, Helen blushed and reacted with a tentative smile.The fisherman stumbled and stopped.
There was a lull in the wind.She felt the intensified heat of the sun burning her arms, and the róughness of the granite rock thrusting up under her feet.
After a moment he nodded curtly and dropped his eyes to resume his trudging walk before the smile could die on her face (p.11).

2
Coetzce's collection o f essays is entitled White Writing (1988).He defines this as writing which is "generated by the concerns o f people no longer European, not yet African" (Coetzee, 1988:11).It is clear that the concerns and perspectives o f black writers in South Africa are very different.Gordimer has noted the extent to which "any writer's attempt to present in South Africa a totality o f human experience within his own country is subverted before he sets down a word" .The black writer, she says, "writes from the 'inside' about the experiences o f the black masses", whereas the white writer is "cut o ff by enforced privilege from the greater part o f the society in which he lives" (Gordimer, 1976:118).
Her confusion here stems from his failure to act out the role o f the submissive black man: his direct, m easured look implies equality rather than subservience.Back home, she says nothing about the incident, knowing w hat her parents' reaction would be: "no more solitary w alks" .Ironically, after a second en counter on the beach, she ends up by imposing this restriction on herself.She feels alarm when he seems to quicken his pace as he approaches her: " Vague pictures o f being dragged behind a lonely dune and raped flickered like a silent movie through her mind.W hat shall I do?She thought, and stood hesitating with her hair whipping across her eyes" (p.12)4.H er response is to run for the safety o f the cottage.The fisherman makes no move to follow her.H elen's actual sexual encounter with Kenny H arper (they had been childhood friends) is an obvious counterpoint to this scene o f imagined rape.As they climb a sand dune together, her propensity for fantasy, this time o f a stereotypically romantic kind, takes over, leaving her unprepared for the suddenness o f his assault -"not this hard crushing o f lips" -as he pinions her under him.She manages to break free and runs down the sand dune with his taunt in her ears: '" Go on, run aw ay home to M umm y'" (p.15).She finds the "dark motionless figure" o f the other fisherman waiting for her on the beach.H e holds out his hand -and returns the w atch which she had left on the rocks some days previously: " 'Your watch.I tried to give it back before, but you ran aw ay," ' he explains (p.16).
In this story the confusions attendant upon an adolescent girl's com ing o f age are compounded by her socialisation in a racist society, which leaves her unprepared for and unable to respond appropriately to w hat could have been a quite ordinary meeting with a young (black) man.Ignorance and fear in fact prevent her from "seeing" this young man at all, or responding to his quite normal behaviour: he becomes a figure onto which she projects her fantasies o f Otherness.In apartheid society, in which racial stereotyping substitutes for know ledge, ordinary human encounters across the racial divide are impossible.Helen is unable to reach out o f the prison-house which society has constructed for her: her plight thus mirrors in microcosm that o f almost any w hite child growing up in apartheid South Africa.The story is thus a salutary rem inder o f the distance to be travelled, both personally and politically, before ordinary human contact across the colour line becomes possible.It is significant that an earlier version o f H obbs's story w as in fact published in Contrast in 1975; the story thus clearly predates the present era o f transition.It is instructive to place "Two Fishermen" alongside Barry H ough's "The Journey," w here the distance that separates the apartheid past from the hoped-for future has been (apparently painlessly) traversed (we are not shown how).The story opens with Thembi sitting next to Johan on a bench in a school playground.H er braids brush his lips as she turns her head.'" I refuse to kiss a boy who stutters," ' she says.'" And do w e really w ant to spoil a lovely friendship by com plicating it?"' (p.64).A "lovely friendship", or indeed a relationship o f any kind across racial lines, would have been almost unthinkable (and even illegal) in the "old" South Africa.In the world o f this story, there seem to be no obstaclesother than Johan's stutter -and the story charmingly narrates how this is surmounted.Thembi devises a simple form o f therapy, and Johan is eventually able to claim the kiss which is his reward!The background to this situation is barely sketched in: Johan, we are told, has been "warm and friendly" to Thembi ever since she arrived at the school.His parents are happy to invite her to Sunday lunch.Thembi and his mother "hit it off w ell" and she becom es a regular visitor.The ease with which this transformation has been achieved strains the (adult) reader's credulity, but perhaps, by projecting these possibilities in fictional term s, one brings their realisation a step closer.O r perhaps (some) young people are in fact far less burdened by the past than one imagines?
A story that may be taken as representing the tradition o f black South African writing (often referred to, rather misleadingly, under the rubric "protest writing") is Jimmy M atyu's "Pay-Day M urder" .W hile still at school (in 1957) M atyu apparently freelanced for Golden C ity Post and Drum, and his story resem bles in various w ays the fiction produced by the Drum w riters o f the fifties.His subject (like theirs) is township life, depicted in all its vitality, squalor and ugliness: Litha Felemntwini was struggling to put on his tattered trousers in the backyard shack rented by his mother in the run-down settlement outside Port Elizabeth, nicknamed Soweto by the Sea.... 'Shit', he swore as he caught a whiff o f the stench coming from the garbage which had collected behind the shack that had been his home for the full eighteen years of his life (p.86).
The prose is enlivened by the author's use o f the idiom o f the tow nships, and by frequent recourse to the vernacular.Its immediacy and vitality are qualities one associates with Drum and the writing o f the fifties.Life for ordinary people clutching their Friday pay-packets is a struggle for survival.They have to contend with tsotsis like Felemntwini, with the ruthless skoppers (moneylenders) in their "big shiny cars" (with their kerrie-wielding bodyguards as back-up), and with the claims o f shebeen queens, rural w ives and tow nship amadikazi (concubines).All o f this is observed dispassionately by the authorial narrator.Felemntwini him self is a product o f his circum stances, and his sudden end is in Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:103-117  ISSN 0258-2279 keeping with his life.The world o f the township is self-enclosed, a ghetto, and there is little prospect o f escape or relief for such as him.The talk in the buses on the way home is o f his sudden death: the killers, it is speculated, may have used an intshuntsha -a sharpened bicycle spoke -" a w eapon in fashion during the forties before every other person carried a gun, someone said" (p.92).The older people curse "the children o f today," the more politicised blame "apartheid and its violence," while the "bible-thumpers" pray to Jesus "to help the world fear God".There seems little prospect o f deliverance, either human or divine.The story is a salutary reminder o f the conditions w hich still prevail in the townships and shanty towns which surround the urban centres o f pow er.It seems to have been written during the eighties, but it could equally w ell have been written post-1990.It represents in graphic term s the (continuing) reality o f a deeply divided society.
The emphasis in Miriam TIali's "A Second Look" falls on the continuity o f culture and tradition that acts as an anchor for a child growing up in an urban environment.This emphasis on the struggle o f w omen to survive and determine their own lives is very much in keeping with TIali's collection o f stories published in this country as Footprints in the Q uag (1989).The presence o f both her story and M atyu's story in a collection subtitled "N ew w riting for a new South Africa" suggests the continuity o f black writing and the continuing influence o f them es and styles deriving from the past.

"A window on the worlds o f others"
Given that the stories in the collection are alm ost all concerned with urban experience, they do go some w ay in providing a w indow onto the variety o f cultures and lifestyles that together constitute our plural society.Among the new young voices in the collection is Johnny M asilela, w hose " Baba Mfundisi the Clergyman" takes a somewhat satirical look fontein.He clearly enjoys his status in the community, and (to judge from the bakkie he drives) is materially better off than most o f his flock.His Sunday morning service is interrupted by the arrival o f three young men wielding an AK47, w ho dem and the keys to his bakkie (rather, perhaps, than to the kingdom o f heaven!).This sharply observed story is a wry comment on life in the informal settlements which surround our cities, w here the AK is arguably a more potent presence than the Bible.
Another new voice is that o f Sandile M emela, a journalist based in Soweto."A Life Besieged" offers an insight into the life and times o f Sizwe Sakhile, a teacher and one o f the new breed o f black professionals, who, having survived the turmoil o f the seventies and eighties, find themselves caught betw een the township on the one hand, with all that it represents, and the night life o f Johannesburg, to w hich he now has access.
The story is located in the interregnum o f the eighties, and within its limited scope it explores the uncertainties and contradictions o f the time, as experienced by Sizwe.It concludes with him settling down for the first beer o f the day with Thami, a local shebeen owner.It is 09:30, but there is a protracted class boycott."In the tense morning atm osphere the sun outside continued to shine.Life w ent on" (p.27).There seem s little chance that his prayers for things to return to normal will be answered.
By w ay o f contrast, "A better life for you, M um s", by another new young writer, Zulfah O tto-Sallies, takes us into the gang and crime-ridden world o f M anenberg, a coloured w orking class district on the Cape Flats.In spite o f his matric pass (and his history o f student activism) Solly has been looking for a "decent jo b " for three years.Finally, in frustration, he takes the quick route to the money that will bring relief from poverty and deprivation for him and his family -he becom es a "m erchant," a supplier o f drugs.W hen his mother, a devout M uslim woman, confronts him, he explains, '" I'm sick and tired o f poverty, M ums, ek kan dit nie m e e ' vattie'" (p.82).After his inevitable arrest, he w rites to his m other from prison, begging forgiveness, but by the time she reads the letter he has already been stabbed to death.The dialogue betw een Solly and his m other is completely convincing, largely because it is conveyed in the dialect o f the Cape Flats: '" Ek sm okkel.ja,Mams, vi' kos innie h y s (p.82).In depicting the daily struggle to feed and clothe a family, and the w aste o f a young life that had potential, the story is another rem inder o f how little material circum stances have changed in the w orking-class tow nships -or in the informal settlements around our cities.This story succeeds and convinces partly because it em ploys the dialectical and colloquial forms that characterise the speech o f a particular community.This is not, how ever, true o f all the stories in the collection."R ed Sports C ar," by M ichael W illiams, a successful writer o f books for children or young adults, is

"The new beginning"
The stories which most clearly seek to fulfil the m andate o f the com pilers are those which explore individual responses to the m omentous changes taking place in our society.W hite writing o f the eighties has been characterised as " som ew hat fearfully and apocalyptically entering the unknow n" (Clingman, 1990:54).N ot long ago the future seemed imaginable to these w riters only in apocalyptic term s -one thinks o f G ordim er's J u ly 's People (1981) or C oetzee's Life an d Times o f M ichael K (1983).Several o f the stories in this collection provide, on a m odest scale, and often with a young adult audience in mind, an imaginative record o f what it actually meant to be part o f or witness to this transition.W hat happens when the future becom es the present, when the prisoners are released, w hen the Movement is unbanned, when negotiation replaces arm ed struggle, and w hen Nelson M andela is finally inaugurated as state President and appears on the balcony o f the Cape Town city hall to speak to the assem bled thousands -with F.W. de Klerk at his side?This is the reality w hich these stories register and explore, and two o f them in fact focus on this particular moment on the Parade in Cape Town.
The narrator in Lesley B eake's "The N ew Beginning" is, w e soon infer, an adolescent coloured girl.H er m other w orks as a char for "old M rs D onald", a Black Sash stalwart who is too old to go to the Parade to see the new President."M a" expresses the fears o f many people in her particular community: "People w ere scared to be happy at first.W as it really over?W as the fighting finished?M a said seeing w as believing and she w asn't going to start celebrating too soon" (p.54).The aunt, however, is eager to embrace the new order: she w ants to dress up in A N C colours and w ear a big hat for the Parade: "M a said people w ouldn't be able to see past the hat, and she thought Aunty had always been a D P supporter.Aunty said the N ew South Africa w as all about change, so she w as as w e ll..." (p.55).
Clearly there is a new fluidity: people have the opportunity to reposition them selves, even reinvent themselves, in a situation where the boundaries have all shifted.A nother minor index o f change is to be found in the narrator's uncertain response to the police who line the streets on the w ay to the Parade."At first I thought they looked angry, but then I thought that maybe they w ere scared.If there w as trouble, they were going to be in it" (p.55).She notices one o f the younger policem en sharing a packet o f fruit drops -a small gesture which humanises him -and she smiles at him.The police are no longer simply die boere.Similarly, M a offers a sandwich to an old X hosa man in the crow d at the Parade w ho ju st stands there, "quiet and glad", looking tow ards the balcony and waiting for the moment when Nelson M andela will appear.The narrator notices significant numbers o f w hite people in the crowd, and w onders " if they had also [like Aunty] changed for the N ew South Africa, or if w e ju st hadn't know n about them before" (p.55).
Hendrik, the w hite boy w ho lives next door is, however, absent.Earlier, he had joined the family in celebrating the success o f the elections."N obody notices that H endrik is w hite any m ore," the narrator explains."W e've all got used to having him around" (p.54).The seemingly casual rem ark is another sign o f a society normalising itself.His acceptance by the narrator's family is part o f his liberation from the straightjacket imposed by apartheid -but he is prevented from going to the Parade by his mother, w ho fears possible right-wing violence.As the story builds to its climax, Aunty rem arks, "A pity H endrik's not here," and the narrator hopes that he (and old M rs Donald) are w atching it all on television.The climax is reached w hen M andela appears on the balcony: When Mr Mandela spoke, every ear listened.He told us in that careful way he has that it was true.The New South Africa had really come.We could really believe it.We were free!After that, when we sang, I cried.Lots of people were crying and everybody was holding their hands high in the Peace Sign.All around me was warmth and smiling and happiness.In that moment we were one voice, and one heart (p.56).
It is a transformative, unifying moment -"the best thing that ever happened to m e," according to the narrator, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.The story closes Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:103-117 ISSN 0258-2279 with the w ords o f Nkosi sik e le l' tAfrika, the new national anthem, preceded by the statement, "W e are one people at last."It would be hard to imagine a more affirmative outcome -but the reader know s that this is the experience o f one moment, never to be repeated, and that when the crow d fractures individuals will resume their separate identities, albeit altered in some w ay by this moment when they stand together for the first time as citizens o f a new dem ocratic South Africa and sing the new national anthem.It is, by implication, the realisation o f a dream.
In "The N ew Beginning" the absent H endrik is alm ost the covert protagonist.In "Saint Christopher on the Parade" by the well-know n A frikaans w riter M arita van der Vyver, the narrator is an eighteen-year-old w hite girl.She too is one o f the crowd gathered on the Parade (one o f the w hites w hose presence had been noted by the narrator o f the previous story).In the course o f this story, the narrator interrogates her whiteness.It opens with her almost claustrophobic fears as people press in on all sides: "O ne can easily be tram pled today" (p.50).Then she asks: "O r am I the only one thinking like this?Because I 'm w hite and not accustomed to crow ds?"She has alw ays taken her own space for granted -her own bed in her own bedroom.H er w hiteness, and the privilege that goes with it, is w hat sets her apart, m akes her feel different.She w ishes she could jo in in the singing o f a group o f young women near her: "I could understand snatches o f their song, odd w ords that Beauty has taught us over the years w hile she ironed our clothes, but not enough.I've never really understood enough" (p.50).Ironically, being w hite here signifies ignorance and exclusion, rather than privilege.
W e discover that her fear o f crow ds is linked to a childhood incident when she had got lost after a rugby m atch at N ew lands -"the day my brother let go o f my hand" (p.50).Four years previously, when M andela w as released, she had wanted to come with her brother to the Parade, but their m other had forbidden it.Now, four years later, she is standing there, but without her brother, w ho has been killed in a car accident.It is for his sake that she is there.The absent brother figures rather like the absent H endrik did in the previous story.H is sister remembers his excitement at the new s o f M andela's release, and the w ay his friendship with Sipho (Beauty's son) had led him into the tow nships, and led him to " start asking questions" (p.52)."Four years can m ake a big difference," the narrator reflects, "not ju st in a country, but in a life.minority in this country.Her affirmation here should, how ever, be read alongside her earlier doubts and fears, which realistically represent a continuing awareness o f the extent to w hich her whiteness estranges her.
At one point in the story the narrator lifts a four-year-old Muslim girl onto her shoulders, remembering her own terror o f being trapped in a crow d at that age.
H er grandmother introduces herself as Rehana, and explains why she is there -so that one day her grandchild can tell her grandchildren that she w as there -"that her granny brought her" (p.53).Realising the narrator's physical discomfort o f the narrator ("it feels as though I'm carrying a backpack full o f hot coals") the grandmother offers her an orange: "'Sy 's swaar, nê? Wil j y dalk ' n lemoen h e?'" The narrator feels grateful, not just for the orange, but because the woman speaks to her in Afrikaans: '" I feel as if I'd passed a test'" (p.52).She has been accepted, it seems, not ju st as a white, but as an Afrikaans-speaker.This is our first and only indication in the story that the narrator is in fact A frikaans speaking, or that this is important to her, or that w e may be reading the story in translation.
M andela's arrival brings the story to its symbolic climax: "W e cheer.All o f us.M e too.Through the tears.Oh, God, I miss my brother.A nd I hear the high, clear laughter o f a child somewhere over my head.And I realize, am azed, that I no longer feel the w eight upon my shoulders (p.53).
A burden -the burden o f guilt, the burden o f the past, the burden o f being w hitehas been lifted (hence the reference to St. Christopher in the title).H er personal pain and sense o f loss is absorbed into the larger experience o f acceptance and belonging: '" W e cheer.All o f us.M e too.'"W hat the story enacts is the in clusion o f the w hite outsider into the new nation-in-the-making.
By w ay o f contrast, Lawrence Bransby explores "the morning after" in his story, "A Reflection o f S e lf'.Victor is the son o f liberal English-speaking parents, and the events o f the story are filtered through his consciousness.His own apparent lack o f complicity with apartheid is contrasted with his father's more com plex need to rationalise and justify his principled liberal opposition."H ow could his parents have lived through it, accepted it, done so little?",Victor w onders (p.60).
It is a thought w hich must have occurred to many young people, particularly in the light o f the daily revelations before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Victor finds it difficult to believe "that benches had actually had W HITES ONLY signs attached to them, that blacks had had to sit in the back o f buses" .H e is convinced that, had he been old enough, "he would have done something about it -some grand gesture, perhaps been arrested, his picture on the front page o f the Sunday Tribune ..." H e even feels cheated that he has been denied the opportunity!That morning (the "morning after") he goes to the café ready to view each black person he comes across with "new eyes" as "an equal, a fellow South African, a person" (p.61) -something that would not have occurred to Helen in Jenny H obbs's story.H ow ever, he allow s him self to be served before the old black woman standing in front o f him in the queue: his fantasies o f making some "grand gesture" o f opposition are belied by this small, petty moment as he acquiesces unthinkingly to the privilege w hich his w hite skin confers on him.He is not as untainted by the past as he has imagined.In this way the story cautions against simplistic or naïve assumptions o f transformation and acceptance.
Dianne Case, the author o f "The Crossing," is well-know n for books such as Love, D avid (1986) which has been widely prescribed in schools.She draw s in her writing on her own intimate know ledge o f coloured w orking class life."The Crossing" is in fact a variant o f a sub-genre o f South African fiction, the "maids and madams" short story.Here the coming election threatens to destabilise the familiar relationship betw een maid and madam.The madam (significantly, w e never leam her name) is a somewhat stereotypical but all-too-fam iliar figure: her prejudices have survived the transition to dem ocracy intact, and she expects the worst: "You people can also go and m ake your cross on the twenty-seventh.But how many understand a thing about politics?I can see the country going to ruin.Look w hat happened to Rhodesia and even M ocambique.A nyway, everybody is entitled to vote now.So, let's sit back and w atch them mess things up (p.47).
Katy (the maid) tries to avoid being drawn into conversation, but when asked directly whom she will vote for, she looks her madam in the eye and says, '" Mr. M andela'" (p.48).W hen she recovers from her shock, her m adam tries to reason with her ("Look at w hat D e Klerk has done for the people") but finally admits, " 'I guess I should not have asked you that.... Your vote is your secret.'"However, she persists in her efforts to persuade K aty to stockpile in advance o f the coming election -and is hurt when her offer o f a loan is refused: " 'I don't understand you people.... I offer to help you and you don't w ant it.D o n 't come crying to me when its too late'" (p.49).The repeated reference to "you people" is, o f course, a classic example o f "othering" .H ere it takes the form o f a familiar accusation: "they" (one's maids or servants, and by extension all black people) are ungrateful for all "w e" (the w hites, the bearers o f civilisation and progress) have done for "them" .Her need to vindicate herself, to prove that she is in the right, m asquerades as concern for her m aid's welfare.
As she w alks down the road looking for a taxi after w ork, K aty w onders if she is ju st being stubborn.Then the slogan on a passing taxi catches her eye: " Your vote is your voice" (an echo o f her m adam 's " Your vote is your secret").This is her moment o f epiphany: "That said it all.Suddenly she understood.She w as a real South African.She never had a voice before.Here the political, in the form o f the slogan, intersects with the personal as Katy realises, perhaps for the first time, what having a vote means: she is a person; she has a voice; she, Katy Hendricks, matters.This small, personal victory assures her that she too has a place in the new dem ocratic dispensation.Her willingness to look her madam in the eye and name M andela as the person she will vote for enables her to reverse the power-relations that had previously governed their interaction as maid and madam.Things will never be the same again -nationally, personally, or in her workplace.The madam, on the other hand, has chosen to exclude herself from the new dispensation -one o f those who remain locked into the racism o f the past.

Conclusion
The Because o f their significance for the future, I have focused in particular on those stories which register and explore in personal term s the implications o f the transition to democracy.Read three years later, in a South Africa in the grip o f a crime-wave o f alarming proportions, and with a government struggling to deliver on its pre-election promises, these stories are already tinged with nostalgia.The collection as a whole, then, does make a valuable contribution to the effort to promote a culture o f inclusivity, but its gaps and silences also reveal the challenge that remains if transformation is to bring meaningful change for the previously disenfranchised majority.(Sole, 1994:13).Sole is himself critical o f the tendency which he finds in both writers to "downplay structural social divisions" and to exaggerate the potential o f literature to promote "rationality, tolerance and empathy among individuals" (Sole, 1994:15).There is no doubt that Ndebcle's call for a "rediscovery o f the ordinary" and for a renewed exploration o f subjectivity accords closely with the aims expressed by the compilers o f this anthology.The diversity of perspectives represented in the collection helps to mitigate the kind o f objection expressed by Sole.

4
Page numbers without an indication o f a source, refer to Rode, Linda and Gerwel, Jakes (compilers).1996.Crossing over: New Writing for a New South Africa.Cape Town : at the head o f the Twelfth A postle Christian Church o f Jerusalem, located in the squatter cam p o f Boekenhout-108 ISSN 0258-2279 Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:103-117 Liter ator 18(3) Nov. 1997:103-117 ISSN 0258-2279 H er m other never had a voice 114 ISSN 0258-2279 Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:103-117 before.Her father never had a voice.Her vote w as her voice.The 'your' in the slogan meant her, Katy Hendriks" (p.49).
collection o f short stories has achieved -as Gerwel concedes -only limited success in term s o f representativeness.Almost all the stories are by professional writers or journalists.The only black (African) woman w riter in the collection is Miriam Tlali (already an established writer), and black rural dw ellers are not represented at all.The possibility o f reaching actual or potential African women writers is dem onstrated by an anthology like Women from South Africa(1988), published by Seriti sa Sechaba, a publishing house run for and by black women.5In addition, the failure to attract contributions in any o f the indigenous African languages points to the continuing hegemony o f English and Afrikaans as mediums o f literary expression.The anthology, Crossing O ver does, never theless, bring together writers from a variety o f different regional, class and cultural backgrounds, and the publishers have provided an opportunity for new voices to be heard.The anthology as a whole is geared tow ards the needs and interests o f young adult readers: read in relation to each other, the stories provide a variety o f perspectives on the often starkly contrasting communal situations and life experiences that constitute the com plex reality o f present-day South Africa.M ost importantly, by promoting a renewed aw areness o f self in relation to others, 5 Ellen Kuzwayo declares in her Foreword to Women from South Africa that Seriti sa Sechaba has made it possible for "these few women" to write about issues which concern them directly." It is through such sharing that these writers can find it possible to release pain, frustration and complete helplessness and to replace these with a feeling o f achievement, fulfilment and some form o f satisfaction" (Tsikang & Lefakane, 1988:2).The birth o f Seriti sa Sechaba has, according to her, "wiped out that feeling o f defeat and o f being left out o f the game" (1988:3).It is unfortunate that the potential o f writers like these was not tapped by the compilers and publisher o f Crossing Over (Seriti sa Sechaba no longer seems to function as a publishing house.)Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:103-117 ISSN 0258-2279the anthology goes some w ay to helping to uncover and undo the racism and stereotyping that have been endemic to our society.But while the 1994 election marks a new beginning and makes possible for the first time the em ergence o f a sense o f a common South African identity, the stories also remind us o f the continuing presence (and burden) o f the past.In the w ords o f M zam ane (1996:13) "The success o f our elections notwithstanding, w e are so young, so recent into our new dem ocracy (sic), that w e still live in the past" .The difficulty and pain o f dealing with this past is attested every day by the proceedings o f the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.One also needs to take seriously the reservations, expressed by a number o f critics, regarding a too facile acceptance o f a new discourse o f nation-building which has as its aim the legitimation o f the new democratic order.6In m ost o f the stories which deal explicitly with the birth o f our new dem ocracy, the celebratory and transform ative impulse is understandably uppermost -but clearly issues o f race, class, gender, poverty, unemployment, inequality and homelessness have not disappeared with the transfer o f power.

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Sole has pointed to the relevance o f the critical interventions o f Sachs and Ndebele for writing in a society in transformation: "Sachs and Ndebele stand out as the critics whose criticism links most strongly to the present phase o f change in this country ... To stress the human, empathetic ties that may come to bond South Africans into a common citizenship is relevant o f course to a period o f transition where it is hoped a more humane, more democratic society is in the making" but fails to employ the diction and idiom which w ould be appropriate to the narrator, who is a township boy.This could reflect the difficulty (for a white writer) o f writing for or about someone w hose w orld is the township (see footnote 2).It could also be a function o f the target audience: the story is in fact adapted from a novel, C rocodile Burning, published in N ew York in 1993; for non-South African readers, the narrator's use o f standard English might not be a problem.The same difficulty, how ever, occurs with a story by the well-known journalist and short story writer, K aiser N yatsum ba, and can hardly be attributed to a lack o f familiarity with township talk." Streets o f Hillbrow, Here I Come" examines the hurt, anger and bitterness o f a child w hose parents have got divorced.Rather than live with one o f them, he chooses the life o f a streetchild in Hillbrow.The story fails to convince, partly because o f the child narrator's fluent use o f an educated English idiom.This results in some odd juxtapositions: "Experience se moer, man!I do not care one hoot for their experience.I hate them.God know s I do" (p.138).N or does the story adequately convey the exploitation and degradation that is the likely fate o f a streetchild.This child, one feels, would not in fact be able to resist the temptation o f his "warm and com fortable bed in [his] room at hom e" (p.141)!
Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:103-117 ISSN 0258-2279 carefully crafted " H er experience o f com ing o f age coincides with the transformation to dem ocracy.The experience o f voting for the first time links her with those millions o f other, previously excluded, voters, and profoundly affects the w ay in which she sees herself: " For the first time I felt as though I belonged here, on this continent, in this country, right here where I'm standing today" (p.51).Because her coming o f age is linked in this way to a national rite o f passage, it is easier for her to cast o ff or sidestep the legacy o f doubt, guilt, alienation and regret that has often been the lot o f the white 112 ISSN 0258-2279 Literator 18(3) Nov. 1997:103-117