, conscientization and the trope of exile in Amandla and Third Generation

The purpose o f this article is to examine A m andla (by M iriam TIali) and T hird Generation (by Sipho Sepam la) as anti-apartheid novels o f resistance which are fa c e d by a num ber o f serious contradictions. The article is an attem pt to analyse the ways in which these texts seek to cope, on the one hand, with what seem s to be a lost cause, a struggle without an end, and on the o ther hand with their own status as fic tion a l texts which attem pt to change prec ise ly that which seem s to deny a ll possib ilities o f subversion. Both texts attem pt to make sense o f a reality which is p e rce ived to be so horrifyingly real as to be fic tion a l (in the sense o f the fictive , unreal, ethereal). On the one hand the p o w er o f the apartheid state is seen to be insurmountable, and on the o ther hand, that sta le has to be su bverted and destroyed. The resulting dialectic, p o s ited in the texts, o f the sta te o f affairs in reality an d the sta te o f affairs that is desired, can only be so lved by the use o f the trope o f exile as an im aginary resolution to a very real contradiction in order to achieve a t least som e m easure o f conscientization in the reader­


Johan Geertsema
Fictionalization, conscientization and the trope of exile in Amandla and Third Generation

The debates
In this article "exile" is read as an ironic trope by means o f which the contradic tions inherent in the struggle against apartheid may be dealt with in fictional terms.As such, the article inevitably will be seen as entering the debate on the broader relation between politics and culture in South Africa, even though this is not its purpose.
It is stating the obvious to say that the distinction between culture and politics is problematic.Since the publication o f Albie Sachs's by now famous paper "Preparing Ourselves for Freedom " (1990:19-29), the debate has flared up with burning intensity in South African cultural (and, in this case, literary) circles.The debate has recently been lent urgency by the clash between the National Arts Initiative (NAI) and the A N C 's D epartment o f A rts and Culture (D A C ).1 This article does not seek explicitly to intervene in any o f these debates, which deal with issues like the following: whether 'art' has to be seen in aesthetic terms; w hether art is 'good' because o f the experience o f the person writing it, or because o f the writing itself (in an immanent fashion) -which w ould have important consequences in terms o f 'shared experience', and the 'right' o f a critic writing on texts by authors w hose experience is not shared by the critic in question (may/can white critics write on black novels?); and w hether culture has to serve a specific political agenda, for instance that o f liberation (the question o f control).Another important problem raised by the Sachs paper pertains to the w ay in which it seems to "licence dissent" as Cornwall notes in an interview (Brown & Van Dyk, 1991:17;cf. Kistner, 1991).
This article engages with two specifically South African texts which deal quite explicitly with issues in a contem porary South African world, and as such evince certain 'traits' o f what might be called resistance literature -such as angry rhetoric, stereotyping, depictions o f violence or struggle, and so on.In terms o f Sachs's paper they might be accused o f being instances o f artefacts "trapped in the multiple ghettoes o f the apartheid imagination " (1990:19), o f that type o f "art and literature [which would m ake you] think w e w ere living in the greyest and most sombre worlds, completely shut in by apartheid " (1990:21).In short, it would seem as if the texts which form the subject o f this article might illustrate Sachs's controversial statement that apartheid is perpetuated by the very texts which would attack it: It is as though our rulers stalk every page and h aunt every picture; ev ery thing is obsessed by the o ppressors and the trau m a they have im posed, nothing is a bout us and the n ew con scio u sn ess w e are develo p in g ... i f only they [our w riters and painters] could shake o f f the gravity o f th eir anguish The controversy, specifically with regard to artistic control, has recently bubbled to the surface again and become very public, with critical reporting subsequent to the ANC Culture and Development Conference in The Weekly Mail (cf. Gevisser, 1993:24).Mtutuzcli Matshoba, media spokesman of the DAC, responded (1993:24) to an open letter addressed to the DAC (and specifically to Wally Serote and Mewa Ramgobin) by Mike van Graan, the general secretary of the NAI, in The Weekly Mail (Van Graan, 1993:15).This was followed by the SABC news programme Agenda hosting a (fairly acrimonious) debate between, among others, Ramgobin from the DAC and Njabulo Ndebele from the NAI and break free from the solem n form ulas th at people (like m yself) have tried for so m any y ears to im pose upon them (Sachs, 1990:21).This contradiction, I would like to indicate, also haunts these tw o novels.Both texts would seem to aspire towards subverting and resisting the political status quo o f apartheid.The texts in question here can both be said to attempt, morever, to enact resistance -not only are they about the struggle against apartheid; they (seek to) form part o f that struggle.
The question is whether, and to what extent, these texts can -and do -further the struggle against apartheid.

I l l
as am m unition in the struggle, and to p o in t the w ay fo rw ard (W atson, 1989: 4-5).
But what is especially important is the em phasis put on this issue -as well as on the concomitant need to record what is happening and make it on e's own as a people -by Tlali and Sepamla themselves.
One o f the reasons why she w rites in English and not in her native Sotho, Tlali says, is because "'I'm trying to reach as many people as possible'" (Ludman, 1989:28;cf. Tlali, 1984:24).Tlali is said to be "known for her pen which always shouts slogans and bleeds with anger" (Anon., 1986:13), and she has been quoted as saying ... I alw ays feel that o u r history m ust be recorded.T he future g eneration has the right to know w hat happened during o u r tim e. ... T he role o f the w riter is to conscientise the people, so that th ey can be able to w riggle out o f this o ppression (A non., 1986:13).3 And Sepamla does not see his role "to be the provider o f entertainment, but to spread hope for the future and sympathy for the present" (Douglas, 1981:6).In an interview with Gray (1977:257), Sepamla states that the South African writer "has a duty to be a witness ... to record what transpired while he w as around".
History is seized and shaped, it becom es a history o f "experience": ... the n o v e lists' concern is m ore th at o f p resenting a sense o f the authentic experience o f blacks in S ow eto at the tim e through several individual characters, ra th e r than a superficial parroting o f events (Sole, 1988:83).
It should be clear that Sepamla and Tlali are deeply committed to the principles o f recording and writing "history from the inside", as Clingman (1986) calls it in his work on Gordimer, to "a process o f the fictionalizing o f history" (Sole, 1988:83).This writing o f history is executed for the benefit o f a future generation -and is therefore geared tow ards the shaping o f a future and em ergent culture -and, at the same time, for the benefit o f the present generation -and is therefore geared tow ards conscientization and action for liberation now.
It is this process o f the recording o f history by means o f fictionalization for the sake o f conscientization in Amandla and in Third Generation, w hich forms the subject o f this article.Plot construction and narrative form are examined in terms o f exile as the trope by means o f which the texts as romance narratives becom e imaginary resolutions to certain real contradictions to which they thus constitute C f also the interview with Tlali by Lockett (1989:69-85;cf. esp. 76-77).
an active response (cf.Jameson, 1985:77;118) in order to have, after all, a conscientizing effect on their readership.4 But the process o f recording history through fictionalization appears to be an essentially ambiguous project (at least in the case o f the texts being read in this article).There is an important dialectic involving a reality (a state o f affairs) and a telos, an object o f desire (a non-actualized state o f affairs which comes to seem fictional5).This dialectic as constructed in the texts must be connected with the structural disjointedness o f the texts commented upon by various critics (cf.Sole, 1988:69;W atts, 1989:223-224).The dialectic becom es symptomatic o f a confu sion punctuating not only the implied disjointedness o f the times, but also o f the novelistic form itself as a means o f escape into the exile o f the private imagination as against the collectivity o f mass struggle.This is despite the stated intention o f using this private form -the novel -o f fantasy and fictionalization in another, transgressive form as a means o f resistance.According to W atts (1989:5) this trend can be characterised as a movement away from an ... angst-ridden search [for identity], the introspective nihilism of the exis tentialist [to] the purposeful quest of a people who have had to emerge from conscious and subconscious subjugation [and] rescue their psyche from alienation and near obliteration and forge a collective will to carry out the task allotted to them by history.
The novel would then no longer be something private -it would becom e collec tive (and thus transgressive -the novel is traditionally a private form) in its recor ding, its seizing o f history.
However, rather than offering new cultural possibilities through a refashioning o f the novel into a form both new and collectively supra-novelistic, these texts (the ones being read here) confirm their fictional status through the traces o f w hat they themselves deem private flights o f fictional fantasy -as expressed in writing (rather than action) -which cannot but lead to what is represented as the end.This end is the end o f writing in exile because o f the way writing is self-reflexively represented as merely being able to represent.W riting is represented as repre sentation -it is not the real thing.
Scpamla and Tlali have stated explicitly that they write for a black audience.Cf. the interview by Scroke (1988:305-307).
I use the terms fiction and fictional in a very broad sense In this article the terms arc sometimes meant to signify the conventional, everyday connotation of something secon dary, fictivc, unreal, ethereal, illusory, a lie Sometimes the term is used in a more tech nical sense, but always with the added -and prejudicial -sense mentioned above.
The end o f writing in exile is, then, not so much the physical end o f writing, but a punctuation o f what would seem to be the only w ay out.The fiction o f exile starts where fictionalization ends, something which thematises the paradoxical movement o f novels which on one level seem to doubt the heroic nature o f the struggle and the inevitability o f its outcome, and yet also have to affirm the heroic nature o f that struggle, and the inevitability o f its outcome.

Fictionalization and irony
Fiction, it is one o f the contentions o f this article, is used in the texts in question in order firstly to record history, and thus to conscientize an audience, and se condly to deal with certain social contradictions, among which the perceived im potence o f w hat seems like an everlasting struggle against injustice is especially significant.As noted above, though, the texts themselves get caught up in con tradiction because o f the way in which w riting (fiction) is represented as being merely writing (as opposed to action).
The concept 'w orld' is important in any understanding o f fictionalization.'W orld' implies the notion o f 'b order' -fictionalizing is crossing borders (cf.Iser, 1990:939) -which in turns implies a certain (ironic) doubling, as the process o f fictionalization entails crossing borders from one world to another.
In this regard, fiction is closely linked to the dream, the lie, to identity.Fiction is very often, like representation, deem ed to be something secondary, ethereal, unreal, illusory, a lie.
Fiction pretends, like the dream and the lie, that its world (which oversteps the w orld) contains that world, and thus shares with the dream a structure o f double meaning.Fiction is a wearing o f m asks, a becoming different from oneself; it is a "veiled unveiling", a disclosing concealment, being ecstatically beside itself, as Iser (1990:945) puts it.W hereas a dream entails entering other worlds, dream worlds, fiction entails the generating o f meaning through the difference implicit in the tension between different w orlds -the real world is left behind in entering a fictional world, and yet one is aware that this fictional world both oversteps and contains, and is therefore, unlike the dream world, a conscious version o f the 'real' world.
We may therefore describe literary fictionality as a conspicuous modi fication of consciousness which makes accessible what merely happens in the dream.The dreamer is inextricably bound up in the world he or she creates, but fictionalizing in literature permits a loosening of these very bonds (Iser, 1990:948).
The 'as i f is repressed in the dream, and made self-consciously explicit in fiction, even if it is questioned.Fiction, as Iser notes (1990:939), refers to both "the story-telling branch o f literature", and to lies.To this the important qualification has to be added that it refers to that which is neither true nor false, but both -it is neither the real world, nor a non-existent, unreal world, but a fictional world.This would imply that fiction is inevitably ambivalent, and would stress the cen tral role o f irony in fiction.6Irony is a condition o f fiction, o f the equal validity of mutually exclusive possibilities, but as such fiction is also the victim o f (often unintended) irony.As Ndebele (1989b:47) notes, The artist ... although desiring action, often with as much passion as the propagandist, can never be entirely free from the rules of irony.Irony is the literary manifestation of the principle of contradiction.Its fundamental law, for the literary arts in particular, is that everything involving human society is in a constant state of flux; that the dialectic between appearance and reality in the conduct of human affairs is always operative and constantly problematic, and that consequently, in the representation of human reality, nothing can be taken for granted ....
In the context o f the present article, then, it should be noted that fiction is always a tw o-edged sword, because it is always to some extent bound to irony and con tradiction.
* Fiction is a way out; but it is at the same time a w ay in. 6 Irony is here defined as aporia, rather than as a rhetorical term to indicate a mere stylistic figure available to be used in order to express the opposite of what is said.This definition is obviously indebted both to the work of Paul de Man (particularly on the principle of non-contradiction and aporia with regard to Nietzsche).Another important influence is that of Friedrich Schlegel, the German Romantic, and theoretician of Romanticism (cf. 1967Romanticism (cf. , 1973)).The dialectic nature of irony (cf.Burke, 1952:511-517), or at least of Ro mantic irony, comcs to the fore strongly in Schlegel's writings.According to Schlegel, (1973:294) to quote an example.
Die wahrc Ironic, -da es doch auch eine falsche gibt, [...] ist die Ironie der Liebe.Sic cntstcht aus dcm Gefiihle der Endlichkeit und der eignen Bcschránkung, und dem schcinbarcn Widcrspruche dieses Gefuhls mit der in jeder wahren Liebe mit cingcschlosscncn Idee eines Unendlichen |True irony -as there is, after all, also a false one -... is the irony of love.It originates from the feeling of finiteness and one's own limitation, and the seeming contradiction of this feeling with the idea of infinity inherent in any true love ] According to Heimrich (1968: 63), irony is a function of this contradiction.In fact, irony may be said to be that which contradicts the principle of non-contradiction in logic (De Man, 1987).
* Fiction is a means, but it is also an end, and a beginning.
* Fiction is something which may be used in various w ays (to record history, and to conscientize, for instance), but it is also something which exacts a price.
In a fictional game, like a novel, w e pretend that we participate.One is inside and outside the text, which makes one's position ambiguous (cf.Pavel, 1986: 54ff.).The question, then, would be -how does one struggle ambiguously?

Am andla and the question o f w ritin g (fiction)
The novel Amandla (1986) Before even opening the book the reader is confronted with the theme of power -and with the attempt to instal an alternative power.'Amandla', the title proclaims across the top of the red cover, while beneath it a black fist is shown raised against barbed wire.In Zulu the word 'amandla' means 'power', and it is the first of two terms chanted by demonstrators against white power, 'Amandla Ngawethu!' -'Power is ours!' or, 'Power belongs to us!' A title therefore which is at once a programme and a challenge.
At the same time, Amandla presents itself as a fictionalization (the subtitle is 'A Novel by Miriam Tlali') o f history (the text is dedicated not only to Tlali's husband and children, but "to the courageous children o f Soweto w ho laid down their lives during June 1976 so that a free A zania may be realised").Amandla records this attem pt at realising 'a free A zania'.It does not portray success as much as the dialectic o f desire and defeat between an ideal and a reality.This di alectic is manifested in a significant w ay within the text as something w hich is itself perceived not to be physical, objective reality.It could be a hoax; a false alarm.Maybe an armed black man had suddenly run amok and started shooting at random.Perhaps he had actually wounded a few whites, and, as usual, it had become a 'white' national disaster.He tried to reason it out, alone in his mind, in the complete darkness of the cinema.How could the poor so-called terrorists pierce the armour of the South African Defence Force -the invincible Goliath armed to the teeth; the mighty 'white' navy; the powerful 'white' air force, howl (Amandla.3).
The illusory' falseness and hopelessness o f it all is intimated by references to the film: the SADF is "the invincible Goliath", the "terrorists" could never succeed in piercing its armour.David is helpless against Goliath.M iracles do not happen in South Africa.
Throughout the first chapter there are references to the improbability, the hope lessness o f w hat is said to have happened.This is indicated by the repeated use o f conditionals when referring to the 'terrorists'.Furthermore, Pholoso thinks o f "the absurdity o f such an occurrence" (Amandla:3), while apartheid is describedin terms o f the vainglorious ideas o f its propagators that it is the god-given nature o f reality -as a "million commandments" (Amandla: 7) and is thus metaphorically linked to the film as well.It is no accident that it is the Israeli em bassy which is the focus o f the attack.
Apartheid, and thus the Afrikaner State, is linked metaphorically to ancient Israel, which, in turn, is linked to the film Pholoso and Felleng are w atching in the Starlite Cinema.
And the 'terrorist' attack w as, as Pholoso feared, "a hoax; a false alarm" (Amandla:3) in that it had nothing to do with that struggle.The promising pre lude to w hat is to happen in the novel -the June 1976 insurrection -amounts to nothing.And at the end o f the novel Soweto 1976 itself seems to have been "a hoax; a false alarm".The dialectic o f fiction and reality, expectation and action, becom es grounded in the very structure o f the novel.The view postulated here is that this dialectic is the result o f the uncertainty o f the text (as fictional writing) about itself with regard to its real contribution to the struggle, and that it is this dialectic which results in the disjointedness and confusion9 critics have found in Amandla.
In order not to be apprehended, and if apprehended, then to hide his true identity, Pholoso "is using another name and not his real name.He did not have any iden tifying papers so they do not know who he is" (.Amandla A 01). W hile in deten tion, Pholoso's "mind [is] a com plete blank" {Amandla: 146).He cannot remem ber who he is, w hat his name is: The fact that his mind dissolved into a complete blank when he tried to think -to remember what his name was and where he came from -was not, he decided, something that would concern him now.That would come in its own time ... As Providence would have it, the very state of partial deli rium and loss of memory was itself a blessing in disguise.All attempts by his assailants to establish Pholoso's true identity and get a confession from him had been unsuccessful.They were only able to identify him by the dir ty, crushed papers in his trouser pockets, which had the name Moses Masuku written on them (Amandla: 148).
In order to survive, Pholoso has to stop being 'Pholoso'.He has to m ask him self by rewriting himself.This is why the elaborate scene with the codes in Chapter 12 (Amandla: 81-93) is not merely "a naïve discussion o f codes [and] invisible inks" (W atts, 1989:223) -this scene may be said to be a fictional enactm ent o f the novel, just as the novel is a fictional enactment o f the struggle.The activists have to hide their being by means o f language; language must act as a m ask, and the revolutionaries are forced to carry out their programme, as it w ere, in a fic tional world.The novel presents the true nature o f the programme as something which is being denied in order to carry the programme through, in the same way that Pholoso has to mask his true identity in order to protect his revolutionary programme.Pholoso's survival depends upon Pholoso becoming M oses.Pholo so has to disguise himself, and the final disguise, the final denial o f identity is lo cated in Pholoso's going into exile.
The novel ends with Pholoso's going into exile.This is an important move as it is presented, if not triumphantly, then at least inspirationally.D espite the defeat in herent in retreating into exile -9 An anonymous reviewer of Amandla (Anon., 1981:15) states that "[b]y any customary definition of literary quality, Amandla falls a long way off making records.The interweaving of themes, the complicated saga of an extended family, and Tlali's somewhat rambling style, do not make for the crispest reading" Cf. also Watts (1989:222-225).
"I never wanted to flee, Felleng.I have to go because the student leaders think it is the best thing, better than rotting in jail.The police dragnet is closing in on us.All known leaders are in jail" (Amandla:288).
-the movement into exile is presented as a continuation o f the fight.Despite everything's being lost, everything is portrayed as not being lost: "You see, Felleng, in order to fight we must be armed, not only physically but also mentally.We are up against a formidable, highly-sophisticated enemy whom we must[?10] face on equal ground.That our task is a mo mentous one cannot be denied.The roots of this evil have penetrated deeper than we can speculate.But we dare not give up.If we forget those who laid down their lives, then they will have done so in vain.We the op pressed cannot be expected to think we can go on living as if nothing has ever happened" (Amandla.29,9).
The irony is that it is in 1980, or in 1985, as if Soweto 1976 has never happened (just as the novel has intimated right from the start).It w as -in the context of Serote's To Every Birth Its B lo o d -a n abortive birth.A people's defeat and sub jection -by a system o f dehumanization, and by their rejection o f this system through violent rebellion -is and must be denied in the novel.This is inevitable.
The reality o f it all is too unreal even to contemplate.An imaginary resolution (the flight into exile) to a real contradiction (represented by the conflict between reality and fiction postulated by the novel) is the very condition for continued existence -and continued struggle -after defeat.W ithout this no hope, and no conscientization is possible.With this hope present, at least some degree o f conscientization and the creation and filling o f a cultural space seems to be a possibility.The final act in the novel -Pholoso's going into exile -is ironically a sign o f defeat as much as o f victory.Exile is a necessity, a rhetorical move to persuade a readership to struggle.Exile, thus, is a necessity m ade a virtue.It is the only way out for the text, the only w ay left to conscientize, to give hope.

Third Generation and the question o f w ritin g (fiction)
A similar process may be identified in Third Generation.The novel documents the disintegration o f the Third Generation group and, by implication, that o f the struggle.The front cover o f Third Generation firmly situates the novel within a particular context o f struggle against apartheid.It consists of, at the top, the author's name (Sipho Sepamla) in relatively small type.Then, some w ay down, w e find the title (Third Generation) in black and white capitals with a black bor der.The 'T H IR D ' o f THIRD GENERATION consists o f huge white letters with The typescript in my copy of the novel is at this point illegible.The back cover states that "Third Generation celebrates the courage and com mitment o f Black women in the liberation struggle".
But the back cover also identifies the text as a 'novel', stating -in typical adven ture and spy thriller vein -that "[i]n this novel, a life-and-death game goes on right under the nose o f the forces o f repression Although Third Generation does present itself as a novel o f struggle against apartheid and injustice, it also presents itself as an adventure story.This does not mean to imply that the novel could not be both a novel against apartheid and an adventure story.On the con trary, the novel sets out to document a particular phase o f the struggle in such a w ay that readers will find it engaging.To Johnson (1986:2), in fact, the strength o f the novel is its "fairly simple story ... Third Generation should be read for the sake o f its story".This "fairly simple story" is, however, narrated in a fairly com plex w ay -num e rous flashbacks interrupt the progression o f the narrative.These interruptions are mnctly mnemonic.The novel starts with Lifa's recollection o f Soweto 1976.In what amounts to an invocation o f that turbulent time, Lifa presents Soweto 1976 from the perspective o f his mother, Sis Vi.In a later flashback to Soweto 1976 (Third Generation'.12-13), we read that Sis V i's job exposed her to sights unknown in any other experience: often she had to attend to victims of the knife, men with intestines rolling out of the stomach; casualties of the motor-car, the brains smashed into portions similar to the cauliflower.She could live with these spectacles bearing their pain fortuitously.But the year 1976 was the turning point for her.The sight of mutilated young bodies, innocent victims o f ruthless, trigger-happy The novel itself comments on the significance of the title (Third Generation.22,26,31,46,81,149,158,160).
sharp-shooters crowded on cement floors bleeding and helplessly begging for attention left her own heart bleeding endlessly.It was a sight which turned around her code of conduct so that in the quietness of her heart she swore to do something about it.
Sis Vi is a nurse who decides that real nursing will amount to nothing less than a radical change in the socio-economic situation.In order to stop the flood o f maimed bodies which have to be treated at hospitals Jike Baragwanath, the root cause o f injury -the disease o f apartheid -has to be destroyed.W hile in deten tion Sis Vi reflects that ... [s]he had seen all kinds of disease; she had seen how its slow process ravaged the body and how vulnerable the body was.Causes o f diseases were just as bad as the disease and were to be tackled with the same vigour for their elimination.When she agreed to join the Third Generation, it was with this conviction in mind.She saw the group as a unit bent on elimi nating the causes of disease ... (Third Generation:5\-52).
The victims o f the disease o f apartheid must be cured by destroying apartheid.Sis V i's spell in detention and the psychological torture which she undergoes are portrayed in vivid terms.The vivid quality o f this portrayal is em phasised by means o f the fi^v .witinteriorization o f Sis V i's action.By means o f the juxta posing of, for instance, dreams ( Third Generation.52), almost Gothic visions in duced by dreadful memories and fears ( Third G eneration:56,58,9l-92), the w rit ing o f imaginary letters ( Third Generation: 89-91) and the naked reality o f torture and interrogation, the terrorism perpetrated by the police is highlighted.An opposition between reality and fiction is constructed.This opposition fulfils a num ber o f important functions within the novel, especially because it is linked explicitly with the task not only o f the Third Generation group, but also with the task o f Third Generation itself.Sis V i's visions while in detention (Third Generation:56,58,91-92) are com parable to Pholoso's nightmarish visions o f the angry mob killing the white man (A m andla:\2-\4, 147).These visions strengthen the fictionalized nature o f reality, and fulfil the function o f implicating everybody in the defeat o f the struggle by means o f the strength o f the system.
The question o f writing in times like those represented in the novel is posed by means o f the structural device o f organizing an opposition, as in Amandla, b e tw een reality and fiction.The Third Generation group, according to Lifa, "was a receding dream" ( Third Generation:^?,).Third Generation docum ents the rece ding o f this dream.The thematics o f writing as fictionality is introduced most forcefully in the compulsion Sis Vi experiences to write.As in Amandla, langu age is tied up closely with identity.
Sis Vi has to write a 'confession' o f her activities as a m em ber o f Third G ene ration.M ajor Brink forces her to provide a representation o f her mission to Port Elizabeth to organise the transportation o f recruits to Johannesburg.This con fession must meet the expectations o f Brink -Sis Vi may not write her truth, but has to write that o f M ajor Brink.
The whole o f the ninth chapter ( Third Generation-.50-61) is devoted to Sis V i's writing and rewriting the story o f her mission to Port Elizabeth.This chapter be comes an allegorical representation o f the black person's plight to redefine herself in terms o f what the white person demands.Sis V i's forced w riting is self-reflexively a graphic illustration o f the forced reduction to writing suffered by black people at the hands o f white conquerors.And this graphic illustration (Chapter 9 o f Third Generation, but also the novel as such) is subject ju st as much to colonialist coercion as is that o f Sis Vi.It is writing as a residue o f the dominant culture -and Third Generation itself as such a residue which seem s forever doomed to replicate the very system it opposes by confirming the status o f black people as foreigners in their own country -which unsettles the novel.M oreover, the novel seems aware o f the contradiction inherent in its own being.Instead o f making black people more real by consciously writing their own history, it cannot but confirm its status as a foreign and W estern object.Sis V i's w ords that "pen and paper had becom e the elements o f her survival" ( Third G en eration\6\) are reminiscent o f N debele's statement (1989a:21) that ... the written word ... which itself perhaps represents a form o f strategic marginalization, may be the only viable bearer o f witness, the one last act that would provide proof of existence.
This "strategic marginalization" itself is already limited, a denial o f the very type o f existence it seeks to confirm, as Nethersole (1991:245) notes: 'the pen, paper and ink' are themselves objects associated with the conque rors.The proof of existence mediated by the pen is, therefore, not a 'last act' but a new form of existence ... Resistance in such a situation o f total coercion (with the implication that such a system is not transcendable) does not seem to be possible, and Third Generation presents the system o f apartheid and oppression, at least from the perspective o f Lifa, as being well-nigh monolithic.The system is portrayed as having the pow er to turn the struggle into an illusion, and to make ordinary, eveiyday life seem unreal and fictional.After Sis Vi has been arrested Lifa goes to Potlako.It is late at night: I walked the streets o f Wattville on this Friday night oblivious o f the dan gers lurking along dark shadows of houses; my head was in a spin; eyes cat like; I couldn't tell how much o f the surroundings registered on my mind.At times I met the lone night-creature too pissed out to let it worry me.There were strange sights of young couples glued to each other in the middle of the street or hugging hedges on the sidewalk.Dammit, I thought to myself, who said we slaughter one another in the night?(Third Genera tion:39).
Township life is portrayed in almost apocalyptic terms in this eerily poetic passage.There is a strange inversion o f w hat is expected -Buda B has warned Li fa about the dangers o f going out at this time: "Thugs in the streets will not look at it that way; cops pounding on the door any minute now will not look at it that way.I know these things!Believe me, I know what I am talking about" (ThirdGeneration:3\).
Life becom es like a weird dream, and the reality o f oppression and seemingly mo nolithic pow er seems to make any opposition not only irrelevant but fictional: "I did not w ant to continue the lie o f a struggle w hen it w as a mere illusion -just another product o f my fantasy" ( Third Generation-.155).In a situation where Lifa can com pare him self to a rabbit being ferreted out -"'I can't take this rabbit's life in the country o f my birth ... I am postponing a decent life by the day '" ( Third Generation.15%) -exile seems to be only w ay out.
W riting seems to have no effect on Lifa as the narrator o f a novel about the struggle which seeks to become part o f the struggle.Third Generation is a w ea pon, an example o f the type o f text which "firfes] with the pen" (Ndebele, 1989a: 21).But this w eapon does not seem to be effective.The time for talking and arguing has, for Lifa, passed, because "[w]ords were strewn all over our path o f history achieving nothing but an improvement o f our condition as Buda B had put it earlier" ( Third G eneration:\63).The novel ends when its "story had come to an end" ( Third G eneration:\54), when the only viable option seems to be to stop writing and to start shooting and to go into exile.
Within this context it is useful to note the depiction o f the one poet in the novel.Stompie Lukala is a journalist.He has also established him self as a poet "on the strength o f one poem published in Staffrider" ( Third GenerationAAA).However, "[w]hat the public didn't know, w as that Stompie Lukala w as on numerous cases Mr X in political cases" ( Third Generation: 145).Stom pie's poem is, significant ly, like his life an illustration o f what happens when art is separated from politics.This separation is m asked by the p oet's insistence that art does have a political role: He wrote on the power of the poet's pen: how a poet was an important instrument of the revolution although not a revolutionary himself, how necessary he was to bring to the attention of men their role in a changing society and the need to understand that the poet must stand aloof from the day-to-day activities to help the leaders -a kind of conscience to their doings (Third Generation.144).Lifa, who becomes sceptical towards on the one hand the struggle as it is w aged internally (in South Africa) and, on the other hand, tow ards the very idea o f stru g g le/o r something, very often makes it clear that he is opposed to exile.That Lifa can, eventually, leave the country into exile despite the clear intimations o f defeat inherent in exile is significant.Initially the members o f Third G eneration ... were all against skipping the country [but, i]f the trail behind each one seemed to hot up, the position was to be reviewed on an individual basis (Third Generation.AX).
Potlako, one o f Lifa's best friends and one o f his com rades in Third Generation, is the first member o f the group to opt for exile.He decides, relatively early in the novel, to flee the country, but is shown to have been seduced by a latter day Delilah (the white woman S ue).12 D espite Potlako's enthusiastic utterances o f "'Never!N ever!'" (Third G en eration A l) and "'A m andla!'" (Third Genera-tionAS), he gives up and leaves the country, disappearing from the novel.In deed, his exile signals the end o f the novel: His escape symbolised the defeat of the Third Generation.Its image lay shattered on the ground like many pieces of glass.The struggle?How was it that it seemed endless so that even the number of casualties was count less?(Third Generations^).
The dilemma o f Soweto 1976 is addressed in the w ider context o f struggle and the success o f struggle.Soweto 1976 is, for instance, seen by Buda B in Third Generation as having been an exercise in futility because the struggle has merely been accom modated by the system: "We've all made our positions within the system comfortable.Buda B is like an alter-ego, a chorus, forever deflating w hat he believes are Lifa's idealistic views o f struggle and 'causes', because Buda B has 'travelled the road'.He has been to Robben Island; he has been betrayed by his com rades in the strug gle; he has seen his wife locked up in jail and his son bent upon leaving the country with the idea o f coming back to be killed in the name o f justice and libe ration.
Lifa sees w hat his father means.However, he still feels that his generation, the new generation, the third generation -and especially as manifested in a grouping o f young people who present themselves as the Third G eneration -can make a difference.But Lifa attem pts to smooth over the contradictions o f a system w hich in reality is harsh but which at the same time forces people to limit them selves to questions o f survival and therefore deludes them into thinking that once they are able merely to survive, then change has taken place.This line o f thought persuades Lifa that ... nothing short of a revolution in the lives of the people would create a bet ter climate for people to see the truth about their lives.And for me it meant military training (Third Generation: 161).
Lifa leaves, but on a profoundly ambiguous note.The imaginary resolution o f this novel o f struggle -and o f others, like Amandla -is coming apart.Lifa know s that the contradictions against which he w ants to fight will not be resolved as easily as going into exile and coming back "armed to the teeth" (Amandla:3).13 The last lines o f Third Generation capture the profound ambivalence o f Lifa's leaving for exile: I left the house like one going to the toilet in the backyard.There never was a better way to leave home for a freedom fighter.There were no farewells, there were no trumpets blaring the last note.

Africa 1 come! (ThirdGeneration:\63).
Third Generation can thus be seen as a novel o f exile, as it is a novel which leads tow ards an inevitable exile.Exile seems to be an object which is at once feared Thamsanqa, the brother of Solly (one of the members of the Third Generation group) "skipped the country in the aftermath of Sharpeville" (Third Generation:41).One might reason that this price might still have been worthwhile had Thamsanqa's exile resulted in something other than his violent death at the hands of his enemies before he could strike at them (Third Generation: 110-117).and desired.The novel, like Amandla, has to end in exile in order to m ake sense o f a situation o f endless struggle.
Lifa, like Pholoso, does in the end opt for exile.A nd one has to ask w hether Lifa and Pholoso have 'come to some sort o f insight', or w hether the novels are faced with contradictions which can only be resolved (or seem to be resolved) by means o f exile as an imaginary resolution to real contradictions.Both Amandla and Third Generation undermine themselves and their m essages o f hope in certain key areas regarding the w ay in w hich they represent them selves.They announce, paradoxically, the end o f struggle through their culmina ting in exile.Because exile is crossing borders; it is entering another world.N ot only do these texts end in exile; they enact exile.Instead o f doing, they write; like Pholoso and Lifa, they are not (in) the real world, but (in) fictional worlds.And yet the sceptical view o f language, writing and fictionality em anating from these texts is sought to be denied in them, and turned into a rhetorical gesture, a trope, which would ironically deny the denial o f the outcome o f the struggle.This is the w ay in which Amandla and Third Generation seem to confirm their ultimate impotence as 'm ere' artifacts, as cultural texts.They them selves harbour doubts as to their own efficacy, and try to resolve those doubts in imaginary ways.H opes become dreams and dreams become fantasies and illusions.Both novels can be characterised by Lifa's statement that "ours w as a receding dream" (Third G eneration:68).

C onclusion: the trope o f exile
The call 'Amandla!', in both Amandla and Third Generation, does not become more than a speech act doom ed not to be performative.The crow ds chant 'Amandla!' during the revolt, but the revolt itself seem s to be doom ed right from the start.Pow er is only to be found in "'P ow er' stoves", "'P ow er' children" and "'P ow er' canvas shoes" (Amandla.\Q5\141).Power, these texts seem to say, is not real if it is verbal; and thus they judge themselves as impotent, as fictions.
The first chapter o f the text (Amandla A-S) functions as a kind o f prologue to the novel.The beginning o f the novel is situated before the start o f Soweto 1976: it is "M onday the 29th o f April, 1975" (Amandla:\), more than a year before So w eto 1976.The protagonist o f the novel, Pholoso, and his girlfriend, Felleng, are in the Starlite Cinema watching a film.In this ambience o f the fictionalization o f history -they are on the point o f watching Cecil B. de Mille's The Ten Com mandments (Am andlaA) -they are told that "Die 'terrorists' is hier!" ["The 'terrorists' are here!"](Am andlaA)* However, Pholoso is sceptical:

For
black borders; G ENERATION is black in its entirety.The bottom part o f the cover consists o f a photo o f black men, some with fists raised in the air, holding banners proclaiming revolution.The effect o f this lies in the implication o f a new (third) generation11 o f black South Africans which will rise up and attain dignity and freedom through struggle from the grassroots.The m essage o f the success o f this struggle is carried by the novel, with the following dedication: Through the figure o f Stompie this kind o f writing is rejected.Third Generation insists that writing must be political by being part o f the struggle itself.The novel refuses to accept the type o f divide betw een writing and political action advo cated by Stompie's poem.But in the end it cannot continue.It cannot but be a conscience to the doings o f the people.It cannot overcome the posited contra diction between reality and fiction.
That's what we've done.Change?Not a thing!Don't let anyone fool you my son.There's been no change because no one really knows what's to be changed.Replacing an old car on the road with a new one does not change one's This article does not attempt to deal with stereotyping and sexism in the texts under discussion.Both texts do make themselves guilty of sexism while attempting to celebrate the courage of people regardless of sex in the struggle.Third Generation specifically seeks to celebrate the courage of women in the struggle for liberation.mode of travel.Think that one through and you'll see what I mean.I've travelled the road, remember" (Third Generation: 160).
This contradictory state o f affairs has been acknowledged by various critics, many o f them writing long before Sachs.2WhileMichaelChapmanadamantlydenies that there are "ghettoes o f apartheid imagination"(Brown & Van Dyk,  1991:11), Cornwall states that the "political gains made by the culture o f liberation"(Brown & Van Dyk, 1991:16) must be qualified by the recognition that ... the voices w hich it has em pow ered to speak w ere after all em pow ered to speak only in the w ay they have.A nd from the perspective o f literary value this is precisely the problem .A s a (necessarily) a uthoritarian sort o f cul ture, the culture o f liberation has deform ed as m uch as it has form ed ...(B row n & V an Dyk, 1991:17).
7 by M iriam Tlali documents the history o f the 1976 Soweto rebellion and its culmination in detention and exile.It portrays, rather than mass action, more or less individual pockets o f resistance.The text presents action which is defeated rather than victorious, and yet it presents itself explicitly as a novel o f struggle against apartheid.
This m essage is conveyed explicitly enough through codes not usually taken to be part o f the text itself.The cover o f Amandla has been com mented upon by A lvarez-Pereyre(1988:115-116):