"Stories. We were always going to be saved by stories. Not any stories, but our own — those that had been suppressed, neglected, discarded and forgotten: the untold that were yearning to come to life…" —Darryl Accone1
"A people who do not preserve their memory are a people who have forfeited their history." —Soyinka2
A TIME OF MEMORY
Against the “public rehearsal of memory”3 through the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [TRC] and the accelerated writing of autobiography and biography in South Africa in the present time many suppressed individual, family, and collective stories has been brought to the fore. These stories may be seen as a continuation and widening of the scope of the TRC, where the experiences of living under colonialism and apartheid during the 20th century are being recounted.
In this context it is good to see that Chinese history in South Africa is being given recognition. Darryl’s Accone's recent book, All Under Heaven – A story of a Chinese Family in South Africa, recounts this neglected part of South African history. A recent review of the book, referring to Chinese history in South Africa, has noted: "Over the past 10 years in South Africa there has been a lot of emphasis on correcting the wrongs of the past, and obtaining cultural equality, yet there is still one group of South Africans that continues to be overlooked"4.
David Medalie rightly points out that Accone's book addresses "a noticeable lacuna in the history and self-representation of a prominent South African community"5. The book provides a personalised account of one family's history, given that the arrival of the Chinese in South Africa has been generally recorded mainly in impersonal statistics and demographic data. The other memoir written, as far as I am aware, is that by Lily Changfoot, entitled A Many-Coloured South Africa: The Diary of a Non-Person6.
It is clear that Accone's experience as reporter, arts and film critic, columnist and editor have all come to bear on this present work. South African-born, Accone has been an arts commentator for important newspapers such as The Star newspaper in Johannesburg from 1988 to 1994 and the Sunday Independent. His contribution to several South African anthologies has been an important precursor to this present writing. For example, he wrote a short story, "Kum Saan" which was included in the collection From Jo'burg to Jozi: Stories About Africa's Infamous City.
Accone’s writing is significant as it is yet another example of an attempt at “redrawing the South African literary map”, to use Isabel Hofmeyr’s words in relation to another example. Of that book (The Lotus People, by Aziz Hassim: 2002) Hofmeyr notes that its importance lies in "how it challenges the boundaries of South African literature”, and “shifts the axes of our thinking”, so that South African Literature is not seen only in terms of Europe, North America and the Atlantic, but also includes the Indian Ocean.
My own interest in Accone's writing has been prompted by my interest in excavatory work in general and in questions of identity from different vantage points in the South African historical and cultural mosaic. For my doctoral study I researched South African Indian women's texts, a marginalised corpus in South African literature. My study of this literature prompted me to explore the historical background of the indentured experiences of Indians in South Africa, and from the vantage point of my grandmother's story7. In that study I argued that it is tempting to assume that some minority groups are more important than others. Working on Accone's text was another attempt to rectify that assumption, and to highlight also some of the experiences of other indentured communities is South Africa.
Accone's book presents me with a wonderful opportunity to explore an area of South African history and culture that was in many ways hidden from me. Working on this essay has been an exciting and important learning experience for me as it has broadened my sense of my Africanness from an unusual angle, of our common and diverse heritage, of the interconnectedness of our histories, and of the way identity and difference may be held in creative tension.
Accone’s writing reminds us of the “multiple inheritances that make up South African society”, and reconfigures not only the canon but also how we think of ourselves as "community" in South Africa, on the African continent and globally. We are constrained to read marginal literatures for the way they prompt new ways of reading literatures. It is not a question of substituting one canon for another but of considering that "the history of imperialism and the history of colonization, the history of oppression… is built upon segregation, on separation"8. This writing, and literature more generally, enacts the project of “remapping cartographies” globally, subverts and re-configures what we understand, in this instance, by Africa and the African diaspora, Asia and the Asian diaspora, as we explore less familiar intersections and "contact zones"; in this way we actively resist cultural ghettoisation and enhance our sense of a common world.
In this paper I begin by tracing the background of Chinese immigration to South Africa. I then give a broad outline of the four sections of Accone's text and the significance of each. I conclude with a critical discussion of some of the discursive issues that emerge from the text, such as identity, home and homeland, diaspora, and the political meaning they might have for us today.
1 From "Framed by Real Life." In Mail and Guardian Online, ZA@Play, 23 April, 2004
2 In The Politics of Memory - Truth, Healing and Social Justice. Ed. Amadiume, Ifi and Abdullah An-Na'im, Zed Books, 2000
3 Nuttall, Sarah and Carli Coetzee [eds]. 1998. Negotiating the past - The making of memory in South Africa. Oxford University Press: Oxford. p75
4 Exclusive Books Review. All Under Heaven: Synopsis. http://www.exclusivebooks.com/search/display
5 Medalie, David. "Speech for the Launch of Darryl Accone's All Under Heaven." 4 May 2004, Johannesburg. p2
6See Women Writing Africa - The Southern Region, Daymond, MJ et al 2003. Witwatersrand University Press: Johannesburg. pp272-374
7 See "Sister Outsiders - The Representation of Identity and Difference in Selected Writings by South African Indian Women." Phd. Dissertation by D. Govinden, 2000, University of Natal [Unisa Press, forthcoming].
8 Viswanathan, Gauri. [ed]. 2001. Power, Politics and Culture - interviews with Edward W Said. Bloomsbury: London. p260
