Cry, the Beloved County: The Ongoing Conversation About South Africa

South Africa had its own political miracle and the magic man, President N.R. Mandela, about the same time that the former Soviet Union (Communist USSR) voted itself out, and handed its UN permanent seat and the baton to the CIS (Community of Independent States) led by Russia. Until then, good white men and women, as they appear rather accurately in Alan Paton's 1948 classic, worked tirelessly since 1948 with "Black, Coloured and Indian" South Africans to dismantle apartheid and dictatorship. Only in Chapter 25, during the Jarvis family funeral, do we see whites, blacks and other minorities like the indians/South Asians coming together in one place during apartheid, Christian funerals. This alludes to the enduring message of the novel, that Christ-like love and endurance will take us from the cross (individual, national, global) to Glory. Our central characters fail to achieve their earthly and family hopes, dreams and basic goals, but they do grow and see that "family" needs to be more broadly defined on this, our brusied, planet.

CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY appears to be a South African test of the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son for the black father, a reverend Stephen Kumalo no less. Rev. Kumalo hurriedly leaves Natal (the rather Eden-like South African province evocatively presented by Paton in Chapter 1) on an unexpected mission to rescue his straying family and especially his son, Absalom, in Johannesburg (the landlocked interior with money, mines and crimes, past and present). Though he fails in this objective, the reverends Kumalo and Msimangu, together, cut a collaboration that reminds one of Moses. Msimangu of the northern provinces of South Africa, is a great preacher, almost admired and feared for his ability by white friends, because he might easily move the masses to seek earthly salvation too (Chapter 13, page 124 in Scribner Paperback 2003). While Msimangu remains true to the Great Commission to spread Christ's message of love and forgiveness, Kumalo is able to save his tiny nephew, son of his runaway sister Gertrude, a prostitute, who also found that all roads leads to Johannesburg. In this way, he is able to give life to Jesus's teachings and parables - especially as lifted up in Luke's Gospel, Chapter 11 - and to save even one sheep among his own flock.

Although the good minister is also seeking news of his sister and nephew, and of his brother, in the city of lights, he quickly locates his sister Gertrude, and despite limited funds, takes her to a rented apartment so that she and his nephew would escape a seedy life among sex-workers and abuse. Stephen's brother, John, now a black political boss and businessman, is free of "ignorant ...chiefs" in the great city of Johannesburg, and will not consider returning for any reason. The novel, at some level, is a sad commentary on the migrant labor system, that destroys tribal culture with the false promises of golden lives in Johannesburg. John has grown proud and selfish; he savors no relationship other than ones he prefers. He had cared neither for their common nephew, his sister Gertrude, nor even Absalom, with whom John Kumalo's son was a partner and sibling in crime. Half-mockingly, half-seriously John asks Stephen whether he has found the prodigal son, a sly reference to the parable in Luke 15, 11-31. The reverend, in replying, also points to where the parallels are wrong:
"He is found, my brother. But not as he was found in the early teaching. (page 128, Chapter 14, in the Scribner Paperback edition, 2003).

South Africa still challenges one's faith in human beings to be grateful, to do the right thing, or honor the friends and institutions (churches, too) that helped the masses achieve their many freedoms. It is good to take another look at South Africa 14 years after the first fully democratic elections that abandoned the apartheid government and ideology, and ushered in an African Renaissance under Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. However, this book takes you, the reader, not simply to two South Africas, past and present, but to ongoing relevance of this book written by legendary white liberal and son of South Africa, Alan Paton. The arguments in the book are to be examined in the light of what good men, women and churches had tried to achieve, nonviolently, and to ask whether Cry, the Beloved Country has not really stopped being beautifully downcast. Apparently, the country still cries, according to the ironical words on page 105: "The sun still pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart." What is missing in the Mandela miracle, the miracle of forgiveness and national healing, so well documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings and Archbishop Desmond Tutu's chairmanship of it and the Report? The bureaucratic nightmare of waiting for services, for council houses, police indifference to muggings and crimes, the demands for bribes to move up in the waiting lists, are things even I, when I returned to my native South Africa in 1996, experienced first hand.

Paton's love of the land is unmistakable, and he clearly did what he could to oppose apartheid. Unfortunately the old state of apartheid has continued in one small (or mighty aspect) - of being the State of Fear. Paton's novel is a landmark in modern literature, and not simply because a white liberal and one-time politician told the story of fear and hope so well, and spoke up for the muzzled black masses, and for a more Christian South Africa. Paton celebrates not just rural parts of the land, but the city of Johannesburg itself, even as he documented the consonant loss of rural innocence among African tribes, families and food supply. Paton seems to have wanted this novel to document the break down in customs and filial bonds because African education was designed to support South Africa's internal migrant labor system. That carefully controlled system spread its tentacles to neighboring countries and tribes, and played sub-tribes against each other, for the "good" of the economy. It attracted the rural masses to Johannesburg that turned them into shanty-own dwellers. He noted the growing national fear ... of fathers like the Reverend Kumalo following his errant family members and desperately hoping to rescue them from Johannesburg, but also the fear of the white men, women, seniors and thrill-seekers who are victims of crime, deftly summarized in news reports of a liberal white from Natal, Arthur Jarvis, president of the African Boy's Club in Claremont, who was murdered when three "Natives" burgled his home in Parkwold, Johannesburg. In a way, the old South Africa did not allow for successful internal movement of people, as even Natal whites coming to do social and church work in the northern cities were seen as the "haves" who needed to be dispossessed by those in need, or by "too many young men coming and going [to shanty towns], that seem never to sleep, and never to work. Too much clothing, good clothing, white people's clothing." (Chapter 9, p.87)

Kumalo admired Msimangu's preaching; whites tried to also revel in the good fortune that Rev. Msimangu used his incredible talents to preach the gospel, not politics against the apartheid regime.

The conversation between father and son, and Absalom (the name has echoes to the biblical David and his son) and the authorities, during Absalom's arrest and imprisonment... is described by Paton as men "torturing each other" with questions, questions, questions, and "they ask, ask, ask..." (especially pages 131-132,; 140-142). The kind, white man who runs the Reformatory or a gentler, milder American bootcamp equivalent, is in a somewhat similar state of hope through Faith. Yet he cannot hide his fear and regret for having trusted, and thereby having failed, Absalom and worse, the work at the Reformatory! "They will say we let him (page 126, Chapter 14. This "indifference" toward the reverand's hurt and suffering, Paton explains as the white manager's self-preservation and saving the reform school, when he helped get Absalom released because he talked endlessly about his pregnant grlfriend; Absalom promised to turn from petty crime and help raise his child and the supervisors were persuaded to help in this regard).

In Chapter 13, we may have gone full circle to the now, new and democratic South Africa. The issues of crime, especially of murder which ranks South Africa about the highest in the world, and its having quickly abandoned the lessons of the Bible, democracy, and the churches that fought apartheid. The shock of discovering that his son had used a revolver and killed a good, white man, sends the Reverend father into questions about how he might have become the father of a cold-blooded criminal. He raises important questions about how easily humans rise to this climax of crimes, with blacks de-valuing life as much as racist whites did for the apartheid regime. Paton, and the reverend also, do not completely lose their hope through Jesus and in true repentance, the application of "light" to lead all races to serve the blind Africans in Ezenzeleni, near Johannesburg.

The last-mentioned is a hopeful place, and through all the pain, and his bursting heart because his only son left the Reformatory for murder, theft, prison and execution ... Rev. Kumalo is inspired to think about education, especially for the young, when he returns to Natal. He is optimistic, finally, that education will replace what, to some extent de-tribalization and de-traditionalisation has emptied out from Africans (destroying African Ubuntu, or humanism) without filling its places with real education for crafts, trades and real jobs for the future. There is a subtle attack on the crime of institutionalized Bantu education - education for "barbarians" (as is implied ). In Chapter 15, the young, white idealist who runs the Reformatory comes to suggest the need for a lawyer for Absalom, for at least two reasons. First, the brother-turned-politician-businessman is planning to fight for his son on the basis that neither that son nor the other young men were involved in the botched burglary. Secondly, the Corrections social worker feels his guilt in having failed Absalom too, and more recently for being harsh with Rev. Kumalo and his disappointment. Paton, in this description, hints at the way in which even white liberals abuse - unintentionally - even ministers taught to be humble in all matters:

"Kumalo struggled within himself [when the suggestion for a lawyer was later proffered by the selfish, or "indifferent" white social worker] . For it is thus with a black man, who has learned to be humble and who yet desires to be something that is himself" (Pages 136-137; 139-140).

The reverend Kumalo gently lives out Christ's message, and achieves his usual balance, forgives his white acquaintance, and also sees how he is more of a victim of his blood brother - in the Zulu language, said easily and emphatically many times in the novel - "son of our mother." Yet, John, the son of his mother, in order to save his own criminal son, turns against Rev. Stephen Kumalo and Absalom. In fact, John is able to help the other two co-conspirators more than he is willing to help Absalom, his nephew! But Stephen Kumalo does the most frightening and challenging thing int he wordl, to confront in utter humilty, the father of the man (Arthur Jarvis,) killed by his own cold, amoral son, Absalom. In the old South Africa, it was not at all easy or predictable that such a confession would be well receievd, especially since the older Jarvis is from Natal, and had been a silent neighbor to Reverend Kumalo all these years (James Jarvis had come up for his son's funeral, to Johannesburg, just as Kumalo had done, and because the city killed their loved ones or tore their families apart). His daughter-in-law does not show similar human concerns , and therefore mirrors some of the harsh white prejudice when blacks do not show gratitude to white liberals and/or their employers, in this instance, the Sebeko family's daughter and Mrs. Smith's maidservant, who was arrested for brewing alcohol in her assigned room.

The value of Paton's classic contribution is manifold. It builds hope upon the Biblical scriptures and the servant-leader, Jesus, even while reminding us that Nelson Mandela is no Jesus Christ. Perhaps like Harriet Tubman who helped runaway slaves to freedom, Mandela ought to remind us of a man with vision - but not total vision - but still a man favored by Hod, the reluctant leader of the Jews, Moses. The parts of the book that capture the sickening, dying, repugnant details of shanty towns that spring up because of bureaucratic failures and indifference, the paucity of jobs and the fecundity of crime, disease and sexual aberrations ... in both South Africas, may be accurate and depressing. The optimism is meant to take us back to our hero, Reverend Kumalo, who places his trust in divine institutions, not human ones, however magical. We are sadly reminded that black life is still cheaper than white in South Africa; and the police even now respond too slowly to prevent orgies of crime and business vendettas among blacks, as happened in May 2008, when at least 60 non-European immigrants (Mainly Africans and Asians) were killed in South Africa. The immigrants were accused of being favored by South Africa's agencies above local blacks ... the majority of whom still live in poor housing, or in shantytowns replete with "shebeen" or criminal pub clulture, disease, joblessness, hopelessness and crime. Thanks to God, the majority among the majority are still patient, and have not moved South Africa along the path taken, directly or otherwise, by Zimbabwe. Paton, who died in 1992, on the eve of the historic victory of Mandela at the polls, did not live to see the inability of the liberal ideology to completely solve South Africa's problems and its mildly effective, easily corruptible, institutions. South Africa today may be labeled old wine in new bottles, as the same country, with the same frustrations, and the inability of black faces in government to do any better than the many white faces had done during the apartheid era. This conclusion does not suggest the need for another revolution Mandela's country; rather there is a need to honor and live out those spiritual and Christian ideals that inspired abolition in the United States, and segregation, hate and racism in Africa.