Nadine Gordimer's "Burger's Daughter": the Black Consciousness movement

 

The Black Consciousness Movement forms the background of Gordimer’s novel Burger’s Daughter. It was very popular amongst the Africans. Due to the impact of the Black Consciousness Movement’s ideology, we find the changed attitude of the blacks towards the whites, which is apparent in the novel.

Baasie, Rosa’s childhood companion and a black boy, lives with Burger’s family. But after the death of Rosa’s father Lionel Burger, he leaves their home; now he is a black exile in London. When Rosa joins the French branch of the anti-apartheid movement, she proceeds to London from Paris in order to meet other revolutionaries in exile. In one of the parties Rosa meets Baasie, her childhood playmate. The conversation with Baasie shakes Rosa out of her complacency. There was a change in his identity. He asserts his separate identity. The name he was given ‘Baasie’ means ‘Little Boss’. 

Infuriated by Rosa’s easy reassertion of their childhood friendship, Baasie insists on his new identity as Zwelinzima, not Baasie. He attacks her for posing as different from other whites because of her political commitment. He replies, ‘You didn’t even know my name. I don’t have to tell you what I’m doing.” We find that in Gordimer’s novels the black people have a capacity of leadership. Here, Baasie becomes the voice of the Black Consciousness Movement. He rejects the false brotherhood he had with Rosa and the paternalism of Lionel. He rejects the heritage of Lionel Burger himself.

The Black consciousness sentiment had formed a background to this novel, and the speculations raised in this novel regarding the role and the sacrifices of the whites for the anti-apartheid struggle are also because of disillusionment of many white dedicated activists, probably Nadine Gordimer herself, who were seriously hurt by segregationist sentiment of the black consciousness which had a blatant creed of 'no whites - blacks only'. Gordimer depicts the same in Burger's Daughter. Dhladhlaa, a young black teacher, vocalizes the rationale behind the Black Consciousness movement': “Blackness is the blackman refusing to believe the white man's way of life is best for blacks .... It’s not a class struggle for blacks, it’s a race struggle.”

The blacks believed that "all collaboration with whites has always ended in exploitation of black" and therefore they were assured that true revolution can only be brought by blacks – “Our liberation cannot be divorced from Black Consciousness because we cannot be conscious of ourselves and at the same time remain slaves.” Gordimer in the novel names some of the Black Consciousness organizations—the Black People’s Convention, South African Students’ Organization, Soweto Students’ Representative Council, South African Student Movement, the Black Parents’ Association etc.

The Soweto revolt was an outcome of black-consciousness movement. The last pages of the novel bear a direct reference to the Soweto revolt. But black-consciousness was a racist approach and was bound to further the breach between the two races; it was therefore as evil as probably apartheid. Apartheid gave rise to black consciousness. But it can be detected in the narrative that black consciousness can ignite similar white consciousness sentiments. Rosa recalls that a young colleague not actually interested in communism comes to pay respect for Lionel - as a fellow white - an Afrikaans - related to him through history, blood and language. So, any racist move is dangerous for the society. It is like a vicious cycle where any racist movement has the potential to ignite a counter movement. The solution therefore lies only in multiracialism.