Re-thinking of Queer Voices in the New South Africa: Nadine Gordimer’s None to Accompany Me

Abstract

In the midst of the ongoing changes, a complex social and economic life, contemporary South African society is characterised by exceptional complexity. The new South Africa following democratic rule and accompanying urbanisation had brought about drastic changes in the primary form and institutions in society. Post-apartheid literature foregrounds the themes of poverty, assault, rape, bloodshed, xenophobia, gay life and the AIDS epidemic amongst others. None to Accompany Me presents incidents of life experiences of young adolescents dealing with issues of sexuality, violence and social struggle. This study focuses on Nadine Gordimer rethinking her former conception of same-gender love and sexuality. A literary work exploring the contemporary social issues faced by many young people in modern society and investigates what the researcher see as a significant shift in her most recent work after independence. The paper is informed by an old-fashioned liberal humanist vision and clearly interprets escalated gay existence in post-apartheid South Africa not as a strange phenomenon but a logical maturation of the pressures of long years of racial segregation and oppression as well as the precipitated expectations of the post – apartheid era. The findings are that by asserting the queer subject and their place in post-apartheid South Africa, None to Accompany Me offers vital coun¬ter narrative to widespread homophobia. It sustains on the premise that for social justice and harmony to reign, there should be the political will of state leadership to shun cultural exclusionism and articulate policies that will reconcile and accommodate cultural, racial and sexual differences.