An exchange programme involving students and academics from Egoli University in Johannesburg and the University of Athens provides the conduit for the smuggling of Venetian Grossi coins discovered on the Cycladic island of Naxos. Thirty-five year old Delancey James, a Professor of Ethics at Egoli University, stumbles upon events associated with the murder of a post-graduate student. Through her investigation, she uncovers a web of intrigue that links the coin smuggling to corruption at the highest levels of the University, and, in the process, her life is placed in mortal danger.

The kingdom of Sansland situated on the Azanian Peninsula has been ruled by Sorricians, the sky people, ever since they landed on terra firma centuries ago. The indigenous population are forced to engage directly in the social and economic perpetuation of their own domination beneath the Sorrician heel. Until revolution flares in the antipodes, and soon, even the gods themselves seem to take an interest in the inevitable course of events. But all is not what it seems. The revolution appears to proceed too rapidly. The kingdom’s trade infrastructure collapses too easily. The Sorrician rulers are inexplicably and unrealistically confident in their ability to repel an attack on the capital. It will take a man of conscience, a regular soldier and a boy priest to restore appearances back to reality.

My mother had many failings. Her inability to cook. Her inability to work. Her inability to love. But her two biggest failings...those were the ones that had the potential to ruin my entire life, to ruin my brother’s life, to tear a family apart. More than anything, it was her inability to act. Claire is a young woman working in Johannesburg as a PA. She has few friends barring her au pair flatmate Beth and work colleague Marge. Her nights are spent trying to overcome the trauma of her past to find sexual fulfilment in a shallow world of one night stands. Whether she can set herself on a path towards a more normal life comes down to one crucial thing – forgiveness.

A young woman from a rural village near Kimberley is killed by her husband in a fit of jealousy. Her illiterate mother is summoned to the hospital to authorize the removal of vital organs – eyes, liver, kidney and heart – for organ donation. But some members of the family feel that their child should not be buried with parts of her body missing. Thus begins a story that changes the lives of many people, both black and white, over the following twenty years.

When Kate arrives at Heathrow airport, her best friend Jake convinces her to go clubbing with him. And so starts her journey into London's clubbing subculture with Jake as her guide. The novel is structured around Kate's exposure to the ethos of the different clubs she visits. The narration is propelled by the tension set up between the potentially salacious material these experiences provide and the 'flat' account given of it by the narrator. Kate's reserved perspective plays off against the usual expectations one has of the 'confessional' mode. This becomes particularly telling as she recounts Jake's spinning off into increasingly destructive patterns. The reader is left to deal with the cycle of spectacle and experience presented in the work on his or her own terms. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

The 'colony' in Olive Schreiner‟s fiction and non-fiction is a place or space, I shall argue, that is both dynamic and complex. The comings and goings, the stories, of the 'characters' in the space are not reducible to the division of indigene/settler. This dissertation takes as its starting point a still prevalent view that Schreiner's literary achievement displays a typical 'colonial blindness' in matters of dispossession and resistance: that the colonial person has little connection to his/her material surrounds. In reaction to what I regard as a binary language of response, my focus is on what I refer to as 'margins' in Schreiner's writings: that is, to apparently tangential incidents which add complexity to the conception of colony and, by extension, to that of the colonial novel. My argument is that in her treatment of a colony of diverse, conflicting stories, which are told in both fictional and non-fictional forms, Schreiner challenged the dichotomous language of colonialism (in its sharp delineations between indigene and settler) and imbued her times (1880s-1920s) with visionary potential: a potential that continues to have import where the reductive categories of indigene and settler retain purchase even in postcolonial times. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

In this thesis I will look at the interlinked issues of power, race and sex in Lewis Nkosi's Mating Birds (1986) and The Black Psychiatrist (1994) using the psychiatrist figure to provide the focus on these intersections of power, race and sex. It becomes clear after even a cursory reading of these texts that it is these very issues that inform both texts, one a novel and the other a play. it is important to note as well that these texts were selected because they have at their center inter-racial sexual relations set against the backdrop of apartheid in South Africa. Mating Birds is the story of Ndi Sibiya, ex-student of the University of Natal, left to a life of aimless wandering after being expelled for participating in student boycotts, now imprisoned and sentenced to death for the rape of a white woman, Veronica Slater. What is interesting about this text is the doubt set in the reader's mind about Ndi's guilt or innocence, by Ndi himself. The Black Psychiatrist deals with a black psychiatrist Dr Kerry, practising in Harley Street, London, who is visited by a white female patient, originally from South Africa. What is interesting about the play is the fact that the doctor seems to take on the role of patient and the patient that of the doctor. What is ironic however is that in her attempts to analyse the doctor, she is faced with the realities of her own life. With both texts dealing clearly with inter-racial relations, it is thus necessary to take into account the historical context in which these texts are set. Mating Birds was published in 1986 but set during the 1950's and 1960's while The Black Psychiatrist was published in 1994. Both texts were written and published before South Africa's first democratic elections and set during the time of apartheid. Selected theorists that will be looked at in relation to the two texts will be Freud (1949), Memmi (1965), Fanon (1967), Said (1978) and Young (1995). Freud is a useful starting point as it is his theory of the Oedipus Complex that forms the basis of psychoanalysis in which the role of the psychiatrist in curing patients of neurosis is very important. Freud's essays on the Oedipus Complex, "A Child is Being Beaten" and "Fetishism" though not written with the black man in mind are useful in analysing the effects of colonisation on the colonised and the way the colonised sees the world. This is something Fanon discusses in detail in his book Black Skin White Masks (1967), where he describes the feelings of inadequacy and dependence experienced by people of colour in a white colonial world. Robert Young's Colonial Desire (1995) will be a key text for this thesis as it allows insight into definitions and theories of race, power and sex in a colonial and oppressive context. Said's Orientalism (1978) will help provide insight into colonial discourse and its effects. Though written specifically with the Orient in mind it is a text that can be used to understand all subjugated people. His opinions on the notion of othering will be of particular importance: the idea that the colonised will always be the Other, object and not subject. Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized helps provide useful insight into colonialism, creating portraits of the coloniser and the colonised, allowing one access into the minds of both. The theorists selected provide definitions and theories about power, race and sex, issues which form the basis of Mating Birds and The Black Psychiatrist and which can best be understood by looking at the psychiatrists Dr Dufre and Dr Kerry. Issues of power, race and sex are essential in any discussion of colonialism and colonised people. The basis of colonisation was one of power, in the case of South Africa power of the white man over black people. Of particular importance to the white man in his reign of power were the extreme oppression of black people and an absolute prohibition of any sexual contact between black and white. It is these issues then that underline the work of Lewis Nkosi and that form the basis of his texts Mating Birds and The Black Psychiatrist. Chapter Two provides the historical context of Nkosi's work as well as a short biography. Of particular importance in this chapter will be a discussion of why Nkosi writes the way he does; why the emphasis on power, race and sex in his work. This requires one to look at the political situation under which he lived and worked for a time before leaving the country having signed away his right to return. Nkosi' s work outlines clearly the effects of apartheid and oppression. Discussed in this chapter as well are his comments on African literature, particularly South African 'protest' fiction. This will be linked to his work and the reasons for him writing the way he does. Chapter Three provides an in-depth analysis of Mating Birds looking specifically at power, race and sex using the role of the psychiatrist as a focus. A useful beginning will be an outline of the plot of the play followed by a discussion of Freud's Oedipus Complex and how it can be used to interpret the black man's view of the world according to Fanon. Deleuze and Guattari's theories will be useful as well in understanding the coloniser as the Father figure, the patriarch. This can be linked to the control that the coloniser has over things like language, communication, place, and the prohibition of inter-sexual relations - looked at in relation to the text. Freud's essay on "Fetishism" will help provide insight into the black man's desire for the white woman while at the same time using her as a substitute for the freedom and power that he so covets. The issue of Othering is important as well - what do black and white men represent to each other? Fanon's views on the African rapist will be referred to as will be Said's object-other theory. Chapter Four presents a brief plot outline of the play The Black Psychiatrist followed by a detailed analysis of the psychiatrist figure Dr Kerry, a successful, black South African having flown his home to practise in London's famous Harley Street. Issues of power are evident immediately as Kerry's authority in his office is undermined by the white woman who should be his patient but prefers to do the questioning. Freud's theories on Repression, which are based on the Oedipus Complex are important here but what needs to be discussed is which character is really guilty of this repression? It is in this chapter as well that a contrast between Dr Dufre and Dr Kerry will be made. Dufre, by coming to South Africa becomes a white man operating in a black man's world, representing the coloniser while Dr Kerry living and working in London is a black man in a white man's world, representing the colonised. Linked to Freud's Oedipus Complex is the issue of incest, which becomes evident only at the end of the play and can also be linked to his theories on Repression. Fanon's views on relationships between black and white make for useful discussions pertaining to the text. Chapter Five presents a short conclusion looking briefly at whether the thesis has achieved what it set out to do: that is, provide a discussion of the issues of power, race and sex in Lewis Nkosi's Mating Birds and The Black Psychiatrist. It will include a discussion of whether Nkosi has found a new way of writing about apartheid. Chapter Five includes as well a discussion of Nkosi's use of psychoanalysis in his writing and presents a short account of his article "The Wandering Subject: Exile as Fetish". / Thesis (M.A)-University of Durban-Westville, 2005.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

This dissertation investigates five texts: Damon Galgut‟s The Imposter (2008), Anne Landsman‟s The Devil’s Chimney (1998), Eben Venter‟s My Beautiful Death (1998) and Trencherman (2008) and Zoë Wicomb‟s David’s Story (2000). In addition to being written in the post-apartheid era, these five texts are all set wholly or partially in the Karoo, a semi-desert landscape unique to South Africa. The Karoo is, however, more than just a common setting onto which their individual stories have been transposed. It is part of the literary imagination of each text. Within these texts are a number of fluid interactions between the consciousnesses and the landscapes they portray. Of course, to attempt to examine these interactions as occurring purely between landscape and consciousness would be foolhardy. As such, this project investigates these links by comparing the texts under investigation to the historical literary form of the plaasroman and by scrutinising them through the theoretical concept of hospitality, as outlined by Jacques Derrida. According to J.M. Coetzee term „plaasroman‟ refers to the type of early twentiethcentury Afrikaans novel which “concerned itself almost exclusively with the farm and platteland (rural society) and with the Afrikaner‟s painful transition from farmer to townsman” (1988: 63). This project investigates all five texts in relation to a number of the concerns common to the plaasroman, including the idea of the farm as a patriarchal idyll, its valorisation of near-mythical ancestral values and the pushing of black labour to the peripheries of narrative consciousness. These concerns, along with the fact that the plaasroman marks out the farm as a fenced off area surrounded by threatening forces, means that it is an ideal form to include in an investigation involving hospitality Derrida outlines hospitality, at its most basic level as “the right of a stranger not to be treated with hostility when he arrives on someone else‟s territory” (Derrida 2007: 246). This relationship, however, goes further than a simple binary. Both host and guest give and receive hospitality. From Derrida‟s meditations on the subject come two forms of hospitality: Conditional and unconditional. The primary distinction between these two kinds of hospitality is a distinction “between a form of subjectivity constituted through a hostile process of inclusion and exclusion and one that comes into being in the self‟s pre-reflective and traumatic exposure, without inhibition, to otherness” (Marais 2009: 275). Unconditional hospitality is the latter and morally preferable. In linking the two concepts, this dissertation illustrates the degrees to which each text, through subverting, or conforming to the conventions of the plaasroman, achieves instances of unconditional hospitality. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

Thesis (B.A.Hons.1978) - Dept. of History, University of Adelaide.