Segregação e reconciliação em Spilt Milk de Kopano Matlwa

Abstract

In 1948 white South Africans elected a government that aimed at racial segregation in order to guarantee white supremacy, thus establishing a system of laws and policies that became known as apartheid. This period of systematic oppression of the black population ended only in 1994, when the first democratic elections took place. However, the country continued to live under the domination of white minority cultural values and old forms of exclusion remained. Consequently, the political climate is reflected in the country's literature and author Kopano Matlwa portrays current social and political realities in Spilt Milk (2010) showing how the aftermath of apartheid continues to haunt racial relations in South Africa. Through a woman A black woman and a white man who were lovers in the past, the author expresses the arduous task of overcoming the ills experienced in the segregation regime in order to achieve peaceful coexistence between different races as desired by Nelson Mandela. The protagonist wants to value black culture and tradition while establishing a distance from western influences, however, we believe that this idea is utopian, since she is inserted in a capitalist society permeated by the legacy of colonization and racial segregation. Furthermore, we highlight the problems that persist in contemporary South African society and the danger of binary thinking that remains. We also reflect on the construction of identities of the new generation of middleclass black South Africans in the face of the influences of contemporary globalized culture. We perceive in the novel a latent concern with the children that represent the future of South Africa, therefore, we investigate the portrait of these children of the so-called “free-born” generation in comparison to South African adults.