Agaat
by Marlene van Niekerk
Buy on AmazonIt’s about an old white woman and her young black maid, Agaat – about their relationship and what happens between them. That’s the basic story but there are extraordinary things happening allegorically. If you look at the cultural artefacts that these women are fighting over, are communicating over, they are bastion symbols of Afrikanerdom – farming, because the white women farm, and tapestry and sewing, which was the domain of the Afrikaner white woman. These are the things that Agaat has taken over. There’s something very subtle and complicated going on at an allegorical level. What’s happening is that these white artefacts are being lost, are being taken over by black people. That’s the one side of the story, losing these things to a black person. But the other side of the story is that to be free and to be black is to be stuck with white artefacts, using them against white people. There is a very murky and quite cynical idea of what freedom means in South Africa today.