South Africa History

Question 4         

Both texts, Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People and District 9 might be depicted as “unpleasant imaginary worlds”. July’s People portray the author’s judgement that the future consequences of Apartheid were not being taken into account. District 9, meanwhile, has this special feature of being a kind of documentary, or better to say, mockumentary, where Blomkamp shows a sci-fi Johannesburg that is having a sort of test period after realizing that District 9 is not well functioning. Gordimer will display a self-conscious dystopian post-apartheid world, in order to make South Africa realize the afterwards political and moral problems that this segregation regime will make befall. While Blomkamp will set his science-fiction story “against the explosive social realities of contemporary Johannesburg”^[1] 

Gordimer herself was first inculcated racist ideas and she had little contact with black people. However, while she was at university she became actively engaged with anti-apartheid movements. For her, South Africa, throughout the years, had been constantly deformed. In her book, as Bales mentions, will take place a future where the white’s fears become a fact. It is easy to notice that Maureen and Bam behave well towards their black servants, and they even consider unacceptable that discrimination and racism were ruling South Africa. However, they are forced to escape. Now they find themselves in the kraal, staying as refugees with July. The stipulated roles at present are the other way around. It is new life where Maureen and Bam do not rule anymore. To give an instance, it is July, and not Bam or Maureen, who has the car keys. July is now the law. He does not need to constantly ask for permission, which, as a result, takes away the power of the Smales.

As Blomkamp assures, District 9 occurs in a current society. By using the sci-fi element, the prawns, as a mockumentary, the movie reproduces what happened in the past with black people. Apartheid was legally accepted. Just as blacks, the prawns were thought to be unintelligent, with no initiative, in need of protection, inferior, and so on. Wikus says at a moment that the prawn does not really understand the concept of ownership of property. All these give us place to the question of how acceptable this discourse is in the case of the prawns, that end up showing more than once how “human” can they be. However when going back to the basis of Apartheid, it is certainly a wicked system.

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