Dominique Lapierre’s A Rainbow in the Night: A Study in Apartheid

Pages:42-45
Rakesh Bharti Yadav (S. K. Govt. P. G. College, Kanwali)

The term apartheid refers to the South African policy of racial segregation or discrimination on grounds of race. Beginning with the White men’s Colonization of South Africa in the seventeenth century; the Dutch descendents established the new colonies of Orange Free State and Transvaal. The discovery of diamonds in this land led to an English invasion sparking the brutal Boer War. When the African National Party come to power its leaders and strategists; trained in Nazi Germany invented the policy of apartheid to cement their control over the political, economic and social sphere of the country. Although the domination of the blacks by the whites is rooted in the history of that nation the enactment of apartheid laws in 1948 made racial discrimination institutionalized. The Population Registration Act of 1950 required that all South Africans be racially classified into one of the three categories: white, black or coloured. The coloured category included major subgroups of Indians and Asians. Classification into these categories was based on appearance, social acceptance and descent. In 1951 the Bantu Authorities Act established a basis for ethnic governments in African reserves, known as “homelands”. The Africans living in these homelands needed passports to enter South Africa. Thus they become aliens in their own country. In 1953, The Public Safety Act and Criminal Law Amendment Act were passed to suppress the coloured people. The Land Acts of 1913, 1936, 1954 and 1955 set aside eighty percent of land and resources of the country for the white minority. Dominique Lapierre in this novel relates the powerful and tragically, historical drama that brought to life the country that is today known as the Rainbow Nation. Ania Loomba in Colonialism/Postcolonialism has considered the complexities of colonial and post colonial subjects and identities and how the colonial encounter restructured ideologies of race, culture and class. She has also considered the ways in which the patriarchal oppression and colonial domination conceptually and historically connect to one another. Aime Cesaire in Discourse on Colonialism indicts the colonial brutality and claims that, “colonialism not only exploits but dehumanizes and objectifies the colonized subject, as it degrades the colonizer himself.”(Loomba 24) Commenting on the European Imperialism, Daniels writes, “The struggle to impose global European hegemony began after the voyages of Columbus and others in the so called Age of discovery; so called because everywhere the Europeans went they found people before them… not only did they arrogantly assume their own superiority but they also disregarded the legitimacy of the civilizations and cultures they encountered. (Daniels 3-4)