Ronnie Govender and Asian Belonging Within South Africa

• Main Author: O'Connor, Maurice
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: Apartheid; cartographies; chotara; conviviality; hybridity; miscegenation; South African Indian
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss41/12; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/2054/viewcontent/KK_2041_2C_202023_2012_20Forum_20Kritika_20on_20Rhizomatic_20Communities_20Myths_20of_20Belonging_20in_20the_20Indian_20Ocean_20World_20__20O_E2_80_99Connor.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

This paper explores the Asian presence in South Africa through the work of Ronnie Govender. One of its concerns is how fictional worlds based on real-life experiences become a means to counter the discourses of apartheid that insisted upon the incommensurability of cultural difference as regards Asian and African communities. In this light, the paper references how a white hegemony sets about compromising an already fragile co-existence that existed between the Black, Coloured, and Asian communities and considers the body of Govender’s work as a repository which aids future generations to connect with the traumatic nature of apartheid so as to reconnect with the era’s lost possibilities. Throughout the analysis of Govender’s texts, the Group Areas Act emerges as a silent actor that casts its shadow upon his writing. This paper notes how these Acts were detrimental to conviviality and shows how Govender creates textual cartographies that counter the surveilling and controlling of ethnic groups under apartheid. Regarding the Indian presence within South Africa, the paper presents how Govender adapts an Afro-centric position as regards the configuring of this identity.