DURBAN--Nobel laureate and
UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Nadine Gordimer criticized
the bickering that has been going on in many
of the meetings at the World Conference against
Racism in Durban.
"Like all conferences it has
mixed results, but I'm totally in favor of it happening," said
Gordimer in an interview Monday with Conference News
Daily. "I think that even when contentious things
come up it must be discussed, that's what democracy
is all about. The only objection I would make is of
people insulting one another personally. It is totally
unproductive."
Gordimer was here
on Monday to speak about, "The
New Aspects of Racism in the Age of Globalism and
the Gene Revolution," on the first in a series
of three panel discussions sponsored by Unesco.
The 77-year old writer is not unfamiliar with
the subject of racism. A South African national
she, often illegally, helped alert the world to
the consequences of apartheid through her writing.
The Nationalist government once banned three of
her books but despite the persecution, Gordimer
resisted being part of the brain drain of white
intellectuals from South Africa. She stayed and
became a member of the African National Congress
(ANC) even before whites were formally allowed
to join.
"As a child I was brought up in a racist
milieu," said Gordimer. "I went to a
all-white convent school, and even when I went
to the cinema on a Saturday afternoon it was all
whites only. And most significant for me--the library,
the municipal library was only for white people,
and I've often thought, with the most incredible
shock, that if I had been a black child instead
of a white child I couldn't have used it, and I
could tell you I'd have never have been a writer."
Her father was a Jew from the border of Lithuania
and Latvia who fought with the British Army in
World War II before immigrating to South Africa.
Her mother was a Jew of British decent. She grew
up in Springs, a small mining town near Johannesburg
and began writing at the age of nine. At 15 she
published her first short story. It was the first
publication of a career that has spanned more than
60 years and included almost 25 books. In 1991,
she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature,
just one of dozens of awards and honorary doctorates
she has received.
"I was born in South Africa as a white--
the quote, unquote 'ruling caste.' I quickly opted
out of that, not out of skin color--I'm white.
I'm neither ashamed nor proud of it. I'm a human
being like everybody else. So race has never meant
anything to me," she said.
Since race meant nothing to her, she grew to oppose
her government to whom race meant so much. She
housed wanted political dissenters, and calls her
proudest moment the one when she spoke in court
as a witness on behalf of 22 ANC members, probably
helping to save their lives.
Although politically
active for most of her life, Gordimer draws a
careful line when it comes to
her novels. "I've never written about apartheid,
I always have to put that right," said Gordimer. "When
I've wanted to talk about apartheid I speak in
public or write an article. My novels are about
people and many of them happen to take place in
the situation of conflict where racism in the form
of apartheid was impinging on their lives, shaping
even their personal lives."
The end of apartheid
hasn't stopped Gordimer from writing about race.
In her new book, "The
Pickup," which comes out on the 12th of October,
one of her characters is what she calls "an
economic refugee," a person who crosses country
borders illegally to try to find work. While "The
Pickup" sounds like it might be a political
novel, Gordimer doesn't consider her writing a
political tool.
"I'm not a politician. I am not a prophet,
I was exploring as I have done all of my life.
Exploring how people live in certain circumstances,
what goes on between them in their personal lives.
Human life is very, very complex, it is influenced
by society," she said. "It is influenced
first of all by your most intimate relations, then
by your family situation, then by society around
you, finally by the country that you live in, and
most of all-- in the end-- the world. Psychologically,
we've always lived globally I think."
It was the subject of globalization that dominated
her speech to the panel. A tiny woman, just five
feet, dressed in a gray suit with steel and dove
hair, she spoke quietly at first prompting the
mediator to move the microphone closer. But her
words were carefully chosen and emphatic.
"Globalization has been managed so far as
the function of the world's economy by agents for
the rich countries in their own interests and without
recognition of the other aspects of just dispersion
of the world's resources that a reality of globalization
demands," she said.
She put the modern
idea of globalization, which she says, is that
of multinational corporations,
in the context of its history. Exploration, she
said, was the first form of globalization, followed
by slavery. "That unspeakable form of globalizing,
the purchase of a person in one country and the
homogenizing of them as slaves within the social
hierarchy of another." Finally, she looked
at colonization as simultaneously the forerunner
of today's economic globalized world, and the greatest
agent of racism in human history.
"What I would hope, in all human modesty,
to come as a contribution from this session of
the conference is a recognition of this: a correction
of the past racism, absolutely unacknowledged,
that has played against the concept of bringing
about globalization," she said.
The audience was silent as she wrapped up her
speech, the only noise coming from a rowdy NGO
conference in the next room. In this session, at
least, no one shouted insults from the audience.
"If only we could reach the stage where people
could accept cultural differences, and difference
in faith, just like a different taste in food,
or thinking it's interesting to have blond hair
or black hair-whatever it is-to accept this as
a matter of personal choice. That doesn't have
to say that you are better or worse that anyone
else," Gordimer said, just before walking
into the event room.
"You know the people are attacking one another
because of their views," said Gordimer. "To
call each other racist and murders, it doesn't
help, that's not what we're here for."
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