The Victims: An African-Ecofeminist Reading

The Victims (1993) is a novel set in Botswana and South Africa during the apartheid era. It depicts the impact of the apartheid policies on the region, by using the case study of labour immigration. Apartheid South Africa and colonial powers recruited black men from the whole region of Southern Africa to work in the mines, paid them next to nothing, and left African women as the heads of their household. Hence the novel presents us with Kgetho, who like, thousands of other Southern African men, has gone to work in the South African mines, leaving his wife to raise children alone. He comes home occasionally, bringing nothing for his family, but each time leaving his wife pregnant. Exploited by apartheid, Kgetho wields an iron hand of patriarchal authority over his wife and daughter, who he insists he wants to marry her away. MmaKgetho, however, is determined to educate her daughter to empower her to become independent. She tills the land to raise the money for educating Dineo, who is eager and excels at school until she meets an incredible young South African refugee who loves to promote her education. Dineo gets pregnant and drops out of school and the South African refugee fleeing from apartheid cannot be found. In this book, the land groans under apartheid yoke but also as a beautiful vehicle of hope as attested by how the young South Africa uses the land to send messages to the Dineo as well as Mmakgetho’s tilling of the land to fight apartheid induced poverty. Religion, represented by African Independent Churches, is depicted as another institution that seeks to offer healing of the land. This chapter will utilize various theories (gender, race, ecofeminist, post colonialism) to explore how religion, gender, and land are intertwined in this story and the purposes it serves.