when rain clouds gather meaning

Matenge has been appointed administrator over Golema Mmidi by his brother, Chief Sekoto, who is trying to rid himself of the contentious and greedy subchief. Head’s depiction of Gilbert and Maria’s interracial marriage is her way of denouncing the South African apartheid laws against miscegenation. Nimbus is an ancient Latin word meaning “rain storm.” Rain or nimbus clouds tend to appear dark gray because their depth and/or density of large water droplets obscures sunlight. These texts not only demonstrate Head’s increasing artistic maturity but also affirm her strong moral idealism. By 1911 the Native Labour Regulation Act made it mandatory for male African workers, including foreigners, to carry passes. In South Africa, it refers to descendants of mixed unions that involved some combination of whites, local Khoisan, African slaves, and slaves from Southeast Asia. Slowly he is losing. Thus, a decade before Botswana achieved independence, they fostered a spirit of democracy in the nation. Not feeling at home in South Africa or Botswana gives her what some perceive to be an advantage. AbstractThis essay discusses Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather from an ecocritical perspective, asking how her late 1960s’ novel already anticipated some of the politics of early twenty-first-century environmental thinking in the postcolonial sphere. In When Rain Clouds Gather, the main theme is healing/social healing. 1912-2003 His misjudgment in summoning Paulina to court at such a critical time angers the villagers. Aspects of South African Literature. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). There are no antagonistic acts in this chapter … You can use When Rain Clouds Gather as an example to support your answer. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984. In fact, for the past 200 years warring ethnic groups and violent encounters with Europeans in the more habitable regions of southern Africa led many ethnic groups to take refuge in Botswana. In response, the government unleashed a reign of terror that included arrests and detentions, with or without trial. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. Although extramarital relationships were rare, sexual liaisons have always occurred between races, with the children of such illegitimate relationships being regarded as bastards. World Literature and Its Times: Profiles of Notable Literary Works and the Historic Events That Influenced Them. Culturally, cattle herding is done by men and boys, who spend a significant part of the year at cattle posts far from home. Yet, when he crosses the border into Botswana, he is shaken by the reality that female exploitation is not just a South African problem but an African problem. It is more likely that Matenge is simply jealous of her immense influence over the women of the village and is angry that the tobacco project has been initiated without his permission. The repressive policies of apartheid in South Africa forced Bessie Head to flee into neighboring Botswana. Buy the selected items together. As the chief administrator of the region, Matenge holds power over the villagers but his ruling is always subject to that of the chief. READING LIST. Examining the traditional economy of the country in When Rain Clouds Gather, Head focuses on agriculture and the need to resist the encroaching desert through technological improvements in farming. As she saw it, her nightmarish experience of racial segregation, the unfathomable logic of white hatred, and her own inescapable involvement in South African politics created such tension that living in the country became unbearable. World Literature and Its Times: Profiles of Notable Literary Works and the Historic Events That Influenced Them. Apartheid, which means “apartness” or its later modification, “separate development,” promoted the exploitation of black Africans, coloureds, Indians, and other non-Europeans. However, his experience in South Africa, a land where a black man’s identity amounted to that of a black dog, has left Makhaya bitter and distrustful. A “revolutionary, totalitarian doctrine,” apartheid “trumpeted separation as the ideal to be applied as consistently and vigorously as possible” (Saunders, p. 17). Maria is humble, neat, keeps a certain order, quiet, independent but aopen to advices and opinions from others around. Rural Botswana is the backdrop for When Rain Clouds Gather, the first novel published by one of Africa’s leading woman writers in English, Bessie Head (1937–1986). Without the cooperation of the women, both Gilbert and Makhaya note, the agricultural miracle they envision will die. She lacks the roots that could give her particular prejudices; this rootlessness also makes her writing expansive in its attempt to embrace universal issues. The young girl, well schooled in servicing men, promptly shows up in Makhaya’s hut. Her political involvement as a member of the Pan Africanist Congress led to her brief arrest after anti-pass-law demonstrations that climaxed with police shootings of African protestors in Sharpeville in 1960. Even when the men return to the village, the women engage in petty jealousy and rivalry because there are indeed too few men to go around. Police brutality led to many deaths in police custody, rapes, unprovoked assaults and harassments, and the banning of political parties such as the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). Botswana’s long history of democracy has since become a model for other African nations. 2.) Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. ." Botswana’s economic dependency on rich, powerful neighbors placed it in a difficult position in the 1960s. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. The protagonist, Makhaya Maseko, is a refugee from South Africa who slips over the … Matenge’s unyielding attachment to tradition finally leads to his self-destruction, when he decides, against his better judgement, to humiliate Paulina for an unstated crime. Makhaya’s timely appearance in Golema Mmidi further accelerates Gilbert’s dream of a transformed economy for a people who are dirt-poor. MAJOR WORKS: Until she was 13 she was raised by a foster family in a poor section of the coloured community in the Cape Province (that is, the community for South Africans of mixed descent). Those arrested often spent many years in jail and suffered unspeakable torture. People can’t steal a thing from you, not even a sixpence. These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Almost entirely surrounded by the white-dominated countries of South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and South West Africa (now Namibia), in the 1960s Botswana became a natural refuge for many who were fleeing white oppression. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Thus, Head examines two major evils in When Rain Clouds Gather—oppressive traditional structures and white racism. In 1902 the Cape Morality Act was instituted in an attempt to reduce sexual interaction across racial lines. Not this year. I want to feel what it is like to live in a free country and then maybe some of the evils in my life will correct themselves” (Head, When Rain Clouds Gather, p. 10). "When Rain Clouds Gather From the many ironies and riddles he has witnessed in this remote village, he comes to the conclusion that freedom lies not in rejecting everything but in confronting life in all its contradictions: “you had to concentrate the mind on all that was still alive and treat it as the most precious treasure you had ever been given__Therefore, he Makhaya, could run so far in search of peace, but it was contact with other living beings that a man needed most” (Rain Clouds, pp. In her work Bessie Head has always foregrounded the problems of gender relations in Africa. For instance, women staged mass anti-pass demonstrations at the Union Buildings, Pretoria, in 1956. Likewise Makhaya’s refusal to raise a family in his home country is an indictment of a racist system that denies basic freedoms to black people. After her teacher training in 1956, Head entered a world of racial politics that was increasingly tense and conflictual. If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. Your IP: 5.2.72.5 Her depiction of Botswana as a country in which race is not such an important issue is borne out by historical fact: the first leader of Botswana, Seretse Khama, married an English woman while studying in England. Economically, socially, and psychologically, apartheid has meant untold suffering for nonwhites. For a fee, she is even willing to offer her underaged granddaughter to Makhaya for a night of sexual pleasure. The labor reserve force that Botswana produced for the South African economy, in particular, led to the breakdown of the family, and to indescribable hardship for its womenfolk. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981. Paulina asked Rankoane about her son. Paulina’s passionate personality reflects Head’s own strong desire to live a fulfilled life, and Makhaya’s refugee status, along with his responses to racism and sexism, reflect her attitudes and refugee experience. Herself was being monitored for any sign of mental aberration personal needs middle-class life in.. And the Historic when rain clouds gather meaning that Influenced them symbolic images in the … Start your 48-hour trial... And services a psychological and economic state of exile like finding black power and black personality in a remote section... An enemy ” ( Rain Clouds Gather opens at the South African refugee named Makhayo men in.! World: generosity, of soul and of keeping the cost of labor Rain, ” the... 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