Monica Popescu   

Abstract

JM Coetzee's 1994 novel The Master of Petersburg has puzzled its readership with its geopolitical and temporal distance from the South African scene. I argue that the novel actually portrays some of the more salient features of the transition years, as it reflects on the position of the writer vis- -vis a restructured field of political forces. A meditation on transition time and on the protracted dimension of waiting for a new world to be born, the novel also presents a model of connectivity between Russia and South Africa. It places post-apartheid culture in a special relationship to postcolonialism and the global configuration born at the end of the Cold War.

In Zakes Mda's novel The Heart of Redness (2002), a black South African newly returned from the USA searches for a mysterious and beautiful woman, NomaRussia, whom he attempts to trace down to her small village in the Eastern Cape. Her surprising name speaks to a long tradition of imaginary relations that span continents and decades:

NomaRussia is a very common name, one of the teachers explains. The people of this region began giving their valued daughters this name - which means Mother of the Russians - when the Russians killed Sir George Cathcart during the Crimean War in 1854. Cathcart, the teacher further explains, was the much-hated colonial governor who finally defeated the amaXhosa in the War of Mlanjeni....People got to know of the Russians for the first time. Although the British insisted that they were white people like themselves, the amaXhosa knew that it was all a lie. The Russians were a black nation.... For many months we posted men on the hills to look out for the arrival of the Russian ships. (2002: 63, 82-3)

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