Cry, the Beloved Country

This is the big daddy of all liberal South African protest novels, the first really high-profile international bestseller to draw attention to the damage done by the racism embedded in the South African system, even before the fiction of "apartheid" was created.

It's a simple, very classically-constructed novel, a tragedy built around a father's quest for his missing son, full of symbolic landscape description and stately, formal conversations, peppered with interpolated sociological observations that come at us from a Marxist-Anglican viewpoint, all of it very much more 1848 than 1948. But somehow that doesn't seem to matter: Paton gets away with it because of his obvious love for the country and the people who live in it and his show more passionate concern to undo the mess that it is in.

Paton sees the racism that poisons South African life in a straightforward Marxist way, as an ideology that has grown up to justify the need the capitalist system has to keep black people in poverty so that there will always be a pool of unskilled labour prepared to work at low wages to keep the mines and farms going. By taking away the best land and forcing people into inadequate "reserves", the old agricultural economy of the tribal system has been broken down, taking with it the social control and restraints on behaviour of traditional society. Young men have to leave their families to go and work in the cities — the system doesn't allow them to establish stable family homes in the cities, or to build careers or businesses once they are there, so those who are too enterprising or too undisciplined to cope with tedious work in mines and factories are more than likely to end up in crime.

For the moment, political opposition doesn't seem to offer a way out — in the absence of any real political responsibilities open to them, black leaders are vulnerable to being corrupted by the system. Well-meaning white liberals can make a difference on a small local scale, but in the end they are only giving back a part of what their community took away in the first place. The only real pillar of hope for Paton seems to be the (Anglican-) Christian church, which gives black people a new kind of community structure to replace what they have lost in the breakdown of tribal bonds. But he's clearly not expecting the revolution any time soon.

If this were a new book, it would be criticised because Paton is a white person writing from the point of view of a black protagonist, using elements of style that are clearly meant to give the book an African rhythm, but which can sometimes start looking rather Hiawatha-ish: Here is a white man's wonder, a train that has no engine, only an iron cage on its head, taking power from metal ropes stretched out above. Conversations that are supposed to be in Zulu are rendered in very formal, courteous English, which is perhaps an accurate representation of the way social relations in Zulu work, but starts after a while to look like a cliché of old-fashioned exoticising colonial fiction. It's clearly all well-meant, of course, and in the context of its time, we can't really use the "cultural appropriation" argument that Paton is stealing space in which black writers could have been selling their books. If anything, he's helping to create a demand for more African writing.

Of course, Paton wrote this for an international audience, during a stay abroad, and the book must owe a lot of its success to the self-satisfaction American readers got from discovering that there were worse things in the world than their own home-grown racism, and British readers from finding that it wasn't their responsibility any more. The South African authorities, of course, banned it. But Paton did go back home and continued to engage in South African politics, doing his best to swim against the tide and work for change.

Whatever you think of it, it's an engaging tear-jerker and an important document of its time. show less

(review originally written for bookslut)

I couldn't possibly have made a better choice to follow Things Fall Apart with than Cry, The Beloved Country. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. I did know that both books were written by Africans, and were in no small part about Africa itself. But I wasn't even that farsighted when I picked Cry, The Beloved Country off of the shelf. This next book decision was as random as most others. Cry was simply the first book I saw that I knew was on the 100 books list. Thus, by happy coincidence, I found myself further immersed in the future of the world I had just left.

In Things Fall Apart, the first death tolls for tribal life in Africa have just begun. In Cry, the Beloved Country, the funeral show more has long been over, and people are searching, grasping, for anything to take its place. As the land loses its ability to feed people, it also loses its ability to hold them. Men are drawn to the mines where there is work, and to the city of Johannesburg where there is the promise of something new, and they soon stop writing the ones they had loved back home. The Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo loses a brother to the city, and his brother-in-law to the mines. When his sister goes to the city to find her husband, she also disappears. His son soon follows. Finally the Reverend Kumalo receives a letter advising him of his sister's ill health, and he embarks on a quest to Johannesburg, to retrieve and rebuild his family.

Of course quests are never easy. And there really is something new going on in Johannesburg, something that no one has the ability to explain in words. But Alan Paton draws an immense, sweeping picture of a city in turmoil. It is a city where natives who are boycotting the buses for high fares walk miles to and from work each day -- often having just a few hours of sleep before they must wake and start the long trek again. It is a city where all the members of the ruling class agree that they are in a terrible crisis, but none can agree on what to do about it. It is a city where it is illegal to give a walking bus boycotter a ride to work, yet hundreds do it anyway. Kumalo witnesses both horrible cruelty and heart-breaking kindness while he searches the city for answers, and the reading this book, I felt the full force of both.

Had Cry, the Beloved Country only been about the search of one man for his family and his journey to and from Johannesburg, it still would have been a magnificent book. I was truly surprised when the book did not end at Kumalo's safe return home. Instead of ending at the obvious place, Paton chose that time to broaden the book's scope. The end result is a feeling of hope -- a much better place to leave off than the despair of Things Fall Apart. Where it is possible, I would always recommend these two books to be read together as a pair. If Things tears you apart, Cry will start to put you back together. show less

There's a reason why this book is a classic of 20th-century fiction. The story of Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo, who travels to Johannesburg in search of his son and sister, still packs a wallop sixty years after it was published. Set in apartheid South Africa, Cry, The Beloved Country depicts the stark contrast between rural and urban life in that country, and puts on vivid display the absurdity of an unjust and inhuman social policy. Paton does not preach. Rather, he allows his characters to show us how living under apartheid affects their lives and the choices they make. Kumalo, an old man at the time of the action and painfully aware of his weaknesses, does not fight the system or even question it, and yet his struggle to make sense of show more it and somehow find solace in tragedy is full of passion and drama. A masterpiece. show less

This was one of those books that when I’d finished, I wondered where it had been all my adult reading life. (Or prehaps where I’d been, or perhaps why hadn’t my High School English teacher set this as a required text?) I’d borrowed this book from a friend, but it one I definitely want on our shelves.

Published in 1948 about aparteid South Africa. This is a moving story about a black pastor Kumalo who leaves his village for Johannesburg to find his son who had gone away to work, but had stopped writing home. As he follows his son’s trail to find his whereabouts, the news is increasingly grim.

The novel also tells the story of a white farmer whose farm is near the same village. His son, an engineer in Johannesburg was murdered by show more a young black man who’d broken into his house. The murdered man Arthur Jarvis was an advocate for black people.

I found it an intelligent and unbiased look at the injustices of the time. So very beautifully written in the Zulu oral tradition, the story and the characters engaged me and the issues were addressed with sensitivity and understanding. The central themes are the land, justice and fear.

Loved, loved, loved this book.l loved how it told a great story that made me cry, examined real issues which despite being based around the events in SA in the 40’s are just as relevant today (in fact are universally relevant), and it made me think! show less

The story of a country parson's journey to Johannesburg to find his son is told in the slow, stately rhythms of country life, and perhaps the Zulu language itself. I was moved by the ritual use of language: go well, stay well, yes, I understand, many other repeated phrases that become something of a hymn to the country and the lost culture. The characters are sometimes emblems: the girl, the demonstrator, the boy, the child, all without names. But the characters that are named are very present. The parson's brother John has long since relocated to Johannesburg, and adopted city ways and pace. Gertrude has been totally corrupted by the city after traveling there to find her husband. Jarvis and Parson Kumalo share the countryside and the show more terrible pain of loss. Msimangu is a loving guide through the inferno of the city, and a truly religious man.

Paton doesn't shy away from the politics and desolation of apartheid, but he shows its effect on behavior, on the way things must be done and must not be done. He makes it very personal, and all his characters sympathetic, no easy task.
And the book is filled with grinding poverty, unspoken fears, poignant hope.

We know now that apartheid has ended, reconcilliation has been attempted, people still live in poverty and separation. Amazingly, there was no war. But the fears between and among groups of different people resurge, and this book bears reading again. show less

This is one of those stories that works on many, many levels simultaneously. What all the levels have in common, however, is their exploration of man’s capacity for both selfishness and selflessness.

On one level, this is the story of the disintegration of a family. An elderly South African pastor travels to Johannesburg to track down members of his family who have vanished into the maw of that ravenous city, never to return. Heartbreakingly, he discovers that all of them have been marked and warped by their brush with soulless urbanism: his sister has become a prostitute, his brother a radical politician, his son, a thief and murderer. In the course of trying to cope with these heartbreaks, the aged, gentle Umfundisi (Zulu for show more “pastor”) is aided by a host of sympathetic strangers, both black and white. The juxtaposition of their generosity and capacity for kindness with the corruption and apathy of the city is deeply moving.

On another level, this is the story of the destruction of a way of life, as drought and ignorance of sound agricultural/land management practices threaten to forever destroy the beautiful valley of the Umfundisi's memory, leaving behind a dry and desolate plain. With characteristic equivocation, Paton challenges us to consider the extent to which we humans bring our evil with us – in the form of plows and tribes and customs – regardless of our intent.

On still another level, this is the story of the evils of European colonialism and the devastation wrought upon an unprepared native population by greedy mine owners, capitalists, and politicians. Paton doesn't shy away from blaming colonialism for the ruin of the corruption of the Umfundisi’s family and the loss of South Africa’s soul. And yet, again, he chooses the path of ethical ambiguity over the much easier path of moral righteousness, juxtapositioning acts of soulless exploitation with acts of stunning philanthropy.

Finally, this is the story of the transition of men from innocence to understanding. In ways both subtle and deeply ironic, the core tragedy of the tale forges an unexpected bond between the Umfundisi and a grieving white African businessman, kindling in both men a deeper wisdom and, unexpectedly, a faint stirring of hope that illuminates the final few pages of this complex and moving tale.

All this, Paton achieves via a wholly distinctive, lyrical narrative voice that mimics the rolling, repetitious rhythms of South African speech. At first I found this use of repetitive phrases and exchanges (for example, the staple farewell ritual of “stay well” and “go well”) a little self-conscious. By the end of the tale, however, I understood the extend to which these simple exchanges could communicate as much depth of feeling and pathos as a whole chapter of Dickens.

Readable, poignant, relevant … can we ask more from any book? If the definition of a “classic” is a tale that still has things to say about the human condition, then this one definitely deserves its spot in the pantheon. show less

For a book that was written over 60 years ago, it is remarkable how much its speaks to the soul of South Africa. The broken lives of both black and white people and how the only redemption is through forgiveness, and working together.

It is a simple story of an old pastor who travels from rural Kwazulu-Natal, to find his son. The place he comes from is impoverished and broken, the land is abused by primitive farming and agriculture and families are broken. It is a land of old men and children because the young leave to work in the cities, serving the industry of white men.

Kumalo ultimately arrives too late, because he cannot save his son from the evils of the big city. It is the tragedy of many Africans who leave their homeland never show more to return, they are swallowed by the city and its ills, the crime, the booze, and the loose living. Those who survive these ills are lost in a struggle for power or in politics, and stray one way or another. In either way there is no return.

Alan Paton speaks with compassion about the problems of South Africa and points to a solution, that is valid even now. Love the land, work for the land. The idea of redemption is strongly linked in the story with the Christian faith, but it also had a strong element of respecting the wisdom of the land, and believing in the kindness and humanity of other. The human story remains as poignant and fresh today as if Alan Paton has just written it. No wonder that this book is one of the greatest pieces of African writing.

It contains very pointed insight. I was struck especially by the depiction of the traditional African chief. Paton describes through his protagonist, how the white man broke down the traditional tribe, and knocked the chiefs down, then restored them to be rulers over swathes of broken and used up land. It is a sad reality that is perhaps valid all over the world. The puppets are never as good as the real chiefs that would have been born from the wisdom of the land and the people. Excellent book should be read by everyone, especially those connected to Africa and South Africa. show less