Using Historical materials, Michel Foucault argued that the forms of power that are at play have undergone a transformation over the past few centuries. Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People is a novel focusing on the inversion of colonial power-play in South Africa whose history till 1990s was nothing but a chronicle of racism, violence, bloodshed, slavery, oppression and exploitation by the white English colonizers. At one stage of this phenomenon, the blacks became revolutionary and the whites were placed aside. Thus, the entire situation turned into a subverted topsy turvy: now blacks have become powerful, whites powerless; slaves have replaced master’s position and vice versa; blacks are in relaxed mood, while whites are struggling for existence; blacks have become oppressor, while whites are oppressed. However, in this essay I would explore how all such inversion and reversal of colonial power-play have affected the refugee Smales in the county of July’s people and have foreshadowed metaphorically to the re-making of history or decolonization. My hypothesis explicitly is that, in the novel’s plot the Smales’ displacement to July’s village and their subsequent reliance on him as their translator and protector dramatizes an inversion of power that suggests a dialectical collapsing of the Smales’ prior position of dominance and July’s prior position of subordination.

As the plot unfolds, we come to know that the Smales were a suburban, upper middle class, white family living in Southern African turmoil and war forced them to flee from their home. Rebel black armies in Soweto and other areas of Southern Africa revolted against the government and the white minority through attacking the radio and television stations, and burning their homes. The Smales needed to get out quickly. Their servant July with whom they had always treated well and had a very uncommon relationship offered to guide the victim family to his remote village. The Smales, having no other options, accepted July’s offer and ran in haste and confusion to the dearth village. They knew little of the drastic adjustments they would have to make in order to survive in July’s rustic village. This essay reveals how this adjustment soon threatens their relationship with one another on the one hand and their family’s structure on the other. It also explores the true horror and terror these people experience, especially the dethroned Smales in the deteriorating situation. In fact, conflicts arise mostly with Maureen when she realizes that her role is changing for inversion of power.

Now, the relationship of Maureen and Bam Smales with their servant July implies the relationship of dependence, defiance, communication and miscommunication. It also dramatizes the broader racial, economic and sexual power dynamics underscoring white apartheid rule and the resistance to it. In other words, the ‘master/slave’ relationship translates or maps onto comparable relationships of power. My interest is to engage their relationship and the historical moment of revolutionary transition in which Gordimer has written, and also to try to put her novel in dialectic. From Marxist point of view, a culture or race is determined to be ‘powerful’ in terms of money. And the more materials it possesses, the more it exploits that race/culture whose belonging of money/material is less. Thus, economic distinction creates class division and the inevitable power-struggle arises. In this context, the whites are greatly shocked at the adverse situation where they have lost their powerful position as colonizers, and are trying to adjust with this inversion of power-play. Here, the power relations of society are revealed as hollow.

Now as the balance of power shifts, the former masters and the former servant must re-think the structure of their relationship and the Smales must confront their most basic assumptions about the way that the blacks and the whites should interact. In this regard, Gordimer employs a paradoxical mingling of ‘continuity’ and ‘change’ in order to introduce the Smales’ unsettling immersion into a foreign class structure. The setting changes: an abrupt transition between “the knock on the door” and the non-equator that follows (“no door”) not only foregrounds the correspondence between place and the formation of identity, but also introduces the inversion of power that characterizes the Smales’ new dependence upon July. In other words, whereas the “master bedrooms” of Johannesburg provide a setting in which the Smales exercise authority over July, their displacement to his village suddenly invests July a degree of power over them (Hegelian ‘Dialectical Materialism’: as we have indicated). And yet July’s broken English in the first line (“You like to have some cup of tea?”) underscores the language barriers that somewhat limit his recourse to power.

Again, among the many implications of the master-slave dialectic, there is the idea of having reciprocity or mutual dependence between master and slave; rather than a blanket opposition of dominance to subordination. The slave ironically shares in the master’s power, because the master defines himself only in opposition to the slave. According to Hegel’s parlance, the ‘thesis’ of the Smales and the ‘antithesis’ of July are merged into a ‘synthesis’ in which both fashions depend upon each other for the formation and legitimization of identity. The master-servant relationship and its complicated systems of dependency and complicity thus function perhaps as a metonymy for broader power struggles that can be ‘displaced’ or mapped onto other contexts – namely the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, the white and the black, and the like.

The impact of power-inversion and consequently the material deprivation and difficulty of adjusting to dependency on their former servant July leads to Bam and Maureen’s losing their self-image as independent, gracious, powerful and liberal citizens. First, Bam and Maureen lose a sense of each other as husband and wife; then they lose their sense of personal identity. Bam changes from active and powerful to passive and defeated. Similarly, Maureen, after several unsuccessful attempts to create a sense of place for herself in the African village, opts for a radical rejection of her current position through her dash for the “helicopter” (symbol of revolution and escape), leaving her family behind and forgetting her responsibilities to them. Besides, regarding displacement of power, Bam feels disoriented and disturbed. But as a practical man he tries to cope with the situation better than others. In contrast, Maureen, the most miserable victim of disorientation, can never leave her racial trait that resides inside her. However, feeling alienated and uprooted, both always feel a sense to escape from this degrading and inverted status.

Thus, Bam and Maureen react to their situation in extreme ways, some similar and some not. The most radical adjustment in which the couple has the greatest trouble in accepting—is their newfound subservience to July. He has become their host, their savior, and their keeper. When July realizes the power he now holds, he takes advantage of the situation. Whether it is done innocently or with deliberate intent, it is hard to decipher. Bam and Maureen are extremely frustrated over their loss of superiority and control, and their true racist views are uncovered and made far more obvious than when they were living in the city. Despite the fact that the Smales are the most intellectual people of the black community in which they now live, they remain subservient and have almost no influence on the villagers.

Now I will focus on the universal phenomenon that power corrupts and shifts, and thus affects human psychology, and sometimes is used as a means of oppression and resistance/revenge. Here, it is apparent in July who uses and abuses power in different circumstances. It is as if the inversion of power and strength has emerged as blessings (for him) from God as a reward of blacks’ oppression, degradation and subordination by the whites for hundreds of years. However, several objects are invested with symbolic power in Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People. Gordimer presents Bam’s gun and the yellow bakkie (and its keys) as objects that represent power in the text. At the beginning of the text the Smales family owns these objects, and as the plot develops, their grasp on these objects of power becomes more tenuous, and July and other blacks assume ownership of the objects. The transfer of ownership, like the parallel transfer that occurs in Johannesburg, is uncomfortable for the whites involved. July also experiences a sort of discomfort as he gains power in the form of the keys.

The characters in the novel are continually forced to negotiate new ways of relating to one another, and Gordimer makes use of the awkward communication between the whites and the blacks that result from a new power-structure and the language barrier between them to illustrate the discomfort of that negotiation. In Gordimer’s words: “There was the moment to ask him for the keys. But it was let pass.” Further, the inversion of power-play is evident from July’s assertion of self-power regarding the bakkie:

If they catch you, without a license…

He laughed….Who’s going to catch me? The white policeman is run away when the black soldiers come that time. Sometime they take him. I don’t know…No one there can ask me where is my license. Even my pass, no one can ask me any more. It’s finished. (P. 59)

After July laughs, and talks about how he is not culpable for vehicular infractions because there is no longer any white system of authority to stop him, the conversation becomes extremely difficult. July does not come right out and tell Bam and Maureen that he can do what he pleases, whatever they might say. July masks his revolt against the Smales’ (by this time non-existent) authority by talking around it. He acts as though there is an understanding they have reached together, that he is only acting as if he has taken control of the bakkie, but that it in fact still belongs to them.

Thus, the key symbolizes the inversion of the power relationship between the blacks and the whites. It must also suggest that the key is just to enter into something and to initiate the new power-structure, but a long is still remaining to pass. He makes clear that he is in possession of the power now, or at least capable of being in possession of something which amounts to the same thing. The keys and the car are July’s if he wants them to be, though he returns them at the end of this exchange. By the time he returns those, Gordimer makes it seem as though July were lending the car to the Smales for the time being.

There is a look back in anger when Bam discovers that July has taken the bakkie without his permission. Bam reacts like a typical alpha male: “Bam got up and had the menacing aspect of maleness a man has before the superego has gained control of his body…” (39). But nothing comes from Bam’s attempt to be the big man; he comes to realize the futility of any violent action in his current situation. Deprived of his last and most potent means of male authority, Bam drifts into a maternal role: not loving one, but detached one. In his final scene, Bam is wordlessly giving the children food. The silence with which he performs this motherly duty creates a sense of detached resignation, almost as if Bam were mourning for his manhood. Meanwhile, Maureen renounces virtually all her motherly responsibilities, has experienced an “explosion of roles” (117) and being unable to make sense of her life or to fit into the village (e.g. the “gumba-gumba” gathering took no more notice of her than of the dogs and children), she loses her rational faculty. And when the helicopter arrives, she is certain only that she is tired, filthy and helpless. In the absence of any meaningful identity she runs.

The visit to the Chief of July’s community is another significant event in the narrative. July lets Bam drive this time, which is an unusual and rather important change. Bam thinks that the Chief is going to expel him and his family from the black community in which they have found refuge, but decides against telling his wife or family in order to keep them calm. When July introduces Bam to the Chief he says: “Chief, this is the master” (111), an expression which the Smales absolutely hate. This is another reference to the sudden shift in power and change in the relationship between the Smales and July that have occurred because of the trip to the Chief. The meeting is in fact over the gun, which is still another possession of the white family signifying power that is soon to be lost by it and gained by the blacks.

A few days later, Bam’s gun is stolen from its hiding place in the hut. Bam is completely caught off guard because he felt that no one in the village knew where it was, which reiterates his ignorance towards the fact that in the village there is no privacy. Maureen becomes angry and leaves her husband in the hut to go and inquire about the theft. She finds July near the bakkie and argues with him that Daniel must have taken it. July claims to know nothing about the gun or Daniel’s whereabouts, but finally breaks down and tells Maureen that Daniel left to join the black army a few days earlier. The last of their possessions has been stripped and the Smales wonder if this feeling of worthlessness and inferiority is something that July, his people, and the entire black race have been experiencing all along. Maureen, unlike her husband Bam, is unable to control her feelings and emotions in reaction to the situation. By the end of the novel, all authority and power, symbolized by the bakkie and the gun, have been transferred to July’s people. So Bam weeps openly in front of his children. And, he and Maureen interact “as divorced people might” (140). Their relationship becomes one composed of indeterminate pronounce: “Her. Not ‘Maureen’. Not ‘His wife’” (105). Maureen goes to July and demands that he return the weapon. This time she approaches him as one conscious of a shared past that can never be reclaimed. Maureen accuses July of stealing rubbish from her home too. All he can manage in response is, “You” before slipping into the eloquence of his native tongue. Clingman aptly characterizes July’s furious venting as an “aching gun barrage” (200) of words. July’s weapon hits its mark. Maureen understands the meaning although she knows no word.

Again, how powerless now Smales are, is evident from July’s statement (at the beginning) to his people: “They can’t do anything. Nothing to us any more” (p.21). And, Maureen cannot adapt as well as the other members of her family with the environment and starts losing her mind. The Smales have limits as though they were criminals locked in prison and being punished. They are bound to the village by the restrictions of the events surrounding them; e.g., the bombings, the riots, and the fires. Likewise, July is also disgusted and bored with Smales towards the end. As he protests against Maureen’s suspicion of his counter-revolutionary (or neo-imperialist) people about the missing of the gun, which was the emblem of colonial rule and power: “I must know who is stealing your things”…You make too much trouble for me. Here in my home too…Trouble, trouble from you. I don’t want it any more. You see?” (P.151).

Whereas earlier in the novel Maureen’s English “broke the cadences” (20) of July’s language, here the tables of linguistic power are turned. July’s native “cadences surrounded” Maureen, leaving her for the most part powerless. Gordimer nonetheless empowers July with a language of revolutionary mobilization: “his face flickering powerfully” (152). The passage itself functions as the crux of the power inversion between the Smales and July. Again, whereas earlier July had been content to communicate with the Smales by a minimal series of monosyllabic English answers, here he reclaims the agency of native language in order to assert his authority over them.

To conclude by restating Foucault, power circulates within institutional context. And when power is inverted, it greatly affects the psychology of those who exercised or manipulated it before; and often we cannot but sympathies with them. On the other hand, those who achieve it newly at the cost of blood are naturally willing to use it as a means of revenge for their lifelong suppression by the former’s part. So, July’s People is a story of the reactions, adaptations, and survival of Bamford and Maureen Smales to the life they have found in a black village after being thrown from their middle-class white neighborhood. Bam’s adjustment to their new life in the village is much easier than Maureen’s because he can handle the situation rationally by attempting to become a part of the community without letting his emotions get the best of him. Maureen, on the other hand, cannot adjust to the situation and becomes insane because she cannot accept a life without racial and gender structures. This alteration in her lifestyle is completely unbearable and she cannot survive without the power, control, and luxuries she once had. As a result of the radically different reactions and adaptations of Bam and Maureen to the life in July’s village, their relationship with one another is almost disintegrated. Thus, the overall impact of inversion of power-play is negative, horrifying, and pessimistic.

Works Cited

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.

Clingman, Stephen. “The Subject of Revolution: Burger’s Daughter and July’s People.” The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside. London: Allen & Unwin, 1986. p. 170, 204.

Gordimer, Nadine. July’s People. New York: Penguin, 1982.

Wagner, Kathrin. Rereading Nadine Gordimer. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994.