ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by identifying South Africa as one of the most polarized countries in the world, due to its history of extreme racial discrimination, but it also acknowledges its unprecedented attempts to move toward unity. It notes challenges that have been made to the ideal of non-racialism while also drawing attention to theorists (Njabulo Ndebele, Sarah Nuttall, Antjie Krog, and Chielozona Eze) who call for new epistemological frameworks which propose that South Africans are not determined by their differences. This chapter then discusses the prevalence of paradox in a society hampered by the legacies of oppression and suggests the value of a “paradox perspective” (i.e., an ability to understand the interrelated relations of polarities and to propose methods for moving beyond them). This chapter subsequently looks at the paradoxical elements of Magona’s aesthetics (her attention to the everyday, her relationship to genre, and her unique position on language) and identifies two themes in her writing that do not tolerate ambiguity: that a woman has equal value to a man and that any type of othering based on race is unacceptable. This chapter concludes that Magona’s unique combination of paradoxes and absolutes makes her an important social critic, reformer, and truth-teller.
