Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Prize-winning South African writer, passed away on Sunday at the age of 90. She was one of the most prominent voices against apartheid in the world.
She deeply cared about South Africa, its people, culture, and its ongoing struggle to realize new democracy.
In 1991, South African writer Nadine Gordimer became the first Nobel laureate from South Africa, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her achievement was significant as her work vividly depicted the daily prejudice experienced by black South Africans under the oppressive apartheid regime, thereby documenting the extent of their suffering under the control of the white South African government.
Sture Allen, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, expressed while presenting Gordimer with the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991, “She unveils the highly intricate and completely inhumane living circumstances in the realm of racial segregation. Through this process, artistic skill and ethical principles blend together.”
In fact, Gordimer was known as a fierce moralist who used her writing to expose the injustices and apartheid of immorality. Over the course of seven decades, she wrote dozens of short stories and around 15 novels.
She published and compiled an anthology of South African black writers, along with three books of her own, which were banned by the apartheid government of South Africa. In these writings, she candidly portrayed the experiences of her friends, neighbors, and lovers, shedding light on the institutionalized racism, enforced isolation, and poverty faced by black individuals.
In “Strangers of World A,” a British businessman makes futile attempts to befriend black people in the segregated Johannesburg of the 1950s. “Daughter’s Burger,” set in 1979, tells the story of a woman’s attempt to find purpose after the death of her anti-apartheid activist father, among others who die in prison.
In 1974, her book “The Conservationist” emerged as the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, serving as a symbolic representation of the pointless nature of the apartheid regime. The narrative revolves around a Caucasian landholder’s arduous endeavor to assert dominion over both the natural surroundings and his African lessees on a rural estate situated outside Johannesburg.
Throughout her career, Gordimer was a strong advocate for freedom of expression.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in nations such as China, she penned frequent opinion editorials in both domestic and global publications to denounce any potential harm to the freedom of expression.
The incredible power of words is still evident in the way we should treat precision and vision, caution and courage, whether it be in the field of genetic engineering or nuclear energy. According to the journal report, she wrote to Salman Rushdie after a fatwa was issued against him, aiming to bring out the best and worst of human nature.
She was also a staunch opponent of the African National Congress party that came into power in South Africa, accusing it of stifling free speech and mishandling the AIDS crisis in Africa.
She became an active advocate in the HIV/AIDS movement, fundraising and lobbying on behalf of the Campaign Action Treatment group, pushing the South African government to provide life-saving drugs for free to sufferers, as reported by Reuters.
A love and a career turned a liking for literature into countless hours dedicated to reading and writing, confining her to her bed at the age of 11, as advised by her mother, after being diagnosed with a heart murmur and taken out of school. Gordimer was born to Jewish immigrant parents on Nov. 20, 1923, in the mining town of Springs, located outside of Johannesburg.
During this time, she lived in a colonial society that was constrained and restricted. It was a society that was highly prejudiced and had a strong consciousness of racial differences. As a result, she turned to books such as E.M. Forster’s “A Passage to India” and Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” for reading material.
And thus started her lifelong quest to condemn apartheid, prejudice, and other injustices she discovered in her society.
A mission and life’s calling, she later pondered, that would not have been achievable if she were African American.
In her Nobel Prize acceptance lecture in 1991, Gordimer recognized the irony of her situation.
She expressed that if she had realized later in life that she, as a black child, might not have had the opportunity to open this library for herself, she might not have become a writer at all.