© 2021 LitNet. During this time, Jezile sees the horrible conditions the white government forces the African work force to live in. Jezile reflects: She had lit no fire herself. As a result, police and the paramilitary are sent to intimidate the community, increasingly united politically against both the government and those assisting it in the imposition of its restrictive policies. She lives mostly in the company and under the authority of her strictly custom-adherent mother-in-law, Mabiyela, whose only child, Siyalo, is (of course) Jezile’s husband, and is sensitively portrayed in this narrative. One of the women, Gaba, sends her eldest daughter (a ten-year-old girl, but a most sensible little person, sweet and competent far beyond her years) to Jezile “to help and carry messages when she was in confinement”, for Jezile has not yet recovered from her second baby’s arrival (148). After being unable to find another job, Siyalo has been refused the right to work in Durban ever again. Siyalo, in a desperate move to save his daughter, begins stealing milk from a local white farmer's cows. Now, Mabiyela even starts spreading the rumour that the baby Jezile is carrying must be a prison guard’s. 3 likes. All that this gentle man can do is look into Jezile’s eyes, at first “wordlessly”, as both are drawn into a vortex of the memories and feelings that entwine them. You have very young children. Soon afterwards, he hatches a daring plan – to go secretly to the estate of the prosperous white farmer Mr Collett, their unneighbourly though near neighbour, to milk one of his well fed cows. The level and nature of Ngcobo's formal eduction probably play a part in the craft she displays in this novel. Ndondo, who is two years “behind” her sister and in another school, is a leader there because of her strong personality and maturity. In And They Didn't Die, any discursive sections in the voice of the narrator are closely interwoven with the narrative's overall focalization on the central character's experiences. What If Naruto's Parents Didn't Die And Naru Was Left As The Hokage's Son? The pay is quite decent, however; the wife offered Jezile five pounds a month, but Potgieter overrides her and makes it 25. Then the police start harassing the isolated women in night-time raids – intimidatory tactics meant to smother the spirit of revolt. Get And They Didn't Die from Amazon.com. The novel follows the life of Jezile, a young wife in the small village of Sigageni. When birth pains come, the Potgieters drive her to the hospital, where the evidently white child is safely delivered – a little boy. Nosizwe is angry with Jezile, but allows Jezile to talk to the group about the protests she saw. In Sigageni, a Majola family council expresses the fear that the police will come down on them because the baby was so clearly fathered by a white man; he cannot be a part of the Majola family, but they cannot decide what to do until Siyalo returns from jail to tell them what he thinks. Not only is her husband, Mabiyela’s son, left out of the equation, but so are the brutal circumstances allowing men like him under social and economic apartheid restrictions to visit their wives and families for only two weeks a year. He is “sorry it happened that way”, he says, and tells Jezile that if the law did not forbid it, he “would even marry her”; he brought her with him all the way to Bloemfontein because he “could not bear not to see [her] ever again”. After a visit to her own mother (with her baby) to recuperate and to “share” the baby, Jezile returns to her home to await Siyalo’s arrival on his annual leave. But then, writing on one of her documents, the man demands Jezile’s “pass”, the colloquial reference to the document allowing black South African men (initially), and now also women, to travel out of their area of residence or to work in the at-this-time white-designated areas, by far the greater and more industrialised areas of South Africa. They have come to take Jezile’s daughters to their father’s family, who have this customarily indisputable right. The visit, though brief and dangerous, is greatly heartening to Jezile, who is proud of her daughter’s courage and dedication. Jezile's child, S'naye, is left with her father and grandmother. Just like that, the two bewildered girls are led away, despite “their eyes pleading” with Jezile’s not to allow this separation. Jezile continues, in simple words, “I had to defend her. The And They Didn't Die lesson plan contains a variety of teaching materials that cater to all learning styles. As Jezile discovers, “what she valued most in the summer of that year was the company of the other women” (160), chatting companionably, and sharing one another’s woes and small successes. Much of its power lies in Ngcobo's talent for complication and nuance, and for her refusal of dogma. "And They Didn't Die brilliantly chronicles the untold predicaments of women caught between custom, white law, and the migrant system. Late that night, having also had to soothe the children and put them to bed, when she goes to her room, she finds Potgieter stretched out on her bed. Noté /5. Nevertheless, she does call on Jezile to report to the other women at their weekly “prayer meeting” – an event which provides the opportunity for the local women to discuss their political situation and plan action – on what she witnessed of the women’s protest movement while in Durban. View And They Didn't Die .pdf from ELL 2007F at University of Cape Town. One evening, S’naye arrives unexpectedly with the news that she was secretly approached by Ndondo and asked to prepare their mother for a risky visit from Ndondo later that night. And They Didn't Die is a comprehensive view of the woman's role in the apartheid and resulting turmoil that defined the life of Africans in South Africa for more than thirty years. Additional Physical Format: Online version: Ngcobo, Lauretta G. And they didn't die. Caring deeply for her friend as she does, Jezile can do little to help her. Tsitsi Jaji Tsitsi Jaji teaches in the English Department at Duke University. When Jezile returns from helping the youngest find a secret path out of the village, she finds a soldier raping her oldest daughter, S'naye. Lauretta Ngcobo illuminates the complexities of life in rural South Africa during the apartheid regime. Jezile soon sees that Mr Potgieter no longer goes out to work; he is doing a correspondence course in law in order to qualify as a court prosecutor. “Mortified and angry”, she returns to her lonely hut. By the end of the week, Jezile tells her utterly downcast mother-in-law that in order to spare her from being punished for something that is no fault of hers, she will go with her three children to live with her own mother. Then the old issue of the pass comes up – the family cannot legally employ her without one, but since Potgieter is part of the Afrikaner bureaucratic network, he marches Jezile straight past the long queues and quickly obtains and signs her pass. She forges a letter in which her husband supposedly asks her to come to Durban to see a specialist about her “failure” to conceive, then visits a sympathetic GP in Ixopo and obtains the necessary second letter from him stating that she has to go to Durban for a medical examination at a higher level. I’ve loved you a long time and you know it. The terrified women are soon brought to trial and sentenced to what appears to be around six months’ imprisonment – with “hard labour”! The community decides to show Siyapi their disdain for sell-outs and stooges. It explores what happens when women start asking questions: about cattle and the land, about female power, about tradition, about violence, about … They walk the entire distance. Potgieter adds that Jezile must know that he does not love his wife. He said: "Not only do they work, but they work extraordinarily well." But Mabiyela expresses ugly suspicion concerning the reasons for Jezile’s quite unannounced, unexplained and unpermitted absence in Ixopo – not for political reasons, but as an exertion of her familial powers of control. Although Jezile is at first hesitant, her friend assures her that it is time to take independent decisions; Jezile is the one who has to feed her children. Probably spurred on to do so by the revelation of even Jezile’s limited political understanding of how apartheid functions and its broader effects on and infiltration of black South Africans’ lives, especially in the rural areas – as apartheid slowly advances and intensifies its death grip – Nosizwe (a woman whose very name identifies her as a representative of the nation) embarks on what is, in essence, a brilliant, brief lecture in political insight and sociology within apartheid’s parameters as seen from the victims’ perspective. When the people ask Siyapi to meet with them at his grand home, he refuses to emerge to speak to or hear them. Lungu, who is also an admired leader at his school, despite his youth, gets shot during a demonstration in which he has participated, and is left paralysed in his lower body. This study guide contains the following sections: This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on Tensions also bedevil relations between the rural and the urban women in the prison for a time, but this eventually resolves itself. . Having been absent from the women’s group’s Thursday meetings for a long time, Jezile feels a need to reconnect with them, but finds the meeting (as it seems) almost over. . Also during this time, Jezile witnesses and even takes small part in the protests taking place in the city. The dipping officer, Mr Pienaar, expresses sentiments in which the white rulers’ inability to understand black South Africans and their deep contempt for them – here, of course, exemplified for Pienaar in the local women’s resistance – are exhibited: These women, this strange breed of womanhood, thin and ragged and not like women at all – they think they rule the world, they spill men’s beers, they herd cattle, they plough fields, they run this community. Then he holds her hands tightly in his and whispers “inaudibly, more to himself than to her, ‘Jezile, life of my life’” (245). Jezile Majola, the young, married black woman who is the central character of Ngcobo’s novel, is a sensitive register of the gamut of feelings and thoughts produced in response to the abovementioned forces and influences that structure the external conditions of her existence. Mabiyela’s treatment of Jezile at this time is described bluntly as a “relentless persecution” (3). Back in Sigageni, Jezile feels simultaneously matured and empowered by the widening of her political and social horizon in Durban, and weakened and embarrassed by the knowledge that she has broken the pact with the other women never to accept the pass. Angrily, the women interrupt Duma with fierce accusations of complicity, and he storms off. Jezile is granted permission, but only under the condition that she will take a pass. Jou e-posadres sal nie gepubliseer word nie. Reageerdocument.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a5c0fb35d6f95d5d7c4ed80e524a684d" );document.getElementById("hff075bec8").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Afterwards, when she lies “curled up like a ball at the opposite end of the bed and winced and whimpered like a wounded animal”, Potgieter pleads with her to “understand”. everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of And They Didn't Die. I love you. Jezile has only been married for a year, but she has not seen her husband in the majority of that time because he is forced to work in Durban to provide for his family. We see the bleak winter scene of a drought-raddled landscape, in which the central sight of an emptied dip tank for cattle carries historic and symbolic significance. However, the church is Mabiyela’s mainstay, as it is for so many black women especially, and when the visiting minister hears about the two-month-old baby, he excommunicates Mabiyela for having harboured Jezile and the baby instead of sending them away to live with Masibiya. Topics Mentioning This Author. largely tribally structured lives of people in rural black South African communities combined fiendishly with apartheid regulations and laws to curtail, diminish and plague the lives of people in such communities – with a particular focus on women’s suffering, courage and resistance ordeals. She is constantly summoned to serve him cups of tea. The meaning of the title is fulfilled, but one is left as wordless as Siyalo. Jezile and the women of her village have chosen not to take the passes in protest of the governments control over the people. How to get rid of the government that poisoned the leaders, and now their people – was there nothing that was not tainted by the evil policies of the government? Unfortunately, there is no milk to feed the baby. “Their prayer rose in a crescendo,” even though the women “cried as they prayed” (49). View the Study Pack View the Lesson Plans Study Guide. Evidently, there is no condonation of murder in either the author’s or Jezile’s feelings; both are deeply horrified, but (as evidently) both know what drove a normally peaceable people to such extreme and ugly acts, at an enormous cost (as they know) to their own future welfare. For weeks this scheme works, and S'naye regains her health. The novel opens in what is probably the late fifties, when black women’s anti-pass law protests were (again) under way. By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jason Karaian, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. When Jezile is released from prison, five months pregnant, she discovers that her daughter has nearly starved to death. If they do not obtain milk soon for S’naye, the child will die. The family, nuclear and extended, lives for a period in silent misery, neither sharing their feelings nor supporting one another. When the crew must move on, the white foreman asks Jezile to work in his home. Despite her “panic and horror”, Potgieter proceeds to rape Jezile. She says terrible things to Jezile, such as, “Why do you suppose your child is more valuable than all the children in this village,” and accuses Jezile quite unfairly of having hatched the plan to steal milk and forcing Siyalo to execute it (146). And they didn't die : a novel by Ngcobo, Lauretta G. Publication date 1991 Topics Women, Black, Poor women, Anti-apartheid movements Publisher New York : Braziller Collection inlibrary; printdisabled; internetarchivebooks; china Digitizing sponsor Internet Archive Contributor Internet Archive Language English. Minato's Point Of View "Forth Hokage Minato, get away from the jinchuriki." Ngcobo is a schoolteacher. List Price: 16.95* * Individual store prices may vary. One night both girls come to visit Jezile. However, each time Siyalo comes home, it is the wrong moment in Jezile's cycle to achieve pregnancy. Despite fruitless attempts to find other employment that will ensure him a pass, he is very soon arrested as present “illegally” in the city, and “endorsed out” (in the parlance of the time). Although she thinks of fleeing to Sigageni the next morning, the thought of informing her people of the reason for her sudden return makes her burn with shame; after Mabiyela’s recent tarnishing of her reputation as a virtuous wife and mother, she is not even confident of sympathy and trust in the veracity of her account of her ordeal in the local community. Jezile's boss puts her on a train and sends her home only a few days after the child's birth. Jezile’s disreputable friends soon come and urge her to join them in a poorly paid work party that will at least bring in a pittance. But the car arrives too late – Zenzile dies as she delivers her (dead) baby. . Her happiness is tempered by her discovery that a heavily pregnant Zenzile is now terribly ill. She has not had a single letter, let alone any sign of support, from Mthebe since Jezile’s return from Durban. Detailed results are due to be handed to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) today. Toward the end of her visit, Siyalo insists that Jezile return to their village early but refuses to tell her why. This edition published in 1991 by Braziller in New York. Ndondo – who committed no violence – has to go on the run from the police, who want to arrest her as one of the protest instigators. Once there, she sees that her friend is in the throes of a dangerously long, difficult delivery process. When her husband, Siyalo, comes home for a brief visit each year, Jezile has high hopes that she will be able to conceive, fulfilling her role in the Majola family. Lauretta Ngcobo: And they didn’t die (1990) South Africans and others who want to, need to or ought to have an understanding of rural black South African life under the apartheid system can do no better than to read or reread Lauretta Ngcobo’s searing, moving and profoundly probing account enshrined in the unforgettable narrative of her 1990 novel, And they didn’t die. She is portrayed as living mostly in a village (Sigageni) imagined by the author as located in the vicinity of the rural KwaZulu-Natal town of Ixopo, in a Zulu-speaking area. Two days later, when Jezile’s own mother has arrived, bringing huge baskets of food including fresh produce from her garden, Mabiyela is shamed into ingratiatingly welcoming her. Much later, she will discover that Siyalo, who has accepted and supported his wife’s political activism, is himself part of a male group agitating for political reform in South Africa. Jezile is unhappy in the work, but it pays well. In the absence of their husbands they’ve lost the need for men; if nobody stops them, they’re going to ruin this country. "They didn't die a heroic death, but they lived heroic lives," she said. De très nombreux exemples de phrases traduites contenant "they didn't" – Dictionnaire français-anglais et moteur de recherche de traductions françaises. Jezile admits her actions to Nosizwe, a female doctor and the leader of the women's prayer group. Ngcobo’s skilful interweaving of historical references with familial and village events and Jezile’s personal experiences in her multi-stranded narrative is evident from the start to the end of the novel. Only this time, he wanted to rape S’naye” – conflating Potgieter and the soldier into a single figure of the white rapist. They know that “when a mother-in-law blames you for any catastrophe, then you’re in trouble” (147). She tells Siyalo, “I could not let it happen again” (244). Much of its power lies in Ngcobo’s talent for complication and nuance, and for her refusal of dogma. Much of its power lies in Ngcobo's talent for complication and nuance, and for her refusal of dogma. KIRKUS REVIEW. However, Jezile is desperate and she makes the choice to put her future family first. Jezile ignores her pregnancy until she goes into labor. 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