Apartheid was a time of deadness. Not only did it portend death for many, it implied a deadness in life for others, confined to townships, smothered by poverty, condemned to material and psychic dispossession. A pall of death, of deadness, hung over Johannesburg, this city where I grew up and currently live. I was not subjected to it as others were, but I was its subject. South Africa now is alive, even as we live with death, dispossession and poverty. This is an important difference; one you can feel in the deep fabric of the city at present, in this time. It may grow more pronounced, or ever more faint. But it exists for now.

For every despot there is a democrat, maybe two; for each abuser there is a man who holds a woman, or, if he chooses, another man, in his arms. This is, always has been, a cruel society, hardened by conflict, but it now has a human core; being human lies at its centre, and even if the centre cannot hold, it will not easily fold. Haltingly, it is now more fully in touch with its human potential, even in the face of what is suffered. This is not something that can be measured accurately, nor is it something that can easily be taken away. It has become a place alive with emotion, struggle, passion, anger, as well as inertia and disappointment.

The resistance movement carried with it a different social energy, in a circumscribed context, in a place of not knowing who would die, or be incarcerated next; who would fall, betray, escape, in a time of heroism and hubris, brilliance and compromise. It was a different economy of social emotion, a whole world at the time – but one, we can see now, infused with pain, bitterness and despair even where it brought pride to many.

Literature is where I went to feel more alive, and to try to penetrate the deadness all around; to know black women more than I could hope to in apartheid life. I wanted to know about the self, the self under duress, and books (some of which I could only find outside the country) were where I could learn what I wanted to know. At some point, literature also deserted me, or me it.