In Paton’s South Africa, the white settlers had destroyed the African tribal systems through mining camps, exploitation, unequal education, segregation, and inaction, not to mention colonization itself. Against this backdrop Paton writes Cry The Beloved Country (hereafter CTBC), a story of mid-20th century South Africa told mainly through the experience of the Zulu, Stephen Kumalo, an aging Anglican Priest. Kumalo’s parish is a land without potential that has been further devastated by incompetence, drought and decimation. Throughout this essay, attention will be given to Kumalo’s experience in two different contact zones.(1) In the first contact zone, Kumalo is subalternated(2) by his position as an elderly rural Zulu trying to make his way in Johannesburg, a fearful metropolitan world “not made for him.” In the second contact zone Kumalo is subalternated in relation to Jarvis, a successful(3) white farmer whose life interweaves with Kumalo’s in such a way as to accentuate the significant power differential between the two. In each of these contact zones, Kumalo experiences some relief from the clash of cultures, ultimately resulting in Kumalo moving into a new space that had previously been unavailable to him. Though Kumalo’s experience in these contact zones is full of fear and even tragedy, he comes out of them into a different place in life, a place where his new contacts have provided not only material support, but have also helped him to become a more active agent in the story of his family and his parish.
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