Achmat Dangor is a South African writer. Dangor has expressed his political opinions in stories, verse, and novellas.
Background
Ethnicity:
Dangor said: “I am an African with Asian and Dutch blood in me, I don’t know what race I am, and I don’t care."
Achmat Dangor was born on October 2, 1948, in Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa. He was born into a Muslim and Indian environment in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1948, the year that marked the beginning of apartheid in South Africa. As a result of the racial classification, he was considered a “colored person". He spoke Afrikaans and Sotho until he started school. Today he writes in English.
Education
Dangor studied at Rhodes University and became a Bachelor of Arts in English language and literature.
Career
Achmat Dangor has expressed his political opinions in stories, verse, and novellas. For a time Dangor was “banned” in South Africa because of his writings; to be banned meaning that he was not permitted to be in the company of more than one other individual at any one time, making work outside his home impossible. After the government ban was lifted, Dangor found employment as the manager of a multinational company in Johannesburg, working as well for a humanitarian relief agency. Of Dangor’s works, few remained in print by the late 1990s; those still circulating included the story collection Waiting for Leila and Kafka's Curse, a novella and collection of stories.
In Kafka’s Curse, Dangor retells the Arabian myth of a gardener whose forbidden love for a princess causes him to be turned into a tree. Set in South Africa, the story revolves around the Khan family. Omar Khan is an Eastern Indian who claims to be a Jew in order to pass for white. His son Fadiel falls in love with a blonde Boer descendant. When Omar dies, his secret identity as a Muslim comes out.
Dangor served as a representative of the Ford Foundation in Southern Africa from 2013-2015, overseeing all grantmaking in the region from its office in Johannesburg. The regional work, in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, focuses on issues of inclusion and civic engagement, human rights, HIV/AIDS discrimination, economic and cultural rights, higher education and sexuality and reproductive health issues Prior to that, he served as CEO of Nelson Mandela Foundation, extending Mandela’s vision and legacy through the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and its focus on dialogues for justice. An early advocate for the need to address the emerging HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa, he served as director of advocacy, communications, and leadership at UNAIDS. Prior to that, Achmat was interim director of the World AIDS Campaign and chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. As founding executive director of Kagiso Trust, he worked alongside Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other political and church leaders to establish the largest black-led foundation in South Africa.
Politics
Dangor was a member of the group “Black Thoughts", whose goal was to strengthen the black movement through literature, theater, and music. As a result of this involvement, he was "banned" from 1973 to 1979; he was confined to Johannesburg and could not attend any social or political gatherings. In retrospect, he sees this as an extremely productive period, as it gave him the opportunity to write, even if he had to do secretly.
Views
For a politically active author like Dangor, in both pre- and post-apartheid South Africa, the adoption of multiple points of view also entails a reflection on the tension between literature and politics. In spite of his active political involvement in the history of his country, Dangor has commented that he finds literature sacrificing storytelling for a political message unreadable. Storytelling, rather than the moral messages, is precisely what the author says he has retained from his religious education in the Islamic school which he attended in his youth in addition to state schools.
Dangor’s imagination, however, has always pursued situations born out of the urgency to oppose the apartheid regime, and, after its fall, to heal its wounds. As the writer himself has stated, he has always been moved by the necessity to bring about change in South African society, although not necessarily to then be part of that changed society.
In the most repressive years of apartheid, Dangor’s characters gave voice to the demands of people with Indian and Muslim background, but, more importantly, appealed to the larger white audience for a cross-racial alliance that could defeat the regime. In the context of anti-apartheid militancy, ethnic particularity was less urgent as a claim than bringing down the institutionalized segregation. Writing about Indo-South African writings in the 1980s, Pallavi Rastoji notes that the urgent need to dismantle the regime led Indians to ‘defy the divisive categories of apartheid by absorbing themselves into alternative identities’.
Dangor’s post-apartheid fiction is more concerned with how Nelson Mandela’s promise of a ‘rainbow nation’ effectively translated into reality. Several Indo-South African characters in Dangor’s fiction seem to come to the bitter realization that, in spite of the promise for a nation that would develop along non-racial lines, they are largely excluded from a post-apartheid society still largely based on the white/black opposition.
Quotations:
“I write because I have to and because I love to; it is the closest I am to having an obsession."