Biography of Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer (20 November 1923 – 13 July 2014) was a South African writer, Nobel Prize
winner, and an outspoken anti-apartheid activist. She was born in Springs, South Africa to
Jewish immigrant parents. Her father was from Latvia and her mother from England. Her father
had been a refugee from Tsarist Russia. Though he was not notably sympathetic to the Black
struggle under apartheid in South Africa, his experience of displacement influenced Gordimer's
politics. Gordimer’s mother, however, was sympathetic to the Black struggle, particularly on the
issues of poverty and discrimination. She opened a daycare for Black children. Due to her
mother’s activism, her family home was raided by the police. Gordimer went to a Catholic
convent school, but her mother kept her home for extended periods due to an unfounded fear of
Gordimer’s weak heart. It was in her home-bound social isolation that Gordimer began to write,
publishing her first stories in 1937 at the age of 15. Her first published work was a short story for
children, "The Quest for Seen Gold," which appeared in the Children's Sunday Express in 1937;
"Come Again Tomorrow," another children's story, appeared in Forum around the same time.

During her studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, she mixed for the
first time with people of color and partook in the Sophia town renaissance—a thriving period for
music and culture in the poor Black neighborhood of Johannesburg. She dropped out of
university after one year, but she stayed in Johannesburg and continued to write and publish,
becoming a prominent literary figure. Her story "A Watcher of the Dead" was published
in The New Yorker in 1951, marking the beginning of her international reception. Gordimer’s
first novel, The Lying Days, was published in 1953.

In 1949, Gordimer married a Johannesburg dentist, Gerald Gavron. They had a daughter, Oriane,
the following year. They divorced in 1952 and in 1954, she married Reinhold Cassirer, an art
dealer who established the South African Sotheby's and ran galleries in South Africa. They had
one son, Hugo. Gordimer remained with Cassirer until his death in 2001.

In 1960, Gordimer’s best friend, Bettie du Toit, was arrested during the Sharpeville massacre
uprising. This event initiated Gordimer's participation in the anti-apartheid movement. She
became active in South African politics after this and was close with Nelson Mandela's defense
attorneys (Bram Fischer and George Bizos) during his 1962 trial. She edited Mandela’s famous
speech, "I Am Prepared to Die," delivered from the defendant's dock at the trial. When Mandela
was released from prison in 1990, he immediately visited her.

During the 1960s and 1970s, she taught for short periods at various universities in the United
States, though Johannesburg remained her residence. She began to achieve international literary
recognition, receiving the Commonwealth Award 1961. Apartheid became the central issue of
Gordimer’s political thought and writing during this period; she demanded that South Africa
examine itself.

Many of her works were banned in South Africa during this time and through the 1980s. The
Late Bourgeois World was banned in 1976 for a decade. A World of Strangers was banned for
twelve years. Other works were censored for lesser amounts of time. Burger's Daughter,
published in June 1979, was banned one month later. July's People was banned during the
apartheid period, but it also faced censorship under the post-apartheid government and was
removed from school reading lists in 2001. Unlike its previous censorship, it was now described
as being racist.

Gordimer joined the African National Congress when it was an illegal organization. Though she
was critical of some of the ANC’s policies, she saw it as the best option for leading Black
citizens to self-determination. She used her home as a safe house for ANC leaders escaping
persecution. She testified at the 1986 Delmas Treason Trial on behalf of 22 South African anti-
apartheid activists.

She continued to win international awards for her work, receiving the Booker Prize for The
Conservationist in 1974. In 1991, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Along with her resistance to apartheid, Gordimer spoke out loudly against censorship and state
control of information. She served in South Africa's Anti-Censorship Action Group. She was a
founding member of the Congress of South African Writers and became Vice President of PEN
International. In the 1990s and 2000s, she became active in the HIV/AIDS prevention
movement.

She remained outspoken and politically engaged until her death on July 13, 2014. She died in her
sleep. She was 90 years old.

Historical Context of Africa (July’s People)

Apartheid, which means “apartness” or “separateness” in Afrikaans, was a system of racial
oppression enforced in South Africa that began with the all-white National Party’s rise to power
in 1948. The National Party campaigned on an election platform that promised to protect white
employment and advance white domination in a culture where post-war economic development
and Black urbanization had incited racial animosity. The National Party’s rise to power created a
system of legislation that enforced existing segregation policies and expanded segregation to
extend to most aspects of daily life. The Population Registration Act of 1950 established three
categories to classify all South African residents according to race: Bantu (Black Africans),
Coloured (mixed race), and white. The government later added a fourth category, Asian, to
encompass Indian and Pakistani residents. Under apartheid, contact between white and non-
white South Africans became severely limited. The passage of subsequent Land Acts awarded
exclusive land rights to the country’s white minority. The passage of “Pass laws” required all
non-white South Africans to carry specific documents that authorized their presence in areas
restricted to white citizens only. The government created separate public spaces for white and
non-white South Africans, and non-white citizens were barred from participating in national
government. Marriage and sexual relations between Black and white South Africans were
prohibited. Apartheid received regular resistance over the years, and many anti-apartheid
activists received lengthy prison terms or were executed. Nelson Mandela, who helped found
Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the ANC’s military wing, was imprisoned from
1963 to 1990. Apartheid-era legislation was gradually phased out beginning in the late 1980s. In
1989, Pieter Botha was forced to resign as State President of South Africa. Botha was replaced
by F.W. de Klerk, whose administration saw the 1994 passage of a new constitution, which
enfranchised Black and other non-white citizens.
Key Facts about July’s People

 Full Title: July’s People

 When Written: Early 1980s

 Where Written: South Africa

 When Published: 1981

 Literary Period: Contemporary

 Genre: Novel; Speculative Fiction; Alternate History

 Setting: South Africa

 Climax: The Smales family discover that Bam’s gun is missing from its hiding
place in their hut’s thatched roof. Maureen confronts July and accuses him of
stealing the gun.

 Antagonist: There is no clear-cut antagonist.

 Point of View: Third Person

Summary of July’s People

July’s People, published in the 1981, is set in an imminent South African future in which riots
have broken out across the country and evolved into an all out black liberation revolution. With
the support of militias from neighboring countries, ports are seized, airports are bombed, and all
white people are in danger. Bam and Maureen, with their three young children, have no choice
but to flee Johannesburg, hiding in the back of a truck with their black servant, July.

They pack their bags in a rush, forgetting many things, including extra clothes, though they do
bring Bam’s bird rifle (not a powerful gun, but something). After three days of driving, they
arrive at a rural African settlement. They find themselves forced to adapt to a primitive life,
living in mud huts, gathering wild greens, and coping with insects and the muck of rainstorms.
On top of this, they are now the guests of July, their young black man who has served them for
fifteen years in their modern house in Johannesburg with many rooms and a swimming pool.

As they settle in and try to make sense of their situation, tension begins to rise between Maureen
and July. While Maureen considers herself a liberal person, opposed to apartheid and in support
of black liberation, she becomes mistrustful of July now that he has more power than her. One
night soon after arriving, July takes the couple's truck—the bakkie—and drives away from the
settlement with his friend. Maureen and Bam panic and they argue with each other in the
confines of the mud hut, airing all the pent up resent that they have for each other. Late at night,
July returns.

Maureen is unsettled by the fact that July keeps the keys to the bakkie. But as she tries to ask for
them back, July realizes that she doesn’t trust him with the keys. July is upset by this. He feels
that he’s still their servant and he’s doing exactly as he would at their home, where he had the
keys to their house and they trusted him with everything. Here, they can’t drive away from the
settlement without being in danger, so it only makes sense for him to use the bakkie. The trouble
for Maureen is that he didn’t ask. This tension breaks out in a small argument and July feels
insulted by Maureen, who in turn learns that he always felt her to be passive aggressive and
controlling.

Days pass in which the family adapts to the primitive life. Maureen picks wild greens with July’s
wife and the other women. Bam goes out to hunt warthog with the bird rifle. He shows July’s
friend Daniel how to use the rifle. They get a warthog and roast meat. They endlessly turn the
dial on an old radio, searching for an English or Afrikaans voice with any information about
what’s happening. They only pick up fragments.

After an ambiguous stretch of time in which Maureen recalls her childhood in the extreme
apartheid conditions of a gold mining town, the chief of July’s people hears of the white people
hiding in his area and he calls them to him. They try to clean themselves up and then July and his
friend Daniel accompany them to see the chief. The chief asks Bam everything he knows about
the war. Bam tells him that black people are finally rising up against their white oppressors. He
tells him that militias from Mozambique and Botswana are coming to their aid. The chief asks
about Bam’s gun. He wants to learn to shoot. He doesn’t want other African tribal people
invading his territory. Bam and Maureen are shocked to hear that the chief is opposed to black
liberation. He wants a return to the apartheid status quo.

Dismayed, they drive back with July. July speaks angrily about the idiocy of the chief, saying
that if white people invaded his territory he would give them everything; but if it’s black people,
he wants to kill them. Bam and Maureen listen to July’s anger and when they come back to their
hut, Maureen says that she thinks July was expressing anger with himself: he helped white
people and not his own people. Maureen and Bam feel that they have to leave. They decide to
flee, but they don’t know how or where.

A couple of nights pass and a man with a music box comes to the settlement. All the people
come out to dance and drink. Maureen and Bam go back to their hut and discover that the gun is
gone. Maureen runs out and confronts July. But she can see in his face that he’s telling the truth
when he says he didn’t take it. He doesn’t understand why she’s so upset though. What does she
need it for? They realize that it must’ve been Daniel who took it. Daniel is gone.

Time passes. Maureen is dull, sewing in the hut. The heat is oppressive. The insects are
everywhere. A noise comes from somewhere distant, and then it grows louder. A helicopter is
overhead. All the people of the settlement run out. They’ve never seen a helicopter so close. It
starts to lower down but rises up again. The people are screaming. The helicopter flies over the
river. Maureen starts to run toward the sound. She leaves her family as she wades across the
river. She hears the helicopter landing behind the trees. She runs to it. The novel closes here.
 The book illuminates the effects of apartheid and how segregation impacts the relations between blacks
and whites in South Africa. Gordimer wrote July's People before the end of apartheid and the book may be
read as a projection of apartheid's end.
July's People, published in 1981 by Nadine Gordimer, is set during a counterfactual revolutionary
civil war in South Africa, in which black South Africans rise up and overthrow their white
oppressors, with the aid of neighboring African nations. The story centers on the experience of
Maureen and Bam Smales, a white South African couple, as they flee from Johannesburg with their
children and with the aid of their black servant, July. As July brings them to his home to live in
hiding with his family, the complicated nature of interracial relationships is challenged. Across the
country, the hierarchy between whites and blacks have been reversed. For the most part, this has
led to widespread killing. The roles between the Smales family and July have similarly been
reversed, but in this case the black man protects the white people. The novel at once addressed the
broader political conditions of South Africa, while also closely examining the nature of interracial
friendships. As the roles between the Smales couple and July are reversed (he becomes the one with
the power while they depend on him), Gordimer explores the nature of power and the possibility of
equality. As tension rises between Maureen and July, one of the main obstacles to finding equal
footing comes from Maureen herself as her latent mistrust of black benevolence rises to the surface
of her consciousness. Though Maureen and Bam consider themselves liberal people and supporters
of black liberation, Maureen grew up in apartheid conditions. Her childhood memories return and
cause her to doubt the man who is saving her family.

CharaCters
Maureen Smales

Maureen is the central protagonist of the novel. She's a liberal, middle-class woman from
Johannesburg. She grew up in extreme apartheid conditions in a mining town where her father
was a mining boss, employing underpaid, mistreated black workers. She considers herself a
supporter of black liberation, but when she arrives on her black servant's settlement and finds
herself depending on a black family, her latent racism rises to the surface. She never confronts
this racism however. She merely copes with it until the end of the novel when she runs toward a
helicopter, abandoning everyone, in hopes of saving herself.

Bam Smales

The narrative of July's People enters various points of view and often merges Maureen's with her
husband Bam's, as though they share a certain consciousness. Bam is Maureen's liberal husband
who introduced her to anti-apartheid politics. His support of black liberation in South Africa runs
deeper than Maureen's. His relationship with July is more equal. Bam however gets drawn into
Maureen's paranoid projections.

July

July is the young black man who worked as a house servant for Bam and Maureen in
Johannesburg for fifteen years. July comes from the rural African settlement that is the setting of
the novel. He is loyal to Bam and Maureen and their family, saving them without questioning his
actions until it turns out that they question him. He becomes offended by Maureen's
presumptions that he might steal from them or turn them in. He grows distant from the couple,
especially Maureen, the longer they spend on his land with his family. He nonetheless continues
to look out for them.

Martha

Martha is July's wife. She has never known white people until the Smales family arrive on her land. Her
husband is also a bit of a stranger to her as he has spent most of his time away from her for the last fifteen
years, only sending her envelopes with money and visiting once a year. She is suspicious of the white
people; she finds them funny. She has only ever heard July's stories of how big their house is.

Daniel

Daniel is July's young friend who teaches July to drive. Daniel learns how to use Bam's rifle. In the end,
Daniel takes the rifle and joins up with the fighters.

The Chief

The chief of July's region, he summons Maureen and Bam to him after he learns of their presence. He
asks Bam to teach him how to use the rifle. He is opposed to the fighting going on. He doesn't want black
people from other tribes in his region. He would prefer that the white government maintained control of
South Africa and upheld the system he lives in.

Victor

Bam and Maureen's oldest son, he is the most mischievous of their children.

Gina

Bam and Maureen's daughter, she is an independent girl with dark blue eyes.

Royce

He is Bam and Maureen's youngest son.

July's Mother

She is an elderly woman who lives close to the land and observes the white people. She has no problem
with them herself, but she thinks they will bring trouble.

themes
Black Liberation

Written before the end of apartheid, July’s People is a projection of the overthrow of the regime
of official segregation that defined South Africa during Gordimer’s life at the time. The violence
that engulfs the country in the novel at once feels like a warning to the white oppressors of
Gordimer’s audience. With the widespread killing of all white people, the novel also presents a
critical challenge to the fantasy of violent revolution.
Salvation

The experience of being saved is arguably the most defining aspect of the Smales family's
experience through the novel. The narrative opens with the flashback to the dramatic act of being
saved, as they’re transported six hundred miles across the country in the bakkie. The entire
proceeding experience at July’s home become an extended experience of salvation. As long as
they are in hiding, they are being saved. The notable irony of this comes from the resentment and
anguish they feel for their salvation.

Power

The nature of power is explored in the novel most strikingly through the intimate dynamic
between July and the Smales family—particularly Maureen. For the fifteen years that he worked
for the family, they had the power over him that any boss has over their employee. While they
felt themselves to be liberal and progressive, entirely trusting and forgiving of him, they
nonetheless always maintained the power to give him orders or take his job away. His livelihood
depended on them. As the roles are reversed and they come to depend on him, even more
thoroughly than he ever depended on them, the nature of power is illuminated.

Power is not in itself a negative or positive force; it depends on how it’s wielded. July turns out
to be as benevolent with them as they were with him, but this does not make them equal.
Maureen and July become aware of this connection between their dependency and his power and
this awareness forms a rift between them, making it impossible for either to trust the other as a
simple friend.

Primitivism

Much of the narrative is constituted by the Smales family’s adaptation to primitive life.
Comparisons are drawn between the life in July’s family settlement and the modern life in the
city where the Smales had many rooms, cupboards for glasses that they only used for guests, a
swimming pool, and a master bedroom where the kids didn’t go. Though they adapt substantially
to living all in one room, walking with bare feet, washing in the river, cooking over a fire, and
though they often seem comfortable in these circumstances, they cannot let go of their desire for
their modern life. The kids, however, never complain, as though primitive life comes easy to
them.

Racial Hierarchy

As with other reversals of order in the novel, the arbitrary nature of racial hierarchy is brought to
light when the black people ascend to power in South Africa and the whites are at their mercy.
Gordimer easily illustrates the emptiness of racial hierarchy, in which there is nothing inevitable
or natural to white power. The place that white people hold in South Africa is shown to be
established through violence alone.

Liberal Hypocrisy

The Smales couple pride themselves on their liberalism and anti-apartheid politics. Their
liberalism is challenged on many fronts, however, when July saves their lives and they come to
depend on him for their survival. Not only is the nature of the previous imbalance of their
relationship called into question by the new circumstance, but the depth of their ideological
position is also challenged. To what extent does the liberal couple actually want to see an
overthrow of the order that kept them in a position of power and to what extent do they actually
support black liberation? As they desperately scan the radio for news that will help them out of
their situation—namely news of a white victory—they come off as nothing less than apartheid
supporters and their liberal ideals are undermined.

Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

The Yellow Bakkie (Symbol)

The yellow truck that Maureen and Bam drive in on, and that they keep hidden between the huts,
is a powerful symbol both for the reader and for the couple themselves, representing their
freedom. We see the way that the bakkie symbolizes freedom to them on the night that July
spontaneously drives off in it without telling them. They immediately enter a state of anxiety if
not outright panic. Though they can't use the vehicle, they depend on its presence to keep them
emotionally stable.

The Radio (Symbol)

The radio symbolizes a connection to the outside world. For the most part, Maureen and Bam's
knowledge of what's happening makes little difference to how they go about living. They're
trapped. When the English language channel goes off the air, they're deeply shaken; not because
they think their situation might change sometime soon, but because they have a need to continue
to hear how bad it is.

The Gun (Symbol)

Like the useless vehicle and the useless radio, the gun, hidden in the roof of the hut, hovers over
the Smales like a strange reminder of what they can't do, yet they they cling to it as a symbol of
hope. While it represents a certain power - the power of any gun - they know that up against the
vast black population that surrounds them, a single gun is no actual protection. This gun in
particular is for shooting birds. Despite their better knowledge, they are adamantly attached to
the gun and devastated, completely giving up hope and believing their fate sealed, when the gun
goes missing. But it is not as though they have lost a practical, usable tool; rather they have lost a
symbol of their freedom.

Mealie-Meal (Motif)

This coarse, corn-based meal, which is a common staple of black rural South African people,
makes a recurring appearance throughout the novel as a motif reflecting the primitive experience
of the Smales family. Mealie-meal is a marker not only of their daily experience, but also of their
broader condition being brought onto a level with average rural blacks.

Race (Symbol)

In circumstances of all-out race war in which the enemy-ally relation is defined solely by skin
color, race becomes a symbol for power. In the actual circumstance of South African apartheid,
whiteness was equated with power. In the counter-factual events of Gordimer’s narrative, the
tables have turned and blackness has now come to definitively symbolize power.
 July's People Essay Questions
1.
When July takes the Smales family to his land and as they come to depend on him for their
protection, is he still his servant? Discuss the change in his relationship with them.
From July's point of view, he remains the couple's servant. He sees himself extending his
position from their home to his home.

This isn't the case for Maureen, however, who presumes that everything has changed. She sees
July's act as an act of friendship. She believes that now that he is their host, they must be on
equal terms. This is not how she behaves, however, as she mistrusts him and projects negative
motives onto him.

The tension that arises between July and Maureen stands in for a larger tension between blacks
and whites struggling to find equal footing in post-apartheid conditions.

2. 2
How do you explain Maureen's mistrust of July? Is he deserving of her suspicions or are
they merely a projection?
Throughout the novel, Maureen recalls her childhood in which her father was the boss of a
mining company that employed black workers who were exploited and mistreated. It's no
coincidence that these childhood memories begin to arise at a time when Maureen finds herself
at the mercy of black people. With the roles of power reversed, Maureen becomes insecure and
the foundations of her racial projections begin to emerge. July is no more deserving of her
suspicions than she ever should have been of his when she held the power over him as his white
boss back in Johannesburg.

3. 3
How would you describe Maureen and Bam's politics? On the one hand, they claim to in
support of black liberation; on the other hand, they're hoping for the South African
military to make gains so that they can be freed.
Now that the tables have turned and South African blacks have the power and whites are at their
mercy, Maureen and Bam are forced to face the difficult question of their long held anti-
apartheid position. While they support black liberation, it seems that it will only be achieved at
the cost of their own liberation. The novel puts them in a position of purgatory, hoping for white
people to save them, and working through the challenging implications of apartheid-era
liberalism.

4. 4
The black revolution in Nadine Gordimer's novel is a fictional construction that never
actually happened. Why might she have wanted to project this future and play out its
implications? Discuss July's People in the context of apartheid South Africa in the early
1980's.
In the 1970's and 80's, the anti-apartheid movement was growing strong in South Africa; though
its prominent leaders were being imprisoned and tortured, the end goal of black liberation was
coming to seem possible, if not inevitable. But the question of how it would be achieved and
what the society would look like afterward was central to liberal politics of the time. In her
novel, Gordimer explores a vision of the country in a state of all out race-war in which the sides
are strictly divided along color lines. While her vision never manifested, it arguably would have
been one that was resonant to many South African imaginations.

5.
Discuss the chief's position on black liberation and analyze other various reactions to it,
from Bam and Maureen, to July and Daniel.
 It comes as a surprise to Bam and Maureen that the chief of July's region is opposed to the
prospect of black liberation in South Africa. They can't understand why any black people would
support the apartheid regime due to its violent oppression and human rights crimes. Bam and
Maureen see the divisions in color terms only. White power is only a force of violence in their
imaginations and despite the fact they're white, they can't imagine a white regime being of any
benefit to the black struggle.

The chief, however, is not thinking along color lines when it comes to the protection of his
territory. He has a position of power within the apartheid system, so why would he want to
change that? If people of other tribes come to the region and take power, he may lose his
authority.

July
Character Analysis

July is a Black man who has worked as a house servant for the Smales family, who are affluent,
white South Africans, for 15 years. When a Black uprising overthrows apartheid rule in South
Africa and puts the country’s minority white population in danger, the Smaleses accept July’s
offer to shelter them in his rural village. While Maureen and Bam Smales are grateful to July for
saving their lives, the move drastically alters their relationship with him. Suddenly, they must
rely on their former servant for food, shelter, and protection. In apartheid-era Johannesburg, in
contrast, July was at the mercy of the Smaleses. While Maureen and Bam always made a point to
treat July with more respect than most wealthy, white South Africans treated their Black staff,
July’s existence as a Black man was more oppressive and stifling than they could appreciate. The
Smales might believe that they have a good relationship with July, but the racial and social
superiority that apartheid afforded them has always prevented them from interacting with him as
equals. When the Black uprising ends apartheid and renders white people powerless, the power
dynamics in July’s relationship with his employers shift, and the Smaleses begin to question
July’s loyalty and honesty. One early source of conflict is July’s decision to keep the keys to the
Smaleses’ bakkie. July’s control of their vehicle effectively severs the Smaleses’ last remaining
connection to their old life and reaffirms how beholden they are to him. July has a wife, Martha,
to whom he sends letters and a portion of his salary. The couple isn’t very close, however, since
July only returns to the village once every two years. Martha and July’s mother disapprove of his
decision to house the Smaleses. Both women criticize July’s decision to continue to serve the
Smaleses, reminding him of the consequences he could face if people outside of his village
discover that he is helping a white family. July, too, struggles to reconcile his allegiance to the
Smaleses with his loyalty to his people. Nevertheless, July continues to protect and provide for
the Smaleses, even as they grow increasingly resentful of the new power that he holds over them.

Maureen Smales
Character Analysis
The main protagonist of July’s People, Maureen is married to Bam Smales, a white, affluent
South African architect. The couple has three children: Victor, Gina, and Royce. The Smaleses
pride themselves on their progressive, anti-apartheid views and always gone to great lengths to
treat their Black house servant, July, with dignity and respect. Maureen’s father, “the shift boss,”
made a fortune in the mining industry under apartheid, exploiting and mistreating his Black
workers for profit. Maureen is ashamed of her family’s complicity in the oppression of South
Africa’s Black population and tries desperately to distance herself from her past. However, while
Maureen outwardly supports Black liberation, her latent racism becomes increasingly evident
once the racial hierarchy of post-apartheid society robs the Smaleses of the status and privilege
they enjoyed—if reluctantly—under apartheid. The Smaleses rely on July for food, shelter, and
protection in July’s rural village, and Maureen struggles to accept this new power dynamic.
While she acknowledges that her family owes their lives to July, she resents being beholden to
him and begins to question his loyalty. Maureen’s doubt about July grows after she sees villagers
using items from the Smaleses’ home in Johannesburg, which July presumably stole over his
many years of service. Maureen repeatedly confronts July about his abuses of power, such as
when he and a friend leave the village in the Smales’ bakkie without asking for permission.
July’s rebuttals to Maureen’s increasingly hostile confrontations also shed light on the many
ways that Maureen has unintentionally insulted and dehumanized July over his years of service.
While Maureen never overtly confronts her latent racism, the culture shock and powerlessness
she experiences while living in July’s village gives her a new perspective on how alienated and
oppressed July must have felt working for them in Johannesburg. In the final scene, Maureen
abandons July’s village and her family to chase down a helicopter that has just landed in the
distant bush land, though she doesn’t know whether the helicopter carries ally or enemy forces.
Simultaneously too ashamed to confront or reject her internalized racism and other demons,
Maureen abandons her old life in pursuit of the unknown.