Accounts of Apartheid's Bloody Past and Psychological Damage: Magical Realism in Zoë Wicomb's David's Story.

In David’s Story, Zoë Wicomb depicts some of the violence thatoccurred in the anti-apartheid movement, including rape and sexual andphysical torture of female cadres in the ANC (African National Congress)recruiting and training camps. By demonstrating scenes that have beenconcealed and covered up, bringing them out into the open and a step closerto the truth, and by creating a counter or alternative history from theperspective of the oppressed black people, particularly black women.Wicomb attempts to remember forgotten women’s bodies in colonial history,detecting the origin of their silencing and their unrecognised resistance.Furthermore, by using materials from a dubiously documented South Africanpast, the novel turns the past into a narrative not entirely to itself butfractured, non-linear, self-critical and even self-mocking. In addition, byreproducing the figure of a vulnerable female body and by showing thegendered dehumanisation during apartheid, Wicomb reinforces the fact thatapartheid is not only racial but also gendered. Linking Saartjie Baartman withDulcie and demonstrating the subjugation and oppression of South Africanwomen makes it possible for David to associate the oppression of thesewomen with his own story and trauma, pointing at how the colouredcommunity has been victimised through colonisation and racial oppression.