Solidarity and gender in protest novels: Bessie Head’s The Cardinals and Miriam Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan

Abstract

This article analyses the critical role of gender within racial solidarity in anti-apartheid protest writing by comparing Bessie Head’s The Cardinals and Miriam Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan. Both novels depict the protagonist’s experience of being the only Black woman at a white-collar workplace during apartheid. The workplace relationships explored within the novels illustrate the complex role of gender in forming alliances and nurturing solidarity. Although Tlali’s novel prioritises solidarity between Black people in the face of apartheid, areas of significant gender inequalities are present. Head’s The Cardinals, on the other hand, explicitly explores the fissures in Black anti-apartheid alliances created by gender inequalities. The juxtaposition of these two novels challenges a uniform understanding of Black anti-apartheid solidarity, while also elucidating depictions of the competing relationships of solidarity for Black working women in female-authored protest writing. By forcing the reader to consider the place of gender in relation to both collectives of solidarity and to anti-apartheid protest, the novels trigger a rethinking of what traditionally male-dominated protest writing was and could be.