Thesis Outline

Thesis- Throughout the novel Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton criticism of/commentary on apartheid was influenced by his own personal experiences from growing up in South Africa, the government and class system in the 1940s, and the lack of rights in South Africa.
I. Background Info on Alan Paton A. Early Life/Family 1. Born in 1903. 2. Raised in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. a. grew up an in era before South African race politics had hardened into its present intransigence. 3. Son of Eunice Warder Paton and James Paton. 4. Parents were very religious and strict. 5. Paton entered college as WWI began…University of Natal 6. Graduated with a degree in physics. B. Job Experience 1. Became a teacher at Ixopo High School. 2. In 1935, became principal at Diepkloof Reformatory 3. 1946, wrote Cry, the Beloved Country. C. Personal Experiences 1. Married Dorrie Olive Francis Lusted 2. Two years after his marriage, had first son David. 3. 1948, resigned from being principal. a. disgusted by the country’s abuse of its black citizens. 4. Founded South Africa’s Liberal Party. 5. Joined the reformist South African Institute of Race Relations. D. Other Important Info 1. Paton’s career consists of three phases. a. 1924 to 1935, teacher and schoolmaster b. 1935 to 1948, a reformatory principal c. a writer and political activist d. he was a moralist, secondarily a political activist 2. Early years of his career, Paton was only concerned with social welfare. 3. Throughout his career, he viewed Afrikaners as more susceptible to racial hatred. a. more responsible than English South Africans for the country’s problems 4. Alan Paton’s work is uniformly about the racial injustice of his country’s society. 5. His fiction… a. leads the readers to read more sophisticated and detailed political studies and historical sources. b. draws his audience into turbulence of South African society 6. Paton, writes essentially of whites, and for whites. 7. Even his African characters are white people’s Africans
II. Economy/Class System A. Housing 1. Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town are a few towns where Africans had lived. 2. Hundreds of thousands of Africans had been born and bred in the towns. 3. Blacks experienced high levels of poverty, undernutrition, and disease, especially tuberculosis. 4. Electricity, running water, public telephones, sewage systems, parks, and playing fields were rare. 5. In urban ghettos, Africans mingled, regardless of ethnicity. a. they ignored the gov’t attempt to carve up the townships into ethnic divisions. b. they married across ethnic lines c. intermarriage was made illegal d. prison terms up to seven years were imposed persons convicted of engaging in interracial sex e. Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and the Immorality Act created legal boundaries between races by making marriage and sexual relations illegal 6. Every year, more than 100,000 Africans were arrested under the pass laws. 7. Under apartheid the condition of the Homelands continued to deteriorate. 8. African women… a. many of them were the head of the household. b. held the “fabric” of the African society together c. women walked miles every day to get water and firewood 9. People crowded into single-sex compounds, leaky houses, or improvised shacks. 10. Schools, hospitals, and public transportation for Blacks were sharply inferior. 11. Homeland… a. an African “nation” that was to “develop along its own lines” b. had all the rights that were denied in the rest of the country 12. Nearly every Homeland consisted of several pieces of land, separated by white-owned farms. 13. Africans lost their last land rights on white farms and many Blacks became redundant to the labor needs of farmers. 14. Few whites ever saw an African, a Coloured, or an Asian home. 15. Approximately 3.5 million black people lost their homes when they were forced to move. B. Job Opportunities 1. White South Africans were as prosperous as the middle and upper classes. 2. They owned cars and lived in substantial houses or apartments in segregated suburbs, with black servants. 3. Best jobs were reserved for whites. 4. South Africa was a partly industrialized society with deep divisions based legally prescribed biological criteria. 5. Industry absorbed more and more black workers, but racial categories continued to define the primary social cleavages. C. Lack of Equality 1. The gov’t imposed segregation in higher education as well. 2. Gov’t also established tight controls over communication media. 3. To enforce the laws of apartheid, the gov’t had powerful resources. 4. Public services for Blacks were characteristically inadequate or nonsexist. 5. Wherever White encountered Black, White was boss and Black was a servant. 6. Thousands of black Africans were beaten and/or imprisoned for even minor violations. 7. Gov’t also intensified its control of educational system. 8. African Education… a. needs of the large African population was constrained by lack of funds b. white children had excellent school buildings and equipment c. black children had distinctly inferior facilities d. African children were in the pre-primary and the primary classes 9. From 1948 on, “White Only” notices appeared in every conceivable place. 10. Laws and regulations confirmed or impused segregation for taxis, ambulances, buses, trains, elevators, benches, lavatories, parks, church halls, town halls, cinemas, theaters, cafes, restaurants, and hotels, as well as schools and universities. 11. Nat’l party used majority in Parliament to eliminate the voting rights of Coloured and African people. a. 1951, it was abolished the only official countrywide by African institution, the Natives Representative Council 12. 1953, court ruled that segregation was not lawful if public facilities for different racial groups were not equal. a. Parliament passed the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act to legalize such inequality 13. Population Registration Act provided machinery to designate the racial category of every person. a. where one parent was classified white and the other was classified Coloured. b. it classified all South Africans as either white or European, colored, or Asian
III. Lack of Rights A. Apartheid 1. Apartheid is a rigid segregationist set up in South Africa by the ruling white population shortly after the victory of the Nationalist Party in 1948. 2. Apartheid was the name of policy imposed by the white minority gov’t of South Africa with the intention of restricting the fundamental human rights and civil liberties of the black majority. 3. Apartheid, an Afrikaans word meaning “apartness” 4. Racial mixing would weaken the racial community and hinder its appropriate development. 5. Apartheid conferred the most advantage to whites but those of mixed race enjoyed greater privileges and rights than blacks.