Re-reading Fatima Meer's Prison Diary and art through the lens of Saidiya Hartman's concept of ‘stealing away’

ABSTRACT

This paper interprets and analyses the concept of stealing away, as a redemptive act, that can be embodied in alternative modes such as writing, painting and drawing. The paper articulates how the pained body – which in this case is understood as the black body – emerges in an oppressive environment. This paper considers prison letters and artwork as redefinition, redress, and reconfiguration of the pained body. The core of this discussion is founded on how Fatima Meer steals away through her writing and artwork while she is imprisoned. These actions constitute self-affirmation over oppression which essentially exemplifies how Saidiya Hartman expresses stealing away as a concept. It is through acts of stealing away that Meer experiences embodied writing, which is about bringing the finely textured experiences of the body to the art of writing. In so doing the pained experiences of the body [Meer] are reclaimed from oppression through writing, drawing and painting.

KEYWORDS:

• Artworks
• resistance
• stealing away
• prison
• pain
• writing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This piece of legislation served to declare the Communist Party of South Africa to be an unlawful organisation; to make provision for declaring other organisations promoting communistic activities to be unlawful and to prohibit certain periodical or other publications; to prohibit certain communistic activities; and to make provision for other incidental matters (Union of South Africa 1950)

2 The African National Congress (ANC) is, at the time of writing, the governing party in South Africa, and has been in power since the transition to democracy in April 1994. The organisation was initially founded as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), on 8 January 1912, in Bloemfontein, with the aim of fighting for the rights of black South Africans (South African History Online, 20 March 2011).

3 The uprising, on 16 June 1976, that began in Soweto and spread throughout the country, profoundly changed the socio-political landscape in South Africa. Events that triggered the uprising can be traced back to policies of the apartheid government that resulted in the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in 1953 (South African History Online, 21 May 2013).

4 The 1967 Terrorism Act was one of the most important pieces of legislation passed by the South African apartheid regime. Although the Act's stated purpose was to facilitate the government's fight against ‘terrorists’, the police used the law to pursue and prosecute various organisations and individuals who resisted state control (South African History Online, 25 May 2021).

5 Ismail Meer was Fatima Meer's husband, a prominent lawyer and anti-apartheid activist.

6 Sibongile Kubeka was one of the detainees arrested and held in solitary confinement under section 6 of the Terrorism Act (Meer 2001).

7 Cecily Palmer was one of the detainees arrested and held in solitary confinement under section 6 of the Terrorism Act, she was detained for four months in the Women's Jail in Johannesburg in 1976 (Blaine 2017).

8 Black female wardens were addressed as ‘vagaash’, an Afrikaans version of the isiZulu ‘vahashe’, which translates into English as ‘visitor’ (Welch 2015, 220).

9 Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela-Mandela was an ANC political activist and ex-wife of Nelson Mandela (South African History Online, 17 February 2011).

10 The Black Women's Federation was formed in December 1975, in response to the expressed need for women across South Africa to form a united front (South African History Online, 31 March 2011).