Cry, a Prophetic Book
Even though I have been immersed in the study of African history for over three years now—in particular, South African history— I just read Alan Paton’s "Cry, the Beloved Country" last week.
Written in 1948, just as the country was entering over 40 years of apartheid rule, it now seems like a strangely prophetic book. By prophetic, I do not mean that it foretold the future; rather, it judged the nation of South Africa and explained that extraordinary measures of grace were needed for healing. This is, in fact, exactly what mystified the world about South Africa’s peaceful transition from apartheid to democratic rule in the early ‘90s. Grace is not what we expect to see when a nation has been judged as harshly as South Africa was judged, when the government of a nation has committed the acts of evil that the government of South Africa committed. Yet grace was given, and "Cry, the Beloved Country" is one more example of that grace.
The plot is structured around a black minister, Stephen Kumalo, who goes to Johannesburg to seek his missing son Absalom and rescue his sister from prostitution. In Johannesburg, he learns his son has murdered a white activist, the son of a white landowner named Jarvis who comes from the same rural area as Kumalo and his son. Paton carefully demonstrates how urban life devastates the African family and the individual (which he calls “breaking the tribe”).
Patton offers no excuses for young Absalom Kumalo’s actions, but the novel explains how living conditions in the city and the political climate of the nation created desperate young African men who had few choices besides crime. (Certainly, no lucrative choices besides crime.) What sets this novel apart then is how the white landowner Jarvis becomes an activist in his own way, doing what he can to change the rural area where he lives so that Africans would not need to leave in order to live. It is as though his son had charged him from beyond the grave to “bring good out of evil.”
Paton was a devoted Christian and his plot revolves around the idea inherent in the Bible verse, “All things work together for good for those who love him [God] and are called according to his purpose.” Cry, the Beloved Country was an instant bestseller, and may be the best known novel to emerge out of South Africa.
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