Tell freedom

Birte Hüsemann

(student in MA programme advanced Anglophone Studies)

Peter Abrahams,Tell Freedom

: Introduction

South African writer Peter Henry Abrahams was born in Vrededorp, Johannesburg, on March19, 1919. His father,James Henry Abrahams Deras, was the son of an Ethiopian landownerand his mother, Angelina DuPlessis, a Colored South African, who had two children from aprevious marriage. When his father died, Peter was only 4 or 5 years old and he was sent to distant relatives in a rural villag

e because his mother did not earn enough money to take care of him. This was the starting point for a life shaped by a sense of constant movement,instability and leaving behind familiar surroundings.

Abrahams’s autobiography,

Tell Freedom, published in 1954, covers this first period of his life from his first childhood memories shortly before his father’s death to the time when he leaves South Africa in 1939. In a chronological sequence of episodes, the reader follows the protagonist on his journey through large parts of the country, from Johannesburg to CapeTown and, finally, to Durban where he boards a ship to England. As a firstperson narrator,Peter does not only introduce the readers to his childhood friends Andries or Joseph, to his

first girlfriend Anne or to some of the friends who help him along his way, but also to a world

full of racism and injustice. In its depiction of social and political circumstances, his narrative

becomes more than only an autobiography of one individual. Abrahams ratherclaims to speak for a whole group of people to form a collective statement as already indicated in the verybeginning of the book with the following epigraph:

For

MY MOTHER, MY SISTER, AND ZENA in their different ways,asked meto tell this.Tell Freedom is arranged in three sections, each dealing with a different phase in Abrahams’s life. Book One starts with the earliest memory in the early 1920s as a 4-year-oldboy. Son after these first flashes of remembrance, the small boy is torn from his familiar surroundings after his father’s death: “I remember my mother and father merging into each other in my mind. Together, they were the symbol of peace and laughter and security. Thenmy father died.” (15) What follows is the constant moving from one place to another, fromcountry back to the city, from his aunt and uncle back to his mother and sister and again to yet another aunt. In his early childhood, Peter is confronted with cultural differences, racial prejudices and privileged whites. Asked about these differences, his aunt Liza tells Peter:“‘You are Colored. There are three kinds of people: white people, Colored people, and blackpeople. The white people come first, then the Colored people, then the black people.’ Why?’‘Because it is so.’” (44) While living with his aunt and uncle in Elsburg, near an Afrikaner village, Peter isintroduced to the rural life dictated by the work for white people and has to learn the brutal lesson that, no matter what happens, he must never lif t his hand to a white person. Back inJohannesburg, young Peter soon adapts to the life in a slum, follows a gang of other young boys and together they steal and fight other gangs. However, once he is introduced to literature by a Jewish girl at work, Peter longs for education and a new part of his life begins.“I was ripe for something new, the new things my books had revealed, to take the place of the old life.” (163)Book Two of the autobiography deals with his further education that begins with his work at the Bantu Men’s Social Center in Johannesburg where he is introduced to important thinkers not only among the South Africans: “Du Bois’s words had the impact of a revelation” (193). Especially African American authors of the so-called Harlem Renaissance like Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and Claude McKay shape his consciousness of racial injustice, of the need for change and his wish to become a writer himself. When he is accepted at a missionary college near Pietersburg, Peter leaves his family and his girlfriend behind to seizethe chance for a higher education and his way out of the slums of Johannesburg. Soon he is completely absorbed by his studies and becomes a full member of the church after hisconfirmation and First Communion. But when he starts to measure the Christian ideology of the mission fathers against the world of colour and race that he experiences outside of the somewhat protected setting of college, he decides not to become a teacher and quits college.BookThree begins in 1938, when Peter is 19 years old. He is back in Johannesburg and

comes into contact with Marxist ideology, makes his first white friends and further works on

his writing. At that time he already has a reputation as revolutionary poet because

The Bantu World, a black South African newspaper, has published some of his works by then. For a

short time, he evenhas a relatinship with a white woman but they soon break up because3they could never show their love in public. When Peter gets acquainted with members of the black trade union movement, he is impressed by the impact this could have socially and politically: “Here, a new social and political consciousness was in the making. The black man of the past, the peasant, was being turned into a townsman, a modern man who was part and parcel of the highly industrialized world of the present.” (260) He decides to leaveJohannesburg and arrives in Cape Town, where he is overwhelmed by the apparent liberalityand freedom of movement for non-Europeans. Just like in Johannesburg,he is in touch with people sharing a Marxist ideology but Peter is soon disillusioned by their mere talking about political theory and he plans to not only leave the city again but also to leave South Africa andto head for England. Because of his literary work, the authorities deny him a passport to board a ship and, while thinking of another way to leave the country, Peter helps to build up a school in one of the poorest areas of Cape Town. Although this work seems satisfying, henevertheless crosses large parts of the country again in his urge for freedom and arrives inDurban where he can finally go on board and leave for England with a clear purpose in mind:“Perhaps life had a meaning that transcended race and colour. If it had, I could not find it inSouth Africa. Also, there was the need to write, to tell freedom , and for this I needed to bepersonally free.” (311, emphasis added) The title reappears in one of the last paragraphs andthereby functions as a frame of the whole narrative. Abrahams has freed himself through education from his old life in the slums, from the possible future dictated by humiliating work for white people, from resigning himself to racial injustice.