Labour Pains

Labour Pains

I think Normaventa Mathiane is a black journalist in Soweto, South Africa, she wrote the story, when Nelson Mandela still was imprisoned. She is looking back at that day in the taxi, and comparing the struggle of childbirth, with the struggle for the black people to be free.

The focus in the story, are not on the characters or location, it is on the whole struggle, of being black in South Africa.

The viewpoint in the story is from the black peoples side, and there struggle for a free Africa. To tell a story about how an idea can grow, and unite a group of people, to put all different aside and fight for a common goal.

In the beginning of the story, I almost felt like I was sitting on the bus, you almost fell like you are a part of the experience. The rest of the story I am more a listener, hearing Normavenda Mathiane telling about how it all began, and slowly everyone got dragged in.

The story’s settings starts in a taxi, N.M. sitting beside a pregnant woman, they are on the highway, going to the city. Then we follow N.M. down memory lane, where she tells us about her childhood. And how she lived with the struggle all her life, even long before she understood it´s meaning. The story ends at a formal dinner, held in there honour of a visit from group of black American congressmen, and again, there is a contrast between childbirth and the struggle of being black in South Africa which is the symbol and primary focus in the short story.

”Mr. Mosala says, you cannot make an appointment. It goes the same way with the struggle. You do not make an appointment with the white oppressors to stop oppressing the blacks and give them back their rights. The new society is not born in one day. As she says, it moves at its own pace. It is not the same period of time as the other countries. Ghana became independent a while before the other countries. Every struggle and every pain is different. Like childbirth, even though a woman has given birth before does not...

Similar Essays