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Write an essay highlighting the challenges facing post apartheid South Africa.Draw your illustrations from Rayda Jacob's 'The Guilt'.

Write an essay highlighting the challenges facing post apartheid South Africa.Draw your illustrations from Rayda Jacob's 'The Guilt'.

Answers

Martin
i)Racial animosity / racial conflict

The advent of a new government was envisaged to bring interracial harmony.Unfortunately it has not helped bridge the racial animosity and suspicion existing between blacks and whites.Blacks are bent on taking advantage of their newly found freedom to exploit whites while whites feel vulnerable in the prevailing circumstances.William Sidlay sets three traps that will enable him extort money from Lilian.He first produces a forged letter,then manages to get a five rand coin from Lilian ,after which he demands another payment of ten rand as compensation for an hour worked.Lilian keeps two dogs,Tembi and Tar to offer her security,now that her husband is not alive.Lilian benevolence towards the blacks who come to beg at her gate is seen from the guilt she feels on behalf of her for the sins the old regime committed on Africans.

ii)Insecurity

With the advent of a new regime,whites are in a state of perpetual fear.Lilian is annoyed that she has to be afraid of her own house."was it racist if you were afraid and didn't want to open your door to strangers . When a woman with her children knocks at the gate at night and she could not see in the dark, he fared that there could be another person waiting behind the wall with a knife or a gun.She remembers how'The papers were full of stories of people getting killed in their gardens and houses,and she'd heard of husbands and wife crime waves.Lilian also slept with a gun near her .Also that night in bed,the gun in its new place under the pillow.Lillian has barricaded herself behind a ten feet high wall and huge gate.She also keeps two fierce Alsatians,Tembi and Tor to ward off unwanted intruders.

iii)Guilt

Whites are overwhelmed by guilt since they have been beneficiaries of the former regime.Guilt has driven Lilian into developing feelings of benevolence towards blacks who come to beg following her action of ejecting Sidlay from her compound to the extend that she could not even disclose the incident to her friends who come to visit her that afternoon.

iv)Exploitation

As a result of coming of to power of a new regime,Africans seem to take advantage of new political dispensation.Aware that Lilian lives alone,William Sidlay pretends to be a jobless young man looking for employment.This is a play to gain the trust of Lilian before extorting money from her.The woman with her children who knock at Lilian's gate at nine o'clock on a rainy night knows that Lilian's conscience would not allow her to turn away.
marto answered the question on December 28, 2017 at 11:11

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