Citizen other: Islamic Indianness and the implosion of racial harmony in postapartheid South Africa

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2008

Abstract

This essay explores the implosion of racial and religious harmony in the postapartheid fiction of South African Indian writer Ahmed Essop, who problematizes the accommodation of the Indo-Islamic community within the contours of a secular nation in The King of Hearts (1997) and The Third Prophecy (2004). The minority disaffection described in these texts raises important questions about citizenship in the "new" South Africa. Indian-Muslim alienation from the national norm casts doubts on democratic South Africa's success in the projects of community building, inter-cultural reconciliation, and racial healing thus compelling us to question its very legitimacy as a truly postcolonial nation. © 2008.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Research in African Literatures

First Page

107

Last Page

124

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