Alan Paton

The time, the people, and the events that Kumalo encounters on the trip comprise the richness of this book.  Kumalo leaves Natal for a trip to Johannesburg to find his sister, Gertrude.  He finds her only to discover that she is not physically sick but has become a prostitute and bootlegger.  He finds his brother, John, and discovers that he has become a leader of the black movement for freedom, while cautiously being more of an orator than an open law-breaker.  He finds his son, Absalom, after Absalom has been arrested for the murder of a prominent white engineer, Arthur Jarvis, who has been leading the national discussion about freeing the blacks.

I usually write reviews of non-fiction books but the beauty of a novel is in the way the author weaves the story’s narrative until the end.  In the event that someone reads this review and opts to read Cry, the Beloved Country for the first time, I have chosen not to write a descriptive narrative about the way the story ends but instead about its ending paragraph.  The book ends with Reverend Kumalo meditating on a mountain top at dawn.  Kumalo has a reason for his personal journey to the mountaintop, but Paton uses the ending as a metaphor for the dawn of the emancipation of native South Africans.   The book ends with a prophetic sentence that is almost a question:  “But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.”

I selected Cry, the Beloved Country because it was a book that I had never read and a book that argued for equality of the races in South Africa long before there was an organized international outcry against apartheid.  In fact, the book was written before the Afrikaner Nationalist Party won the 1948 election and implemented the official policy of apartheid.  Paton’s description of the trials and tribulations of the blacks in South Africa was risky given his status as a free white South African.

Paton’s incorporation of the readings of Abraham Lincoln into the novel indicates that he believed that whites in South Africa could see the importance of helping the blacks achieve liberation and financial independence even though for a white to do so was unpopular at the time.  It took nearly 50 years after the publication of this book for apartheid to end, but it probably would not have ended as quickly as it did had there not been a group of whites like Paton who continually pushed to end the practice.

Cry, the Beloved Country describes the land that attracted the first white immigrants to settle it, the black tribesmen who were natives, and the tribes who migrated to South Africa.  All of them loved the land and cherished it in many ways.  I enjoyed reading the book given the retrospective viewpoint we have post-apartheid, and I look forward to my visit to South Africa.

By the mid 1800s, another American president had captured the hearts of the American people: President Abraham Lincoln.  Coincidentally, Lincoln’s birthday is February 12th.  In 1865, one year after President Lincoln’s assassination, the nation officially honored his presidency and character by commemorating his birthday.  In 1880, George Washington’s birthday became a federal legal holiday, making Washington the first American to have a federal holiday named in his honor.  Though Lincoln’s birthday did not become an official federal holiday, many states began celebrating it either in addition to or in conjunction with George Washington’s birthday.  Those states that celebrated Lincoln’s birthday in conjunction with Washington’s began calling the holiday Presidents Day.

In 1968, Congress passed legislation, known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act that gave federal employees some fixed three-day weekends.  With this legislation, the observance of Washington’s birthday was moved from February 22nd to the third Monday in February.  In the same year, Congress debated the issue of renaming the holiday to Presidents Day.  The motion failed and the holiday is still officially known as Washington’s Birthday even though it is popularly called Presidents Day around the country.

Beginning in the 1900s, few Americans celebrated the holiday with the type of zeal that their ancestors did.  Most businesses closed and for most Americans, the holiday became simply a day off work.  With the advertising boom of the 1980s, however, media executives saw an opportunity to promote the holiday as a “shopping holiday.”  True to the American spirit of consumerism, businesses reopened their doors on Presidents Day in the 1980s and coaxed shoppers with huge sales.  Today, the holiday is synonymous with shopping and sales.  Given the state of the economy, however, it will be interesting to see how retailers fare this Presidents Day compared to those past.