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CAJOLIS – Calabar Journal of Liberal Studies 20(1), 2018
66
A Marxist Study of Police Brutality in Alex La Guma’s
A Walk in the Night
By
Mathias Iroro Orhero
Department of English,
University of Uyo, Nigeria
literarymathy@gmail.com,+2348130890991
&
Nathaniel Ojima Sunday
Department of English and Literary Studies,
University of Calabar, Nigeria
Nathanielojima4@gmail.com, +2349036160650
Abstract
This study examines the representation of police brutality, alongside its many indices, in
Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night. This study is predicated on the background that La
Guma’s work has been studied mainly as an apartheid work even though the role(s) of
the police in victimising and brutalising blacks have not received enough critical
attention except in passing. This study has, therefore, thematised police brutality in the
text as a way of investigating the various roles played by the police in apartheid South
Africa and how they are represented in La Guma’s fiction. This novella has been studied
firstly as a part of the large body of works known as apartheid fiction and the socio-
political and historical background to apartheid literature have also been underscored.
This study is hinged on the critical theory of Marxism. The representation of police
brutality in the novella has been highlighted using various thematic thrusts such as
torture, extortion, corruption, unlawful detention, racial stereotyping, racial segregation,
and the general presentation of blacks in the text. The study has been able to show
various instances where the police acted outside the ambits of the law and extra-
judicially attacked, maimed, detained and even killed coloured people for no reason
whatsoever and with little provocation. The study also analysed the main narrative and
stylistic devices in the text and how they have contributed in bringing out the
representation of police brutality. Some of the narrative devices highlighted are irony,
dramatic irony and flashback. On the stylistic level, the study examines symbolism, code-
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mixing and code-switching, slangs and colloquialism in the text and how they are used as
racial identifiers and as tropes in the representation of police brutality. The study
concludes that Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night sufficiently represents police
brutality at the thematic and stylistic levels.
Keywords: police, brutality, alex la guma, apartheid, Marxism
Introduction
Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night has been critically examined by various
scholars with each bringing a wholly new perspective to the text. This text has been
studied primarily as an apartheid work by scholars while others have examined the text in
the light of its stylistic peculiarities. However, this paper examines the representation of
police brutality in the novel. The choice of approaching the text from this angle is
informed by the understudying of violence and the role of the police in this text. This
research therefore examines violence, racism and the roles played by the South African
Police in engineering these in apartheid South Africa.
This study employs Marxism as a critical framework. The selection of this theory
is against the background that apartheid literature is socially committed and the best way
to approach the literary works produced in apartheid South Africa is to examine them in
the light of their social relevance and their success, or failure, to realistically portray the
plight of the common man in an oppressively brutal society with no chance or hope of
succour.
Marxism is a critical theory that evolved from the works of Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels. The major tenets of Marxism are encapsulated in the work, The
Communist Manifesto (1848) in which Marx and Engels assert that the history of all
existing societies is the history of class struggle. (qtd. in Duiker and Spielgovel 428).
Marxism is a theory that attacks capitalism and feudalism by proposing
communism/socialism as the ideal state. The theory avers that there are two opposing
classes in every human society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and that these two
classes form the elites/haves and the have not, respectively. Marxist tenet seeks to
remove this dichotomy in human society by arguing for a classless society where
intellectuals rule, a society birthed by the commonness and equal distribution of wealth, a
society where exploitation and oppression are eliminated by means of proletariat
revolution, an egalitarian and utopic society. In literary criticism, Marxism is seen by
Terry Eagleton, a foremost literary critic, thus:
Marxist criticism is not merely a 'sociology of literature', concerned with how
novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is to
explain the literary work more fully; and this means a sensitive attention to its
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68
forms, styles and, meanings. But it also means grasping those forms, styles and
meanings as the product of a particular history (3).
Marxist literary criticism, as averred by Eagleton above, examines the various classes in
the society and their interaction in terms of exploitation. This examination is done from
the thematic and technical levels of literature. This theory is applied in this study and the
various classes will be examined in terms of race and racial relations.
Apartheid in South Africa
Apartheid in South Africa began when the “white” Dutchmen known as “Boers”
or “Afrikaans” settled fully into South Africa and became integrated fully as parts and
parcel of the society. Following the total independence from Britain, the white South
Africans developed a racial system which sought to establish their dominance against the
black, lower class South Africans. 1948 is generally taken to be the starting point of
South African institutionalised apartheid when the South African National Party started
to formulate stringent rules to control the black populace and limit their freedom. David
Brokensha divides apartheid into three phases. According to him:
(1) 1948 to 1959, when the NP increased its power and set about strengthening
the existing segregation and extending it to nearly all areas of life, (2) 1959 to
1966, when the homelands (“Bantustans”) were established, where Africans were
supposed to “develop along their own lines”; and (3) 1966 to 1994, a period of
intensified measures created to support the government, followed by the gradual
erosion of apartheid, with African nationalism becoming unified and stronger, and
the final, agonizing process of a negotiated settlement (146).
South African apartheid is known for a whole lot of things which are basically aimed at
reconstructing the social experience of the blacks in the country. Apart from the blacks,
people of other races, such as Asians, also faced certain measures of apartheid. Apartheid
legislations in the 1950s divided South Africans into various racial types such as Whites,
Indians and Coloured and this division enabled the government to restrict the access to
work and school as well as places one can stay, hospitals and other social amenities, on
the basis of colour. Some of the features of this racial system have been enumerated by
David Brokensha below:
The prohibition of “mixed marriages”; The Immorality Act, outlawing sexual
intercourse between “races”; the control of Bantu authorities; the removal of the
Coloureds from the electoral roll, (educated Coloured voters in the Western Cape
having had the vote since 1853); and the establishing of a different system of
Bantu education, the premise of which was to provide a limited and practical
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education for Africans. Each culture was thought to have the capacity of
development along its own lines; Africans were deemed to be destined primarily
for manual labour, so that an advanced education was not appropriate for them.
Finally, the NP established eight ethnic units, each with its own “homeland,” and
all Africans—even those who were third-generation urbanized— would be
citizens of one of the homelands. The homelands were poor, crowded, often
fragmented, and were clearly not sustainable (147).
Apartheid was fought severely using various agencies. Some of those at the forefront
against apartheid were South Africans themselves who formed the African National
Congress party in the 1940s to fight back. Among these anti-apartheid protesters was
Nelson Mandela, who later became the first black South African president at the end of
the apartheid regime in 1994. The South African apartheid experience has evoked many
responses by various scholars over the years. At its peak, Romanus Egudu asserted that
apartheid is essentially one of the ugly faces of colonial movement comprehending in one
dimension, discrimination, alienation and exploitation, and in another, enslavement and
cultural violence (46). To Patrick Wilmot (xi), apartheid is a system of economic
exploitation, a system of racial segregation and a political organisation of a European
minority to deny the liberty, rights and dignity of the African majority.
Apartheid Fiction
South African Literature in English has come a long way since its beginnings in
the early 20th century. As a part of the body of works in the continuum of world literature,
South African Literature has echoed the history and socio-political temper of its society.
Apartheid has produced a large body of writings that it has become a canon of its
own in African literature. The study of South African literature is inextricably linked with
the apartheid experience. In the genre of fiction, which this work is situated, the apartheid
experience and race dynamics can be traced to the earliest works, in English, by South
Africans. Peter Abrahams is one of these earliest writers whose works are canonised as
apartheid fiction. His internationally renowned novel, Mine Boy (1946), is acknowledged
as a masterpiece of the apartheid experience in South Africa. Some of the writers that
dominated the South African literary space during the apartheid period include J. M.
Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Andre Brink, Albie Sachs, and Njabulo Ndebele.
According to Johan Geertsema (1-2), South African fiction in the apartheid period
fetishised victimhood and black suffering and a concomitant stereotype emerged. Since
literature was heavily censored in South Africa during the apartheid period, literary
works are limited and moreso in the genre of fiction. Anti-apartheid writers such as
Nadine Gordimer, André Brink, Mary Benson, Richard Rive, Bessie Head, Peter
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Abrahams, Dan Jacobson, C. J. Driver, and J. M. Coetzee had their works banned in
South Africa. Many writers, such as Rive, Alex La Guma, Dennis Brutus, Breyten
Breytenbach, and D. M. Zwelonke were imprisoned on Robben Island for their writing
and political activities. Many other writers of anti-apartheid literature, particularly Black
and mixed-race writers such as Rive, Abrahams, La Guma, Arthur Nortje, Lewis Nkosi,
and Ezekiel Es'kia Mphahlele were exiled or went into self-exile to escape political
oppression, as did some white South Africans, such as Breytenbach, Brink, and Athol
Fugard. Prior to the official establishment of the apartheid regime, South African writers
such as Olive Schreiner and Sol Plaatje decried the injustice of racial segregation and
unfair economic policies that were in effect before the South African National Party
institutionalized such practices. Schoenberg and Trudeau (2) aver that although anti-
apartheid literature is multi-faceted and addresses many aspects of human experience,
generally speaking there have been two major traditions—the white, liberal tradition
begun by Schreiner and continued, in varying degrees, by Alan Paton, Gordimer, and
Coetzee, and a more radicalized, protest tradition that originated in the Black townships,
out of which came the fiction of Abrahams, Rive, and La Guma.
Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night
This work has often been referred to as a novella. Field (243) believes that this
work marks La Guma’s shift from journalism to prose fiction. First published in 1962 by
a Nigerian publishing house, Mbari, Field (226) contends that La Guma appears to have
finished the novel sometimes in 1960 though it is unclear whether he had finished it
before his detention or whether he finished it in jail. The novel presents various
characters that are affected by the vicious tyranny of apartheid South Africa. Alex La
Guma explicitly states some of his reasons for writing his work and giving it its peculiar
title thus:
One of the reasons why I called the book “A Walk in the Night” was that in my
mind, the coloured community was still discovering themselves in relation to the
general struggle against racism in South Africa. They were working, enduring and
in this way they were experiencing this walking in the night until such time as
they found themselves and were prepared to be citizens of a society to which they
wanted to make a contribution. I tried to create a picture of a people struggling to
see the light, to see the dawn, to see something new, other than their experiences
in this confined community (Abraham 49).
The novel paints the portrait of young and suffering black South Africans who are faced
with a tyrannical society that favours one racial group over another. The novel is set in a
South African slum called District Six, a suburb in the city of Cape Town. The plot
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revolves around the murder of an old Irish man by Michael Adonis during a drunken rage
and how the police kill the wrong person, Willieboy, for the murder committed by
Michael. The novel has been praised for its realism, style and thematic thrusts. Keeping
the critical tool of Marxism in mind, the novel presents the abysmal life of the
proletariats, the haves not and the exploited in terms such as “domestic workers...
working people... taxi drivers... loiterers... prostitutes... numbers runners... petty
gangsters... and frayed looking thugs” (La Guma 3). The oppressive class is presented as
being the bane of the helpless masses. In this novel, La Guma uses the South African
Police and the white employers to represent the oppressive class. This elitist class exploit
the proletariats who are blacks in the novel and treat them as subhuman, oppress them,
abuse them and eventually gets rid of them.
The proletariat characters that are presented are young blacks who are described
as impoverished in the strongest of terms. La Guma describes the protagonist, Michael
Adonis, as a young man who “wore jeans that had been washed several times and which
were now left with a pale blue colour decked with old grease stains” (1-2). The
environment/suburb itself is not left out in this biting realistic description by La Guma, he
describes Michael Adonis’ habitation in Hanover Street, an area in District Six, as having
“a row of dustbins lined one side of the entrance” (21) and he describes the foul stench as
that of “rotten fruit, stale food, stagnant water and general decay” (21). These images
present the novel as being conscious to the plight and conditions of the exploited masses,
the blacks and the haves not.
The novel also treats various other issues. Foregrounded among these is the issue
of racism and apartheid. The black experience in South Africa is presented from multiple
perspectives realistically. One of such representations is found in the major character who
is sacked from his work place simply because he stands up to his boss who treats him
more like an animal than a human (14). His boss, thus, represents the exploitative
bourgeoisie class who extort the proletariat of their services and enrich themselves while
treating the downtrodden workers as peasants, disposables and appendages. Race
becomes the driving force for the capitalist system. The racist presentation of blacks in
the novel is reinforced by the use of demeaning terms such as “colour of worn leather”
(2), “a cockroach emerging through a floorboard” (9), “negroes” (16), “bushman bastard”
(39), “hottentots” (39), “kaffirs” (39), “tan coloured” (51), “skollies” (56), “black
bastard” (63), “coloured boy” (80), “bloody baboons” (88), among others. These terms
are mainly used by the white elites to taunt, debase and mock the blacks.
La Guma’s novel treats apartheid with ease. It does not have to be foregrounded
because it has become a part and parcel of the daily lives of the people that writers do not
struggle or conjecture situations in other to portray this great injustice. One of such
explicitly realistic portrayal of apartheid is found in the early scene involving Joe and
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Michael Adonis where Joe states clearly that the City Council is going to restrict access
to the public beaches “so only white people can go there” (10). This segregation by the
governmental superstructure against the lower class of blacks is an aspect of oppression
as well. In the novel, segregation is outrightly blamed on the system of capitalism (17).
The taxi driver is very certain that racial segregation or “colour bar” is because of the
system of capitalism.
The themes in the novel that relate with racial segregation, violence and squalor
abound. However, this study aims to examine the role(s) of the South African Police in
encouraging the aforementioned as well as their own unique roles in victimising the
brutalising innocent black South Africans.
Police Brutality in Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night
The South African police was a ready and useful tool in the enforcement of
apartheid policies in South Africa. Since the police, in almost all countries, is an agent of
the government, it implies that the police would have no other choice than to implement
government policies even if the policemen themselves do not agree to these policies. In
apartheid South Africa, the police was used by the bourgeoisie as a ready agent to inflict
untold pain, havoc and catastrophe on all coloured people representing the oppressed
lower class. Protests were controlled using the police, racially discriminatory laws were
enforced using the police, anti-apartheid protesters and activists were arrested using the
police. In fact, the police was at the very nucleus of the apartheid system. While the
government, the superstructure, was making the policies, the police, a part of the
bourgeoisie, was actually in charge of making sure they are “tormented” into the masses.
On March 21st 1960, the South African police made global headlines when it opened fire
on anti-apartheid protesters killing sixty-nine people instantly and injuring one hundred
and eighty (Reeves 1). The bourgeoisie exploit the proletariat in various forms in the
novella. This exploitation is far more glaring in the way the police, an agency of the
elites, harass and brutalise the hapless blacks, the proletariats. Through the use of satire,
La Guma captures the role(s) of the police in apartheid South Africa.
Alex La Guma was not conservative in his representation of the agency of the
South African police in the brutalisation of hapless black citizens. This is presented from
various points and using various techniques. The novel presents the idea of police
brutality from the point of view of the policemen themselves as well as from the
viewpoint of the downtrodden victims. Police brutality is introduced quickly in the novel
because, like earlier iterated, the police cannot be separated from apartheid itself. The
police is first presented with a clearly foregrounded “gun harness shiny with polish, and
the holstered pistols heavy on their waists” (La Guma 11). This image portrays the police
as a ready tool of oppression. This description acts as a foreshadowing device to the death
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which the same pistol shall indiscriminately cause later in the story. The unfriendly
nature of the police is further described in the story using imagistic devices. La Guma
writes that the police had “hard, frozen faces as if carved out of pink ice, and hard,
dispassionate eyes, hard and bright as pieces of blue glass” (11). They are further
presented in the novel that they “wore guns like appendages of their bodies” (58) and
their faces had a “hard metallic look” (58). This unfriendly representation of the police
foregrounds their nature as masochistic as opposed to the idea that “the police is your
friend”. These images show how hardened and ready-to-kill the police force is against the
black lower class.
The police is presented in the novel as a hindrance to free movement which
should be a fundamental human right. However, with various curfews and pass laws
imposed by the apartheid government, it is not unusual to see the police stopping a
coloured citizen to know about their movement and even ask for their pass. This is
presented in the novel as a casual event which hints on its high frequency of occurrences.
In the novel, two policemen on patrol stop Michael Adonis indiscriminately and ask him
“where are you walking around, man?” (11). Michael responds and the policemen simply
assume he is a thief and ask him to empty his pockets. Upon seeing an amount of money,
they asked a rather derogatory question “where did you steal the money?” (12). This
demeaning assumption that coloured lower class people are thieves and low-lifers is
strengthened when he was earlier asked “where’s your dagga?” (12). Dagga here means
Indian hemp and the presumption that Michael has one on him shows the trouble-starting
expertise of the South African police. The restriction of movement for the oppressed
black people is further cemented in the statement by one of the policemen; “don’t let us
find you standing around” (12).
The South African police is not just an agent of apartheid but also something
much worse than that. This is suitably captured in the fact that the policemen are not to be
stared in the eyes by any coloured person. Coloured people are forced to stare at the feet
or belt of the police officers as captured in the first encounter between Michael and the
patrol officers in which Michael looks “at the buckle of this policeman’s belt... but never
into their eyes, for that would be taken as an affront by them” (11). This is the height of
social oppression. The lower class blacks are given low self esteem in order to prevent
them from asking for more. This is also presented where Abrahams talks to Constable
Raalt but “he looked down at his feet when Raalt stared at him” (62). This aversion to
face-to-face conversation debases the blacks, reduces their self-worth and humanity and
creates a primordial fear of the police, the bourgeoisie and the whole superstructure in the
heart of the black masses.
The South African police is portrayed in this text to be a highly undisciplined
body. The policemen flout the rules of their own body by engaging in acts that are not
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worthy of the uniform they wear. Alex La Guma attempts to capture the indiscipline of
the police in several instances in his text. In one of these instances, the police officer,
Raalt, smokes on duty (31). It is simple logic that policemen should be focused and clear-
headed when on active duty. However, the South African police during the apartheid
regime do not care for what is normal or logical but what they feel. Constable Raalt’s
love for smoking is treated also in the scene where Willieboy, a black lower class
character, is rushed to the station after being indiscriminately shot and instead of hurrying
to save his life, Raalt tells his fellow patrol officer “pull up at the Portuguese, will you? I
want to get some smokes” (91). This ultimately proves the level of inhumanity and value
that the white bourgeoisie place on the black proletariat.
The extortive and corrupt nature of the police towards coloured people is also
brought to limelight in the text. The police actively visit business owners who may be
involved in accommodating gamblers and they collect money from them under the threat
of torture. In one of such scenes, an “olive-skinned” business owner “drew out a fistful of
greasy crumpled notes. He counted off five pounds... and passed it to Raalt” (42). The
description of this scene is highly vivid and the indices of Realism are used to portray the
picture of the oppressed and the oppressor.
The fact that the police in apartheid South Africa was an agent of torture is not
new. However, the nature and form(s) of this torture always unravel itself till this very
day. The torture goes beyond mere anti-protest attacks and colour bias and it is
systemised. The brutality of the police in this regards is so deeply rooted that the masses
have a psychological fear of the police. The torture of hapless coloured people by the
police is captured in the scene between the “olive-skinned” business owner and Constable
Raalt. Firstly, Raalt asks the man to take off his cigarette and then tells him “you don’t
have to smile at me, jong. I’m not your playmate” (42) after striking him in the mouth.
Raalt strikes the man unjustly again before receiving a bribe. This bribe further symbolise
the economic exploitation of lower class blacks by the white superstructure. Another case
of unjust police torture is also described in the case of Noortjie who “was a little drunk
one night” and because of that, they indiscriminately take him “to the cells and boggered
hell out of him all night.” (58). The term “boggered” is used here to mean torture.
Noortjie is unjustly tortured so much that he “lost his teeth”. Perhaps the best description
for police brutality and torture is the altercation between the policemen and Willieboy
where Willieboy is shot at thrice and he eventually dies due to the negligence and
vindictiveness of Constable Raalt. (86). Shooting at coloured people isn’t a new thing as
hinted in the scene where a passerby says “that’s all they know. Shooting us people” (87).
Unjust arrest and detainment by the police is another aspect of police brutality
treated in the text. It is well known that in apartheid South Africa, the police was used to
silence sharp critics of the government and her policies. Alex La Guma himself is one of
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the victims of unjust police arrest when he was detained against his will in 1962 (3). The
police in apartheid South Africa carved a niche for itself as the ultimate tool for illegal
arrests. Most of these arrests are political while others are mainly as a result of bad
investigations or flouting appropriate police protocols. Unjust arrest scares the masses so
much that the people believe reporting a murder might make the police arrest “the whole
building on suspicion”. (45). Constable Raalt himself defends unjust arrest without
proper investigation when he says “I’ll get him even if I have to gather in every black
bastard wearing a yellow shirt” (63). This statement foreshadows the unjust arrest of
Willieboy by the police for a crime he did not commit. The basis of his arrest was simply
“isn’t that not that donder se hotnot, the one with the yellow shirt?” (80). He was
accosted on the basis of his “yellow shirt” without proper investigation on his complicity
in the death of the old Irish man. Willieboy is chased and shot at thrice before he is
arrested and dies. Illegal detention is also found in the scene where Noortjie is arrested
simply because he is slightly drunk. The police further unearth their brutality by heaping
a false accusation on him that he resisted arrest (58). Furthermore, Raalt threatens
Abrahams with forced detention by saying “if you don’t want to talk now you can still be
forced to appear in court and say what you know before the magistrate” (63). The
emphasis here is on “force” and this word connotes the idea that the police can hold
anyone at anytime for anything whatsoever. These instances show the oppression and
brutalisation of the oppressed class by the system itself which does nothing to ameliorate
the plight of the hapless blacks.
The perception of coloured people by the police is another issue treated in the
text. Since apartheid itself is a system of racial segregation, the police sees itself as the
apotheosis of this system and they use invectives to reduce the status of the coloured
people. This is the same way the bourgeoisie perceive the haves not. The haves not are
seen as second class citizens whose existence is simply to serve the white elites. Some of
these invectives are captured all through the text. In one of these instances, Raalt says
“I’d like to like to lay my hands on one of those bushman bastards and wring his bloody
neck” (39). He further asserts, in the same scene, that he doesn’t care if coloured people,
which he calls “hottentots”, “kill each other off” (39). In the scene where Willieboy is
transported to the station, Raalt tells his fellow patrol officer about blacks and he paints a
picture of exaggerated toughness by saying “that bastard isn’t going to die yet. These
hotnots are tough” (91). Even when Willieboy iss shot initially and arrested, Raalt refers
to the crowd that gathered as “a lot of bloody baboons” (88). Perhaps one of the most
vivid and realistic depictions of blacks as sub-humans in the eyes of the police is captured
in a highly denigratory statement by Andries, the patrol driver, where he remarks about
coloured people: “train them like dogs to have respect for you. If you whip them, they’ll
turn on you... Give them some wine and drive them into town Saturday nights and they’re
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all right” (79). This is reminiscent of the way the downtrodden are treated. They are seen
as slaves who should be satiated with meagre pay so that they will not revolt. This “Uncle
Tom”-like depiction of coloured people as docile when treated like animals highly
foregrounds the idea that the South African police has no respect for blacks and see them
as animals that must be tamed.
The issues relating to Police brutality in the text are so much that they cannot all
be enumerated. Every text is a cesspool of varied interpretations which the critic must be
able to unearth. It is hoped that the little analysis performed above has been able to drive
home the thrust of the study that Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night represents the
South African police in all ramifications and their role(s) in apartheid South Africa and
the unleashing of terror, torture, pain, segregation and verbal attacks are well
documented. This analysis has taken Marxist critical tenets into consideration by
presenting the various classes in the society and the tension between them.
The Style of Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night
Since literature is essentially an aesthetic piece, it is important to examine some of
the stylistic devices used in actualising the thematic thrusts of the text. Some of the
stylistic devices generally employed in the text include satire and irony, flashback,
foreshadow, dramatic irony, burlesque, dialogue, among others. However, due to the
scope of this paper, only irony, flashback, dramatic irony and imagery will be
underscored as these are unique in realising the idea of police brutality in the text.
Irony is usually used as a device in satire. It occurs in literature when a situation
goes contrary to general expectations. In this text, irony is used to heighten the effect of
the South African police brutality and incompetence. It is used to mock at the
dimwittedness of the exploiters, the elites and the oppressors. In an ironic twist in the
novel, the murderer of the old Irish man, Mr. Doughty, Michael Adonis, goes scot free
and even descends into a world of crime (76) whereas an innocent young man pays for
the crime with his life (94). This irony shows the police as an incompetent group of
rascals who kill just about any coloured man they see while they flout police procedures
and allow the guilty go free. This irony is also used as a Marxist trope to reveal the idea
of proletariat revolution. The idea that Michael Adonis kills Mr. Doughty, a symbol of
the white bourgeoisie class, and goes scot-free represents the revolution advocated for by
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In Michael Adonis’ little way, he has revolted against
the whims and caprices of the exploitative class and has gone scot-free with it even as he
descends into a world of crime in other to further revolt against the superstructure.
Flashback is also used in the text to establish a background for the events that
unfold in the text. In the case of Constable Raalt, flashback plays a very important role in
understanding the reasons for some of his drastic actions. Anger runs as a major motif
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throughout the text, from Michael who is angered from losing his job and affronted by
the police, to Raalt who is angered by his wife’s new disposition towards him. The motif
of anger is realised through flashbacks. Some of the flashbacks are found in the case of
Michael Adonis where he retells his encounter in his former workplace that led to his
being sacked simply for speaking back to a white trouble starter (4) and also in the case
of Raalt who recalls how his wife leaves him to do domestic chores as well as his anger
that his wife is no longer good-looking (31). Another flashback is realised in the scene
where Abrahams is told about Noortjie’s unlawful arrest as a result of police brutality
(58). These flashbacks are used to create a sense of continuity in the actions of the
characters and they also examine the psychological state of the characters when they do
the things they do.
Dramatic irony is also present in the text. Dramatic irony occurs when the reader
knows more than characters in the text. This is usually used to heighten effect and make a
work more dramatic. In this text, dramatic irony is used to make the representation of
situations and characters objective, in line with the tenets of realism. The major instance
of dramatic irony is seen in the Michael-Police-Willieboy triangle. Michael Adonis
murders an old Irish man, Mr. Doughty, because of a minor scuffle when they drink
together (29). The reader knows this and how it happens. However, this fact is not known
to Willieboy who visits Mr. Doughty only to find him dead (34). The police don’t know
this fact as well and so they are quick to accuse the last person who visits Mr. Doughty
without any proof (63). The dramatic irony is realised in the fact that the reader knows
the real culprit and yet can do nothing when another character that is ignorant of the
murder is killed unjustly by the policemen who are also, ironically, ignorant about the
true nature of the murder. This shows the height and length the police can go in unjustly
prosecuting the black lower class.
Imagery is also used in the text as a device. Imagery is simply the ability of a
writer to vividly portray events, situations, persons, happenings, etc, and immerse the
reader into it with the faculty of the senses. Imagery can be further broken down into;
visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile. In the text, imagery is used by La Guma
to paint the various classes of society, especially the lower classes and how they have
been pushed to the last wrung of the economic ladder through the actions and policies of
the superstructure. Colour is used as a device of imagery in the text. The bar between
white and black symbolise the divide between the upper class and the lower class. The
image of poverty is present visually by the narrator through the description of Michael
Adonis thus: “The young man wore jeans that had been washed several times and which
were now left with a pale-blue colour decked with old grease stains [...] and going white
along the hard seams” (2). This visual image of squalor shows the degree of suffering that
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the haves not experience. This image is further reinforced in the vivid and visual
depiction of the black lower class people thus:
People sat in booths or along a wooden table down the centre of the place, eating
or engaged in conversation. Ancient strips of flypaper hung from the ceiling
dotted with their victims and the floor was stained with spilled coffee, grease and
crushed cigarette butts; the walls marked with countless rubbing of soiled
shoulders and grimy hands. There was a general atmosphere of shabbiness about
the cafe, but not unmixed with a sort of homeliness for the unending flow of
derelicts, bums, domestic workers off duty, in/town/from/the/country folk who
had no place to eat except there, and working people who stopped by on their way
home. There were taxi-drivers too, and the rest of the mould that accumulated on
the fringes of the underworld beyond Castle Bridge: loiterers, prostitutes, fab-fee
numbers runners, petty gangsters, drab and frayed looking thugs (3).
This specific visual imagery has been used by the narrator to depict the conditions of the
black people of South Africa. Black lower class South Africans take on menial and
exploitative jobs in other to make ends meet and yet their condition can only be described
as the “wretched of the earth”, to put it in Fanon’s terms. Olfactory imagery is also used
in the text to heighten the effect of squalor and the condition of the down trodden in the
society. An instance of this imagery is presented thus: “... and the driver felt trapped there
by the smell of decay and disintegration” (60). Tactile imagery is presented in the scene
where Willieboy is shot indiscriminately. This act of violence, which represents the “big-
blow” of the upper class against the down trodden, is captured thus: “The bullet slapped
into the boy...” (86).
On the stylistic level, the text has a uniquely foregrounded language that cannot
be wholly described within the scope of this study. However, it should be noted that the
aspect of language dealing with police relations and brutality is stylistically important.
The language of the police and some of the coloured characters in the text frequently
employs codemixing and codeswitching between English and Afrikaans as well as the
use of slangs and colloquialisms. In one of the scenes involving the police and Michael,
the policemen make use of codemixing and codeswitching in their utterance; “waar loop
jy rond, jong?” (11). This deliberate switching and mixing of Afrikaans and English is
used to intimidate the coloured Bantus. When the blacks hear Afrikaans, they begin to
maintain themselves knowing full well that they are dealing with white supremacists that
have little or no regards for them. Slangs and colloquialisms abound in the text and these
are all used mainly to relegate the coloured people as well as to create a divide between
the police and the oppressed masses. Some of the slangs and colloquialisms frequently
employed by the policemen include; “jong”, “kerel”, “hotnot”, “blerry skollies” and
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“skollies” which are used to refer to black men. On the other hand, coloured people use
subservient terms such as “baas” to answer to the policemen.
These stylistic devices are important in understanding the text, not just as a text
but as a literary work of art. They situate the themes found in the work and merge them
with techniques much so that form and content become one and are inexplicably so.
These devices have been used to present the overarching focus of this study on the issue
of police brutality and the critical framework of Marxism is used in this analysis.
Conclusion
This research work has examined Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night against the
background of police brutality. The selection of this issue is predicated upon the idea that
the text has been sufficiently explored by other critics as an apartheid material. However,
the role(s) played by the police in the materialisation of apartheid as well as the role of
the police as an agency of the bourgeois class is seldom studied. This work has therefore
adopted the theoretical/critical framework of Marxism to examine the text as a
presentation of the police as exploitative oppressors and as tools in the hands of the
oppressive superstructure and elites in apartheid South Africa. Some of the issues relating
to police brutality such as torture, unlawful detention, racial slurs, and others have been
highlighted as present in the text. The dominant stylistic peculiarities of the text,
especially as they relate to the overarching idea of police brutality have also been
highlighted. It is hoped that this work has added a new interpretative angle to the critical
discourses on La Guma’s A Walk in the Night.
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