The Reaction to 'White Colonial Oppression' in Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather

A good amount of South African literature focuses on the psychological and mental disorders of South African people. Critics often shed light on white colonialism and its humiliating treatment of black people. They show the suffering of the South African people and how they are fighting black white colonialism. The impressive fact is that more often the South African people create wisdom out of the madness of apartheid.
This paper addresses the wisdom of madness in Bessie Head’s novel When Rain Clouds Gather (1969).The paper explores the theme of madness in literature. White colonialism is one of the main reasons for madness in South African people. This paper addresses madness from a Post-Colonial perspective as white colonialism effects the South African people mentally and psychologically. The relation between madness and colonialism is outlined with reference to Post-Colonial theory as this allows us to see mental and psychological disorders within the broader context of colonialism and oppression. The theoretical views of Frantz Fanon’s are repeatedly referred to since he is one of the psychiatrists and theoreticians interested in the colonizer/ colonized relationship especially the disorders of the South Africans under white colonialism. Apartheid in South Africa is one of the main devices of control and humiliation to the South African people.
In When Rain Clouds Gather Makhaya, the protagonist of the novel, is the symbol of black South African anger. He and Paulina suffer psychologically from losing precious things and from identity crisis. This paper expresses how Head sways between depression and hope throughout the novel due to white colonialism.