July's People Essay Questions

When July takes the Smales family to his land and as they come to depend on him for their protection, is he still his servant? Discuss the change in his relationship with them.

From July's point of view, he remains the couple's servant. He sees himself extending his position from their home to his home.

This isn't the case for Maureen, however, who presumes that everything has changed. She sees July's act as an act of friendship. She believes that now that he is their host, they must be on equal terms. This is not how she behaves, however, as she mistrusts him and projects negative motives onto him.

The tension that arises between July and Maureen stands in for a larger tension between blacks and whites struggling to find equal footing in post-apartheid conditions.

How do you explain Maureen's mistrust of July? Is he deserving of her suspicions or are they merely a projection?

Throughout the novel, Maureen recalls her childhood in which her father was the boss of a mining company that employed black workers who were exploited and mistreated. It's no coincidence that these childhood memories begin to arise at a time when Maureen finds herself at the mercy of black people. With the roles of power reversed, Maureen becomes insecure and the foundations of her racial projections begin to emerge. July is no more deserving of her suspicions than she ever should have been of his when she held the power over him as his white boss back in Johannesburg.

How would you describe Maureen and Bam's politics? On the one hand, they claim to in support of black liberation; on the other hand, they're hoping for the South African military to make gains so that they can be freed.

Now that the tables have turned and South African blacks have the power and whites are at their mercy, Maureen and Bam are forced to face the difficult question of their long held anti-apartheid position. While they support black liberation, it seems that it will only be achieved at the cost of their own liberation. The novel puts them in a position of purgatory, hoping for white people to save them, and working through the challenging implications of apartheid-era liberalism.

The black revolution in Nadine Gordimer's novel is a fictional construction that never actually happened. Why might she have wanted to project this future and play out its implications? Discuss July's People in the context of apartheid South Africa in the early 1980's.

In the 1970's and 80's, the anti-apartheid movement was growing strong in South Africa; though its prominent leaders were being imprisoned and tortured, the end goal of black liberation was coming to seem possible, if not inevitable. But the question of how it would be achieved and what the society would look like afterward was central to liberal politics of the time. In her novel, Gordimer explores a vision of the country in a state of all out race-war in which the sides are strictly divided along color lines. While her vision never manifested, it arguably would have been one that was resonant to many South African imaginations.

Discuss the chief's position on black liberation and analyze other various reactions to it, from Bam and Maureen, to July and Daniel.

It comes as a surprise to Bam and Maureen that the chief of July's region is opposed to the prospect of black liberation in South Africa. They can't understand why any black people would support the apartheid regime due to its violent oppression and human rights crimes. Bam and Maureen see the divisions in color terms only. White power is only a force of violence in their imaginations and despite the fact they're white, they can't imagine a white regime being of any benefit to the black struggle.

The chief, however, is not thinking along color lines when it comes to the protection of his territory. He has a position of power within the apartheid system, so why would he want to change that? If people of other tribes come to the region and take power, he may lose his authority.