Dry White Season by Andre Brink

¶ … Dry White Season

In Andre Brink's novel A Dry White Season, the background of apartheid-era South Africa sets the stage for a legal battle which challenged the racial policies of the period. During Apartheid, the governmental regime set about a system of government-sanctioned racism which forced the black people of the area to suffer greatly. The story is on the surface a murder mystery which then enters the genre of political thriller. The central character of the story is white school teacher Ben du Toit. Although he begins the story as a selfish man concerned more with preserving the status quo and with it his own protection than in investigating the brutality of an assault on an innocent young man. Through the course of the story, du Toit evolves into a man who cannot stand by while allowing the present racist government policy to continue on unquestioned. His selfishness morphs from a single-minded determination to stay out of the situation into a single-minded determination to find the answer regarding who murdered his gardener Jonathan. In that regard, Ben du Toit begins the story as a selfish man and ends the story as a selfish man as well. Although the target of his selfishness changes from himself to the society around him, he still allows his determination to prohibit him from being influenced by the people around him or fulfilling his responsibilities to the people who care about him, including his wife.

Schoolteacher Ben du Toit had never been an exciting man. He was a teacher with an ambitious wife who made dollhouses to relax. When Gordon Ngubene, a man who was both the janitor at du Toit's school and a personal friend, comes to du Toit for help when he cannot find his son after a violent excursion with police forces, du Toit's instinct is to protect himself. Instead of going to the police directly for information about Jonathan Ngubene, du Toit goes through an intermediary: a lawyer with no real feeling about the case at all. Du Toit agrees to pay this lawyer money for supposedly gathering information about Jonathan. The lawyer Levinson says in a most inappropriate tone, "Now don't you worry…we'll give them hell. By the way, do we have your address on the account?" (43). Levinson's investigation consisted of writing letters and making phone calls which helped nothing.

This complacency changed when he became personally affected by the violence of South Africa. Gordon Ngubene had been killed by government forces and his son Jonathan before that. Jonathan Ngubene was killed during a youth riot where a group of young men marched on Johannesburg to protest the racist Apartheid laws. These marches, part of a series were designed to show the government the dissatisfaction of the nation's youth and would often turn into violent bloodshed, not least of all because the government would send armed men to combat the protestors. "It happened in July, in one of the demonstrations which by then had become an almost daily ritual: children and youths assembling for a march to Johannesburg, police converging in armoured trucks, long rattling bursts of automatic gunfire, a hail of stones and bricks and bottles…Shots, shouts, dogs" (41). It is easier to ignore violence in the abstract than to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the murder of someone you know. This is what happens to du Toit. In one context he becomes less selfish because he is concerned with the lives of another group of people besides himself.

Even after witnessing the inefficacy of this lawyer, du Toit does not get his hands dirty by getting directly involved with the police. Although he is sympathetic to Ngubene, his priority is still very much on self preservation. He says to his friend, "There's nothing you or I can change" (48). Du Toit begs Ngubene not to go to the police directly and make accusations about what happened to Jonathan because their wrath will go back to the accuser. To this, Ngubene makes a statement which exemplifies the whole conflict of the novel. He says:

Baas, the day when they whipped Jonathan you also said we can do nothing. We cannot heal his buttocks. But if we did something that day, if someone heard what we had to say, then perhaps Jonathan would not have got the sickness and the madness and the murder in his heart. I don't say it is so, Baas. I say perhaps. How can we know? (48).

Unlike du Toit who is concerned with the living, Gordon Ngubene cannot allow his questions about Jonathan to go unanswered which ultimately leads to his own demise. In the aftermath of these two murders, du Toit finally comes to the realization that doing nothing similarly accomplishes nothing and takes up where Ngubene left off.

Yet, in taking on the responsibility of investigation, he becomes neglectful of his other responsibilities and this single-mindedness is also a form of selfishness. The narrator of the book begins the story by telling the reader that Ben du Toit is dead. The conversation they have about du Toit's notes indicates how close he is to the end. "They want to wipe out every sign of me, as if I'd never been here. And I won't let them" (13). Whatever else will transpire through the course of A Dry White Season, part of the story will invariably include this event. It is possible that knowing the duplicitous nature of his government that he was aware of how his investigations would end. Given the prevalent violence of South Africa in the 1980s, he had to understand that by questioning the policies of this regime, there would be a very good likelihood that he would die. Yet, still he pushed on in his quest for answers. Although arguably du Toit was acting in the moral right, he was still being selfish in terms of his responsibilities as husband and father. This is also an ironic change because when Gordon Ngubene set out on his doomed mission for answers, du Toit tells him, "Please be careful, Gordon. Don't do anything reckless. Think of your family" (48). Du Toit could very well have been addressing these words to himself. Although he has a family of his own that requires attention and protection, du Toit charges ahead in his own quest for answers.