"On Your Knees, White Man": African (Un)Belongings in Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart

This paper analyzes the concept of what can be called an "insider Whiteness," at once African and inevitably always already out of Africa. Specifically, it explores life writing narratives by White Africans as a rich setting for an analysis of how White people both relate to the continent as a physical and imaginary space and negotiate their ability to call Africa "home." Through detailed textual analysis of Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart (1990) and reference to a number of works by J. M. Coetzee, Gillian Slovo, Breyten Breytenbach and Doris Lessing, the paper proposes that the continuing debates about identity and race in post-Apartheid South Africa show that it takes a great deal of work for the White person truly to belong in Africa.