Book review: Bessie Head's A Question of Power

Sibusiso Banda



 Genre: Fiction
 Publishers: Heinemann African Writers Series
 Pages: 206
 Year of Publication: 1974
 Country: South Africa/Botswana

 A Question of Power is an African Writers Series novel that waswritten by Bessie Head in 1974. The novel tells a story of a woman called Elizabeth, who moved with her son, Small boy, from South Africa, where she was hugely discriminated to exile Botswana.She worked as teacher in local village called Motabeng.

Due to societal isolation and her racial and ethnic differences from the local people (of whom many ignore her),she felt alienated and as a result struggled to emerge from the oppressive social situation of whichof she was running from in South Africa, she now foundherself in. Nightmares and hallucinations startedtormenting her. She later moved again to the rural Botswana, where she was involved in a cooperative farming venture which focused on developing the economics of the locals.Instead of peace of mind, she finds the opposite of ever lasting peace.



The story has little action and humor andfew emotional hills and valleys and a lot of weird hallucinations and dreams. On another level, however, the novel can be read as is a record of the author’s mental breakdown (just like Elizabeth’s in a novel). The novel was written when the author (Head) was under mental strain and alsowhenshe was recovering from psychotic breakdown.

 Bessie Emery Head was born in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg), as the child of a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa. Like Elizabeth, Head settled in Serowe, famous both for its historical importance, as capital of the Bamangwato people, the largest of Botswana's "villages". It took 15 years for Head to obtain Botswana citizenship.

Most of Head's important works are set in Serowe, particularlyWhen Rain Clouds Gather, The Collector of Treasures (which is book on the history of Serowe),Maru, When Rain Clouds Gatherand this one that I am reviewingA Question of Power.

These novels somehow seem to have a similar story structure, asmost of all the characters’ seem to struggle to emerge from the oppressive social situations in which they found themselves, example inWhen Rain Clouds Gathershe writes about a troubled young man called Makhaya who runs away from his birth place, South Africa, to become a refugee in a little village called GolemaMmidi, in the heart of Botswana.

 Bessie’s early death in 1986, at the age 49, from hepatitis came just at the point where she was starting to achieve recognition as a writer and was no longer so desperately poor.

The setting of A Question of Power takes place in the period of the 1950s and 70s, where foreign powers were still controlling most of the African states. In South Africa racial tolerance was still rife; races were kept apart from each other through the segregationlaws of the apartheid regime. Head successfully uses this period to not only paint a complex emotional situation but also takes the readers into the mind of the “Insane” Elizabeth.

I read the novel the first day I got my hands on it, although I didn’t understand it but I kept on reading. It was only when I wasin the middle of part one, after I re-read the short summary written in the back cover of it that I started understanding it, from the story line to the writing style.

The book is separated into two parts: The first part of the novel deals with Elizabeth's relationship, which entirely takes place in hermind, with a man in the village named Sello. Sello takes on different incarnations and he is perceived or is regarded by Elizabeth as an advisor with God like characteristic.
In the second part this regard changes completely as Dan (whom Elizabeth was attracted to in the beginning) paintsSello as the bad guy. Dan torturers her psychologically as he forces her to watch sexual acts he performs on a series of fantastic women.Elizabeth fails to read the signs. It’s Sello’sdivine interventionin the end that helped Elizabeth survived Dan's threats of suicide.
The people that, I can say, kept her from committing suicide are her son and the American Peace Corps volunteer, Tom, whom she worked with in the agricultural project.They had a similar past and that’s why they were conversing on a deep level of thought: "men don’t really discuss the deep metaphysical profundities with women" Tom said to her (24).

 “Your mother was insane. It you’re not careful you’ll get insane just like your mother” (16).Its one of the most powerfully shocking racial hate speech statements that Elizabeth had to endure in her childhood and I think, since Elizabeth was exposed to it as a child, Head used these harsh words symbolically as torture that seems to influence Elizabeth’s thinking throughout the book.

Strangelyenough, in real life it was claimed that her mother was mentally ill so that she could be sent to a quiet location to then give birth to Bessie without the neighbors knowing. However, the exact circumstances are disputed, and some of Head's comments, though often quoted as straight autobiography, are in fact from fictionalized settings.

Elizabeth’s mental journey is harrowing (for the reader as well), as she slips in and out between dream, hallucination, and reality. It is hard for a person to differentiate what is real and what is not, because the author does not specify or show in writing what is reality and what are dreams. That was what I was struggling with as I was reading. The reason why I think this is hard to differentiate it’s because of two things: the lack of idea separation and the type of language used in the book.

Bessie does not stick to one idea at a time, as she narrativeshe fills you upwith a lot of images and emotions then drifts away without finishing the points she was about to make. She uses different themes such Abandonment, Colonialism, Cross-Cultural Issues, Loneliness, Obsession, Rebellion, Sexuality of which when combined with both the complex narrative method and the unusual type of language (symbolic) used in novel confesses the reader. It’s for the above mentioned reason and also the use of insensitive language that I come to the presumption that the target audience for the novel are adults perhaps at the age of 25 and whose level of education is higher.

Though the story line hasvarious themes and complex word structure, the novel is able achieve its purpose, which is to take the readers to the mentally ill mind of Elizabeth and it is similar to William Bernhardt’s Dark Eyed where he also takes the reader into the complex mind of a psycho killer who is on the loose and always seems to be a few steps ahead of the detective and the psychological profiler who are after him. Although both novels have different story lines but they are use the same complicated structure of ideas (hallucinations, weird dreams, etc.) accompanied by complex words to describe and emphasize the different ways to have people tortured mentally.

In an indirect way, Bessie’sA Question of Power teaches us a lot about effects of post colonial treatment on the Africans and the reasons behind the social gender imbalance: why the African society regards males as a superior and most powerfulgenderwhen comparedwomen.

 I find the book informative as it teaches us about the effects of apartheid and other cross-racial issues and some of the indirect impact it had on how different African races had on other countries races (refugee).To some large extent, I think it explains the reasons why way the society is in the state it’s in today: