Eksperiment en intertekstualiteit: 'n studie van Ingrid Winterbach se Niggie (2002) en die oorlogsdagboek van Jan F.E. Celliers 1899-1902 (1978), asook ander Anglo-Boereoorlog tekste

This study focuses on the creative adaptation of Anglo-Boer War material in Ingrid Winterbach’s (Lettie Viljoen) Niggie [Cousin] (2002) with specific reference to the Oorlogsdagboek van Jan F.E. Celliers, 1899-1902 [War Diary of Jan F.E. Celliers, 1899-1902] (1978) and other texts written during or shortly after the Anglo Boer War in Dutch, such as Totius’ Vier-en-sestig dae te velde: ‘n Oorlogsdagboek [Sixty Four Days Afield: A War Diary] (1977) and in English, Woman’s Endurance (1904) by A.D.L. and Deneys Reitz’s Commando. A Boer Journal of the Boer War (1929). More recent Afrikaans novels dealing with the same war are also analysed, such as Ons oorlog [Our War] (2000) by Klaas Steytler, Op soek na Generaal Mannetjies Mentz [In Search of General Mannetjies Mentz] (1998) by Christoffel Coetzee and Etienne Leroux’s Magersfontein O! Magersfontein (1976). A literary analysis is done of the novel Niggie, with specific focus on the nature and function of Anglo-Boer War material in Winterbach’s text. The question is posed why there is such a sustained focus and creative adaptation of Anglo-Boer War texts in Winterbach’s oeuvre (especially in Belemmering [Impediment], 1990, Karolina Ferreira, 1993, Buller se plan [Buller’s Plan], 1999, and Niggie [Cousin], 2002)? This novel has a profound effect on the reader a century after the war, because it addresses postcolonial issues and predicaments such as a defragmenting identity, as well as the possible demise of the Afrikaans language and culture, faced by the descendants of those involved in the war a century ago. In her reworking of the past to come to grips with the present, Winterbach confronts difficult South African topics, such as interracial relationships, racism, the relationship with the land, possible language death, gender relationships, the role of the supernatural and the unconscious in everyday life (in the form of dreams and trickster figures), amongst many others. The dissertation offers an intertextual study as well as a literary analyses of the literary techniques used, and the characteristics of this magisterial novel, which deservedly won the Hertzog prize in 2004, the highest accolade possible for an Afrikaans novel. The anomaly of such a novel in 2002 seemingly dwelling on the past, is shown up for what it is: a metaphor for the present and its dilemmas, reflecting the social conflicts existing at present in the crumbling Afrikaans community