The “Great Coloured Question” and the Cosmopolitan: Fiction, History and Politics in David's Story

In this article we set out to interrogate Wicomb's David's Story as a political and historical intervention and to examine its treatment of the “great coloured question” and the relationship between armed liberation struggle and democracy. The novel has the potential to be read as a liberal critique of the ANC's treatment of coloured people and of women in exile and in the transition to democracy, but we argue that one can only arrive at such a reading by closing down meaning within the text. The novel raises fundamental questions about the activities and cosmopolitan reach of the ANC in exile, but also about the relationship between coloured people and the greater South African whole. The novel's narrative complexity and multi-layered portrayal of ethical dilemmas, and ethnic cross-currents, should compel readers to confront the impossibility of discerning a single, simple truth about the history or the future of South Africa.