July's People

A 30-something Black man from a rural area 600 kilometers east of Johannesburg, July has worked for Maureen and Bam for 15 years, handling the most intimate tasks of their household. He’s the story’s prime mover since, after the collapse of white rule in South Africa, he boldly takes the fate of the Smales family into his hands, granting them shelter. Almost all the novel’s events take place on July’s property, a “habitation of mud huts” occupied by members of his extended family (12), where the Smaleses are forced to hide, mostly passively, while July takes on most of the important decisions. Weeks into their stay, the Smaleses learn their former house servant’s real name (Mwawate). Consonantly, their longtime ignorance of July’s inner feelings and true character lead them to become increasingly suspicious of his motives, especially when he borrows their bakkie (pickup truck) without permission.

Indeed, July’s motivations are partly a mystery to readers as well since the book provides few glimpses into his thoughts. While he directs most of the novel’s action, July’s thoughts remain ambiguous since the novel interprets his actions mostly through Maureen’s increasingly hostile perspective as she grapples with her anxieties about her servant’s increasing power over her and her family’s lives. For instance, whether July’s pleasure at learning how to drive their bakkie is simple joy at learning a useful skill or (as his white guests suspect) a gloating arrogance at commandeering the Smaleses’ most valuable possession remains unclear: “[H]e was not a simple man, they could not read him” (60). What puzzles the Smaleses in particular is how July continues to play the devoted servant in almost every word and action, which makes him “borrowing” the bakkie so shocking to them. Increasingly, they wonder whether him harboring them—which ostensibly puts him and his family in significant jeopardy—is entirely altruistic or is his way of rubbing his new leverage in their faces while slyly stealing their property. (Adding to their fear and resentment, Maureen notices small, cheap objects in the village that July has apparently stolen from their household over the years.) However, in a couple of July’s conversations with his wife and his mother, who resent the Smaleses’ continued presence in their home, July passionately defends his former employers, insisting to his relatives that they have nowhere else to go. These scenes balance those showing the Smaleses’ anger and suspicion, casting July as a possibly benevolent figure who wants only to do the right thing.

When the Smaleses’ shotgun is stolen, presumably by July’s friend Daniel, Maureen pushes July to the breaking point, accusing him of violating their supposed bond of trust and affection by pilfering small items from her household. July, who for 15 years has diligently served the Smaleses and their children to the exclusion of his own family—whom he was allowed to visit only every two years—explodes at her, mostly in his own language, since his rudimentary “servant English” lacks the words for the rage and contempt he feels. Maureen, he bluntly conveys, never regarded him as an equal, much less as a friend, and has no notion of him as a person or a man. He continued to play the servant because that is the only bond he feels between them: He doesn’t care to know them as people, any more than they’ve tried to know him, despite all their liberal pretensions. The rancid South African legacy of white master/Black servant has made true communication between them impossible—the words don’t exist. July’s lapsing into his own language, which Maureen has never learned, forcefully denotes this.