This purposeful ignorance underpins Galgut’s narrative choices in the novel. “A lot of white South Africans just don’t care to ask, or aren’t interested enough to ask.” I mean, so close that sometimes these are people who’ve worked for your family for years,” he says. “The white South African psyche is not very perceptive about Black citizens that are really, really close to hand. Per Galgut, the central focus of The Promise is “the white South African psyche,” or the mentality used to justify the subjugation of Black South Africans for more than three centuries, which can be seen in the dynamic between the Swarts family and Salome. “But it was always heartening to me that people knew this was going to be a process, not just a flip of the switch.” “You cannot transform the economic situation that apartheid bequeathed to us overnight,” he says. The overall bribery rate reported by people using public services was 18% in 2019, up from 7% in 2015.ĭespite the rampant corruption and a “sense of exhaustion,” Galgut sees glimmers of hope. According to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, 64% of 1,840 citizens surveyed in 2018 thought corruption had increased in the previous 12 months.
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