Law, Subject de/Formation and Resistance in Bloke Modisane's Blame Me on History (Report‪)‬

Introduction In this essay, I shall consider the depiction of law and policing in Bloke Modisane's memoir Blame Me on History (1986[1963]), which not only provides an articulate and formally experimental narrative of the life of a black man (and professional writer) under apartheid, (1) in which, as Abdul JanMohamed observes, "the Manichean organisation of colonial society reached its apogee" (1983: 4), but also offers a detailed literary account of apartheid's legal apparatus and police brutality. (2) In part, too, Blame is an account of the demolition by the apartheid government in 1955 of Sophiatown--the Johannesburg township renowned for its racial mix, shebeens, jazz, gangsterism and, above all, its refusal to capitulate to the psychic oppression of apartheid--and the aftermath of its destruction. (3) Modisane considers the apartheid government's determination to raze Sophiatown as continuous with its obsession with extinguishing urban black identity. The death of Sophiatown betokens, at least symbolically, the death of Bloke (1986[1963]: 5). (4)