Apartheid, Racial Oppression, and Dehumanization Theme Analysis

“The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses” is set in a South African prison camp during the era when the system of apartheid was the law of the land in South Africa. Instituted after World War II, apartheid mandated strict classification and separation of the races according to a hierarchy of white, colored (mixed race), and black. This brutal and racist system incited much opposition, and the South African government frequently jailed political protestors. “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses” was published in 1973 at the height of apartheid’s sway, and focuses on a bespectacled political prisoner named Brille who is a part of a group of black political prisoners called Span One that is relatively successful in resisting the prison’s authority until a new, brutal guard named Hannetjie is brought in specifically to subdue them. Through its portrayal of the conflict between Hannetjie and Span One, the story demonstrates the way that oppressive authorities seek to use physical and psychological violence to break down and dehumanize those who are oppressed until they accept that oppression. But the story also shows the way that such behavior also dehumanizes the oppressors.

Violence and strict discipline are accepted as normal in the prison camp. All the prisoners are subjected to brutal physical violence and harsh punishments: “it was the kind of prison where men got knocked out cold with a blow at the back of the head from an iron bar.” The imagery of the “iron bar” both describes a literal implement of violence and suggests the cold, hard, unyielding nature of the state power behind it. A specific example of such violence occurs after Brille talks back to Hannetjie, challenging the warder’s authority: “Hannetjie whipped out a knobkerrie and gave Brille several blows about the head.” Other non-physical punishments inflicted are similarly harsh. At one point, Hannetjie notices that Brille has dropped a cabbage while working on the prison farm, and uses this error as a way to punish all of Span One by withholding three meals from them. Brille apologizes to the Span, and his fellows reply, “What happens to one of us, happens to all of us.” This statement expresses group solidarity, but also demonstrates their resignation to the harsh punishments inflicted. Later in the story, an elderly prisoner is punished with a week in solitary confinement for stealing grapes—all the prisoners, not just those of Span One, are routinely punished far beyond the extent of any “crime” they may have committed.

The prisoners are also degraded psychologically through racial epithets and pejoratives that were commonly used in South Africa during the apartheid era. After dropping the cabbage, Brille challenges the justice of Hannetjie’s punishing the entire Span. Hannetjie replies: “Look ‘ere, I don’t take orders from a kaffir. You don’t know what kind of kaffir you think you are.” The word Hannetjie uses is a racist pejorative used in South Africa to describe a black person. Equivalent to the n-word in the United States, it is often referred to as the k-word. Hannetjie’s use of it here is clearly intended to degrade Brille, as allowed and encouraged by the racist hierarchy of the time.

In the same interchange, Hannetjie also attempts to establish his racial superiority and degrade the inmates by insisting that Brille call him by his title: “Why don’t you say Baas. I’m your Baas. Why don’t you say Baas, hey?” During apartheid, black and colored South Africans were forced to use “Baas” when addressing white people as a sign of respect. The story makes clear that the prison in general, and Hannetjie in particular, are engaged in an effort to dehumanize the prisoners, to make them feel and believe that they are inferior to white people, and in so doing to make them more pliable prisoners.

In fact, the story further captures the way that apartheid more broadly is designed to accomplish the same goals: to justify the treatment of non-white people as second-class citizens by engineering conditions such that non-white people are dehumanized even when not imprisoned. The story makes this case by describing the chaos and “extreme, almost unbelievable human brutality” that characterized Brille’s family life before he was imprisoned. Brille and his wife had 12 children because they were unable to use contraceptives properly. The difficulty of supporting this large family on Brille’s teacher salary, their lack of economic stability, and their overcrowded home led to “16 years of bedlam.” Brutal fighting occurred among the children: “They’d get hold of each other’s heads and give them a good bashing against the wall.” The story makes clear that Brille’s children are not inherently violent, but that their violence is the result of the inequities of the apartheid system—specifically, lack of birth control, education, and economic opportunity for Brille and his wife. And yet the story also makes clear that the white society that created apartheid would, conveniently, never recognize these details and would instead see Brille’s children as evidence that white racist attitudes were, in fact, correct.

The story undermines any such racist arguments, though, by portraying the white guard Hannetjie—and by extension all defenders of apartheid—as being brutally inhuman themselves. Even before Hannetjie does anything vicious or brutal, he is described as being obviously brutal: “His eyes were the color of the sky but they were frightening. A simple, primitive, brutal soul gazed out of them.” After seeing Hannetjie, Brille says to the rest of Span One: “We’re in for trouble this time, comrades.” When asked why, Brille replies “Because he’s not human.” In describing how Hannetjie’s white characteristics—his blue eyes—mark his brutality and inhumanity, the story turns on its head common apartheid practices of seeing black people as inhuman or brutal based on their appearance. The word “primitive” in the racist discourse of the time was often used to describe Africans who were thought to be less intellectually and culturally developed than their European colonizers. This portrayal is reversed in the description of Hannetjie’s “frightening” blue eyes that reveal his “primitive, brutal soul.” And Hannetjie does end up being just as brutal and inhuman as his appearance makes Brille suspect, which of course invalidates the racist apartheid idea that “primitiveness” is a uniquely “non-white” characteristic, with white people as the defenders of civilized society.

But the story pushes even further. Eventually, Brille finds a way to turn the tables on Hannetjie to the degree that he has Hannetjie in his power. But rather than force Hannetjie to bribe him for protection, he instead tells Hannetjie that he wants to form an alliance with him. Hannetjie takes the deal, but what at first is certainly an alliance of convenience over time evolves into what seems like something more. As Span One helps Hannetjie, he in turn often responds with such generosity that it leaves the prisoners “speechless with surprise.” As he ceases to be a guard and instead becomes a kind of partner with the prisoners, Hannetjie undergoes a moral transformation. He ceases to be brutal or inhuman.

The racist and white supremacist apartheid system was based on the idea that non-white people were inherently inferior to white people, and therefore were deserving of lesser status and opportunity due to their underdeveloped and primitive nature. Head’s story challenges this logic in two ways: by making clear how apartheid is designed to create dehumanizing conditions under which non-white people suffer; but also, through the initial brutality and subsequent moral transformation of the white jailer Hannetjie, that in perpetrating apartheid white society is in fact dehumanizing itself. The story shows the false logic and belief underlying apartheid, and the danger that such false beliefs pose to both the oppressed and the oppressor.