Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum
Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum
Sonja Darlington
To cite this article: Sonja Darlington (2013) Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum: Justice Juxtaposed to
Questions of Maturity, Community, Gender, and Moral Action in the Novels by Unity Dow., Journal
of the African Literature Association, 8:1, 74-86, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2013.11690219
Sonja Darlington
Beloit College
I dont want any arguments later as to whether I said this or that. The
form, please, officerIm literate, you know. She glared back at him.
How old are you? he asked. Arent you a TSP? He was trying to figure
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
out how a girl her age had the guts to question a man wearing a police uni-
formhe was used to dealing efficiently with obedient villagers, regardless of
their age.
What relevance is my age?
74
Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum
and responsibilities. Thus, according to Durham, determining who the youth are
in Botswana involves crucial issues of power, agency, and moral structures of
society. As she elaborates, I mean that arguing over youth, or maturity, involves
exploring what it means to be a person, what power is and how it is exercised,
how people relate to one another, and what moral action might be and who may
engage in it and how (601). In discussing Unity Dows novels, it is precise-
ly these kinds of questions about personhood/ maturity, community, gender
relationships and social action that allow for the strength and uniqueness of her
artistic contributions to Botswana literature in English to become evident.
Dows detailed investigation of these themes throughout her literary output
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
75
Sonja Darlington
place where she gains recognition for her intelligence, education, and deter-
mination. During her coming of age struggles, Mosa has kept the family in the
survival mode and her brother Stan credits her adult-like leadership for his own
coping ability. Amantle Bokaa, the twenty-two year-old national service worker
in The Screaming of the Innocent is the protagonist who states unequivocally
that age has nothing to do with the ability to seek out justice in adult society.
Amantle speaks to the courage of a young woman to use her literate background
to challenge male discourse when it violates females. In Juggling Truths, Monei
Ntuka tells her story of maturing in the village of Mochudi, against a backdrop
of the 1960s, when Botswana gained independence and traditional life changed
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
dramatically, as modern patterns of living emerged among young elites often ed-
ucated abroad. In The Heavens May Fall, Naledi Chaba, a thirty-year old lawyer
and her best friend Dr. Mmidi More advocate for young female rape and abuse
victims, who solicit their professional help. In their environment of frequent
clashes with over-protective, male authority figures, Naledi and Mmidi insist on
their right as adults to challenge the health and judicial sectors in Botswana.
As part of the story in each of these novels, the female protagonist
deals with issues of infantilization, whereby she must assert her authority and
reject attempts by those who want to diminish her ability to think and act in
a mature fashion. Amantle in The Screaming of the Innocent is most direct
among Dows characters in addressing the non-compatibility of seeking justice
with defining the right to secure justice based on age. Assertive and quick-
witted, Amantle calls out the police officer who tries to intimidate her and
shut down her questioning about evidence she has found, which will later be
key to unraveling the truth about the ritual killing of a twelve year-old village
girl. Amantle resists being intimidated by a sergeant whose authority is poorly
grounded and rests primarily on his gender and age. Unaccustomed to being
out-maneuvered by an educated female, the agitated station master, to whom her
case is thrust next, resorts to tactics such as loud pronouncements, insults, and
threats. In the scene at the Maun Police Station, Amantle rejects dignifying the
question of How old are you? with a number, and she proves three officersa
sergeant, a station master, and a constableunable to match her brilliant, reverse
questioning strategies. The altercation ends with a series of grunts, emanating
from the station master who has clearly lost his ability to articulate orders to his
staff and to interrogate suspects so they will confess. If ever age is relevant to
gaining justice, it is not to be the case in this investigation. Amantles acuity and
76
Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum
maturity, which allow her to coordinate efforts to bring Neo Kakangs murderers
to justice, are more than a match for her opponents who are her so-called elders.
in this story is stymied by the sexual practices that lead to HIV/AIDS, and her
actions depict a young woman tired of fighting. Dows perspective is there-
fore as Okie notes, a realism written for sober teenagers experiencing sexual
violence, witnessing the death of those closest to them, and surviving the times
of AIDS (83). Furthermore, this is a story about an exhausted and disillusioned,
19 year-old female protagonist who is barely able to survive, and her tale is a
narrative based on bitterly frustrated maturity (83). Following the norms of
traditional Botswana society, Mosa, neither wife nor mother, is not an adult. But,
yet, as Dow has conceptualized this heroine, through her travails with cultural
ills including HIV/AIDS, Mosa demonstrates adult-like behavior that is elabo-
rated more fully by Dow in The Screaming of the Innocent. In this subsequent
novel, the author deals intentionally with the issue of age and clearly endows the
character Amantle with the fortitude to confront limitations set by conflating age
with maturity.
What can be distinctly summed up about Dows novels and the communities
in which her protagonists, such as Mosa and Amantle, come of age is perhaps
best interpreted to date by Mary Lederer and Nobantu Rasebotsas criticism on
the rural-urban dichotomy in Far and Beyon. One of their insights about the
sense of place in Dows writing is that it is significant only to the extent that
it illuminates the nature of human relationships, which they argue is the most
valuable aspect of human life. They suggest that what matters is restoring
and maintaining peoples sense of to whom they belong, (22) and in Far and
Beyon Dow elaborates the values of unity and collective support found in a rural
Botswana village. As the main character Mosa is forced to deal with the deaths
of family members from AIDS, and although her life unfolds within the confines
of a local community, her intelligence and education help her to navigate beyond
77
Sonja Darlington
the perils of seeing AIDS as a local curse, like her mother does, and to move
towards regarding AIDS as a world-wide virus, like current medical practitioners
do. Implicit in the change in mental attitude from believing in superstition to
accepting a scientific-based approach to the illness, is that Mosa has under-
stood the negative beliefs associated with AIDS and has matured and embraced
possibilities of healing through contemporary means. As Lederer and Rasebotsa
say, Dows literary strategy is to use Mosa as a transitional figure who can keep
traditional values in mind while also judging them by modern standards.
While Far and Beyon is grounded by relationships in rural Botswana,
where unity and collective support are found closely tied to family and to tradi-
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
tional behavioral codes, in The Heavens May Fall, connections among people
in urban Botswana are found tied not only to family, who may project more
modern behavioral codes, but also to personal and professional friends, who
reflect contemporary social arrangements. For example, Naledi Chabas family
consists of a single father who has chosen to live by himself as a widower. As
Naledi narrates, when she was ten My father declared himself capable of living
without outside female help, (7) and chose not to remarry as is customary. His
relationship with his daughter is firmly rooted in routines such as storytelling,
listening to the radio, and playing cards. Even when Naledi is an adult, she
continues to depend on him for advice, when they play Casino and dine together
on Thursday evenings. However, both father and daughter insist on independent
living arrangements by owning their respective homes, despite aunts and uncles
who disapprove of their untraditional life styles. They both make adjustments
to environmental changes, which include adapting to neighborhoods that have
developed from rondavels to bigger, multiple-roomed houses and to national
programs that have incorporated state-subsidized utilities, free education and
free health care (96). As father and daughter, they demonstrate that non-tradi-
tional families can build meaningful relationships in modern Botswana commu-
nities.
Naledis community also includes, Mmidi More, who is a working profes-
sional at Deborah Retief Memorial Hospital in Mochudi. As best friends, on
a personal and professional level, they represent urban relationships in which
nuclear families have been expanded to include friends, who as peers, provide a
kind of network, in which people support each other through strong, long-lasting
commitments. Naledi as a lawyer and More as a doctor work well together, and
the bonds that form between them represent the new spaces in which community
78
Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum
79
Sonja Darlington
and her thesis ably demonstrates the strong connection that Dow has to wom-
ens rights. As have other critics, Biscaia draws upon Dows views in How the
Global Informs the Local: The Botswana Citizenship Case published in Health
Care for Women International, in order to illustrate the extent to which Dow
supports the idea of giving women power to be participate equally in Botswana
society rather than functioning as mens props. She quotes Dow as saying, there
cannot be a discussion about human rights without a discussion about women
and the law (323). Dows legitimate authority to address issues of womens
rights violation is founded on her own challenge to the Citizenship Act that did
not recognize her children as Botswana citizens, because they were born to an
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
80
Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum
difficulties with teasing out written and customary law, as she tries to help Kitso
Mokobi avoid a divorce caused from a spell cast by her mother-in-law on her
husband. With cases such as this, when the protagonist is not able to successful-
ly unravel a judicial issue, the point still has to be made that as Biscaia rightly
argues, Dow recognizes discriminatory gender behavior in Botswana culture and
effectively portrays the everyday challenges in its social life that stifle women.
Even Juggling Truths, which does not seemingly agitate for gender equality
and teenage independence as much as her other novels, is a studied introduction
to fundamental questions that arise from the interactions of individuals within
their community about gender. The young budding protagonist Monei who, like
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
81
Sonja Darlington
than heaping blame on the perpetrators, guides her readers to recognize social,
personal, and cultural complexities (36). According to Gagiano, this so-called
thorn in the flesh gives rise in Dows novels to both forms and abuses of power
and to life-affirming, future-directed activities and social roles (36). As Muff
Anderson who has written on Amantles revolutionary spirit as amateur sleuth
with brothers in South African mines during the Apartheid notes, Dows writing
engages the political and reminds him of the revolutionary art form described by
Soyinka in Art, Dialogue and Outrage. To support his point, Anderson referenc-
es a passage in The Screaming of the Innocent as Principal Modiega asks Mrs.
Seme, one of the teachers, about students wearing smelly blankets instead of
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
82
Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum
perfect young, budding body. This young girls impala likeness is compared hu-
morously, although with sinister undertones, with Mr. Disankas youngest child
affectionately called, Debaby, who jiggles and wobbles from being loved in
the form of endlessly being given ice cream, chips, fatty cakes, chicken, sodas,
and gum (4). Ironically, as well, in The Heavens May Fall, Justice Mmang
by virtue of being a Chief Justice ought to be a role model for a just citizenry.
Instead, he refuses to marry Gertrude Badisa and conspires to hide his true
identity as a Bush womans, son, so that he can snatch a top-notch education
and achieve laudable judiciary credentials. In the same novel, Dow pokes fun at
Naledi who though an admirable adversary for the judge and respected for her
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
intellectual skills is nonetheless aware of her feminine appreciation for pink, use
of bad words as a child, desire for a weekly beer, and delight in the occasional
flirtatious male.
Despite Dows range of abilities in her writing, criticisms that have been
leveled at Dow, for being too political and feminist, have been overshadowed
by her successful, detective-like technique that focuses on crimes being solved
quickly in slim volumes. Her political and aesthetic approach have been widely
praised for their appeal as young adult fiction. Reputed to be established as a
unique genre for its young protagonists, brevity, succinct plots, simple vocab-
ulary and syntax, Dow gets high marks for these aspects of her writing style.
Most often, her details are either related to a case a protagonist is trying to solve
or to provide readers with background on Botswana politics, culture, or law that
Dow believes her audience ought to know. Her strongest attributes include her
Setswana vocabulary inserted as a reminder of the particular community with
which she identifies. She frequently uses a Setswana word to identify the cultur-
al aspect that she is trying to define, whether it is a social practice, such as phe-
kola (strengthening ritual), depheko (ritual killing), or borekhu hunting (gum/
resin hunting), or an environmental identifier, such as the morula trees, insects
mabere (beetles) or moselesele wood. And, the vast majority of her characters
have Setswana names, which themselves carry meaning. Other noteworthy
stylistic devices are the episodic approach to multilayered stories and the use of
suspense built around targeting perpetrators of heinous crimes and bringing them
to justice. Numerous incidents are also interjected to bring common Setswana
attitudes and beliefs into the plot and suggest a connection to historical markers
and customs.
A further analysis of Dows writing also includes a consideration of her
83
Sonja Darlington
syntax: short sentences and simple structures, well arranged into brief chapters
from two to 19 pages, which fits the purpose of providing investigative research
into the process of self-discovery. Among the syntactical forms that appear
frequently is the interrogative, which also fit the purpose of questioning what
lies beneath the issues that confront contemporary Botswana society. In addition,
her semanticswords, phrases, sentences and their meaningsuggest the sense
of how not only society changes but also how language changes and varies,
according who, when, and where someone speaks. Many of her female char-
acters, in order for them to challenge authority, have had to learn to make their
way within particular language communities, so that they know what words and
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
phrases will attract attention and unsettle the interlocutor, who is often an adult
male. For example, Naledi Chaba, as prosecutor, is merciless in her questions to
Justice Mmung who does not recuse himself from a case in which he would be
disbarred, were he to remain the presiding judge. In a spectacular verbal joust,
when he is seemingly willing to do anything within his power to remove Naledi
from the roster of speakers at the Law Societys Annual Dinner, she combines
her written speech with an impromptu address and demonstrates her unflinching
verbal assertiveness. In the end, she relishes the speech she gave that brought
across to the audience some of what [she] considered to be the social and legal
issues (166). Naledi has taken her sophisticated audience and brought them into
their former shared world of no tar-roads, no running water and no electricity,
limited places in school and reminded them amidst applause for Botswana, that
despite being the shining example of democracy in Africa not all was well,
what with the disintegration of the extended family system, the ravages of AIDS
and the runaway crime (167).
In summary, Dows key focus in her fiction can be said to mirror Selol-
wanes concern for the future of democracy in Botswana by also investigating
the role of youth. Dow casts her support behind young people and teaches them
about the process of changing political institutions and provides stories in which
young protagonists gain legitimate power and participate in governing Botswana
society. Each of her novels emphasizes the potential for youth as social agents
to change institutions and political circumstances. In addition, Dow also mirrors,
Deborah Durhams careful interpretation of youth in terms of how they are
positioned as an individual or group with respect to their social attributes. Dows
concerns, like those of Durhams, address a nuanced understanding of what it
means to be a mature person, define how relationships work in society among
84
Fiat Justitia, Ruat Caelum
young and old, examine in whom power is invested and why, and identify who
can engage in moral action and for what reasons. So that, as Gagiano and others
rightly insist, Dows novels do not present static social constructs nor do they
present pre-digested conclusions. Rather, Dow defends the right of young
people to challenge the political system, so it reflects the highest expectations
for honesty and integrity. She rejects pronouncements in favor of processes of
education that involve adjusting to contemporary realities, within the framework
of social and cultural traditions that have evolved within particular communities,
such as Mochudi, over time. Thus, she brings issues related to maturity, com-
munity, gender, and moral action up close for careful scrutiny. To that end, Fiat
Downloaded by [Pepperdine University] at 06:05 05 August 2017
justitia, ruat caelum, a call to justice at any cost, is precisely what Dow has en-
deavored to exemplify through her novels. Her militancy, if it can be called that,
is to articulate that society is always changing, and its youth, whether female
or male, ought to be enabled to exercise its power and participate in governing
Botswana, so that as a democratic state, it hopefully grows more transparent and
accountable. Arguably, she avoids the trap of imagining that as she portrays is-
sues of justice in Botswana that she is the custodian of African identity (Kalua
82).
Works Cited
Anderson, Muff. Watching the Detectives. Social Dynamics: A Journal in African
Studies. 30:2 (2004): 141-153.
Biscaia, Dulce Paula. Empowering Women in Unity Dows The Screaming Innocent. Diss.
Universidade de Aveiro, 2010.
Browne, Peter. The Best of Times, the Worst of Times. Griffith Review. Ed 17: Staying
Alive. Web. 10 June 2013.
Dow, Unity. Far and Beyon Gaborone: Longman Botswana, 2001.
---. How the Global Informs the Local: The Botswana Citizenship Case. Health Care
for Women International, 22:4 (2001): 319-331.
---. The Heavens May Fall. Victoria, Australia: Spinifex, 2006.
---. Juggling Truth. Victoria, Australia: Spinifex, 2003.
---. The Screaming of the Innocent. Victoria, Australia: Spinifex, 2002.
Durham, Deborah. Disappearing Youth: The Social Shifter in Botswana. American
Ethnologist. 31:4 (2004): 589-605.
Gagiano, Annie. Getting Under the Skin of Power: The Novels of Unity Dow. English
Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies. 21:1 (2004). 36-50.
Kalua, Fetson, New Perspectives in African Literature: The Case of Unity Dow and
85
Sonja Darlington
Van Allen, Judith. Feminism and Social Democracy in Botswana. Socialism and De-
mocracy. 21:3 (2007): 97-124
86