Holding back
Midnight
Maureen Isaacson
Characters
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President Manzwe
Mother
Ethel
Leon (husband)
Dad
Uncle Otto
Louis Dutoit
Joyce Dutoit
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The daughter
Paul Schoeman
President Manzwe
President Manzwe is the new President of
South Africa after transformation
 He is the first black President.
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The daughter
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She and her non-white husband, Leon,
lives on a communal plot in the outer limits
of the mega-city.
Mother
She is drinking
 She is old, and looks like a dead person
 They have ravaged voices from smoking
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Ethel
The mother’s friend
 She is also old and ravished from
smoking.
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Leon Laubscher
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Leon is coloured
He is married to the daughter
The dogs always bark at him because of his
colour
Leon is not bitter about the past.
His motto is forgive and forget.
He has equilibrium, he is peaceful.
Laubscher is a white surname so people don’t
know immediately that he is a non-white.
Dad
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The father is caught up in history
He still lives in the Old South Africa and does not
want to change.
He was a hotel owner.
White men used his hotel rooms to sleep with
women of another colour
These meetings were not allowed in the Old
South Africa
He is the perfect host at the party.
Dad
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He was very rich and had connection in the
government during the old regime.
He was a miner but made his money with the
hotel.
They owned three game farms and four cars.
The new regime took away some of his farms
because of the redistribution of wealth policy.
Uncle Otto
Ex-minister of Home Affairs
 He lost his position when the government
changed.
 He was one of her father’s guests at the
hotel
 He calls the prostitutes angels.
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Louis Dutoit
A Dentist
 A family friend
 Still believes in the Old Johannesburg
 Louis only treats white people.
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Joyce Dutoit
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Still believes in Old Johannesburg as it
was during Apartheid.
Paul Schoeman
The old minister of Law and Order.
 He cannot understand that the daughter
lives in a native township (Soweto)
 He wears a panic button around his neck
which is set off when he pulls the daughter
too close to him when dancing.
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Setting
Set in the last minutes before midnight, 31
December 1999.
 South Africa is on the brink of the new
millenium.
 Women wear recyclable dresses and
everyone uses paper gloves in restaurants
to prevent the transmission of AIDS.
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Plot
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The daughter and her non-white husband is at her parents New
Year’s party.
They await the arrival of the year 2000.
Some of the guests are ministers from the old regime.
The characters find themselves in the new South Africa
Through the conversations you hear that the old generation is not
accepting the changes.
The daughter sets off Paul Schoeman’s panic button when they
dance
Armed security guards arrive and the dogs are let out.
They insinuate that the husband is hiding because the dogs don’t
like him
Midnight arrives and the father says no not yet, suggesting he is
holding back midnight
Intention
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The writer concentrates on the past.
The parents and their friends – among them
cabinet ministers from the old regime – refuse to
relinquish the past.
The writer shows the difference between the
views of the daughter and her parents.
The older generation can not read the signs that
things have changed.
Intention
The older generation misinterprets the
new freedom for anarchy (chaos and disorder)
 The older generation protects themselves
with security guards, panic buttons and
dogs.
 The old generation tell stories of lifts not
working and rubbish piling up
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The heading of the story
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‘Holding back midnight’ can be interpreted
figuratively.
Nobody is able to stop midnight (12’o clock) from
happening.
Midnight refers figuratively to the New South
Africa, change, events,.
By not accepting the new government the father
and his friends are holding back the arrival of the
new regime.
Old South Africa
Cheap labour was the cause of ghettos.
 Afrikaans and English are the only official
languages.
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New South Africa
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The ghetto’s got smaller when there was no
more cheap labour
There are more shebeens and malls that play
jazz in the old poverty stricken township.
Soweto is connected to Johannesburg with a
skyway and a highway
Soweto runs on foreign funding
There are millions of people, of all races, living
in the new exciting and modern Soweto.
They plant organic food.
They care about Johannesburg.
New South Africa
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The daughter wears a dress made of paper.
They recycle their products.
There is a downswing in crime.
Because of the redistribution of wealth there are
no more poor people.
Afrikaans and English are not the official
languages.