Apartheid’s Patriarchies in Decline: White Masculinities in Damon Galgut’s The Promise

The initial popular reception of Damon Galgut’s Promise (2021) has overlooked issues gender in the text, favouring instead more narrow allegorical readings race. In response to this, this article emphasises novel’s engagement with distinctly gendered nature transition from apartheid, focusing on representation white masculinities text. This raises concerns about how these are depicted. Through close text’s systematic introduction and disavowal constitutive forces apartheid’s patriarchies—including fatherhood, Christianity, security state—this argues that is one negation; it offers a narrative mode which rendered sterile, rewritten well-worn register an anti-apartheid moral certitude depends tired tropes. While novel attempts important decentring masculinities, its outlook ultimately bleak as shown lack depth, resulting their power present being curiously absented act textual erasure.