Fiction-Lucy never leaves the farm. She takes it over and makes it her own. She forms a partnership with the men who raped her. They work the farm together. It is no longer solely hers. And this—Coetzee suggests—is how it should be. A black man and a white woman work side-by-side to farm the land together. The rape of fiction-Lucy is a metaphor for the necessary phase of violent overthrow that has to be got through before a true post-apartheid era can begin.

South Africa never had a violent revolution. It had a negotiated settlement. The old regime grudgingly handed power over only once certain guarantees were in place. Those guarantees—“sunset clauses”—were not agreed upon in anything approaching a democratic fashion.

Coetzee’s book has been praised as “unflinching,” as holding a mirror up to the post-apartheid lie. But I refuse to accept it. I refuse to accept that my rape is the best metaphor for the overthrow of the old order.

As I pull up in front of the farmhouse, I can see her—Fiction-Lucy. She is coming in from the fields, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with her rapist. Her child is strapped to her back with two blankets tied at the corners. I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. It is not an option for her to hand her child to a babysitter. She and the women who work here take it in turns to watch each other’s children. She has no special status. She is not the madam. Her privilege has been stripped away, leaving behind a woman like any other—one who must work for her place in the world while raising her child.

A boy. It’s a boy. I can see that now. He is the promised child born into modest circumstances, destined to lead his people to freedom. Perhaps he will become a carpenter.

Lucy and Petrus parent the child together. It is not important whether Petrus, who was not one of the rapists, is literally the father of the boy. It is not necessary for him to share DNA with the child to be its father. The boy is the child of everyone who participated in the rape, and their associates, and as such, he belongs to all of them.

He is the embodiment of the saying that it takes a village to raise a child.

Beyond the farmhouse, the fields are thriving. Wheat and barley nod in the wind, a rippling sea of green and brown. All is well with this new-new South Africa. It is a much better place than the old-new South Africa.