260. Indaba, My Children - African Tribal History, Legends, Customs and Religious Beliefs by Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa

For most Africans the history of their lives, their culture, their ancestors, begins from the point of entry of the unknown men with pale skin, who would later become the colonialists and the oversea slave traders. To most of us who have gone through formal education studying subjects like Social Studies, Life Skills and a bit of History, not as an Elective but as a core, the farthest we can trace our history is to the borders of the Mali, Songhai and Ghana Empires. Even then, we do not know how they are linked to our present selves. Thus, to ask a Ghanaian student - to be specific on what I can guarantee, though I know this might largely apply to several Africans - to think of his ancestors beyond this period is to ask him to risk haemorrhaging his brain cells or to cause him to hallucinate holographic images of people whose faces he cannot outline or describe and whose deeds he does not know.

Yet, it is ironical that these same folks who know nothing about themselves, their origins - for we all migrated from a source - will insist and claim certain traditions as their culture, insisting that 'this is not our culture' and yet be unable to define, to trace, to historically discuss that culture which they are trying to protect. And the authorities, the men who have to ensure that this problem is solved, look on unconcerned. The leaders - or as they prefer to call themselves, the politicians, who must invest - material and personnel -  to ensure that this knowledge gap is bridged hardly ever think about it. But it is not for nothing that money is pumped into such studies of archaeological interest. The end result is not the museum such archaeological finds occupy; they are profounder than that. They are psychological.

It has been said - and has ignorantly been repeated - that an unexamined life is not worth living; if this is the case, then we, who have lost our roots and who have no vision of where we had come from and whose only claim to fame is our struggle with the British colonisers in eighteen-something, are not worth living. There are those who will ask: What is the use? Why not move on? What will this bring us? To such questions one can only say that there is a psychological importance to knowing one's history. For instance, currently, we sit in awe of the enlightenment of other cultures with the belief that we never had one, had never had one; we sit in perplexity over where we all did come from and if we really all did come from some source then this space we currently occupy belongs to all of us and not one particular ethnic group. Thus, knowledge of our roots will imbue confidence and unity amongst us, as a people. The knowledge that one's ancestors did something meaningful is a sure way of motivating one to aspire to do greater things. Great countries have been emboldened by the greatness of their past. This is one reason why it is important. It will also expose why we are as we are; why certain progress has not been made; and, consequently, what we must do to lift ourselves from the morass of deprivation. And such researches should not be limited to the text-books of higher institutions. It should be made available to all through different sources.

In Indaba, My Children (Canongate, 1998 (FP: 1964); 696), Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa sought to trace the history of the Bantus and other similar groups from the Central and Eastern Africa as they migrated towards Southern Africa. Vusamazulu, himself a Bantu Shaman, has pieced all this history together from the stories he was told, the native songs of the people, and the histories he was forced to memorise as one of the keepers of Tribal History and Stories. Through these he has created a book filled with legends, stories, customs, and beliefs of the people. He has recorded the battles that were won and those that were lost; he has recorded the brave men and the cowards; those who created nations and those who destroyed them. Vusamazulu, more importantly, has also discussed - in this beautiful book - why Africans (or may be Bantus) failed to develop technologically. He also removed the cover from some of the beliefs and rituals of the people, showing them as they truly are.

In the telling of the stories, the author relied on the oral mode of telling engaging stories by mixing mythology with history to the point that the listener is somewhat unable to stake out where one ends and the other begins. However, as always, the essence of what is being said could be seen if one look beneath all these mythological tales and legends. He pointed to songs, to inscriptions and paintings on caves, to the art of the people to support his statements. Through this book Vusamazulu has broken myths - like the popular belief that Shaka (the Zulu), who appeared at the tail end of the story, was the greatest Zulu warrior [refer to both Thomas Mofolo's Chaka and Walton Golightly's AmaZulu] and the main cause of Piet Retief's murder. In fact, according to Vusamazulu, Shaka was a coward who killed his mother. Here he explained in Bantu life, a mother is revered and therefore if one draws blood from one's mother, he or she is deemed to have killed her. Hence, both those who argue that Shaka did not kill his mother and those who claimed he did are right. The Bantus regarded Shaka's stabbing her leg with an arrow as murder, even though she actually died of dysentery. Yet, writings by Europeans and from European perspectives are what have influenced this 'brave Shaka' tale and our minds to an extent that no single person doubts the legendariness of Shaka the Zulu. 

Furthermore, Vusamazulu answered many unasked questions. Did the African ever attempt writing? Many an European writings about Africa - fiction or non-fiction - have shown how savage the African was. Books such as Conrad's In the Heart of Darkness and others as such show how blood-thirsty the African was in such times and that it was the coming of the Europeans that brought to the dark continent, a modicum of civilisation. Therefore, it will not be a surprise if most African and all European readers doubt that the African ever wrote. According to Vusamazulu, message sticks and mats and calabashes were passed round in moments of need, confirming that the African wrote. In fact, he provides examples of these inscriptions and their meanings in the book. The most significant eye-openers in this book are the numerous 'surgeries' the African performed, such as - even in the not too distant past - the precise drilling of a small hole into the skull of a person to turn him or her into a zombie, the delivery of babies, the suturing of wounds and others. The problem is that all these were shrouded in mystery and attributed to gods and spirits.

The question one is likely to ask is what then prevented us from developing into a machine-gun-wielding people with stone-buildings at the time the Europeans arrived. It is this that Vusamazulu intends to answer with this tome of a book. He seeks to educate the black man as well as the white of the intricacies of the Bantu's - or more generally, the black man's - mind. He believed that his book - published when his native South Africa was still under apartheid rule - will lead the white supremacists to an understanding of the Bantu's mind and thus lead to an amicable and peaceful coexistence. Whether this was achieved is there for any of us to interrogate, for it took three decades after the book's publication for South Africa to break the yoke of apartheid. 

According to Vusamazulu, there was a period where there was massive progress among the people - buildings, weaponry and others. However, usurpers who want to be equal to the gods or to lord over the people and live every vision their depraved minds could conjure, took over these to suppress the people to the point of slavery. Here he referenced the Zim-Mbaje (the stone building in Zimbabwe). It was at a point when these usurpers were toppled and their colonies thoroughly destroyed that a high law was passed to prevent people from improving on things that exist and from creating new ones. According to the law, anyone who did so was comparing himself to the gods and should be sentenced to death. This high law, and its strict application, ensured that 'deviants' were killed leading to a suppression of creativity and development and the homogenisation of the society.

The book, like all mythological tales of history and unlike the formalised historical writings, also narrated the Africa's (or Bantu's) creationist story linking it to the coming of evil, life after death, the essence of man and his purpose on earth, and the African's view about death. Thus, the African religion - which has variously been labelled as fetish, pagan, animism etc. - is comparable to any other religion. He refuted the oft-said and always misunderstood statement that the African worship his ancestors. He explained the role of ancestors in the African's life.

In proving that Africans have come from a common source, Vusamazulu relied on the commonalities in our languages, where sometimes similar words are used for the same thing by different ethnic groups across the continent, from Eastern and Central Africa down to Southern Africa. In this linkage, Vusamazulu made a bold statement, not based on any research finding, that Africans migrated from South East Asia. I must say that during the time I was reading this book, I watched a documentary that seems to support this idea. Here, I who hardly speak or understand any local language apart from my native Twi, found some of the similarities. For instance, according to Vusamazulu the Yiddish name for Mother is Ima, and Ma in Bantu. Among the Gas in Ghana, it is Imaa (shortened from Imame or my mother). In Twi it is Mama or maa (the contracted form). Similarly, the name for Father in Yiddish is Aba, in Zulu, Shangaan, Shona, it is Baba, which is also used among certain ethnic groups in Ghana. There are several of such examples: Mina is Me or Myself in Bantu, Me, Meus, Mei in Latin, and Me in Twi and Mi in Ga. (Note that the Twi and Ga additions are mine).

This is a book that makes bold statements from a point of knowledge and that seeks to unmask Africa's hidden past - both the good and the ugly. It seeks to dispute the claim, which most Historians (including those on the continent) make, that Africa - because it lacks a written language - has no history. Here Vusamazulu, a man whose great-grand father worked with Shaka and who himself no less a person than one of the High Priests of the Bantus who has sworn to protect tribal secrets, has bared it all. Whether we agree with what has been said, whether we attribute them to legends and fables or to an imaginative mind, he has provided a compelling story, which regardless of the legends it entails, should make us think and think again as Africans. He shows clearly that the African has lived for thousands and thousands of years on this continent and that he had means to preserve his culture in the face of torture and oppression.

Vusamazulu employed several narrative styles. There was the omniscient narrator, the first person narrator - where he sets out to describe and explain, and another first person narrator but from the point of view of a character in the story, Lumukanda, and sometimes from the points of views of animals and plants. Thus, the African's view of life, as all-encompassing, was honoured here: trees and animals are all spirit beings, and so too are the mountains and the rivers. There were also places where poetry and songs, in the form of stanzas, were used. However, the entire language is dreamlike and poetic.

This is a book that must be studied. It is one which must be treasured and one whose content must be subjected to critical debates and scientific researches because Vusamazulu does not take what he says lightly, he believes in them and ask us to do same, not religiously but to subject them to studies and see if we will not come to the same conclusion. He is bold and this is what I like about the book, in addition to the fact that to some of us inquisitive minds - those of us who want to know exactly what our past was like - it is like a refreshing spring that one must visit over and over again.

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About the Author: Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa (born on July 21, 1921) is a Zulu Sangoma from South Africa. His father was a widower with three surviving children when he met his mother. His father was a builder and a Christian and his mother was a young Zulu girl. Caught between Catholic missionaries on one hand, and a stubborn old Zulu warrior, Credo's maternal grandfather, his parents had no choice but to separate. Credo was born out of wedlock which caused a great scandal in the village and his mother was thrown out by her father. Later he was taken in by one of his aunts.

He was subsequently raised by his father's brother and was taken to the South Coast of Natal, near the northern bank of the Mkomazi River. He did not attend school until 14 years old. In 1935 his father found a building job in the old Transvaal province and the whole family relocated to where he was building. 

Where Christian doctors had failed, his grandfather, a man whom his father despised as a heathen and a demon worshipper, helped him back to health. At this point Credo began to question many of the things about his people the missionaries would have them believe. "Were we Africans really a race of primitives who possessed no knowledge before the white man came to Africa?" he asked himself. His grandfather instilled in him the belief that his illness was a sacred sign that he was to become a shaman, a healer. He underwent the initiation from one of his grandfather's daughters, a young sangoma named Myrna. 

His other books include Zulu Shaman: Dreams, Prophecies, and Mysteries (2003); Songs of Stars, 1st Edition (2000); Africa is My Witness (Blue Crane Books 1966); The Reptilian Agenda (with David Icke); My People, the Writings of a Zulu Witch-Doctor (Penguin Books, 1977). [Source]

211. July's People by Nadine Gordimer

It is apartheid South Africa. This time Blacks are up in arms, heavy arms, fighting the Whites. And the Russians and Cubans are here to help them. White South Africans are running for their dear lives. With nowhere to go, the Smales' family took the advice of their houseboy, a man they named July, following him to his family. July's People (Penguin, 1981; 160) is about the changes in the roles and the dynamics of Black-White relationships.

The Smales' are liberals whose relationship with South Africa Blacks in general and with their houseboy in particular is cordial and non-discriminatory. However, they were forced to analyse this view when it dawns on them that, though liberals as they are they could not speak any of the native's language whereas the apartheidists or their followers could and therefore found it difficult communicating with July's people. They never also did actually ask July of his real name. They just named him as such. How liberal is one if he refuses to allow the other to bear his own name? Is there a human without a name?

It was at July's home that the Smales saw how privileged their lives were and how much they took for granted. There on the farm, whereas the natives lived freely on and off the land, unaware of any other way life could be lived, the Smales were working around on the necessary adjustments required to be made in the absence of such things as tissues, proper clothes, their privacy and more. The scatological effects of their adjustments are at par with the behaviours of the incarcerated blind folks in Jose Saramago's Blindness. The Smales' remembrance of their past lives and their realisation of the lives their kinds have carved for the natives in their country led them to repudiate, further, the actions of their kind.

On the farm, with his people, July - who had always obeyed, never retorted - now has to be the man his family wants them to be and also the servant of the Smales. The balance between this two extreme spilled over sometimes; for even though the Smales were fully prepared to take things into their own hands, working  or looking for their own food, washing their own clothes, service has become a habit for July or Mwawate. Yet, through his replies to some questions, and seldom outbursts, Mrs Smales was able to perceive July's opinions of them; that some thing exist beyond the Yes-Sirs.

Though almost every Black man was seen to participate in the fight, from the blacks in the Force to civilians, there were dissensions. Nadine never assumed that all natives were on the same page and in agreement to the course. Those who were most against the uprising were the native Chiefs who were of the view that those behind the insurrection would take their kingdoms away from them, and this is what the apartheidist government had told them. These egoistic thoughts have been the bane of African unity. Now Bam and Maureen, liberals as they were, must decide on whose side they were: the Chief's, who supports the Whites, or the freedom fighters. Now as the Chief was trying to recruit the service of Bam Smales in case the uprising gets to his land, July who refused to join his people in the insurrection against Whites - choosing rather to lead his employers into safety - must now avoid joining the Chief to fight the blacks. In this war, of good and of evil, there is no 'no-choice'. These dilemmas of the Smales and of July give flesh to Archbishop Desmond Tutu oft quoted statement that 'if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. In an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality'.

This novel offered a possible trajectory the future for South Africans could take if things are not rectified; that is, if the apartheid is not destroyed; however, even though Blacks couldn't mount a sustained campaign on Whites, with arms, and therefore wrestle power as such, as it is in this story, their sustained demonstrations and fearlessness of death saw them win. 

This story is like a Zimbardoesque experiment. It studies human behaviour - adjustments and responses to stimuli - in different environments. It was as if Nadine was studying how a privileged White - who takes his privileges for granted - will behave when put into such a situation. Were the Smales supporters of the government, every bit of schadenfreude would have transformed into psychological insecurity of suicidal tendencies. 

The language was sparse, the dialogue - without quotation marks, without the 'he said' 'she said' to identify the speaker - was open to the reader's own interpretation; a lot was left unsaid. There were pauses between questions and responses. This, together with Nadine's minimalist touch, helped create the required tension between the couples, Bam and Maureen, which moves the story.

Once again, Nadine's prose was gratifying though it wasn't as dense as either The Conservationist or Burger's Daughter. With her keen sense of observation and deeper understanding of the human condition and the workings of the mind, writing from within the character's mind, Nadine has shown why she is an authority when it comes to South Africa's apartheid literature. Like most of her books, July's People had been a victim of censorship in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. In Apartheid South Africa, it was was banned for being too liberal; in post-Apartheid South Africa it was removed, in 2001, from school curricula for being 'deeply racist, superior and patronising.' It is highly recommended.

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Read about the author here.

172. SHORT STORY: Hunter Emmanuel by Constance Myburgh

Constance Myburgh's Hunter Emmanuel is a noir story of sorts. The story was somewhat hard to follow especially due to the technique - or approach - adopted by the author where she mixed dreams and the surreal with reality in a way that doesn't really work. Not that one cannot identify where the dreams end and where reality begins but the parts worked like two immiscible liquids, with one sitting on top of the other. As a story capable of evoking lip-curling grisly imagery, it works; however, it fails on the front of a whodunit. That's how the parts failed to work. Yet, it is possible that the author had nothing of these in her mind.

There is no murder per se that requires investigations; but a woman's leg has been severed at the hip level and, fortunately, she has survived and recuperating in the hospital. The severed leg has been tied to the branch of a pine, in a pine forest that is undergoing harvesting. The discoverer of the leg, like in most film-noir or mass-market whodunits, is a former security officer - Hunter Emmanuel - who knows not what he's doing with his life. Hunter Emmanuel realises that the person the leg belongs is a whore and consequently, the police will not conduct any thorough investigation; this he makes known to Zara, the woman in question. He wants to investigate but he has no reason why he wants to, except that according to him '... a man must investigate'. Or was there some attraction between the pair, especially of Zara to Hunter? Regardless of Hunter's eagerness to solve the case, he was shown as incapable, lacking the requisite elements of the trade to track the perpetrator of that heinous crime. In fact, Hunter was not created to be loved or pitied and neither was Zara. There was a kind of distance between the characters and the reader, no affection, no eagerness for Hunter to succeed.

The question however is, was it necessary for Hunter to investigate this crime, since it was clear from their conversations that Zara knows who had cut off her leg and why but she's not telling and the reason why she wasn't telling was not easily obtained in the prose. The closest Hunter Emmanuel came to finding out, he was blacked out and woke from coma in the hospital.

The dialogue between Zara and Emmanuel sounded a bit artificial and forced. The author had a lot to offer in this story, using the technique of hiding to reveal and to involve the reader in story so that the reader works his or her way into the heart rather than being supplied with all the necessary information. However, it looks as if Constance hid too much so that the story seemed a bit jarred. This personal observation might arise from my own defiency in appreciating such stories and therefore should not be the basisfor judging this story. But is Constance's story therefore empty? The answer is no. Like Nii Ayikwei Parkes' Tail of a Blue Bird, there was no resolution to the crime, which happens to be one of my best endings for crime stories. Again, the language was street-smart. Some may criticise it for being uncough but how many times do we speak those polished Shakespearean English, aside on the English stage of English Theatres.

Hunter Emmanuel might work for others, like most stories. There is something in it that works, which made the judges to shortlist it; not that every shortlisted story works but Hunter Emmanuel seems to (want) tosay something and it might take more to hear it out. It all depends on how it is read and appreciated after all there is always a thin line between a great work and a failed one.

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About the author: Jenna Bass, writing as Constance Myburgh, is a South African filmmaker, photographer, writer and retired magician. Her award-winning, Zimbabwe-set short film, 'The Tunnel', premiered at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals and continues to screen internationally. She is currently engaged on her debut feature, 'Tok Tokkie', a supernatural noir set in Cape Town. Jenna is also the editor and co-creator of Jungle Jim, a pulp-literary magazine for African writing. (Source)

170. Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer

Title: Burger's Daughter

Author: Nadine Gordimer

Genre: Fiction/Race/Struggle

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 361

Year of First Publication: 1979

Country: South Africa

Read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge and the Africa Reading Challenge

Nadine Gordimer's Burger's Daughter is not an easy read. The author, probably mirrored the lives of the people: natives and the whites who were against the apartheid system at the time, in her prose. For reading this seemingly melancholic novel, the reader would feel the desolation, the destruction, the emotional torture, the emasculation of ideas and of works, the impotency of one filled with verve without a vent or valve. The reader would go through several tortuous moments, reflecting the lives of a people who would not bend to division, destruction and death no matter how well it is shrouded and how white the shroud is. And these feeling of pain, emanating from the book, does not result from the use of verbose adjectives or adverbs but the use of language itself. The pain is in the read. In this book, Gordimer, somewhat answers partly a question that has been bothering some observers of South African apartheid system and which was also the centrepiece of Steve Biko's I write What I like; the question of whether the South African Liberals, those who vociferously and vituperatively spoke against apartheid, were for real and why they never forwent the privileges that were preserved specifically for them. Fictitious as this story may be, it still shows that there were several white South Africans who were willing to brave death to see the collapse of that vile and humongous system than to live and partake of it.

The book explores the issue of struggle and what it takes to be the child of a revolutionary father and more especially a white revolutionary fighting and dying for policies and laws, changes that would benefit blacks. It also explores the loss of childhood that most of these fighters and their children go through; how they suddenly become adults, unbeknownst to them, and how the struggle charts their lives. Another question, more importantly a puzzle, which is currently been portrayed in the Kony 2012 Campaign, which the book attempted to resolve without seeming success is the issue of the equalness of human value. Most of the time, an issue becomes a concern to the world - or the international community as they are referred to - only when a single white person has been subjected to it, regardless of the fact that those prevailing conditions, of which this white individual suffered, is the reality of several non-white folks, in this book, blacks. For instance, when Lionel Burger - Rosa Burger's father - was jailed for life for his alleged treasonable conduct and died in prison, Rosa Burger became a star attraction at most of these human-rights-freedom-fighters-liberals luncheons and dinners, even though countless blacks had suffered similar fate. This issue converges into the suspicion that blacks harboured even for whites who could be seen supporting or working for their cause. It is also that which makes the black men in the police be seen as victims of circumstances and therefore not part of the enemies that white policemen were.

Gordimer also investigated what it takes to be a clean-conscience white South African and if such a thing is possible regarding the prevailing conditions. Here, she was much more concerned about the sins of the fathers following the children; how people would perceive an individual - a white - who says he or she is a South African. Do people link you to the atrocities taking place? Or would they treat you in isolation? This identity-burden is one of the themes covered in the story.

The story, written in different narrative styles alternating between an omniscient narrator and Rosa Burger's own first person narrative, is divided into three parts. The first part concerns Rosa's parents and her life in South Africa. Her parent's involvement in the fight against apartheid, life in their home, and their visit to and from prison and sometimes imprisonment was the subject. Rosa's home was teeming with blacks and whites. It was a place - even when the separate places policies was in full swing - where the race border breaks down. Even though the Burgers lives were not like other white South Africans, they had to contend with every day mishaps life showers on people. They went through the loss of a young son and friends and betrayal. However, Cathy and Lionel stood firm in their belief in their chosen paths. Even then young Rosa understood, without any indoctrination, what her parents were doing and accepted it. In the first part, Rosa's narrative mostly addressed a man she had a brief affair with, Conrad. When her parents were alive, she felt shielded, somewhat, and even participated in some of their clandestine activities. During this period, she never thought of leaving the country, and because she had been named together with her parents she was not entitled to a South African passport. Outside the Burgers' home, they had to contend with state policies especially in public institutions over which they had no control; so that even though Rosa and gone to school with Baasie, Lionel's black comrade, the two had to separate as they moved from the kindergarten/primary stage. An event that would later come to haunt her in faraway Europe. After her father died in prison and her mother died from a debilitating disease and the house was sold, Rosa would move from one place to the next until, a few years after, she would decide to leave South Africa, altogether. Rosa had worked in South Africa as a physiotherapist.

The second part deals with Rosa's foray in Europe, mostly France and how she deals with her father's first wife and life in general. Here her ability to stay away from liberal activities will be tested. Rosa will have an affair with a married man (her first lover), working on his doctoral thesis; however, this will not be the defining moments in her life. The defining moments would come when she met Baasie at a programme organised by liberals. In this chance encounter, when Rosa was not able to identify his childhood friend, sparks would fly for definitely Bassie, whose father had also died in prison, had gone through several transformations whose complexities have, probably, been exacerbated by his colour. Baasie's accusation of Rosa was based on her using her father's death as a launch-pad for fame and that this is a singular event a white man suffered; an event that is the reality of countless whites. Fumed by this clearly abrasive accusation Rosa countered and enumerated all the sufferings they had to bear for what they believed in. But it would not be what Baasie said that would get her visiting South Africa, it would be what Rosa herself told Baasie. Rosa's narrative, in this section, addressed her father's biographer.

The third part is when Rosa came back to South Africa. She went to work as a physiotherapist but the activities of her father, and the name Burger and her inability to dissociate her personal struggle from the overall struggle that would come haunting. In 1976, the Soweto uprising was in full force and the police also met them fully prepared. What followed were countless mangled bodies and broken bones. A year later, Rosa would be arrested and charged for her participation in advancing the cause of the ANC and inciting the revolt. Rosa mostly called unto his father, in this period.

Gordimer's creativity was at its best. She unleashed the full force of her creative prowess, and gave the reading public the beautiful narrative that would, if it had not already, become a classic. Yet, what this book achieves is not the beauty of prose or lines, but the documentation of a period of life in the lives of a people that need not be repeated, no matter what. 

Again, this is a relatively difficult book but one that deserves to be read.

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About the author: Read it here.

ImageNations' Rating: 5.0/6.0

159. SHORT STORY MONDAY: Almost Cured of Sadness by Vuyo Seripe

Almost Cured of Sadness was published in the Caine Prize for African Writing 2010, A Life in Full and other stories.

Lisa is flirtatious. She lost her virginity at fourteen and at eighteen she had had an abortion. Later, she was raped by a man she couldn't identify because she was drugged. But Lisa, like most teenage girls who wouldn't listen to their parents and would shout back at every advice given, blamed her mother for turning out as she did. She hated her mother and so she moved out of her house to live on her own.

She entered a design school and the rape incident became the subject of all her designs: 

For lingerie assignment, Lisa designed padlocked panties and bras which would be made of a type of material which flattened the chest and hips to hide all feminine features. ... She had all the models wear masks from horror movies with all the outfits sewn up with a technique that made them look torn and the material was dyed to look bloody.

She failed all her design courses and passed the sewing courses. She met Hennie at the Gallery she worked for. Hennie was a painter who was not satisfied with his current work and want to quit and concentrate on painting. The two - Lisa, black; Hennie, white - were not loved by their friends. Lisa's friends considers Hennie to be dull, pessimistic and a sloth; they claimed she loved him because he is white. Hennie's white friends also regard Lisa as a different species, something that hurt Lisa so much that she decided not to attend any party that friend would organise. But the two loved each other regardless of their personal differences and incessant quarrels. Because Lisa kept two jobs, she allowed Hennie to move in, and concentrate on his paintings.

Source

Almost Cured of Sadness is a young woman's attempt to cast away her demons and create a new life for herself. It is a bold attempt at starting all over a life that went off-course even before it started. It shows how sometimes a badly handled teen angst could lead to disaster and that it will take a conscious effort from the individual to get things back on track.

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From the author's page: I am a writer and artist based in Johannesburg. I am a keen observer of South Africa’s emerging urban cultures with a focus on fiction writing, research, and content development for publications. My writing skills extend to suit corporate internal and external communication needs. I am currently working on a collection of short stories focused on urban themes to be published as soon as I find a capable publisher willing to invest in raw talent. (Source)

156. SHORT STORY MONDAY: Invocations to the Dead by Gill Schierhout

Invocations to the Dead was published in the Caine Prize for African Writing 2010 anthology, A Life in Full and other stories.

Jonas Peterson was involved in a severe accident that left his pelvis crushed in seventeen places and a six-month stay in the hospital. At the hospital Jonas got on well with the nurses and got close to Grace Jaffe. Two years after Jonas was discharged he appeared at Grace's house, when Grace's relationship had gone cold and a divorce had occurred. Jonas was a helper, doing the things most men would not do. He did all the washing, the folding, the cleaning and tidying, and more.

When a job opening was announced at the hospital, Grace encouraged Jonas to go for it. Consenting with her decision, he became a washer of dead bodies for the pathologist. One night Grace was shocked to find, what she initially was a hairless rat, a lung hidden in Jonas's clothes. With his secrets out, Jonas fled the house.

The story begins another two years after Jonas fled from Grace's house at a psychiatric hospital where he had been brought for psychiatric assessment by Grace to determine if the charge for necrophilia which had been brought against him, when he was caught with human parts, would stand. It then alternated between the past life of Jonas and Grace and the current life at the hospital. The information on Jonas given to the hospital reads

 Illegally possessing various body organs, for no legitimate reason. Atypical Necrophilia. No evidence found of defilement of a corpse. Patient cannot give account of his actions. No other compulsive behaviours noted. Some tendency to magical thinking.

And Grace, who had been the first to witness Jonas's affinity for dead people perhaps which resulted from his working at the morgue, was tasked with performing a three-day assessment on him and make up her mind on his condition:

It is now up to Grace, and her colleagues, to answer the Magistrate's standard questions. In your opinion, was the act premeditated? Does the patient show remorse? Is this a rigid pattern of behaviours? Is he likely to re-offend?

Her answers would determine whether he is released on bail perhaps with medication or sent to prison. But before any of these could occur, Jonas stole one of the doctors' car and escaped. However, because six months previous to his appearance at the hospital he had communicated with Grace and had told him he was a changed man, Grace knew where he was heading towards. She followed him, found him, never brought him to justice, and helped in his escape. In all these, there was no love between Grace and Jonas.

This particular story got me thinking. How could one allow one who cuts dead bodies escape or help in his escape? The best should be an attempt at treatment.

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Source

About the author: Gill Schierhout has lived in Sydney since 2009. She is a writer, mother, struggling academic, consultant in public health, daughter, dog-owner and aspiring runner. In 2008, her short story The Day of the Surgical Colloquium Hosted by the Far East Rand Hospital was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her first novel, The Shape of Him (Random House, United Kingdom, 2009) was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Sunday Times Literary Award (South Africa), and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Set in South African mining communities in the early 1900’s, it tells the story of Sara Highbury, an immigrant from the United Kingdom, and her doomed love affair with a diamond digger, Herbert Wakeford. She also writes a few short stories and is working on a second novel, and on some attempts at literary non-fiction. (Source)

128. I Write What I Like by Steve Biko

Title: I Write What I Like

Author: Steve Biko

Genre: Non-Fiction/Essays/Letters

Publishers: Picador Africa

Pages: 244

Year of First Publication: 1978

Country: South Africa

On January 8, 2012, the African National Congress, the ruling party of South Africa marked its centenary and to celebrate that I decided to read this book. Though Steve Biko ran parallel organisations, The Black Conscious Movement, which was basically to empower blacks to stand for themselves and fight for what they believe in and its political wing the Black Peoples Convention, he has come to symbolise the South Africa's fight against the barbaric and inhuman attitudes meted by the white minority, Boers and even in his writings recognised the ANC has the main group for the old guards like Mandela, Sisulu and others. Thus, instead of talking about Mandela, who is already known, I chose to talk about Steve Biko.

I Write What I Like is a compendium of articles, essays, letters and memoranda by the freedom-fighter-turned-martyr, Bantu Steve Biko. In this collection, put together after his death in police detention in 1977, Steve Biko shares his views and aspirations for a country under apartheid. He visualises and cuts the path that would see blacks move from their lethargic acceptance and grumbling to an energy state where they would see themselves as the only saviours they have and need. As a do-it-yourself person, Steve Biko, early on, saw the struggle against apartheid not as a liberalist fight. For the liberals, mostly white, through no fault of theirs have been born into a system that gives them privileges and rights not earned by any other South African, black or coloured. It is this realisation and his philosophising of the black man's conditions that would become the core of his actions. He saw the liberals as not doing enough to change the status-quo they enjoy, as trying to tell the black man what is good for him. 

Nowhere is the arrogance of the liberal ideology demonstrated so well as in their insistence that the problems of the country can only be solved by a bilateral approach involving both black and white. [21]

As a testimony to their claim of complete identification with blacks, they call a few 'intelligent and articulate' blacks to 'come around for tea at home', where all present ask each other the same old hackneyed question 'how can we bring about change in South Africa?' The more such tea-parties one call the more of a liberal he is and the freer he shall feel from guilt that harness and binds his conscience. [23]

The liberal must understand that the days of the Noble Savage are gone; that the blacks do not need a go-between in this struggle for their own emancipation. [27]

Liberal organisations such as the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) whose executives were mostly white and which push 'no harder' the problems blacks faced were seen as ineffective in the struggle against apartheid. It was only fitting that the first organisation Steve Biko would form would be a Students' organisation, for he saw the lacuna between the old and young black South Africans. Whereas some of the old were afraid to act, were torn between the Bantustan policies that was trying to divide and rule the country by diverting black South African's attention from the fight against apartheid to a struggle amongst themselves, and some were too slow for young, Biko saw an opportunity to bridge this gap. The South African Students' Organistion (SASO) was formed as a platform to address and push problems facing non-white students.

Biko's ideology was to awakened the catatonic soul of the black man that has made him unresponsive to the daily abuse he receives at the hands of the white man in South Africa. He challenged a system that deemed it best to preserve jobs for a certain category of people based on their skin colour. He criticised a system where blacks were deemed to be illiterate even though the system prevented them from receiving proper education. And his expansive knowledge of issues made him walk in and out of courtrooms and trials a happy man even though he received several detentions and bans. He saw the social vices of blacks, like stealing, murder, fighting, sexual promiscuity, not as an inherent or congenital trait - as preached about by the Nationalist party and some Priests - but as a consequence of the system; a system where the influx control or 72-hour clause restricts Africans to a given district and prohibits movement from one district to the other without government permit to last for more than 72 hours. 

Again, Biko - though religious in a broader sense of the word - saw the harm that Christianity was causing. According to him, the black man does not find himself in the bible and the preaching does not reflect his situation. He made several statements that highlighted the incongruity between the Christianity the white missionaries brought and the practice of that Christianity. For instance, he bemoaned the daily atrocities meted out to blacks in South Africa and intimated

The anachronism of a well-meaning God who allows people to suffer continually under an obviously immoral system is not lost to young blacks who continue to drop out of Church by the hundreds. [34]

To him the bible must be seen to preach against white supremacy and allow blacks to see the evilness of that system rather than making them 'soul-dead' citizens who are seen to be eternally carrying the cross of Christ, waiting for their reward somewhere in heaven. He writes

The bible must not be seen to preach that all authority is divinely instituted. It must rather preach that it is sin to allow oneself to be oppressed. The bible must continually be shown to have something to say to the black man to keep him going in his journey towards realisation of the self. [34]

It is in view of this that Steve Biko advocated for Black Theology, which according to him

... seeks to depict Jesus as a fighting God who saw the exchange of Roman money - the oppressor's coinage - in His father's temple as so sacrilegious that it merited a violent reaction from Him - the Son of Man. [34]

Because a larger population of the South African society were Christians and because the individual priests - black or white - wield enough power in their communities, Steve Biko avoided antagonising them but rather prep them with what is wrong, to work to awaken the self of the African rather than continuously preaching the of Jesus walking water, among others.

Later, Biko formed the Black Conscious Movement, with its political wing the Black Peoples Convention, whilst still working for the Black Community Programme. With BCP Biko worked with the people to build clinics, to let them know that there is more they can do for themselves. All these were done under the watchful eyes of the security system. There several arrests, several deaths in detentions, several demonstrations and several shootings and deaths.

Steve Biko also fought the Bantustan policy where about 13 percent of the land were given to over 80 percent of South Africa population (the non whites) to form homelands. Though some of the leaders like Gatsha Buthelezi, Lucas Mangope, Kaizer Matanzima accepted and later ruled the Zulu, Tswana, and Transkei territories, Steve saw a divide and rule tactics inherent in the system. He saw how the National Party was fighting to divert the struggle to among the people so that instead a united Azania, Steve's name for South Africa, they would be approaching the struggle as different units of people making it ineffective.

After 101 days in detention under Section 6 of the Terrorism, Biko was again banned and restricted to his locality of King but not before he sent a memorandum to a visiting American diplomat, Senator Dick Clark, on American policy towards South Africa. In it he made some demands; but before those remarks, Steve wrote:

Besides, the sin of omission, America has often been positively guilty of working in the interests of the minority regime to the detriment of the interests of black people. America's foreign policy seems to be guided by a selfish desire to maintain an imperialistic stranglehold on this country irrespective of how the blacks were made to suffer. [159]

His restriction to King meant that he does not talk to not more than one person at a time, that two people in addition to him is a crowd, that his name is not mentioned anywhere that nothing he writes is ever to be read at any place. These were to wipe his name from the minds of the people. But Biko survived it all, including death. In August of 1977 he was arrested and through the usual police brutalities sustained brain injuries. Here the evil of apartheid was seen in all its 'glory'. For after the police had hit his head against the wall he was left, chained to the window grille, to recover so that the interrogation would proceed. On September 11, 1977 he, he was loaded in the back of a police Land Rover, naked and chained and was driven on a 1100-km journey to Pretoria to a prison with hospital facilities. He died on September 12, 1977 at the Pretoria prison.

This version by Picador Africa includes a memoir, Martyr of Hope: A Personal Memoir, by Aelred Stubbs an Anglican Priest Steve had close friendship with, sharing his fears and aspirations and considering him as his father.

Steve's death, at the age of 31, caused international protests leading to the UN arms embargo on South Africa. I Write What I Like was a column Steve Biko wrote in SASO newsletters under the pseudonym of Frank Talk. It is through these writings that he shared his visions. This book is recommended to all those who love international politics, who want to know more about a young man's quest for equality. 

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Brief Bio: Bantu Stephen Biko was born in Tylden in the Eastern Cape on the 18 th December 1946, the third child of the late Mathew Mzingaye and Alice Nokuzola “Mamcethe” Biko. He attended primary school in King William's Town and secondary school at Marianhill, a missionary school situated in a town of the same name in KwaZulu-Natal. Steve Biko went on to register for a degree in medicine at the Black Section of the Medical School of the University of Natal in 1966.

Very early in his academic program Biko showed an expansive search for knowledge that far exceeded the realm of the medical profession, ending up as one of the most prominent student leaders. In 1968, Biko and his colleagues founded the South African Students' Organisation (SASO).

With the seeds of Black Consciousness having been sown outside of student campuses, Biko and his colleagues argued for a broader based black political organization in the country. Opinion was canvassed and finally, in July 1972, the Black People's Convention (BPC) was founded and inaugurated in December of the same year. Inspired by Biko's growing legacy the youth of the country at high school level mobilized themselves in a movement that became known as the South African Students Movement (SASM). This movement played a pivotal role in the 1976 Soweto Uprisings, which accelerated the course of the liberation struggle. The National Association of Youth Organizations was also formed in order to cater for the youth more generally. (Read more here)

Rating: 6.0/6.0

127. SHORT STORY MONDAY: The Mistress's Dog by David Medalie

David Medalie's story, The Mistress's Dog, should have been read last year as part of the Caine Prize Shortlist 2009 to 2011 Reading Challenge. I carried it with me but never came around to reading it, perhaps preferring to read the books rather than the single stories or perhaps discouraged by seeming bad taste that I found most of the Caine Prize Shortlist. If any of these was the reason why I failed to complete that challenge last year, then I should have persevered since this is a quite different and hilarious story.

The Mistress's Dog was shortlisted for the 12th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2011 and was included in the Caine Prize for African Writing anthology To See the Mountain and other stories (2011). However, it was first published in The Mistress's Dog and other stories (1996 - 2010).

The dog had outlived its owner, The Mistress, and was now in the care of Nola. In fact, it had outlived the two individuals who made Nola's life silently difficult, Nola's husband included. And even though she preferred cats to dogs she had been left with this canine whose life and, with time, death she must look after. An animal that reminds her that there is really an end to life, that to every beginning there is an end, which makes her also think about her own end.

The Mistress came from a rural, religious, and poor background but had 'worked' hard to make a career for herself. She was single but not entirely, and her career consisted of working as a secretary to a powerful man and also as his mistress.

She remained single, devoted herself to what she called her 'career' (she was a powerful man's secretary), and had an affair that endured for over a decade with a married man (that same powerful man).

And this powerful man is Nola's husband. And Nola knew. She also knew that The Mistress was far from what she made people believe she was. So that even though people thought her to be beautiful, bold, daring, unconventional, libertarian, and happy - laughing excessively even when it was not warranted - Nola knew otherwise; she knew she was weak and fearful and frightened of being alone even though she flagrantly displayed her independence, which was limited to only marriage as the powerful man provided for all her needs even when they were not seeing each other again.

After thirty years of service with the powerful man, fifteen of which there was an intimate relationship, the man retired with Nola and so too was the single The Mistress, who thought it unwise to work for any other person. Unfortunately, the powerful man left with his wife to Cape Town leaving The Mistress in Johannesburg. Lonely she grew decrepit and moved into a home for the aged. It was during this time that the powerful man, now weak and suffering, begged her wife to take The Mistress's dog into her keep.

All through the novel, man's name is not mentioned and so too was the Mistress's name. The story provides a hilarious and at the same time scathing look at some of the choices and decisions that have become fashionable these days.

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Brief Bio: David Medalie is a South African writer and an academic. He is a professor in the Department of English. His first collection of short stories, The Shooting of Christmas Cows was published in 1990. Prior to its publication it won the Ernst van Heerden Award. His debut novel, The Shadow Follows, was published in 2006. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Literary Award for Best First Book and the M-Net Literary Award.  A new collection of short stories The Mistress's Dog was published in 2010. (Read more about him here)

Rating: 5.5/6.0

126. The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer

Title: The Conservationist

Author: Nadine Gordimer

Genre: Fiction/Race

Publishers: Penguin Books

Pages: 267

Year of First Publication: 1974

Country: South Africa

Mehring is rich, divorced and somewhat frustrated and, though he has a lot of highly-placed friends, he feels alienated. He also deals in pig-iron, so he doesn't classify himself as part of the oppressors regarding the use of cheap black labour in the mines. But Mehring has a farm as most rich South Africans do. In the context and setting of the story, rich is synonymous to white. Though Mehring has a farm, he does not run it for profit. He sees the farm as a place to escape to from the city and he knows nothing about farming so that blacks like Jacobus and Solomon and others are the ones who run the farm and these individuals were living on the land before it was purchased from the previous owner.

One day, the body of a black man was found on the farm. Mehring was called and he in turn called the police but because it was a black man, no investigations were conducted and the body was buried on location without any fuss. But when farm got flooded after a heavy downpour, the body was uncovered and the locals on Mehring's farm offered him a befitting burial using materials they could gather or borrow. It is the appearance of the dead black man on his farm that got Mehring thinking of his own death and succession.

Mehring was rich but never happy. His wife had divorced him and lived in the US, speaking to him only through her lawyer, and his son is estranged from him because he wouldn't serve in the military and had perspectives about life different from his father's. Thus, Mehring's riches had fewer spenders. But he also had a peculiar thinking, a kind that has ravaged modern thoughts, that he could obtain everything he wants with his money, including women, sex and love. However, seeing the way the poor black folks live on his farm - and he was considered a conservationist at least by the author because he would not allow anyone to take any wild animal from the farm including eggs laid by the guinea fowls - Mehring began thinking of whom the land he farms really belong to. He also felt lonely so that at one point he had to spend his New Year with the black workers on his farm. He knew that the locals were there before the first purchase, before his predecessor and will be there when he was gone. The land will not be truly his even though he had some papers showing that he had purchased and paid for it. The people's claim to it was ancestral and their attachment to it was not cultivated but connatural. 

There'll be dissatisfaction because they were here when he came, they were squatting God knows how long before he bought the place and they'll expect to have their grandchildren squatting long after he's gone. [202]

These were the kinds of thoughts and ruminations, mixed with his own mortality and death, that plagued Mehring in his daily rounds even as he travelled from Japan to South America to Jamaica and back to South Africa and to his farm, making him look like one who was less satisfied with his life than the poor folks were with their poverty. What opened up these wounds was when his workers, especially Jacobus, talk of how his son - Terry - would take over from him after he had finished his school.

With the floods, storms and the destruction of Mehring's farm, Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist could be considered a metaphor and interpreted as the conditions that blacks found themselves in. It could also be considered as a premonition of what was to come. For instance, when the storm came, a tiny ditch carrying trickles of water, in normal rainy weather, accumulated so much water as to carry away cars driven two white South Africans:

But who could ever have imagined that the trickle of water that sometimes dried up altogether for months on end so that that gully was nothing more than a culvert full of khaki-weed and beer cartons thrown in by the blacks, the trickle of water that in normally rainy weather was never more than a gout from the big round concrete pipe that contained it under the road, could become a force to carry away a car and its occupants. [235]

In some way, these gathering floods, which forced Mehring to finally abandon his farm and emigrate to 'one of those countries white people go to', could be taken to be the political force that was gathering in apartheid South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. With this kind of interpretation one will summarise as: the police (white) bearing the authority of the government (white) only covered the dead stranger (black) on a land inhabited by blacks but paid for by whites; but after the floods (political upheavals) the body came up and Mehring (settlers) ran away to wherever he came from in the first place and the people buried their dead because he was one of them in colour and spirit and took over their land. 

Using a mix of narrative formats and deliveries, Gordimer told the story from within the mind of Mehring so that we get to know his fears, even when he was only mentally projecting or playing around with it, and his person. In effect Mehring opened up his consciousness, or the author made him to, to the reader without restriction and this is what makes the book not only an interesting read but also a difficult and discomfiting to get around, at one point reading the 'I', at another 'You', at other places the omniscient takes over. The denser and seemingly impregnable nature makes the reader uncomfortable mentally and physically, as if one is crumpling under a burden and which he cannot also set aside.

The Conservationist was a joint winner of the 1974 Man-Booker Prize.

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Brief Bio: Nadine Gordimer (born 20, November 1923) is a South African writer and political activist. She is the daughter of Isidore and Nan Gordimer. She has lived all her life, and continues to live, in South Africa. Gordimer's writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organisation was banned. She has recently been active in HIV/AIDS causes. 

As a writer she was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature when she was recognised as a woman 'who through her magnificent epic writing has - the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity'. Her principal works include A Guest of Honour, The Conservationist, Burger's Daughter, July's People, A sport of Nature, My Son's Story, None to Accompany Me, Jump, Why Haven't you Written: Selected Stories 1950-1972, The Essential Gesture, On Mines and The Black Interpreters. (Sources: Wikipedia & Nobel Prize)

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Read for the Top 100 Books Reading Challenge

113. What Molly Knew by Tim Keegan

Tim Keegan's What Molly Knew was shortlisted for the 12th Caine Prize for African Writing Prize in 2011. It was part of the crime anthology 'Bad Company' published by Pan Macmillan SA in 2008. It has also been included in the Caine Prize for African Writing 2011 anthology To See the Mountain and other stories.

What Molly Knew is a story that is difficult to define. It's is a crime story but not as we know the whodunit genre to be. Here the crime is not solved and the victim or the individual who stands to gain from exposing or getting the murder solved destroyed the only evidence involved; and the investigative part too is not shown. It is, however, a typical story whose plot could be predicted to a large extent once the characters and their associations or relationships with each other are known.

Molly's is currently married to Rollo, after the death of her husband. Molly's daughter Sarah sees the step-father as an intruder, or so Molly thinks. Then came along Tommie Nobrega, a psychologist into the Retiefs' household, who married Sarah against the wishes of Molly and to some extent Rollo. From there on the relationship between mother and daughter became strained.

Molly also suffers from domestic abuse and has chosen to remain with her abuser because of fear of becoming financially destitute. Molly seems to support the husband ahead of the daughter even though the husband isn't perfect and does things to her. She seems not have listened to her daughter or inquired about her problems and what was happening when Sarah was living with them. She defined all of Sarah's abhorrence of Rollo, the 'gulf of misunderstanding and mistrust, charge and recrimination', that existed between she and Sarah as a resentment of the 'speed with which her mother remarried'.

Alright, Rollos wasn't perfect: he drank too much; he stayed out at night playing darts at Wally's Bar in Koeberg Road; he'd visited prostitutes in his time, had girlfriends. And he had a temper, used his fists when he was boozed up, used foul language. The neighbours sometimes called the police in. But what was she supposed to do? Move out and starve? Go and live in a shelter? At her age?

And this is from Molly's perspectives.

Then Sarah died. Shot through her head, from behind. And Molly pointed accusing fingers at Tommie, Sarah's husband. It could only be Tommie, who else had access to the third floor? And who separated her from her daughter? Besides, Tommie is not from the country. He's a Mozambican. He is also a cross between black and white parents, but leaned more toward black than white. He also always wore ANC shirts. Above all he's a psychologists who knows how to convince people. But Inspector Duvenage has no concrete evidence to work with. Not a single mark to begin investigation as Tommie has been keeping to his script and the neighbours, though collaborative, haven't provided any clue yet.

But Molly was to find an envelope addressed to Rollo Retief under a pile of decomposing mowed grass. In this envelope is a letter, written two days before Sarah's murder, addressing Rollo. The letter warns Rollo to confess what she did to Sarah when she was young. It also threatens or mentions a confrontation in the presence of Molly, so that she - Molly - would know what he did to her. And finally, Rollo should ask for forgiveness so that Sarah would be free. With this piece of evidence found, one would have thought that the case will be solved or that it will lead to it and Molly would become free of oppression and abuse. But Molly destroyed it. All through the story, we see that Sarah had something to tell Molly but Molly was not listening. She preferred to lose a daughter than a means of sustenance.

What Molly Knew is a story that makes you question the reasons behind certain actions. Was Molly justified in choosing herself over her daughter? Was she justified in living under the complete control of a husband who, not only dictates to her, but also abuse her consistently? And why didn't she walk out finally when she found the evidence that will link her husband to the crime? And since her daughter was a nurse, financial concern alone could not be the reason. The reason could be that Molly, herself, might be suffering from a psychological problem that has transformed the fear she had for her husband to absolute reverence. Besides, from Rollo's conversations with Molly it was pretty clear that he considered Sarah a hindrance and her death, a good riddance. Here I am reminded of a Dean Koontz's book I read, False Memory, where the characters, under psychological control, worked against themselves. 

I found it difficult to connect to any particular character in the story. Both viewpoints from which the story is told did not give much insight into what was unfurling. The sad thing with Molly's behaviour and thought-trends is that they are real and present in most women's life. Initially, she was pitiful but all sense of sympathy fizzled out when the reason for tolerating Rollo's abusive behaviour was exposed. Inspector Duvenage was no where near solving the case and had no clue. We only get to know what he feels about such cases as Sarah's death and that was all. Molly, around whom the majority of the story revolved was dull and almost stupid in behaviour. I almost felt like pushing her to act.  For those interested in the Caine Prize shortlisted stories, the story could be downloaded here.

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Brief Bio: Tim Keegan was born in Cape Town in 1952. He matriculated at Bishops and then majored in history at the University of Cape Town. He obtained his PhD in African History from the University of London. After living and working in the UK and America he spent five years in the African Studies Institute at Wits University before going to the History Department at the University of the Western Cape. In the mid-nineties he left his post as an associate professor there to continue research and writing. He has published a long list of articles and reviews in academic journals and many chapters in academic publications. Around 2002 he began writing fiction, not very seriously at first, but with increasing enthusiasm and commitment. (Source)

ImageNations Rating: 4.0/6.0

104. The Life of Worm by Ken Barris

Ken Barris's The Life of Worm was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing, 2010. The story was first published in New Writings from Africa Anthology published by Johnson and King James Book, Cape Town. This story, like all the shortlisted stories, are part of the A Life in Full Anthology published in 2010.

The Life of a Worm is a story about a man and his dog, Worm. The man lives behind a series of metal doors, motion sensors and several electronic security protection. He is also protected by Worm, a ferocious dog he struggles to handle on their daily outings. When people approach them, praising the dog, the man becomes scared, afraid that the dog would tear off intruder's face. From his internal conversation, we see that the man is unable to control his dog. He is also afraid of something: armed-burglars? He is needs this protection and this makes him unable to sleep properly, always checking on his security detail. With alarms going off randomly, his alarming security detail is a worry to his neighbours.

Another worry of Worm's owner is his neighbours infested oak tree. This oak tree has bent at such an acute angle that any strong winds or storms would fall it and in falling destroy the man's house. The man has estimated the extent of this damage should it occur, arriving at the conclusion that his garage would not be destroyed.

Taking his dog for walk one day, the man sees that a huge trunk-like stem of the oak, which he dreamt had broken off, had actually broken and and destroyed a part of the wall. He wants to confront his neighbour but continues his walk with Worm. Then a spaniel approaches Worm and Worm grabs the spaniel and strangles it to death. The man cannot make Worm release this spaniel from his jaw. And powerless, he waits till Worm, in his own time, releases this dead dog.

This story, written in the first person present, is more of an internal dialogue and desperation of a man. Taken at face-value it portrays nothing. Absolutely nothing; however, further reflection shows man's daily worries about security, death, things he cannot control, things he procrastinates and more. Would he be attacked by the numerous robbers parading the street or by any of the reported incidents of burglary? Would the rotten oak tree fall and destroy his house? Would Worm kill someone? It has this Kafka-esque feel, for things begin almost at nothing and develops into something different.

This story is worth its inclusion in the shortlist. As to it winning the award would have depended on the meanings attributed it not what it says. And since attribution is a subjective endeavour, it is difficult to speak for or against it not winning.

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Brief Bio: Ken Barris lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He's a poet, novelist, and short story author. His short story The Quick Brown Fox won the 2006 Thomas Pringle Award. In 1996 his novel The Jailer's Book  won the M-Net Book Prize; it also received Honourable Mention at the Noma Award. His Poetry in New Coin won him the Sydney Clouts Memorial Award. An Advertisement for Air, a collection of poetry also won him the Ingrid Jonker Prize. He has been twice shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003 and 2010 for Clubfoot and The Life of Worm, respectively. The latter was also shortlisted for Studzinski/PEN Award in 2009. Barris' novel What Kind of Child was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book for Africa Region and the Herman Charles Bosman Fiction Prize. (Read about the author here)

ImageNations Rating: 4.5/6.0

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: How Shall we Kill the Bishop (2010) 

101. Soulmates by Alex Smith

Alex Smith's Soulmates was shortlisted for the 11th Caine Prize for African Writing in 2010. The story appeared in New Writing from Africa (2009) published by Johnson & King James Book, Cape Town.

Mary of the bees and thorns, Mary of the porcupines and nubbly roots, namelijk Maria, genaamd Magdalena, van welke zeven duivelen uitgegaan waren, Maria minus seven devils, Maria after whom I have been named, help me, please! Outside spiders were spinning webs, bees were waiting, motionless, for day, and porcupines were chewing through the frost and rutty bulbs of the renosterveld. Inside Maria was tearing. The door to the room was closed, but windy wind, tumultous as Maria's loss, violated the locks and cracks and came in with grit and insects, to witness the splitting of the elliptical entrance to Maria's physical soul, and, regardless of the fragile circumstances, boorish wind rampaged about the room with all the rattle of seven devils. Maria was laid out on a bed of coarse sheets.

Soulmates is the retelling of a historical event that occurred in Cape of Good Hope in the 18th Century. It is a story of love and murder, of a woman who, in finding love, found death for in finding love she stepped over an abominable line: killing her husband, in a patriarchal era, and falling in love with a black slave in an era where all that blacks were good for were dienaars en slawe: servants and slaves.

Maria was married to 'Rough' Franz Jooste, 'a knurled farmer, who has spent his blessed savings on negotiating for a bride price' at a young age her family was in need of the money. From the story we observe that Maria is depressed. There is no joy in the marriage, no love, no affection exhibited by Franz. There was two main activity that Franz demanded, one was asked, the other was taken: food and sex, respectively. Sex with Franz was one of a punishment through asphyxiation, physically and emotionally, than it was of love, for Franz, as portrayed in the story, was a straightforward person who goes in directly for what he wants. It was one-sided without the kisses, without the conversation, without the sharing of emotions: it was always rough and dry. 

Franz, who had stripped her of clothes to fondle, squeeze, prod, suck, suffocate, vandalise and admire her, and now now slept fully dressed with his pants still unbuttoned and his mouth hanging open, ...

Consequently, Maria experienced no joy in the household. Not even in her language, as Franz had 'disallowed her mother tongue, French' thus taking away her willingness to read the 'humourless Bible in Dutch'.

Suddenly, Maria, who had always thought of herself as better than their slave, Titus, realised that she was no different from him; they were both slaves to Franz, beaten by him at his will for the least offence and sometimes for nothing at all. However, 

Impish Titus with tapering fingers, ..., in spite of everything that was in his life possessed the playfulness of youth. He was a jester, not especially gifted at comedy, but irrepressibly inclined to joke.

This meeting, this realisation forbade doom. From then on Maria 'grew fond of the Biblical book of Titus, regardless of its Dutch, and from it drew comfort.' Titus would dress her wounds with lotion and herbs after the master had beaten her; Titus would get her a flower, a leaf, a speckled egg, a feather, even as the master refused to buy her clothes. Then one day Maria 'leaned upwards and held her lips near to Titus's lips.' And the abomination was complete.

Death by impalement and decapitation to Titus and by strangulation to Maria was the judge's sentence, when Maria shot and killed her husband after Titus's shot failed to kill him for beating Maria. The sentencing of Maria and Titus took place on September 1, 1714 and Titus lived for two more days after his impalement, giving up life on September 3, after which

His right hand and head were sawed off and fixed on the gates of Jooste farm as a warning to other slaves who might dare to love beyond their quarters.

This story, full of biblical allusions (for it seemed that Franz Jooste was one who kept the Lord's words in some sense), shows how far the people of South Africa, and humanity in general, have come. For 'today, they would be allowed to kiss, allowed to love and would surely have been acquitted from the charges of murder, for they were acting in self-defence'. From the latter statement, one can deduce that this story is meant to be a rallying call for their 'names to be cleared'. Yet, they were

'a contemptible slave guilty of carnal intercourse' and 'a woman who gratified her foul and godless lust'

I am extremely impressed by this story; not only for the quality and beauty of its prose (reason why I quoted part of the opening paragraph to the story at the beginning of this review), but also for the unlikely source from which the story was taken. With this story, Alex Smith has shown the wideness and deepness of the river how varied the fishes that swim in it. Read the true account of this story here.
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Brief Bio: Alex Smith was born in Cape Town but has lived in China, Taiwan and the UK. She is a teacher, textile merchant, a bookseller and an author. She has been shortlisted for and won several awards. In 2009 she was shortlisted for the PEN/Studinsky Award judged by J.M. Coetzee for Soulmates, which was also shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing and is currently part of the Caine Prize anthology for 2011 To see the Mountain, after appearing in the New Writing from Africa anthology. She won the 2011 Nielsen Book Data Booksellers Choice Award for Four Drunk Beauties (Random House publication). She was also the prize winner in the Tafelberg-Sanlam Youth Literature Competition 2010 for her youth novel Agency Blue. In 2009 her story Change was included in the prestigious Touch anthology of stories by 25 top South Africa authors.

ImageNations' Rating: 5.5/6.0

Other Caine Prize Shortlist: Waiting by E.C. Osondu (2009)