tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/zakes-mda-41296/articlesZakes Mda – The Conversation2022-01-09T08:31:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1740632022-01-09T08:31:04Z2022-01-09T08:31:04ZBook review: Zakes Mda’s subversive take on Lesotho’s traditions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439684/original/file-20220106-13-y7in1y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Portrait of a Lesotho shepherd, Ntoaesele Mashongoane.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">JOHN WESSELS/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2019 at the Abantu Book Festival in Soweto, South African writer and artist Zakes Mda was celebrating the publication of his final novel, <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/zulus-new-york/9781415210154">The Zulus of New York</a></em>, when he made a <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2019-12-09-mdas-new-novel-confession-caps-abantu-book-festival/">surprise announcement</a>. He had changed his mind and was writing another novel. He explained that “sometimes when you are a writer a story finds you and attacks you. It forces you to narrate it.” </p>
<p>The story is set in Lesotho, a landlocked and mountainous country neighbouring South Africa. It covers the growth of a kheleke – a wandering minstrel – and his career and the heights it is possible to reach, before tragedy engulfs and silences his accordion.</p>
<p>In <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/wayfarers-hymns/9781415210826">Wayfarers’ Hymns</a></em>, the author draws on his early life in Lesotho, where he joined his father in exile, and where he later taught at the national university. This novel re-connects the author to the land and culture of <a href="https://www.wantedonline.co.za/art-design/2017-02-01-how-the-basotho-blanket-became-the-brand-identity-of-a-nation/">colourful blankets</a>, <a href="https://pan-african-music.com/en/introducing-lesothos-accordion-music/">Famo musicians</a> and feuding factions, or “musical gangsters” as academic Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang calls them in a recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/zakes-mda-on-his-latest-novel-set-in-lesothos-musical-gang-wars-170839">interview</a> with Mda.</p>
<h2>Subverting traditions</h2>
<p>The central character is a nameless boy-child kheleke – “the eloquent one” – who sings the praises of his sister Moliehi. Despite the abundance of compliments sung by her brother, she describes him as a lazy <em>leloabe</em> (vagabond) and <em>molelere</em> (wanderer), with the connotations of a wastrel. But as the kheleke narrates the novel, it is his viewpoint that wins over. He explains in the first line that “she was the one I sang my hymns to” and he makes her name and beauty famous.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/zakes-mda-on-his-latest-novel-set-in-lesothos-musical-gang-wars-170839">Zakes Mda on his latest novel, set in Lesotho's musical gang wars</a>
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<p>The tradition is explained thus:</p>
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<p>A great hymn begins with the kheleke introducing himself to the world, repeating his name and his father’s, against his father’s if his father was a reprobate as men tend to be, and praising the virtues of his clan, his village and his chief.</p>
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<p>And throughout Mda plays with this convention as the kheleke himself remains nameless, it is his “cult” (band) “of the arum-lily”, Mohalalitoe, that becomes famous. And although the kheleke sings about his father, it is a father who is missing, having died in a deep goldmine. He could not be buried among his kin in ancestral land and his spirit remains unappeased. In many ways it is the search for his father’s body that propels the action in the novel.</p>
<p>This apparently patriarchal form of music also praises the land, “even when the hymn is a lamentation. Even when the land is barren.” Before moving on to the sister: “A kheleke dwells on his sister and her unsurpassed qualities of womanhood.” Again the irony here is that the kheleke must sing about a “formidable woman in his life”, if he doesn’t have a sister, then his <em>rakhali</em> (paternal aunt) is the best he can do. </p>
<p>Most importantly, “No self-respecting kheleke sings the praises of his wife in public, lest he invites vultures to his homestead.” And yet the song the kheleke becomes famous for <em>U Ka Se Nqete</em> celebrates female polyamory, or at least the ability of women to take different sexual partners while their husbands are working in the gold mines of Johannesburg.</p>
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<img alt="A bald man in a suit jacket stands in a garden smiling at the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439686/original/file-20220106-23-109v0nq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Zakes Mda.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">LEONARDO CENDAMO/Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>This song that celebrates cuckoldry becomes an unexpected hit. The duet that the kheleke creates with his girlfriend, the dancer Maleshoane, is what cements the success of the song. It’s upbeat and funny, and though the men claim to dislike it, they all sing along.</p>
<h2>Musical gangsters</h2>
<p>In the ensuing battle between rival bands, the kheleke’s Cult of the Arum Lily directly challenge The Cult of the Train, an antagonism that leads to his downfall. Unknown to him, the cults also operate illegal mining operations and, as his father’s age-mate Tau ea Khale explains, things have changed greatly since the days when “warriors were warriors and musicians were musicians”.</p>
<p>The gangs arose in 1999, escalating in 2007, when Tau ea Khale describes being in prison and hearing of “inmates sentenced to years because they killed others over music … Mosotho killing another Mosotho for a song … boys who used to look after cattle together.” It is this snapshot of Lesotho gang warfare that Mda expertly captures in this novel, though it also celebrates music, composition and creativity itself.</p>
<h2>Meditation on masculinity and femininity</h2>
<p>Mda develops a significant meditation on masculinity as <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em> continues the pattern of Siphiwo Mahala’s <em><a href="https://www.panmacmillan.co.za/authors/siphiwo-mahala/when-a-man-cries/9781770104075">When A Man Cries</a></em>, Thando Mgqolozana’s <em><a href="https://cassavarepublic.biz/product/a-man-who-is-not-a-man-2/">A Man Who is Not a Man</a></em>, and Masande Ntshanga’s <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/reactive/9781415207192">The Reactive</a></em>, all of which consider <em>ulwaluko</em> (traditional circumcision ritual) and what it means to be a man in southern Africa (during the HIV/AIDS pandemic).</p>
<p>A continued refrain amongst the men of his band is that the kheleke is disloyal because he is not circumcised and must “graduate from an initiation school” to be a man. He responds: “All I wanted was to be a kheleke of note, playing beautiful music, appearing on television … Radio.” But he is pushed by an attack on his sister to write a song which directly challenges The Cult of the Train and therein lies his downfall.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-sindiwe-magonas-devastating-uplifting-story-of-south-african-women-166186">Book review: Sindiwe Magona's devastating, uplifting story of South African women</a>
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<p>Mda develops different notions of freedom – in performance, singing, music and mourning – by bringing back the much-loved character of Toloki from his celebrated 1995 novel <em><a href="https://www.oxford.co.za/book/9780195714982-ways-of-dying#.Ydb5sS8RpQI">Ways of Dying</a></em>. Toloki seeks more ways of mourning, away from the township and the HIV/AIDS bereavements of South Africa, with the deaths of the Famo musicians in Lesotho. Although he is a background figure in <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em>, Toloki provides ample comic respite from the posturing and machismo of the gang warfare. He also challenges us to rethink categories, bringing his performance of ‘grief’ to Lesotho and then juxtaposing it with his own genuine grief at losing the love of his life.</p>
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<p>Mda has always written strong female characters, but in <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em> he also classically undercuts notions of femininity by making Moliehi a woman who loves another woman, providing unexpected female khelekes and featuring female gangsters called MaRussia like Mme Mpuse. She offers her sage advice to the boy-child kheleke when he sings with her. She tells him, “One day you will be a sought-after kheleke. But never be led by your penis. That’s what has destroyed great men. Be led by the music.” The <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em> are songs worth listening to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lizzy Attree works for Blake Friedmann Literary Agency, where Isobel Dixon represents Zakes Mda.</span></em></p>Set in the music wars of Lesotho, the new novel by the South African author tells of a wandering minstrel whose hit song leads to his downfall.Lizzy Attree, Adjunct Professor, Richmond American International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1708392021-11-15T14:06:13Z2021-11-15T14:06:13ZZakes Mda on his latest novel, set in Lesotho’s musical gang wars<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430839/original/file-20211108-21-1gx3sb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A masked herdsman in Lesotho.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edwin Remsberg/The Image Bank via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Zakes Mda is one of South Africa’s best-loved novelists – though he is also a celebrated playwright, children’s book author and an increasingly visible painter. His latest novel, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/wayfarers-hymns/9781415210826">Wayfarers’ Hymns</a>, is at once full of drama and mirth, set in Lesotho and playing out in the bloody world of famo musicians. At a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze1piSqrasA">launch of the book</a> at the University of Pretoria, Dr Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang interviewed Mda about it. This is an edited transcription of that interview.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang</strong> I was intrigued that yes, you talk about the culture of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sotho-south-sotho-or-basotho">Basotho</a> and the <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/musical-instruments-lesotho">instruments</a> of Basotho, but not in the way that you’ve done before, as a kind of healing salve to our colonial oppression and apartheid and so on. This is a different ballgame. Tell us a little bit about what inspired you. And about the process of writing this <a href="https://www.newframe.com/sharp-read-the-hymns-of-a-kheleke/">book about musical gangsters</a>, really.</p>
<p><strong>Zakes Mda</strong> This book is centred around <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/famo-music-lesotho">famo music</a>. Which is a genre of music in Lesotho. Very popular there, predominantly the instrument there is the accordion, it used to be the concertina before. So Basothos have taken the concertina and the accordion and turned them into Sesotho traditional instruments. And it’s a kind of music that’s full of poetry. And the poetry is known as hymns, <em>difela</em>, but these are secular hymns, they are not religious hymns. And so that is why the title is <em>Wayfarers’ Hymns</em>. </p>
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<p>Wayfarers are travellers. The title comes from the Sesotho name of the genre, it’s <em>difela tsa batsamai</em>, which means the hymns of those who traverse the land … Now, I grew up knowing this music because I grew up in Lesotho. But it’s only recently that I learned new things about it, which are <a href="https://chimurengachronic.co.za/accordion-cowboys/">recent developments</a>, gang wars, the wars, amongst the <a href="https://www.thereporter.co.ls/2021/08/15/famo-gang-violence-leads-to-internal-displacement/">gangs</a> that are led by musicians themselves. </p>
<p>So these musicians have evolved into gang leaders. And every weekend in <a href="https://www.lesotho-info.co.za/country/province/29/mafeteng">Mafeteng</a>, which is a district in Lesotho, there are their funerals of musicians who have died in these wars, of their followers, of the chorus boys and so on. Fighting for territory, fighting for followers, but also fighting for <a href="https://www.mineralscouncil.org.za/work/illegal-mining">illegal mining</a>. </p>
<p>The illegal mining that happens here in Gauteng, in Welkom and so on, is actually led by the musicians, the leaders of these gangs. So I was fascinated to hear of this because I’ve never read about it, even in the newspapers. Sometimes you will hear that four <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2021/04/30/the-plight-of-south-africa-s-zama-zama-illegal-miners//"><em>zama zamas</em></a>, by which they mean the illegal miners, were found dead on the roadside or something like that. And they never dig deeper, who were they, why were they there? And then right into the fact that the mining operations, the illegal mining operations are actually run by syndicates of Basotho musicians. They are fighting over these territories as well.</p>
<p>And indeed, when you listen to the music, I mean, it’s beautiful, it’s healing, with wonderful poetry, but it engenders a lot of death. You know, which is a contradiction in terms. I think that’s what fascinated me to write a novel set in this community of famo music, examining the culture that gave birth to it, the culture of the old <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/200611080910.html">MaRussia gangs</a>, the Russian gangs of the 50s. And then up to the contemporary musicians, because you see, you trace the ancestry of the current famo musicians to those early MaRussia gangs.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/virtual-exhibition-breathes-life-into-lesothos-musical-tradition-and-clay-art-167315">Virtual exhibition breathes life into Lesotho's musical tradition and clay art</a>
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<p><strong>Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang:</strong> Scholars of African literature will know about the history of the MaRussia. And I grew up in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/soweto-johannesburg">Soweto</a>, in Pimville. So MaRussia were really big in Pimville. We all knew even as children, that, you know, when you see a Mosotho with a blanket … It might be an <a href="https://theconversation.com/worlds-deadliest-inventor-mikhail-kalashnikov-and-his-ak-47-126253">AK47</a> under the blanket.</p>
<p><strong>Zakes Mda:</strong> We know <em>difela</em>, the wayfarers hymns, as melodic, it’s so deceptively beautiful and calm, you know, but there is this kind of underbelly. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Pretoria launch of Wayfarers’ Hymns.</span></figcaption>
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<p><strong>Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang:</strong> And very elegantly done. The way you balance dramatic and sometimes very difficult issues, to do with race, to do with land, to do with economic freedom, but it’s tempered with humour. But specifically in this book, the issue of the toxic masculinities, the whole persona of the mine worker, you know, <em>o sebetsa dimaineng</em> don’t be a layabout, go and be a man and work in the mines, and the cost of that to the individuals and to the community. Talk to us about that, because in the past, you’ve spoken about strong women, but now you seem to be shining a light more on the many layers of masculinities.</p>
<p><strong>Zakes Mda:</strong> Yes. But even then, I still talk about strong women. But even there, it is not something that is preplanned, that this woman has to be strong, this man has to be toxic, and so on. The story takes me there. And the story is informed by the culture of the setting. The strong women don’t come from my imagination … “Oh, I wish there were strong women in the world, okay, let me create them in my fiction.” It is because in the environment that I’m writing about, they are there. In many instances, they’re the people who drive life in those environments. And therefore, they drive my story. The toxic environment of the men, in the setting of the wayfarers, this is one novel which is much more informed by the reality, than any other of my novels. </p>
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<span class="caption">Zakes Mda.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joanne Olivier/Courtesy Penguin Random House</span></span>
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<p>The story itself is told a lot through the lyrics of their songs, and of their poetry, and those lyrics are full of that toxic masculinity that you are talking about. Because they are lyrics of war, and they challenge one another. And they do in Sesotho what is known as <em>ho kobisa</em> which means, you know, talking obliquely about each other in an insulting way, even without directly mentioning the names. But when you hear the song, you know that song is about me. And I’m going back to kill those people.</p>
<p><strong>Nokuthula Mazibuko-Msimang:</strong> I’ve got a question from one of the people watching: what is the one thing Prof Mda would like to see his books do in African communities? What kind of impact does he hope to achieve?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-award-winning-lesotho-film-also-has-social-justice-at-heart-154204">This award-winning Lesotho film also has social justice at heart</a>
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<p><strong>Zakes Mda:</strong> Well, like every writer in the world, you hope that your books will be read, that’s the main reason you write them. And first and foremost, you want them to entertain, because that’s what the intention is. That’s why it is a novel and not a pamphlet of ideas. It’s a novel because storytelling in itself is entertaining and therefore highly digestible and you transmit knowledge through a medium that gives you joy, just the joy of the stories itself … </p>
<p>But of course, there is no writer in the world who will be loved by everybody. There will be those who will love your work. There will be others who will say it’s so-so, it’s mediocre, but okay. And there are others who say, this is awful. That’s what we live with as artists in all the arts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nokuthula Mazibuko Msimang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lesotho’s famo music is known for the use of accordions - and gang violence. In Wayfarers’ Hymns, Zakes Mda explores this tradition.Nokuthula Mazibuko Msimang, Artist in Residency, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1226642019-10-06T09:04:00Z2019-10-06T09:04:00ZLiterature sheds light on the history and mystery of the Southern Ocean<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295442/original/file-20191003-52796-1763ajl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you look at a globe, you’ll see that the Southern Hemisphere is bluer than the Northern Hemisphere. A <a href="http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/module-3/regional-temperature/explanation-2.php">huge 80%</a> of it is ocean compared to 60% of the North.</p>
<p>The Southern Ocean is the only ocean in which waves circulate without encountering intervening landmasses. It’s gargantuan in size and ferocity. The roaring, furious, and screaming latitudes are daunting to maritime traffic. </p>
<p>The Antarctic Convergence – where icy currents meet warmer sub-Antarctic waters – supports an abundance of marine life. There’s no northern equivalent to this phenomenon. But, like the icebound continent itself, no humans live there.</p>
<p>Because it uniquely flows into the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, the Southern Ocean opens up possibilities for tracking the intersecting currents and itineraries that compose the global South. As do writers and artists, we’re calling for the global South to be thought of alongside the Southern Ocean, what we call <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/english-language-notes/article/57/1/37/137694/The-Oceanic-South">the oceanic South</a>. </p>
<p>The global South makes you think mostly of an unequal present but the oceanic South brings to the fore pasts of maritime imperialism, as well as what the future might bring. It draws together the dispersed landmasses of the settler South, the decolonised and still colonised countries of the Southern Hemisphere, the “sea of islands” comprising Indigenous Oceania, and the frozen continent of Antarctica. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.oceanichumanities.com/people">research group</a>, that we are a part of, based at the University of the Witwatersrand, Oceanic Humanities for the Global South has turned its attention to cultural representations of the ocean by exploring literature and the arts across different scales of time and place. This includes the Southern Ocean.</p>
<h2>Reviewing the literature</h2>
<p>Many writers and artists have represented the Southern Ocean in ways that layer possible futures over diverse pasts – illuminating the links between them. </p>
<p>Two examples we discussed in a <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/english-language-notes/article/57/1/37/137694/The-Oceanic-South">recent paper</a> are Witi Ihaemera’s <em>The Whale Rider</em> from Aotearoa New Zealand and Zakes Mda’s <em>The Whale Caller</em> from South Africa. </p>
<p>Both novels register the catastrophic slaughter of whales that took place during roughly the same period as European colonialism. Both explore the interrelationship between genocidal and extractive projects and how humans and whales interlock as they journey together through the southern seas.</p>
<p>This is the term that Ihimaera uses to describe “the knowledge of whalespeaking” that the ancients once had. It was also this knowledge and with which the Maori ancestor Paikea asked a whale to carry him to the land that lay far to the south.</p>
<p>The novel shows how the interlocking of land inhabitants and ocean inhabitants that articulates the origin story of Aotearoa is sundered when the whalekilling begins.</p>
<p>Mda’s novel <em>The Whale Caller</em> sketches out similarly intersecting itineraries of land and ocean inhabitants from the vantage point of the southern tip of Africa. The Whale Caller had learned the songs of migrating whales during his own peregrinations in which he</p>
<blockquote>
<p>spent many years walking westwards along the coast of the Indian Ocean, until he reached the point where the two oceans met, and then proceeded northwards along the Atlantic Ocean coast.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Whale Caller surmises that – like the Australasians he has read about – the indigenous inhabitants of these African shores had feasted on stranded whales and that their expressions of gratitude for the bounty delivered by the sea included also mourning for the loss of companion species.</p>
<p>Other literature that’s been explored includes poetry by South African-born poet and novelist <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23277408.2014.941751">Yvette Christiansë</a>. She links the Indian and Atlantic Oceans by following “Liberated Africans” from Mozambique to St Helena. This one of the forgotten afterlives of slavery, <a href="https://fordham.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5422/fordham/9780823277872.001.0001/upso-9780823277872-chapter-005">centred in the South</a>. </p>
<h2>The journeys of books</h2>
<p>The Oceanic Humanities for the Global South is also taking into account the entire hydrological cycle. This links evaporation from the surrounding oceans to rainfall on the watershed of the Witwatersrand – ridge of white waters in Gauteng. Isabel Hofmeyr, a Professor of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand and New York University, has <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/english-language-notes/article/57/1/11/137697/Provisional-Notes-on-Hydrocolonialism">proposed the rubric</a> “hydrocolonialism” to link sea and land, empire and environment. </p>
<p>In provisional notes on the topic she discusses hydrocolonial book history and sets out what can be learnt from tracing books on their oceanic journeys. </p>
<p>The Oceanic Humanities for the global South team is involved in a range of other research too. The subjects include undertaking a cultural history of seaweed harvesters, abalone poachers, black whalers and other underwater workers. Members of the team are also exploring representations of water spirits in local literature and culture and tracing links between black aesthetics and the deep ocean.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122664/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Southern Ocean, as artists have uncovered, is also a treasure trove of cultural narratives.Charne Lavery, Lecturer and Research Associate, University of the WitwatersrandMeg Samuelson, Associate Professor, English and Creative Writing, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1011302018-08-07T12:14:10Z2018-08-07T12:14:10ZA tribute to Winston Ntshona: a pioneer of storytelling and activism in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230757/original/file-20180806-191013-1yhn3wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C395%2C2000%2C1793&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Winston Ntshona in 'Sizwe Banzi is dead'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied by Baxter Theatre</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A slim, well-thumbed paperback volume occupies a special place on my bookshelf. Its spine is torn and barely legible, but such is its familiarity that I can dispense with such necessities. I can find <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212322.Statements">“Statements: Three Plays”</a> instantly. The plays were Sizwe Bansi is Dead, The Island, and Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act.</p>
<p>Today, I turn to the volume seeking guidance and as a means of paying homage to a remarkable man, Winston Ntshona, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/obituaries/winston-ntshona-tony-winning-south-african-actor-dies-at-76.html">who passed away</a> on 2 August 2018. Not a man that I knew personally, but one whose impact resonates in so many in different ways. This publication in itself – an Oxford University Press edition – preserves much of what <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winston-ntshona">Ntshona</a> represents in the legacy of theatre-making and theatre-going in South Africa and the world.</p>
<p>A black and white photograph from the Royal Court Theatre production (1974) dominates the front cover. It shows two men and a camera on a tripod in the foreground. The image captures a vital ephemeral moment which has become as iconic as the three names superimposed above: <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harold-athol-fugard">Athol Fugard</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/bonisile-john-kani">John Kani</a>, Winston Ntshona. </p>
<p>These names pronounce a genesis of South African theatre-making founded on creative partnership and collaborative authorship. Together and individually, they represent a paradigm for collective action that fuses storytelling with political activism. </p>
<p>Alphabetical ordering might account for the sequence of surnames, but the image composition contradicts Ntshona’s being named last of the trio. His prominence is asserted through sheer physical presence and position. It is he who is seated in the foreground in a relaxed, expansive pose, elbow resting on the table in the role of the eponymous Sizwe Banzi. </p>
<p>Behind the table, the beam of Kani’s gleaming smile is as arresting as his appearance in dapper bow-tie and crisp white dust coat. Ntshona’s role was invariably to be the foil to Kani’s more urbane, eloquent and flamboyant personae. </p>
<p>The two bodies declare what words cannot capture: an extraordinary complementary relationship between two very different individual performers and storytellers. They share an outward orientation of their bodies and gestures in a reciprocal acknowledgement of each other and simultaneously offer this interaction to an audience.</p>
<p>Ntshona leans into a chair with the dignified air of assurance and a right to occupy his seat: a man who is at one with an identity he is forging. His head is tilted upwards in an expression that suggests a man with a vision or a dream of prosperity.</p>
<h2>Theatre paradigm</h2>
<p>In the early 1970s I was an undergraduate at what was then named the University of Natal (Durban) studying Speech and Drama. </p>
<p>The performance of <a href="http://www.baxter.co.za/shows/sizwe-banzi-is-dead/">“Sizwe Banzi is Dead”</a>, a play about the struggle for human dignity in apartheid-era South Africa, was to take place in the Student Union Building. I recall (with absolute clarity) my doubts that two actors could project a presence that would fill that enormous space. The multipurpose assembly hall accommodated sporting and recreational events and its multi-volume high glass windows tempted the eye to the intense blue of sky and ocean behind and beyond a rudimentary temporary stage. </p>
<p>I sat in what must have been – from the perspective of the two performers – a relatively homogeneous sea of animated young middle-class white faces. We waited, slightly apprehensively, seated uniformly on blue plastic chairs (as we might for an eventual graduation ceremony) ill-equipped, unprepared even, for a seminal experience of theatre as <a href="https://history-day-by-day.com/2012/05/30/a-great-reckoning-in-a-little-room/">“a great reckoning in a little room”</a>.</p>
<p>Some 35 years later, I vividly recall the impact of Ntshona’s voice – deep, rich and resonant – along with his vibrant presence. Even more memorable was his slow, smile spreading across his face. That silent spellbinding action conveyed the resilience of the spirit, the conviction of simple dignity more than words could express.</p>
<h2>Nothing But the Truth</h2>
<p>Decades later I met Ntshona (4 July 2002). Kani’s solo authored play <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/nothing-but-the-truth/">“Nothing But the Truth”</a> had just received a tumultuous standing ovation at its Grahamstown Festival premiere. In the somewhat overwhelming aftermath of the performance and its reception, Ntshona was the first person to be admitted to Kani’s dressing room. They had taken different routes on the journey from what might be called protest idiom to what author <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/zanemvula-kizito-mda">Zakes Mda</a> has called “a theatre of reconciliation” in which Kani has figured so authoritatively. Respectful of the longstanding brotherhood, no one wished to intrude on what these two legends might wish to say to one another.</p>
<p>I was surprised to be called to the dressing room and introduced. Ntshona had one question for me. He wanted to know how it was that I knew the inside of the New Brighton township home in which Kani had grown as featured in the play. </p>
<p>As production designer I hadn’t been inside the house nor had I had access to photographs. Instead, the stage design was based on the sketch layout that Kani had talked me through: condensing, abstracting and selecting details. It tended towards an expressionist rather than realist rendering. </p>
<p>I could only marvel at the generosity of a consummate artist, profoundly familiar with the world of a New Brighton home and his pleasure at having his memory of a particular place being triggered by the creative efforts of another. </p>
<p>His joy at the reception of Kani’s play and performance remains inspirational. The capacity to acknowledge and value participatory collaboration has emerged as a core strength of emergent South African theatre at its most vigorous and committed. Ntshona embodied those attributes.</p>
<p>In an age that venerates celebrities, public achievement as a marker of status and self-promotion in the arts and culture sector, Ntshona remains a role model of a modesty of being and accomplishment. The personae that Ntshona created epitomise moral and ethical integrity conjoined with steadfast purpose. “The Island” (1973) ends with Winston, in the role of Antigone saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I honoured those things to which honour belongs. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The words seem fit as an epitaph to him, his work, artistry and achievements.</p>
<p><em>Winston Ntshona, actor, born 6 October 1941; died 2 August 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In an age that venerates celebrities and self-promotion in the arts and culture sector, Winston Ntshona remains a role model for his modesty.Sarah Roberts, Associate Professor of Dramatic Art, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/811412017-07-30T07:51:32Z2017-07-30T07:51:32Z‘Dancing the Death Drill’: historical fiction that tells us about today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180176/original/file-20170728-1117-152dd5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Mendi shown here in pre-war days in use as a mail ship.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the John Gribble Collection</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his keynote speech at the recent South African Sunday Times Literary Awards the novelist, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/zanemvula-kizito-mda">Zakes Mda</a>, said that “we write historical fiction to take history to the level of what was it like to be in what happened”. Mda <a href="http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2017/06/27/the-illumination-of-truthfulness-zakes-mdas-sunday-times-literary-awards-keynote-address/">said</a> that as a historical novelist, he writes,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>historical fiction to grapple with the present. Great historical fiction is more about the present than it is about the past.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a truism that has always informed, I suspect, most practitioners of historical fiction. It is one not different for Fred Khumalo in his latest novel, <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/dancing-death-drill/9781415209493">“Dancing the Death Drill”</a>. Although Khumalo says that he wrote the novel in order to remember black South African soldiers who played a role in World War 1, and those who perished in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/ss-mendi">SS Mendi</a> ship, this is equally a novel about the present, and the ills that continue to bedevil the country.</p>
<p>While doing his early education, Khumalo’s protagonist tells his teacher, Madame Christine, that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to be a voyager, I want to travel on ships, I want to discover new places, engage in long conversations with strangers, play with ideas, experiment with things. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is obviously a mind of a precocious teenager; curious about the world and intent in finding out more about it. But this precocity is, inevitably, also naïve. The young Roelof de la Rey, who subsequently changes his name to Pitso Motaung (after he is deserted by his white Afrikaner father), is unfortunately still somewhat unaware that his desire to travel, and meet new people, can never be easily realised due to the sociopolitical landscape that he finds himself in in the early twentieth century. </p>
<p>As Pitso becomes an adult, he begins to realise that there are a lot of things that he has to deal with and that have to do with his identity and how people react to him because of it. He finds himself constantly having to confront the fact that contrary to his desires of only wanting to belong to the Sesotho-speaking tribe, that he is instead seen as a coloured person and consequently treated in this manner in colonial South Africa. </p>
<p>He in fact says to someone, as he does several times in the novel, that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>if you ever call me a coloured person or a mixed-race person, I shall make you swallow your faith, I am Pitso, the son of Motaung. The roaring cub of the Bataung people. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Dominant discourses of the day</h2>
<p>It however becomes increasingly clear to Pitso that to be in the world is to be marked and that people’s perceptions of you are dependent on the dominant discourses of the day. Thus against his will, and his constant desire to be regarded in his singularity, or as belonging to a group of his choice, he is forced to learn to accept the impossibility of this desire.</p>
<p>If Pitso’s ambitions, as stated earlier, are to travel and see the world, this does in fact happen. But as with most things in life, this happens by chance. Pitso and other young men hear from the South African government that they need to go and defend the British against Germany. They’re promised that if they do this, they will be well paid and that when they return to their country, the government will offer black people more freedoms than they currently enjoy. </p>
<p>It’s on this journey to France, in the SS Mendi troop ship, that Pitso and his countrymen encounter a crisis; the <a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/first-world-war-home-front/what-we-already-know/sea/ssmendi/">sinking of the ship</a>, that was carrying 802 men of the South African Native Labour Corps, and the unimaginable suffering this brings. This was after colliding with a British merchant ship on 21 February 1917 - a total of 618 men drowned in the icy Atlantic.</p>
<p>It’s one of the tragic histories that is rarely spoken about in South Africa and the act of writing this novel, then, should be seen as an important archival project since it brings a repressed and difficult history into the spotlight.</p>
<h2>A time rife with complexity</h2>
<p>One of the strengths of Khumalo’s novel is that it shows the early twentieth century, similar to other times, as a time that was rife with complexity. This means that while a reader might expect the black soldiers in the novel to be portrayed as mere victims – without any agency – this is in fact not the case. </p>
<p>It is clear enough in the novel that Khumalo is deeply aware of time, and of the ways in which it shapes identity and one’s experience of the world. This does not however mean that those who were dispossessed did not also work to manipulate time in order to lessen their suffering. In the novel this is most clear when the ship starts sinking. </p>
<p>Reverend Isaac Wauchope Dyobha starts preaching to his fellow soldiers that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers. Swazis, Pondos, Basutos, we die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s from this that they start dancing the death drill, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not crying, not panicking, not screaming at the approach of death. In Africa, even in the times of death, people celebrate. Death becomes a spectacular, moment of defiance, the defiance of death itself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s with such understanding that the soldiers approach their unexpected catastrophe with grace. It’s reported that more than 600 black soldiers lost their lives when the ship sank. Pitso survives this tragedy and it’s his narrative that drives much of the plot after this event.</p>
<p>One of the obvious challenges of the times that we live in is that we are coming to the realisation that Hegel long <a href="https://www.ucg.org/beyond-today/blogs/the-only-thing-we-learn-from-history-is-that-we-learn-nothing-from-history">taught us</a>, which is that “we learn from history that we do not learn from history”. </p>
<p>What then, with this in mind, might be the purpose of historical fiction? Perhaps it’s not so much that there’s something to “learn” from it. Perhaps the goal is a much more humble and subtle one which is to recognise and pay tribute to lives that came before us. </p>
<p>In doing so to connect the past with the present and to allow readers to recognise how much of their lives have changed and unavoidably, to pay attention to the many things, and ills, that remain the same. “Dancing the Death Drill” is a fine glimpse into this turbulent historical period in South Africa’s calendar and what is done with this narrative, as the cliché goes, is entirely up to the living.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manosa Nthunya does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What might be the purpose of historical fiction? Perhaps to the humble and subtle to recognise and pay tribute to lives that came before us.Manosa Nthunya, PhD Candidate, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.