Zakes Mda’s novel is set in two time frames. But what if it’s not possible to leave, and if one feels a moral obligation to make a difference, even if it’s risky? People struggle with this dilemma all over the world, in regimes from the Middle East to Latin America to newly nationalist places in Europe, and yes, in Australia too, if one feels anguished about Indigenous issues or the treatment of refugees or the inaction on climate change. Life as a privileged white man becomes unendurable, and he leaves, because he can. In Doust’s novel, South Africa in the apartheid years is vividly depicted, and the narrator exemplifies the psychological disconnect experienced when living in a society that is fundamentally immoral.

Ways of Dying ) might prompt general overviews of the African literary scene.My recent reading of Return Ticket by Jon Doust triggered my impulse to pick up The Heart of Redness, a celebrated novel by South African novelist Zakes Mda. The publication of this novel (accompanied by the release of the paperback original of Mda's first novel, 7)įorecast: Championed by Nadine Gordimer, Mda represents a new, postapartheid generation of South African writers. Mda's sympathies are with the Believers, but his eminent fairness forbids mere didacticism, and his joy in the back and forth of village politics beautifully communicates itself to the reader through poetic language enlivened by humor and irony. Secretly, however, Camagu lusts for Qukezwa, the squat but sexy daughter of Zim.

He ends up being associated with the cold, beautiful Xoliswa Ximiya, Bhonco's daughter, whose scorn for tradition eventually drives her from the village. Camagu originally comes to Qolorha looking for a woman whose memory haunts him. The Unbelievers want economic development. The Believers oppose the changes they foresee coming to the village's traditions. The white store owner, Dalton, whose ancestor killed Zim and Bhonco's forefather, Xikixa, is on the Believers' side in the village's current controversy over whether or not to allow a casino in the village. The chief Believer is Zim his rival, the chief Unbeliever, is Bhonco. They put the onus for the distressing failure of Nongqawuse's visions on the Unbelievers' unbelief. In the village of Qolorha-by-Sea in the late 20th century, the Believers still flourish. The war between the amaXhosa and the British in South Africa (known to Westerners as the Zulu Wars) was interrupted by a strange, messianic interlude in which the amaXhosa followed the self-destructive commands of the prophet Nongqawuse and were split between followers of Nongqawuse (Believers) and their opponents (Unbelievers). In Mda's richly suggestive novel, a Westernized African, Camagu, becomes embroiled in a village dispute that has its roots in the 19th century.

The heart of redness