His finger-on-the-pulse reports of post-apartheid South Africa’s social complexities and challenges have rightly established Niq Mhlongo as part of a younger generation of black South African writers. Mhlongo’s first two novels, Dog Eat Dog (2004) and After Tears (2007) which focus on student life and its precarious financial predicaments, have not lost their relevance in view of the 2015 student protests that swept across the campuses of South Africa’s leading universities. His third novel, Way Back Home, deals with the lesser-known history of the ANC’s detention camps in Angola and corruption among the leading officers of its armed struggle with the latter finding its continuation in the highest echelons of post-apartheid politics. Kimathi, the novel’s protagonist, and his obsession with expensive whiskeys, imported cigars, and fancy cars can be considered a harbinger of Mhlongo’s latest offering, his short story collection Affluenza.
Many of the protagonists in Affluenza share Kimathi’s excessive consumption of goods. In “Betrayal in the Wilderness”, for example, there are the posh tourists who, in pursuit of capturing the Big Five on their high-tech cameras at Kruger National Park, are sipping champagne under the scorching sun. In the title story, “Affluenza”, there is the businessman, Fanna, who flashes about his credit cards in order to impress a group of elegantly dressed young women despite being in arrears with the instalments for his expensive car.
The collection consists of 11 short stories some of which have previously been published internationally, to critical acclaim. They are, however, mostly unknown among the South African reading public. Affluenza adds to the eclectic list of relevant sociopolitical issues tackled in Mhlongo’s oeuvre. Some of the topics covered in the collection are land restitution, xenophobia, stereotypes against Africans, corruption, HIV/Aids, homophobia, betrayal, and dysfunctional relationships, to name but the most prominent. The collection thereby deftly combines Mhlongo’s witty and satirical tone of Dog Eat Dog and After Tears with the more earnest and sombre style of Way Back Home.
Readers are indeed up for an emotional rollercoaster in Affluenza. The pathological need and desire for a more affluent life, as the title suggests, is a recurrent theme in all the stories, which make you laugh, cry, and livid all within the space of two book covers. The alternation of more serious stories with lighter ones, however, gives the readers the necessary space to digest the heavier topics the author dishes up.
Here are my personal favourites:
The collection’s opening story, “The Warning Sign”, hurtles headlong into one of the most contested issues of apartheid’s legacy, namely the question of land restitution. The story, which is set in Limpopo Province, follows the white farm owner Mr Adams who decides to “defend his property” by all available means when notified to vacate his farm by the local Land Redistribution Committee. Mr Adams’s blatant racism towards the protesting committee members and his exploitative stance towards the black farm workers make you shiver in horror: “Kaffirs! What do these monkeys think they would be without us white people!”
In an uncanny way, Mr Adams’s outburst is reminiscent, or rather anticipatory, of Penny Sparrow’s infamous comparison of black beachgoers to “littering monkeys” in January this year and the race debate that it (re-)kindled. Mhlongo cleverly reflects this racial clash between black and white in the story’s alternating night/day pattern. The farm workers and their story leave the readers with further food for thought. There is Knowledge, “Mr Adams’s trusted farm manager”, and three female farm workers: Memory, Patience and Grace. With Knowledge’s sudden disappearance and Memory’s abduction by the protestors only Patience and Grace are left at the end of the story. In view of South Africa’s festering racial tensions, particularly since the advent of the #RhodesMustFall Movement, this can be seen as an underlying criticism on Mhlongo’s part. Patience and Grace (at the expense of knowledge and memory), such as were promoted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its guiding principle of ubuntu, are not enough to overcome the deeply entrenched sociohistorical racial clashes that are the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
While “Four Blocks Away” may be on the lighter side, it is no less sociopolitically relevant. The absurdity of the situation the protagonist finds himself in leaves one helpless with laughter. And yet, there is stale aftertaste to it. The story is reminiscent of police violence against black people in the United States as well as the undue use of police power in post-apartheid South Africa. This is a topic that crops up time and again in Mhlongo’s oeuvre. Readers of his previous works will recognise the parallels to Dingz’s altercation with the police and his subsequent arrest for public drinking in Dog Eat Dog or Kimathi’s detention for publically soliciting a prostitute in Way Back Home.
In “Four Blocks Away”, the gumboot dancer Qhawe Mcwabe is in the US on a cultural exchange programme together with two other representatives from Zimbabwe and Mali. As part of the programme they visit Washington DC, where they are to give a talk at Howard University. After a boozy evening, Qhawe and Siri, an acquaintance or flame of his he has run into at the university, end up in his hotel room. About to have sex, Qhawe realises that he does not have any condoms. Besotted and dressed in his hotel gown, Qhawe makes his way to the next pharmacy, repeating the receptionist’s directions and Siri’s condition like a mantra in his head: “Four blocks! No glove, no love! Four blocks! No glove, no love!” In front of the pharmacy, however, the police stop Qhawe and deny him access to the pharmacy due to his “unbefitting attire”. The ensuing debate between Qhawe and the police quickly draws the attention of passers-by. With their help, Qhawe is eventually allowed to enter the pharmacy in order to purchase the hoped-for condoms. In high spirits, he returns to his hotel room, only to find Siri “lying across the bed, snoring”.
“My Name is Peaches” sees Peaches, whose nickname stems from Nina Simone’s famous song “Four Women”, give tribute to her late boyfriend Tshif. The second-person narrative, which is reminiscent of Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2000), traces their seemingly loving relationship. As the story progresses, however, it becomes increasingly clear that things were more illusion than reality, just like the whisky they are drinking at Tshif’s place one night: “My friends and I were very impressed by your collection […] What we didn’t know then was that you had simply filled the expensive bottles with cheap stuff. As you told me several years later, what we had thought was Hennessy, Johnnie Walker Blue and Chivas was actually concoctions of Klipdrift, Firstwatch and Bell’s that you had simply poured into the empty bottles. Silly man!” Similar to the women in Nina Simone’s song, Peaches eventually finds out that Tshif has repeatedly betrayed her. At the end of the story, she stands at Tshif’s grave with a bottle of Hennessy to say her goodbyes. After pouring half of the bottle on Tshif’s grave in “his honour”, Peaches leaves for his After Tears with Matome where they will enjoy the rest of the expensive whisky.
The irony here is a double one: not only has the scene to be seen as an act of revenge on the part of Peaches. It is also a humorous self-reference by Mhlongo to his second novel, After Tears, where uncle Nyawana’s drinking buddies similarly stand over his grave saying their goodbyes, pouring “a little of [their cheap] J&B” on the grave. One of the friends’ comments: “Wherever you are, drink a bit of this to give you courage, nkalakatha. I’m not being stingy, but I won’t give you much because we are running low on supplies, my bra”. In view of this intertextual self-reference, Peaches’s action gains in bittersweet irony. Her pouring half of the expensive bottle of Hennessy, which stands in stark contrast to the scene in After Tears and the sense of brotherhood it expresses, bespeaks her “affluenza” as an act of personal satisfaction to avenge her late boyfriend’s betrayal.
Such and similar sentiments run through the remainder of the collection like a golden thread. In “Affluenza” the readers are told about the city of Johannesburg, the setting of most of the collection’s stories: “This is Johussleburg and everyone here is suffering from affluenza. Almost every black person pretends to be rich while staying in a rented room.” The “gravy train” of hoped-for opportunities for the majority of black people in post-apartheid South Africa “has passed”. What people are left with is a cruel game of pretence where the needed-for opportunities are grasped as they come along or are (self-)created if necessary.
Once more, Mhlongo succeeds in capturing post-apartheid South Africa’s zeitgeist. The topics and issues he raises in his latest offering may not necessarily make the short story collection a comfortable read, but certainly an indispensible one.
Join the author at one of the upcoming launches of Affluenza in Soweto, Cape Town or Vanderbijlpark. Click here for details.
Related stories:
- A grand vision still in its infancy: SA writers embark on a new chapter at Time of the Writer
- ‘I’m not philosophical, I’m just a writer’ – Niq Mhlongo tells it like it is at Time of the Writer
- How to be a Writer, Part 2: Niq Mhlongo – “I Wanted to be Rich, but Writing Chose Me”
- The Time Has Come for Africans to Tell Their Own Stories: View a Preview from Affluenza by Niq Mhlongo
Book Details
- Affluenza by Niq Mhlongo
Book homepage
EAN: 9780795706967
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Dog Eat Dog by Niq Mhlongo
Book homepage
EAN: 9780795704567
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- After Tears by Niq Mhlongo
Book homepage
EAN: 9780795704963
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Way Back Home by Niq Mhlongo
Book homepage
EAN: 9780795704789
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Author image: Time of the Writer on Facebook