Thompson then tells Kimathi that Zanu is a talented young artist: “I think you’ve got yourself a young Frida Kahlo at home, Mr Tito” (174). Frida Kahlo was a Mexican activist, artist and feminist, whose art “is often subjected to psychological analysis” due to “her large number of self-portraits, many of which reveal her physical and psychic pains” (Helland 1990: 399). Like Kahlo, Zanu at- tempts to express her sorrow and loss through her art instead of violence and aggression, as she comes to terms with her feelings of displacement as the result of a divided family. The character of Zanu can be said to indicate the potential for new, productive ways over overcoming trauma through art and creative production. As the only daughter in a male line of violence, betrayal and self-destruction, which began with the murder of Kimathi’s grandfather in 1972, Zanu indicates a break in the cycle and the possibility of a hopeful future.
30). Her resentment is evidenced when she sneers at the idealistic tenets of the new democratic dis- pensation, inspired by the values of the TRC: “They are dogs […]. Now they want to reconcile?
Reconciliation se voet! ” (29). When she recounts the traumatic story of her father’s murder at the 32 hands of the Viljoen family to Kimathi, he notices “a spasm of hatred pass across Yoli’s face,” in- dicating that she “was obviously not the forgiving type” (29).
For South Africans, a return home is also a return to justice and equality, and a return to the ideals of the anti-apartheid struggle which appear unattainable in the post-apartheid era. In stark contrast to the ethos of the TRC, which was founded on Christian dogmas that extolled forgiveness and restorative justice, Way Back Home suggests retributive justice as a means of finding closure and returning home. This is implied in the novel’s climax, when Senami’s childhood friend Mongezi (alias Comrade Bambata) eventually reveals to the Tladi’s that Kimathi killed Senami in exile. The incensed parents are determined to punish Kimathi for his crime: “That dog! […] He must pay for what he did to my daughter” (206). Hearing this, Mongezi, who betrayed Senami under duress in Angola by labelling her a traitor to The Movement, claims that vengeance had always been on his mind: “I knew that one day I’d avenge her death” (207). Before Kimathi dies, he begs for forgive- ness for his past crimes, claiming that he has changed since his time at Amilcar Cabral camp.
Senami remains indifferent to Kimathi’s pleas: “But the man inside you knew the difference be- tween right and wrong […] Remember the saying: ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you?’” (205).
According to Ndebele, returning home involves introspection and taking active steps towards trans- forming one’s history, as he believes that home is about “recognising [problems] in ourselves […]
and then confronting them” (2010: 67). I find this interpretation of home apposite to my reading of Way Back Home, as the structure of the novel – linking present and past – allows the reader to un- derstand Kimathi’s ‘ bipolarity’ as both victim and villain. However, Kimathi himself does not en- gage in any introspection and fails to understand why his past actions have returned to haunt him, since in his opinion he was simply “following the orders of The Movement” (Mhlongo 2013: 204).
His final apology to Senami at Amilcar Cabral therefore appears insincere and contrived, a final at- tempt to escape his circumstances. He takes no steps to actively change even when he knows that he is wrong, and so never he confronts his problems until it is too late. Although the solutions to these
This South African colloquialism can be understood as an exclamation of dismissal.
32
problems are within his reach, he often ignores them. This is particularly evident in the manner in which Kimathi disregards his nightmares, which are the manifestations of his troubled conscience.
Instead of questioning what his dreams might signify, Kimathi dismisses them as his thoughts upon waking turn immediately to the prospect that “money is on its way” (13). In an allegorical sense, Ndebele’s call for South Africans to return home corresponds with Mhlongo’s assertion that Way Back Home is intended to encourage readers to become “politically aware” (Moreillon and Stiebel 2015: 264). In addition to this political awakening, coming home is also presented as a moral and ethical awakening, a return to the ideals that South Africa’s democracy is founded upon.
In terms of the novel’s various imaginings of home, significant parallels can be drawn between Way Back Home and Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins (2002). In an article on Vera’s novel, Dorothy Driver and Meg Samuelson (2007) invoke Ndebele’s theory as a lens through which they view the themes of home and intimacy. They describe home as both “a physical or material space and an in- tellectual-linguistic-ethical space […] the site of historical knowledge” (2007: 104). Driver and Samuelson note that in the aftermath of colonialism and apartheid, South African families are still coming to terms with the trauma caused by being uprooted and evicted from their homes. This rup- ture of home leads to what they call “the demise of intimacy,” which renders the postcolonial nation
“un-homely” (104). According to Bhabha the state of being unhomely is a “paradigmatic postcolo- nial experience” that resonates in “fictions that negotiate the powers of cultural difference in a range of historical conditions and social contradictions” (1992: 142). Driver and Samuelson suggest that the return home for postcolonial nations like South Africa can be aided by literature, as by examin- ing the “entanglement of temporalities” in the post-apartheid era reading and writing can help
“work through loss” (2007: 105). Novels like The Stone Virgins (and, I argue, Way Back Home) which oscillate between past and present, causing readers to consider how one might influence the other, can grant both fictional characters and readers “the opportunity to come to terms with loss, but not by forgetting aspects of the past” (105). This corresponds with Bhabha’s assertion that “to live in the unhomely world, to find its ambivalences and ambiguities enacted in the house of fiction […] is also to affirm a profound desire for social solidarity” ([1994] 2004: 27). By remembering the past, in particular one’s heritage and history, it is possible to recreate the intimacy of home.
Conclusion
According to Michael Chapman, literature since the end of the apartheid era “has raised challenging questions as to what it is to be South African, what it is to live in a new South Africa […] what re- quires to be forgotten and what remembered as we scour the past in order to understand the present”
(1998: 85). This study on Niq Mhlongo’s Way Back Home reveals how the novel, as a post- apartheid and post-transitional text, is woven into the fabric of the South African social text. My analysis in the preceding chapters has revealed how the novel reflects the concerns of South Africa’s socio-political milieu, namely the rampant corruption among the country’s political elite and the dissatisfaction faced by those who have not received their promised reparations for the in- justices they experienced under apartheid. Exploring the implications of the past on the present is a prominent theme in contemporary South African literature as authors consider the vestigial effects of apartheid, over two decades after its dissolution. The proclivity for writing uncompromising nar- ratives that respond to the issues faced by a democratic South Africa cements Niq Mhlongo’s repu- tation as “one of the most high-spirited and irreverent new voices of South Africa’s post-apartheid literary scene” (Donadio 2006: n.p).
The characterisation of Kimathi Tito, the protagonist of Way Back Home, attests to how ideologies of the anti-apartheid struggle can be said to inform present masculinities, and highlights how the
“ideology of militarism” still endures, post-liberation (Cock in Gqola 2007: 114). By considering the intersections of race, gender and history in a postcolonial context, I illustrated in Chapter Two how Kimathi is a traumatised victim of the masculine ideal that he is interpellated by, as a result of coming of age in a highly militarised setting. The novel implicitly criticises the perpetuation of such violent and oppressive patriarchal masculinities (including radicalised ‘struggle’ masculinities) by depicting a flawed protagonist whose vices include promiscuity, vanity, greed and aggression – par- ticularly towards women. The manner in which Way Back Home demonstrates the harmful effects of an oppressive form of hegemonic masculinity evinces the need for South Africans “to confront violent masculinities […] and the patriarchal men and women who protect and enable them” (2007:
118).
Although the novel maintains that ideologies predicated on male violence and dominance are repre- hensible, it also suggests the importance of understanding how such ideologies are formed. In Chapter Three I have therefore offered a sympathetic reading of Kimathi as both villain and victim
by placing his masculinity into a broader sociological and psychoanalytical context. Reading the novel through the lens of Fanon, I explored the fundamental ‘woundedness’ of black masculinity in a postcolonial context. By bringing Fanon into conversation with Butler and Gqola, I then argued that Kimathi’s highly crafted performance of masculinity is intended to compensate for and ‘mask’
his feelings of insecurity and inadequacy as a man. The contrived and artificial nature of gender, as theorised by Butler and Connell, is reflected in how Kimathi performs his masculinity. These ‘spec- tacular’ performances of masculinity in the novel are presented as the subject of satirical laughter, with Kimathi embodying elements of the carnivalesque and grotesque, in Bakhtinian terms. Satire and parody are used in a corrective capacity to highlight the decadence and excess of Kimathi’s life, and point to the futility and fragility of his elaborate masquerade.
Corruption and greed are also presented as distinctly masculine qualities in Way Back Home, and form part of Kimathi’s masculine performance. The moral bankruptcy of Kimathi and his cronies (representatives of the current ruling elite) stands at the centre of the novel’s critique. Post-libera- tion, these “comrades” are rewarded with business contracts and tenders because of their struggle credentials, and have adopted neoliberal and capitalist values that extol the acquisition of material wealth and (Western) symbols of success. As a liberation soldier turned black diamond, Kimathi’s 33 drive and desire for acquiring money has replaced his former passion for the anti-apartheid revolu- tion. By satirising Kimathi and the comrades, Way Back Home contributes to the ongoing political discourse of South African state corruption, cronyism and nepotism, particularly in the context of the Zuma dispensation. The novel therefore serves as a “powerful indictment of a disgraceful decade, in which words such as ‘tenderpreneurship’ and ‘state capture’ entered the South African lexicon” (Kenqu 2019: 163-164).
In addition to examining the representations of masculinity in Way Back Home, another primary concern of this study was to explore how the novel contributes to the collective witnessing of trauma in South Africa, through references to the TRC and its repercussions. As stated by Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee, “unless the enquiries of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are extended, complicated and intensified in the imaginings of literature, society cannot sufficiently come to terms with its past to face the future” (2005: 30). Way Back Home contributes to this en-
‘Black diamond’ is a pejorative term that refers to the black nouveau riche and their consumerist lifestyles. It can
33
also refer to black people who are wealthy “because they are politically aligned to the ruling party, having greater ac- cess than others to government-related projects and employment opportunities” (Donaldson et al. 2013: 115).
deavour as it explores not only the physical or emotional effects of trauma, but also the psycho-spir- itual effects. In Chapter Four I explored Kimathi’s memory repression, and its eventual resurgence in the form of Senami’s restless spirit. Through a close reading of select passages that illustrate the trauma surrounding Senami’s death and her parents’ lack of closure, I also foregrounded how Way Back Home implicitly challenges the dominant national narrative of the anti-apartheid struggle. This narrative reduced the struggle to a romanticised account of good triumphing over evil, casting the apartheid government as the “evil perpetrator” and the anti-apartheid movement as the “noble vic- tim,” thereby “eliminating all ambiguities and complexities” (Kaden 2012:102). In this sense the story of Senami’s traumatic experience in Way Back Home encourages a re-examination of the past, especially when certain experiences have been purposefully silenced. These eclipsed narratives of trauma need to be integrated into national consciousness, so that they may contribute to a “pluralist interpretation of history” in South Africa (Cleveland 2005: 73).
According to Rebecca Fasselt, emerging trauma theories in the post-apartheid era are concerned not only with the traumatisation of individuals but also “the historical conditions of colonialism and apartheid” which “led to the collective traumatisation of generations” (2014: 93). As discussed in Chapter Five the novel reveals the effects of trans-generational trauma through the legacy of land dispossession and displacement in the Tito family. The loss of an ancestral home further contributes to the fracturing of Kimathi’s already divided sense of self as an exile-at-home. Shifting the focus from Kimathi to Senami, I then explored the trauma of displacement through the journey of her restless spirit, and considered the relevance of indigenous knowledge in the healing of trauma for Senami’s parents.
Finally, this study returns to the significance of the novel’s polysemic title, and the ambivalent (im)possibilities of returning home for the characters, and for the nation. Home is primarily pre- sented as place of (un)belonging for both Kimathi, but it also becomes synonymous with death – his final destination and his moment of reckoning. Continuing in the legacy of his grandfather and fa- ther, Kimathi dies away from his ancestral home, and thus becomes ‘unhomed’ both materially and spiritually. In a broader intertextual sense I argue in my final chapter that ‘returning home’ invokes Ndebele’s essay: “Arriving Home? South Africa Beyond Transition and Reconciliation” (2010) and implies a moral turn: a return to justice and the ideals of the anti-apartheid struggle. Ndebele sug- gests that this can be achieved through introspection. Literature seems to be responding to this call
by “[turning] inward” and urging “self-reflection” in the wake of the TRC and its proceedings (Davis 2013: 799).
Way Back Home forms part of a post-apartheid literary tradition which contributes “to the ongoing political discourse about South Africa’s legacy of betrayal and the ways in which the past haunts the present” (Kenqu 2019: 157). The inseparability of past and present that the novel points to is evoca- tive of Wilson Harris’ assertion that “we arrive backwards even as we voyage forwards” ([1999]
1997: 187). Through the relationship of its central characters, Kimathi and Senami, the novel extols the importance of investigating the past and confronting the trauma caused by past events as a means of moving forward into the future.
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