an indefensible obscenity - fundamental questions of being in kopano matlwa's coconut

8/11/2019 An Indefensible Obscenity - Fundamental Questions of Being in Kopano Matlwa's Coconut

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An indefensible obscenity

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Fundamentalquestions of Be-ing in Kopano Matlwas Coconut

A/Prof. Tlhalo Sam RaditlhaloNelson Mandela Metropolitan University (South Campus)[email protected]

Unisa Press

ISSN

Imbizo (1) 2010, pp 1938 19

ABSTRACTThe article argues that it is the fundamental mistake of the liberation movements

to have shunned culture: this has brought into being a segment of the nation that

hankers after whiteness. By emasculating the terrain of culture as espoused by

the Black Consciousness Movement, and subsuming all discursive terrains under

the guise of the liberationary ethos of speaking with one voice, the confusion in

social transformation in areas of contact, such as schooling and housing, has bred

a class of South Africans whose only mistake was to seek to be in circumstances

not of their making or choosing. This article examines the fundamental questions

of be-ing that are the basis for the searing critique of social transformation and

subjectivities in Kopano Matlwas Coconut (2007). It will be argued in this articlethat the political liberation of South Africa was achieved at the expense of socialand cultural transformations that reveal the unconstructed modalities of be-ing thatwere never fundamentally questioned in the quest for freedom from oppression.

And yet, buried in the crumbling walls of apartheid were the seeds of self-hate,

crises of identity and deliberate implantations of what Nggwa Thiongo labels

whiteache in Wizard of the Crow(2006). The article will examine in particular thesimilarities and divergences of this phenomenon in texts such as Toni Morrisons

The Bluest Eye(1971), particularly the writers depiction of the classism that informscommunities in which covert placismrather than overt racismbecomes normative topost-apartheid subjectivities who are neither black or white. The article concludes

by asking the fundamental question of whether nonracialism is an ideal which

Africans need strive for.

Keywords:

be-ing, black consciousness, classism, coconut, consciousness, culture, honorarywhite, liberation/liberation ethos, nativism, placism, race, racism, whiteache.

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Imbizo 1 - 2 Raditlhalo.indd 19 2010/02/11 01:31:29 PM


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20 A/Prof. Thlalo Sam Raditlhalo

In 1959 Douglas Sirk remade the 1934 motion picture, Imitation of Life as adapted

from Fannie Hursts novel of the same title. The earlier version of the motion picture,

directed by John M. Stahl, had come out in 1934 and was re-issued in 1936. In 2007,

Time magazine named Imitation of Life one of the 25 most important movies on

race. It is essentially a narrative of two mothers and their daughters who live togetherin one household. One family is black and the mother is a domestic, while the other

is white and the employer. Sarah Jane, who is the daughter of Annie Pecola Johnson,

the domestic, grows up to feel, act and pass for white. This leads her to develop

unbridled hatred for her African-American culture and heritage, as she is very light-

complexioned. In a fundamental manner, Sarah Jane is the screen version of Jack, the

character from Langston Hughes carefully weighted short story, Passing from The

ways of white folks(1934).

I had watched this particular lm as a child in an improvised Orlando East township

(Soweto) cinema where I grew up. Along with its melodramatic love angles, it had

a disturbing scene in which Ms. Johnson, on noticing the inclement weather on aparticular day, rushes to Sarah Janes school to provide her with a coat. As Ms. Johnson

stands on the threshold of the classroom, Sarah Jane initially hides behind her desk and,

on being called by her mother, storms out of the class in anguish at having been found

out as a black person (with a black parent, nogal!). For me, as a child viewer it made

very little sense to watch a child deny their parent, much less the cruel laughter of the

classmates and the resultant hurt Ms. Johnson suffered. This was my introduction to the

process of passing for white in the United States (US). Later, it became apparent why

this should be possible as I read James Weldon Johnsons The autobiography of the ex-

colored man(1927) which made me aware of the vagaries of race and racism in the

US. The ex-coloured man was one of the few people who were not held back by being

black. He had a strong education, smart wits, and light-coloured skin. The masses all

assumed he was white. However, his talent was in black music (http://en.wikipedia.org/

wiki/Black_music). Because of his fear of being a Negro, he threw away his talent as a

musician to become a white man. After his wife had passed away, he did not go back

and play his music for the world, because of his children. He could not have his white

children growing up on the black side of a segregated world. He wanted to give them

every racial advantage they would later be able to extract from the American system.

Race as a concept and construct has been sufciently discredited to be a point where

it does not need reiteration in this article.2Nevertheless, it is important to recognise how

it impinges on contemporary societies to an extent that a text such as Coconutbecomes

an outcrop of South African unease with race. This is the view of Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, who posits:

Most contemporary debates over the denition of cultural identities and psychical identications,

whether racial, ethnic or sexual, seem to lapse invariably into the opposition between biological essence

and social construction. Where race is concerned, however, the opposition, when examined closely,

is more over the terms of the debate i.e. the deployment of the term race itself than ontological

considerations. Few if any liberally inclined persons today will hold that race, as it was theorized in

the nineteenth century, as a concept referring to the aspirations and abilities of a homogenous group,



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21An indefensible obscenity:1Fundamental questions of Be-ing in Kopano Matlwas Coconut

is an inherited biological essence. In fact, the scientic bases of race have been thoroughly discred-

ited, as have the philosophical, to the point that race is now considered a folk belief. (2000, p. 12)

For this writer, culture, rather than race, is a matter of considerable ontological

signicance. South African literature has over the years grappled with the question

of race and racism, with culture deeply implicated in this struggle. The now ruling

partys race relations were never clear-cut. Many whites had been active in the South

African Communist Party, which had a long history of nonracialism. White members

of the Communist Party had dedicated their lives to ANC work; journalist Ruth First

was given the task of writing up the history of the movement. But it was only in 1969

that whites were allowed to become members of the party.3When the ANC adopted

non-racialism as a principled stance, it took it for granted that multiculturalism was a

given, rather than nonculturalism. It is the assertion of this article that this is precisely

where South Africa comes a cropper, since it is impossible to assert difference (culture)

yet espouse non-somethingness (non-racialism rather than humanness). For all the

high praise South Africa has garnered in terms of nonracialism as a creed,4it is nearimpossible to think that a declaration of multiculturalism is easy to put in practice, as

the text by Matlwa clearly shows. Even while the national motto, South Africas motto

!ke e: /xarra //ke (written in the Khoisan language of the /Xam people) literally means

unity in diversity, it is this diversity that is shunned, despised and undermined where

black South Africans are concerned. While one is not arguing for a racialist world,

it is rather unsettling to confront an understated but pertinent cultural hierarchy that

reiterates the very polarities of superior versus minor cultures, and the concomitant

insistence that black South African cultural practices need policing in certain spaces.

This policing seeks to regulate black bodies and expressions of exuberance in places of

social interactions, such as gated communities, restaurants and institutions of learning.Coconutinterrogates these issues and much more.

From the protest ethic of the 1950s to late 1960s, the literature by black South

Africans could not avoid the centrality of race, since it was from this basis that their

oppression owed. The literature, by and large, raised fundamental questions of life,

moral values and social being, and gave African readers a sense of themselves as makers

of a fugitive culture poignantly captured by Drum magazine of the 50s. The criticism

levelled at the literature, from Lewis Nkosis acerbic article, Fiction by black South

Africans inHome and exile(1965), through to Njabulo S. Ndebeles Turkish tales and

some thoughts on South African ction and The rediscovery of the ordinary: some

new writings in South Africa inRediscovery of the ordinary: essays on South African

literature & culture(2006 [1991]) shows the strides that have been taken in reecting

and refracting the totality of existence by writers in South Africa.5The next school of

writers, including Zakes Mda, K. Sello Duiker, Phaswane Mpe, Mtutuzeli Nyoka and

others, is now grappling with the post-apartheid dispensation as it unfolds. Yet it seems

writers are afraid of examining the post-apartheid issue of race, just as much as they

eschew an examination of how the liberation ethos, with its emphasis on nonracialism,

neglected to see how we arrive at a situation where young South Africans suffer from

a debilitating sickness of whiteache in which they do not wish to pass for white but



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to be white. This is an important distinction, since it provides the reader with a clue

of the divergences of the assimilation-integration conundrum in the US, with the local

variant of integration by all means in South Africa today. It is with this understanding

that I examine the fundamental questions of be-ing in Kopano Matlwas post-apartheid

society.II

The ultimate political settlement in South Africa between 1990 and 1994 came as a result

of sustained pressure from the internal and external forces ghting for liberation. By the

mid-1980s, it was clear to the observant that the South African situation was headed for

a racial war. It is important to briey recall the South African political history from the

1960s insofar as it would lead to the post-apartheid dispensation.

With the scattering of the ANC and PAC into exile, the vacuum they left behind would

only be lled by the launching of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in late

1968. The BCM sought to resuscitate black self-worth in the light of on-going effects

of absolute oppression. Founded by black university students under the leadership andguidance of Stephen Bantu Biko, the BCM would prove to be a formidable opponent

of the Vorster government in the 1970s. Drunk with the electoral power of 1948, the

Afrikaners fanatical determination to inculcate Afrikaans did not stop with themselves

or with mother-tongue instruction. Through the years discussions had been held, albeit in

secret, on how to get blacks to accept Afrikaans as a second language instead of English.

The Department of Bantu Education was a powerful means to this end, and in 1974 it

sent out a circular stating that half the subjects in secondary schools had to be taught in

Afrikaans. This circular, issued by Bantu Educations regional director in the Southern

Transvaal, W.C. Ackerman, was clear: arithmetic, mathematics, and social studies had

to be taught in Afrikaans; science, woodwork, arts and crafts in English. Headmastersin Soweto schools protested, and representations were made to M.C. Botha as Minister

of Bantu Education. The pleas were turned down. The deputy Minister, Punt Jansen,

admitted in Parliament that he had not consulted blacks prior to the decision being taken

and had no need to consult them in future regarding the language issue. 6Coming to a

generation weaned on the Proudly Black teachings of the BCM with such an attitude

was disastrous, and the tinderbox that became known as the Soweto Rebellion was lit on

June 16, 1976. While not conned to Soweto only, this rebellion shook the foundations

of the apartheidstate in the manner and tenacity of the resistance. Well over 700 lives

had been lost when the conict nally subsided, and thousands more ed the country to

join the exiled political movements. June 1976 marked the beginning of the end of the

apartheidstate.

Between the years 1986 and 1993, South Africa experienced what can only be termed

a low-intensity civil war. This state of affairs would drag on throughout the mid-1980s.

The State of Emergency would be renewed on 11 June 1986, and each year thereafter till

1989. More people would be detained, with even children aged 11 and 12 being found

behind bars.

It ought to be recounted that in all the years of struggle the political formations, by

and large, did not make an effort to inculcate an awareness of the role culture could play



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in the liberation of South Africa. With the exception of the BCM, African culture played

a secondary role in the culture of liberation, in that efforts at self-denition were now

directed solely at politics. It is also in this dispensation that education itself was relegated

to an afterthought with the use of the slogan, Liberation now, education later.7The

liberation ethos smothered every aspect of life, attening concerns around class in theblack communities. This raises questions of legitimacy, too, for in the lead up to the

1990s black liberation parties fought internecine battles of supremacy which could not

then give way to a contemplative consideration of culture. As Frantz Fanon recognises,

the political party which mobilises the people hardly touches on the problem of

legitimacy (1963, p. 167). And yet the generation that launched the BCM was conscious

of the lacuna of culture in the struggle, and in this it was not unique, since colonialist

criticism asserted that the native had no culture worthy of consideration, since culture

was a predicator of difference. Fanon captures this phenomenon memorably when he

notes that colonialism is not satised with holding a people in its grip and emptying

the natives brain of all form and content. For Fanon, a kind of perversion is at work,for the colonialist turns to the past of the oppressed people and distorts, disgures and

destroys it (1963, p. 163). Cultural reclamation, therefore, is an imperative that the

BCM propagated and practised. Commenting on this aspect of the uses and abuses of

culture, Harry Garuba and Tlhalo Sam Raditlhalo note:

The third factor followed from this construction of difference on the ground of cultural evolution.

Oppressed on the basis of culture, subjected people, in turn, converted culture into a domain of politi-

cal resistance. In this way, culture became a site of the contestation and struggle against oppression,

domination and marginalisation. In short, culture came to be used as a shorthand for many claims

political, social and economic that the oppressed would make for equality and access to resources.

And with the advent of globalisation, this has led, inevitably, to calls for the recognition and revalu-

ation of culture constructed as the ultimate site of difference within contemporary imaginings of

liberal democracy and multiculturalism. (2008, p. 37)

Given the difculties experienced by communities in a moment of political, economic

and social anguish, establishing an African identity became an imperative even if

such communities had to create myths to sustain themselves. But, as Eskia Mphahlele

recognises, a myth is an act of faith in that it gives its native community a sense of

spiritual unity, validating in turn a moral code (2002, p. 135). Multiculturalism thus

itself arises as a corrective to a past lled with assertions of superiority and inferiority:

it is not a given.

Such a myth, however, need not be an ossied one, but one that faces the dynamicsof an evolving society. While African humanism has its constants e.g., concern for

the next person, spiritual linkages with the ancestral world, etc., a modern culture has

taken roots as an aftermath of the colonialist experience. And yet this modern culture

cannot be seen as being in opposition to the constants of African humanism and cultural

practice. If it arises out of deance, it also posits the way forward into the uncertain

future. Steve Biko puts this succinctly when he observes:



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This is fast becoming our modern culture. A culture of deance, self-assertion and group pride and

solidarity. This is a culture that emanates from a situation of common experience of oppression. Just

as it now nds expression in our music and our dress, it will spread to other aspects. This is a new

and modern black culture to which we have given a major contribution. This is the modern black

culture that is responsible for the restoration of our faith in ourselves and therefore offers a hope inthe direction we are taking from here. (2004[1978], p. 50)

In the 1980s, as South Africa groaned under unremitting oppression brutality, black

culture itself was undergoing fundamental change. The deance of Bikos children

opened up new contradictions of youth assertion and loss of parental authority. With the

advent of the black middle class, as a result of the liberalisation of the status quo after

the violence of 1976, these factors accentuated the differences. Such contradictions

surrounding black lives are the subject of Ndebeles collection of short stories, Fools

and other stories(1983), in that the author seeks to provide an instantiation of the kind

of guilt that children from well-to-do families could feel in a situation where they are

surrounded by abject poverty. In the short stories The test and The music of the violin,in particular, Ndebele anticipates much of what are the key themes in Matlwas Coconut

(2007).8The young protagonists, Thoba and Vukani respectively, are made to feel the

weight of the relative success their families enjoy and all the concomitant feelings of

guilt that such circumstances engender. In Teboho and her mother Dorcas struggles

(The music) are shades of Tshepo and his father, John, as they tussle over sustaining

moral values. And in Dorcas constant harping on about how lucky Vukani is, how his

room is as good as any white boys (1983, p. 132) we see shades of whiteache that

are apparent in Coconutand how it is implanted in young minds of black children by

the parents themselves. Whiteness and degrees of whiteness are regarded as yardsticks

of beauty, morality and social status, even conduct: Stop acting black! becomes theconstant refrain designed to police black South Africans in schools, restaurants and

suburbs (p. 31). The disavowal of family bonds by Dorcas and the equation of decent

living standards with whiteness and its perceived materialism provide a gauge through

which the contradictions of the post-apartheid black communities may be recognised.

The de-linking of a discernible number of Africans and their cultural practices both

during and after apartheid has been a critical downside of the liberation struggle. The

BCM, however, recognised the importance of culture as a matrix that allowed black

communities to endure, while the nonracial movements did not really give this terrain

of black existence much thought at all. One of the most salient incidents, for instance,

that demonstrates just how uncoupled the exile wing of the liberation struggle was from

its culture, is provided by no less a person than Thabo Mbeki. Recalling the instance ofa homecoming ceremony in 1999, held in his honour at Mbewuleni outside Idutywa, his

ancestral home, he feels disconnected from the ceremonial rites of his AmaZizi clan:

Last time I was there they produced some kind of liquid, which they twirled with a stick, until it is

frothing, and you drink it and they apply it to your arms and face. They say that this is some kind of

herb that is traditionally of the AmaZizi, to protect you and strengthen you. We had to sit there and

drink this thing. Theypull you into it. So whether you want to recognize [your tribal identity] or not,



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they are going to put you there: You are part of us, so you must do this. It cant but get you thinking,

to recognize this thing. (2007, p. 7, emphasis in the original)

This is an important ironic allusion by Mbeki to the power of the clan, even if in

describing the ceremonial rites he frames himself as the perpetual outsider. The suave

and cosmopolitan President nds a tribal identity a problem, and yet it is in the ethnic

space that ones connectivity to African culture is most important. The collapsing,

here, of an ethnic identity with a cultural one is problematic since the former somehow

retains the taint of tradition outside history while the latter is frowned upon as an

imperfection of the great Western liberal tradition begun in the Enlightenment Project,

through which all modern societies ought to converge on the same values and identities.

Clearly, such an idea of liberal co-option is not an appropriate response to pluralism. It

can only work in a highly homogenised society which South Africa is not.9Importantly,

Mbeki places agency on his clanspeople (they) and posits the entire process, if not as

coercive, then certainly as something to be endured, however reluctantly. The severance

that Mbeki feels is precisely because he has, in many ways, consciously sought todistance himself from his culture even as he assiduously sought to promote the African

Renaissance, African reawakening through NEPAD and a host of other policies that in

effect seek to position an Africa that is modern, capable, competent. The reluctance of

participating in what might be interpreted as ethnic chauvinism, a repulsive nativism,

has been paramount in Mbeki placing much distance between himself and his roots.

This is given greater emphasis, when considering who he succeeded and how he went

about attaining his goal of a position, then a perceived Xhosa stranglehold over the

leadership of the African National Congress.10The Mbeki children were never part of

the rootedness that most black South Africans take for granted, and Gevisser frames his

path to a homecoming as a central plank of understanding Mbeki and his attempt, atthe mature stage of his life, to re-connect.

When the Charter to host the World Cup in 2010 was presented to him at the

presidential residence, Mahlamba Ndlopfu, in Tshwane in 2006, the SABC television

newsreels showed Mbeki submitting to the will of the izangomawho burned mphepho

in the garden of the residence while they entreated ancestral spirits to ensure the success

of the tournament. Here, unlike previously and in a more ancestral setting, Mbeki was

demonstrating his acceptance of, and acknowledgement of, an African identity that

sees the mediation of the ancestors in the physical world as unproblematic. It is this

dissociation, this schizophrenic disposition reected uncharacteristically in the suave

president that underscores the crisis in identity that informs Matlwas text.

Matlwas Coconutcentres on the disconnect that two young women, Olwe Tlou and

Fikile Twala, experience towards African culture and heritage. They are the narrating

voices in Parts I and II of the text respectively. They are divided by enormous class

differences because Olwes father, John, is part of the Black Economic Empowerment

(BEE) generation in the new South Africa through his company,IT Instantly, which,

through being awarded a tender, must refurbish and thus modernise all post ofces

in South Africa; this enables him to access instant riches (2007, p. 71). He moves his

family from the township of Mabopane to Little Valley Golf Estate, enrolls his children



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in the very best preparatory schools and comes to a nancial agreement with his wife for

her not to work anymore, as he would provide for her needs (pp. 4950). He indulges

in a lifestyle that reects his success as he sees it: a silver-grey Mercedes Benz, playing

mostly classical music (which he pronounces an acquired taste) in his car, golf over

weekends, and consistent, unremitting philandering that threatens to break his family(p. 12). John Tlou is the unnished product of the new South Africa, led to acquire

all things that insinuate wealth and stability (p. 64). Olwe grows up mainly in Little

Valley Golf Estate, and the narrative ows through a series of present and past events in

an episodic, fragmented manner, from the time she is about eight to the narrated time,

when she is 16 and has become a erce critic of her family and its values.

The narrative begins and ends on a Sunday which, for Olwe, turns out to be an

uneventful day of church and an afternoon at home; for Fikile, it heralds a tumultuous few

hours of denial, denigration and, ultimately, partial recognition. A seemingly innocuous

episode sets the narrative in motion when Olwe witnesses a little girl, Sponono, in

church and her obvious delight at her hair, which Olwe describes as: Braids: shiny,cheap synthetic strands of dreams-come-true mak[ing] their way from her underaged

head (p. 1). This initiates in the protagonist a recall of all the humiliations she herself

had endured regarding her hair, and her grandmothers insistence, as she processes her

hair, that pain is beauty (p. 3). In her recall, we note how she suffered this pain when

she recounts how, in Sis Beautys Salon, she had experienced this painful exothermic

chemical reaction, wishing away every tiny weenie curl in order to declare, ultimately,

how delighted she was to be beautiful again (p. 4). In the process, we learn that the

mother, Gemima Tlou (ne Ledwaba), sees nothing wrong in the whole idea of straight

hair and even buys her hair at a boutique, Ashantis (p. 25).

Through this seemingly innocuous episode, the protagonist shows a world where the

attainment of what black South Africans believe to be the acme of beauty, as displayed

by their hair, becomes grounds for alienation and an ingrained self-hatred. Using this

instance Matlwa opens up a controversial aspect of looks and modes of wearing hair

that bedevil black South Africans in the era of Mandela and thereafter. The new blend

of styles might have occurred as a result of new-found Afrocentricism, but a large part

of it resides in the commodication of hair and the move by a number of black South

Africans to gain a foothold in this niche area during the 1980s. Zimitri Erasmus provides

an explanation of the manner in which hair as a rule is the bane of black communities

throughout the world, when she notes:

The notion of good hair and the silences and pain attached to it are not unique to coloured-african

experiences. Hair texture is a signicant factor across all African communities in South Africa. Nor

is it unique to South Africa. Not so long ago good hair meant long, shiny and straight hair for most

black American women. Lisa Jones writes of the need to [keep our] kinks in the closet (1994:

305). This distinction between good hair and bad hair happens within black communities across

the globe. Good hair on a black body generally means hair that is long, owing, straight, and looks

like white peoples hair, or at least not too curly. Bad hair is short and kinky and has to be made

good. (2000, p. 383)



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Matlwa opens this idea of the uncritical obsession with beauty in a subtle but telling

manner. In the text, both Olwe and Fikile, from diverse communities, have an obsession

with glamour magazines. The text is infused with magazines and the imagery they sell,

and in her encounter with Fresh Magazine on the day of narration, it is instructive

that Olwe is drawn to the cover feature of the star of a local television show, Todaystomorrow. The star of this show, Katlego Matuna George, shares with the readers how

she spends as much as possible of her free time on a farm in the north, with her horses

(p. 55). Quite apart from the acquisitive lifestyle that Katlego Matuna George and

Olwes father share (who, however, cannot ride any horse!), it is precisely the point

here that the life of a glamorous star is equated with a particular view of life: horses and

weekend retreats, and being in a fashion magazine signify success (Katlego means

success in the Setswana language). Olwe thus reads glamour magazines to reiterate

for herself the normative lifestyle to which she aspires. Fikiles introduction to the same

glamour magazines is more prosaic: it arises as a result of her domestic grandmothers

wish for her, Fikile, to pick up English. Yet her grandmother soon grows tired of herand chastises her obsession with these magazines when, at one point, she notes: I am

fed up with you sitting in here all day reading all those fashion magazines. I have good

mind to take those magazines away from you. I thought they would be a ne way to

practice your reading but they taught you nothing but to be a snob. Go outside and

play (p. 131). Thus the two girls socialisation lies in an agency that sells physical

beauty as an attainable commodity, and the unintended result of which is a terrible

sense of alienation. Olwes brother awakens her to her afiction with whiteache, as

she recounts:

When I was a little younger, a lot more foolish, but nevertheless happier than I am now, I covered

my bedroom wall with posters of people I thought were the greatest breathing beings of our time. Iremember spending hours one Saturday afternoon, carefully sticking the magazine cut-outs up

Exhausted, I lay back, admiring the walls, proud of my efforts. Tshepo walked in a little later, prob-

ably wondering where I had disappeared to. I watched his eyes look around; I was excited because

I knew I had done a good job. (pp. 9192).

It is only when Tshepo admonishes her and stresses that she needs to take the pictures

down because there is not a single black person in the whole tapestry, that Olwe notices

the anomaly. But rst she disbelieves his observation and notes: I looked round once

more and then at Tshepo. In his eyes I saw what was to only hit me many years from

then. I think it was on that day that Tshepo saw me for what I was (pp. 9293). Aside

from the intricacies by which the fashion magazine industry is able to permeate thoughtitself, it is clear that the ideas that young Olwe and Fikile imbibe are to the detriment

of their consciousnesses. Fikile, for instance, sees nothing wrong in the world of such

magazines, as she wants as much as possible to live the life of the magazines. She

notes: I lived in those magazines, and the more I read, the more assured I was that

the life in those pages was the one I was born to live [] At the age of fteen I could

advise you what to pack when spending a weekend away in the Bahamas (p. 167). Both

protagonists mirror their literary predecessor, Pauline Breedlove from The bluest eye

(1970), in the obsessive nature of their wishes to be white and the understanding that



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to be black is to be ugly, thus unwanted. Henry Louis Gates construction of how

signication works in African-American texts needs to be stretched to include African

texts in that, as he posits, Black writing is often characterized by tertiary revision, a

literary reinterpretation that involves three texts: texts that provide models of form, texts

that provide models of substance, and the text at hand (1988, pp. 121122). Whethershe is conscious of this fact or not, Matlwas text revises a number of African-American

texts such as Thebluest eye. For instance, Pauline Breedlove gets her images of the

world not from magazines but from motion pictures, and Toni Morrisons rendition of

her distorted worldview is similar to Olwe and Fikiles. Morrison goes to the heart

of the matter when she notes that, in going to the motion pictures, Pauline Breedlove

imbibes the same notions of physical beauty as Matlwas protagonists:

[] she went to the movies instead. There in the dark her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed

to her earlier dreams. Along with romantic love, she was introduced to another physical beauty.

Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived

in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind,bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap she was never able, after her education in the

movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale

was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen. (1970, pp. 9697, emphasis added).

As a form of escapism, then, motion pictures for Pauline Breedlove play a signicant

part in ordering her life, but her sense of disillusion is very profound. She mirrors, in this

instance, her own daughter, Pecola (who shares the name of the child of the domestic in

the 1934 motion picture, Imitation of Life), who wishes to have blue eyes and remove

all her perceived ugliness. In a moment of profound disillusion, Pauline notes:

I member one time I went to see Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. I xed my hair up like Id seen hers ina magazine. A part on the side, with one little curl on my forehead. It looked just like her. Well, almost

just like. Anyway, I sat in that show with my hair done up that way and had a good time. I thought Id

see it through to the end again, and I got up to get me some candy, and it pulled my tooth right out of

my mouth there I was, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth gone. (ibid., pp. 99100)

The travails of Pauline Breedlove and the quests of Pecola, Olwe and Fikile should

alert us to the very concept of the aesthetic as a discourse of power, one that has played a

far from negligible role in the consolidation of the bourgeoisie and its accrual of cultural

capital.11In effect, it is an important concept that partakes in the relation between white

supremacy and modernity and is closely related to the consequences of the construct of

race during what Cornel West calls the Age of Europe (14921945).12

But if Pecola and Pauline need only aspects of whiteness, Fikile wants the entire

gamut of what constitutes whiteness. Asked at school at a tender age what she wishes

to become when she grows up, she responds in a positive sense: White, teacher Zola, I

want to be white. Asked to account for her unusual career choice, she says it is because

being white is everything (2007, pp. 135136). And her conception of everything

is decidedly material and supercial. She notes at one point: I think even before I

consciously decided it, I already knew that this is the life I was meant to lead. The Silver

Spoon life. The holidays abroad, the cashmere, the dramas at Mixy on Friday night, the



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smashed R1.2 million cars, the tears over a bad break-up and the retail therapy thereafter

(pp. 168169). While Pecola may simply wish for, pray for and request blue eyes from

the charlatan, Elihue Whitcomb (Soaphead Church), Fikile would have none of that

child-like wish. She invents a story about herself as a South African who had been

born and brought up abroad (pp. 146147), and consciously wishes to change herselfphysiologically. She notes that accoutrements such as contact lenses, skin enlighteners

and hair extensions are integral in her transformation:

The dainty little emerald-green coloured lenses that oat gracefully in the sapphire blue contact-lens

solution are a reminder of how far I have come, from the nave orphan child living in a one-bedroom

house with her incompetent Uncle in another familys backyard in yet another decrepit township to

a charming young waitress with pretty green eyes and soft, blow-in-the-wind, caramel-blond hair

(pinned perfectly to make it look real), working in the classiest coffee shop this side of the Equator.

My Lemon Light skin-lightener cream, my sunscreen, my eyeliner, mascara, eye-shadow, blush,

eyelash-straightener and pieces of caramel-blond hair extension are all little testimonies to the

progress I have made despite the odds. (pp. 117118)

Fikiles transformation, in her mind, into a white person is complete and all it needs at

this stage is the handsome presence of hard currency to make it real. She is engaged in

what she terms Project Innity, whose attainment will make her white, richand happy.

At this point she shows remarkable tenacity when she notes: I know what I want in life

and am prepared to do anything in my power to get it (p. 118). And change with these

young ladies begins at a linguistic level. Like Olwe, she forces herself to articulate in

like manner to her customers at Silver Spoon, for, as she notes: Its the thing you take

for granted that turns out to be the most important thing in your life [] Your accent, for

example [] for me, my whole life has become about how I speak, about what sounds

the words make as they fall on the listeners ear (p. 154). In Fikile we nd shades ofJohn M. Stahls Pecola and Douglas Sirks Sarah Jane as she stridently disavows her

heritage. Indeed, in her future projection she is not poor and black but rich and brown

(p. 140; emphasis added).

If the future is, therefore, dened in terms of rich and brown it introduces the idea

not merely of a variegated racial group, but of placismwithin that group itself. To be

poor is to be black, but to be rich is to be brown. While Fikiles conception, here, might

be a result of the shifts in international glamour magazines from the 1990s onwards that

replaced white, blonde and blue-eyed models with hallmarks of a new internationalism

a variety of skin tones, hair colours and facial structures in her mind it is a distinction

that separates her from her fellow South Africans and turns her into an honorary white.In her constructed life history, she claims: Yes, I have always been different. I never

could relate to other black South Africans. We just never clicked. So I give them space

and they generally give me mine (p. 140). It is in this context that Fikile proclaims

that as a waitress she does not serve black families as they are a nuisance to her and a

waste of time (p. 164). Instead, she feels that she is an integral part of the Silver Spoon

establishment and thus should only serve white people because she can relate to these

people and that is why I am so good at this job. We have so much in common, so much

to talk about. I understand them. They understand me (p. 161). With this sense of



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relatedness she recalls Pauline Breedlove and her abandonment of her family in service

of a well-to-do family whose members were affectionate, appreciative and generous

(pp. 100101).

At eighteen, Fikile has not as yet met her disillusioning moment, so that she might

at the very least consider what in her heritage is life-afrming. When Olwe does meetsuch a moment she feels the full force of the cultural severance, so much so that she sets

herself the task of re-connection. In her earlier period of ignorance, she is adamant that

an African language such as Sepedi is an encumbrance rather than an advantage. But it

is the disparaging tone in which she speaks that makes her metamorphosis memorable.

Commenting on why she is usually seen as different from other children her age, she

says:

It is because I am smart and speak perfect English. That is why people treat me differently. I knew

from a very young age that Sepedi would not take me far. Not a chance! [ ]I spoke the TV language;

the one Daddy spoke at work, the one Mama never could get right, the one that spoke of sweet suc-

cess.(p. 54, emphasis added)

At this stage Olwe despises her cousins, sees her friendships as essential and dreams of

her future children painted in shades of pink (p. 19). Yet the humiliations she faces from

the sleepovers at her friends homes make her cringe. At age 12, during one sleepover,

she is embarrassed by a white boy, Clinton Mitchley. Mitchley cannot bring himself to

touch Olwe when, on realising that she is the expected recipient of the kiss from the

game of spin-the-bottle, he refuses to indulge her by proclaiming her lips as dark (p.

44). Equally, her heart is broken in the third grade by Junior P. Mokoena, an obnoxious

child who rejects her advances towards him by proclaiming: Tell her I only date white

girls (p. 24). Her friend, Belinda Johnson, is adamant that she does not speak properly

enough and insists on teaching her how to say oven, for instance (p. 49). Slowly, these

humiliations take their toll, and at one point she breaks off her relationship with Belinda

and proclaims that she realises that her life is a lie, as its agony playing a role you

would never dream of auditioning for (p. 48). This creeping sense of self-awareness

reaches its apogee when, during a seemingly happy outing to celebrate her 16 thbirthday,

she is confronted with the fact of her rootlessness, centred on the languages that her

friends speak around her and through her. As her friends speak of their ancestral homes,

their relatives and the countryside, she has nothing to contribute and resolves to learn

Sepedi one word at a time: The plan was that in every spoken sentence I would try to

use a single word of Sepedi (p. 59). Worse, even cultural practices that would normally

tie an African family to its roots are actively discouraged in residential spaces that viewblack culture as an abomination. When, for instance, John Tlou rst lands his major

government contract, it is Koko, as grandmother, who advises that he perform a joint

thanksgiving ceremony for the Tlou and Ledwaba families. While Koko, Gemima and

Tshepo prepare traditional beer and the necessary food, John blithely goes out to drink

instead of providing the ceremonial beast for the ceremony. The day passes without the

sacricial cow, and when he does come home, John is unrepentant. Olwe recounts

thus:



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It was already 4pm when daddy arrived with Bra Alex and Uncle Max [] At the end of the driveway

stood a bakkie that held a subdued chicken in an unnecessary cage. Daddy carried a large blue refuse

bag that dripped blood into the house and onto Mamas peach Persian carpet, making her scream.

Daddys eyes were wide and red, suggesting that he had been drinking. Uncle Max had unbuttoned

his shirt, allowing his large belly to protrude unapologetically . Daddy, detecting the growingunease in the room, explained that he was unable to locate a live cow that was purchasable, and had

instead opted to buy a chicken [] Daddy went on to say that he did, however, remember that Koko

had stressed the importance of a cow, so Bra Alex suggested that they buy a slaughtered one at the

butcher and had requested that its blood be collected in a Tupperware dish so that it could be used

for the ceremony. (pp. 7273)

The above shows not only Johns disengagement, but his irreverent approach not

only to his own responsibilities as a father, but also to his culture. The confusion that

the children then suffer is not of their making; much like the hair industry and its

denigration of what constitutes black beauty, cultural suicide rests with the children

of the middle classes and is facilitated by their parents, so that Gemimas screamsseem to be those of the bereaved as she later remonstrates with her own mother for

having suggested this ceremony, which she labels witchcraft (p. 74). Importantly, this

episode also demonstrates that the Tlous hankering after belonging to white spaces

is given a rude shock when security guards in the complex deliver a stern warning,

reminding them that wild animals, livestock, poultry, reptiles or aviaries may not be

kept on Estate Grounds (p. 73). Thus, African culture, whose very essence involves

the spilling of blood to appease and address the ancestors, and in which people who take

part in its rituals understand the very essence of using an animal sacrice in seeking

and appeasing the ancestral spirits, is here symbolically reduced and compared to a

subdued chicken of self-emasculation. The comparison between an animal, such as

a bull, with its robustness set against the subdued chicken, is intricately realised to

underscore the bathetic present state of be-ing black in South Africa.

Confronted thus with her familys rootlessness, Olwe becomes critical of it, and she

makes observations beginning with their ritual, after church, of going to Fikiles Silver

Spoon Coffee Shop for a traditional English breakfast, that signify her break with the

familys ethos. It is Olwe who notices that the proprietor, Ms. Becky, merely tolerates

them and has nothing to do with them although the establishment is small and thus

allows for a shared familiarity with its loyal customers. In this instance, Olwe believes

it is the familys fault for not ingratiating themselves with the Silver Spoon family tree

(p. 30). In the next instance, however, Olwe allows the reader a glimpse of her truer

feelings regarding Silver Spoon and the routine that her parents enforce on her, sinceTshepo has long absconded from this Sunday ritual:

I hate it, Lord. I hate it with every atom of my heart. I am angry, Lord. I am searing within. I am furi-

ous. I do not understand. Why, Lord? Look at us, Lord, sitting in this corner. A corner. A hole. Daddy

believes he enjoys his food. Poor Mama, she still struggles with this fork and knife thing. Poor, poor,

poor pathetic us. It is pitiful. What are we doing here? Why did we come? We do not belong []

Lord, I am cross with you. I, they, thousands of us, devote our lives to You. Some, Father, labouring

endlessly so that You may be pleased. But still, Lord, still we are shackled. Some shackled around the



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ankles and wrists, others around their hearts, but most, Lord, are shackled around their minds [.]

They laugh nastily, Lord. You cannot hear it, but you can see it in their eyes [.] We dare not eat

with our naked ngertips, walk in generous groups, speak merrily in booming voices and laugh our

mqombothi laughs. They will scold us if we dare, not with their lips, Lord, because the laws prevent

them from doing so, but with their eyes. They will shout, Stop acting black! Stop acting Black! iswhat they will shout. And we will pause, perplexed, unsure of what that means, for are we not black,

Father? No, not in the malls, Lord. We may not be black in restaurants, in suburbs and in schools.

Oh, how it nauseates them if we even fantasise about being black, truly black. The old rules remain

and the old sentiments are unchanged. We know Lord, because those disapproving eyes scold us still;

that crisp air of hatred and disgust crawls into our wide-open nostrils still. (pp. 3031).

With these questions and observations, Olwe comes close to the nub of the riddle:

if South Africans waged a liberation struggle what, essentially, were they liberating

themselves from? What kinds of truth still exist in Steve Bikos observation that the most

potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed? Essentially,

how is it possible for a black person not to be black, but merely to fantasise aboutbeing black? Does it essentially mean that, having been so oppressed for too long, the

oppressed have, through a process of a disinherited imagination, lost the will to remake

themselves in their own African images?13 For, if the most indefensible obscenity

is the desire by young black people to be white, then how does the past relate to

the present in such a meaningful way that it makes the idea of black consciousness

a lived experience of young South African black children? The symbolic politics of

visibility the transformation of South Africa in the national and international gaze

exemplied in the schools, the material benets, the integrated housing estates, are

shown, in Matlwas biting text, to be symbols of a pyrrhic victory actively facilitating

assimilation, integration and cultural annihilation. Indeed, as Olwe observes her father

in the garden after they return to the Estate from the Silver Spoon, he is nothing if not

a character in a world of pretend (p. 78).

In assessing Matlwas text and its various signications, therefore, I place Tshepo in

the related but undercutting role that Beneatha Young underscores in Lorraine Hansburys

A raisin in the sun(1959). Like Beneatha, Tshepo is given a precociousness through

with which he begins to undercut the family values of John Tlou. First, he develops the

remarkable skill of vapourising himself from the family. In a confrontation with his

father over his future career choice, studying African languages and literature instead of

actuarial science, and in keeping with Ndebeles family squabble between Dorcas and

Teboho, Tshepo virtually disappears and begins his process of disengagement. Olwe

observes: And that is how it began. After that comment, Mama shrieked and screamedmany sentences and Daddy roared a thousand others. Tshepo slipped between the

panels of wood on the oor and disappeared (p. 81, emphasis added). Tshepo, like

Beneatha, here uses two modes of knowledge to separate himself from his family: one

where he merely states his beliefs, without asking anyone to subscribe to them; unlike

Beneatha, however, his other mode of knowledge use is not to elevate his knowledge

over others but to attempt to live the lives of the poor in order to attain ordinariness,

to understand the processes by which his fathers wealth has made him different and to

seek to identify with the poor. It is when Olwe snoops in his diary and nds entries



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that relate his work experiences that his mission becomes apparent, not as a frivolous

exercise, but as a quest. He takes a measly job as a delivery man and waiter for Instant

Fried Chicken in Pine Slopes and, unlike Fikile, attempts to blend in with the kitchen

staff and appear as a local fellow who should be treated like any other person (p. 26).

Here he nds that the proprietor, Isabelle much like Ms. Becky and her daughterCaroline at Silver Spoon is accustomed to insulting her staff, accusing them of crche-

level education, calling them airheads and characterising them as lazy and ungrateful

people who deserve nothing (p. 28). Tshepos complacency, however, is destroyed by

the blatant placism and intended marginality operative in the establishment. He rages at

his invisibility in the eyes of one customer, something the permanent staff are used to,

and endure. In a moment of unforgettable candour, he notes:

I squeeze between the tables, not noticing the full-faced purple-nosed housewife who sits hunched

up like a beach ball at the table on my right. She looks up. Our eyes meet or at least I think they do.

Good morning maam, I genially greet, picking up the salt cellar I am sure she did not know she

dropped off her table. Does she not hear me? Perhaps she has a great deal on her mind. That look,or rather the lack thereof, sticks with me throughout the day, maybe because it is foreign or maybe

it is the one I get over and over again as I move from one table of milky faces to another.Do these

people not see me, hear me, when I speak to them? Why do they look through me as if I do not exist,

click their ngers as if it is the only language I understand? [ ] I am enraged want to call them to

order. Tell them that they have no right treating people the way they do. (pp. 2829, emphasis added)

Tshepo experiences what Ayanda, the co-worker to Fikile, later gives in to: workplace

rage (p. 151). It is instructive that, as he compares notes with the kitchen staff, they

laugh and castigate him for not knowing the ways of Umlungu [a white person]. It

is good you have come to work, boy. There is much for you to learn, they tell him

(p. 29). Tshepos experience with the customers of Instant Fried Chicken recallsRalph Ellisons protagonist and his invisibility to people around him and explicated

in the novel Invisible man(1980 [1952]). If the politics of hair are, as Erasmus says,

global, then it follows that black people experience invisibility across the globe to a

remarkably similar degree. In effect, Isabelle, Ms. Becky, her daughter Caroline and

their customers treatment of their staff substantiates Ndebeles assertion: Once you

have denied the human reality of the oppressed, you can do practically anything you

like with them. An essential condition of their continued oppression is their symbolic

non-existence (Actors and Interpreters 2006, p. 80). If the previously oppressed are

now free, Matlwas text also points to the sort of placism that this freedom inaugurated:

Isabelle/Ms. Becky/Caroline at the apex, John Tlou at the top of the rich and brownin the middle, and the kitchen/service staff at the bottom of this hierarchy. Placism,

unlike racism, works through economic means rather than race, although, as Fikile

demonstrates, the chromatic aspect of it is constitutive of it. Importantly, too, placism

requires active participation. For instance, Ms. Becky disparages the Tlous as new-

money people who pretend that they do not see the part assigned to them in this drama,

a part that says all is well; Fikile equally detests the Tlous for their newly-found wealth

to the point of rudeness. But the Tlous merely pretend that this is not the case. Even

more sinister is John Tlous awareness that his wealth allows his penis a very active



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and creative/destructive life of its own: when he winks at Fikile who is merely 24

months older than his own daughter and she winks back, a pact is entered into, since

his material wealth might just allow Fikile to approximate her dream and John to live

out his fantasies as the Great Black Dick, displaying a marked taste for lecherous living

that serves to mock his marriage (p. 174). The real and rather tasteless shenanigans ofthe South African State President, Jacob Zuma, and exposed in his lame public apology

during the fth week of 2010 after having been found to have fathered his 20 thknown

child out of wedlock with the daughter of a close friend, while practising polygamy (at

the time he already had three wives, with another woman as The Intended) and coming

after an earlier apology following his acquittal in a case involving a charge of rape in

2006, point to the veracity expressed by Achille Mbembe, that in the postcolony the

penis, the mouth and the belly regulate and conjoin lives disparate from one another

(2001, p. 106).

Given his education in the real world of downtrodden workers, Tshepo uses his

knowledge to attempt to rescue his infatuated sister. It is clear that his criticism,owing from his probing questions, allows Olwe to grow as a person, as much as

her experiences provide unsettling moments of anguish. At one point, realising how

painfully useful she is to her friends, he asks her fundamental questions of be-ing:

Whatever, Olwe. What does it matter? Are you going to Kristen Bay this Christmas? Do you even

know where these lovely bays are that you spend your evenings talking about? Do you not feel like

a fool, taking part in conversations that have nothing to do with you? Conversations that will never

have anything remotely to do with you. You are the backstage crew in the drama of their lives. If they

need you, they do not know it and do not care. Open your eyes. (p. 43, emphasis added)

These questions are fundamental to the text. The thespianleitmotifin Tshepos assertion

as to how peripheral Olwe is to the lives of her friends echoes her own observation

when she iterates that she nds it demeaning to audition for a part she hardly asked

for (p. 48). This shows her maturing side, and the owing of like thoughts in these

siblings. But it is more the senses of un-belonging that are imbedded within the extract

that provides a sharp relief for the rhetorical questions which Tshepo poses and which,

as reected by Olwe at Silver Spoon, point to a dearth of imagination in the black

community itself.

Earlier on, Tshepo mistakenly pronounced Kristen Bay as Crystal Bay. When

Olwe corrects him, he slips into a counter-intuitive discursive eld, linking Kristen

Bay with Christmas. Symbolically, Tshepos language seeks to undercut and lay bare

the whiteness at the heart of Olwes world. Crystal, it ought to be observed, is a clearglass with which beautiful and expensive ornaments are created and which, for the most

part, emits a hypnotic sound for any listener when clinked together. Crystal ornaments

denote taste, money and comfort. Christmas provides for a time when crystal is used,

a making merry and proffering of goodwill to all people. Christmas is also the time

when the leisured class takes possession of the attractive spots of the world, separating

themselves from the great unfortunate populations inhabiting the rest of the globe. Thus,

the lovely bays have little to do with universally projected goodwill to humankind,

but with self-reward and self-congratulation. Christmas is a religious holiday period



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for those devoted to the same Lord that Olwe questions at Silver Spoon regarding

her communitys un-belonging. Further, Kristen is the European version of the English

word Christian. Thus Tshepo, consciously or not, begins to unpack the very languages

of dispossession and assertion of cultural superiority, if one takes into careful account

the fact that missionary excursions into the hinterland of Africa were almost alwayspredicated on civilising the natives, and converting them to the Christian way of life.

As Tshepo has earlier questioned the veracity of Christianity and labelled it a marketing

gimmick, he consistently articulates ideas that are meant to explode the mythologisation

of this calendrical period and its application to all humanity at the expense of other

religions and practices (p. 5). By providing these varied historical contexts through

the elliptical use of language, Tshepo probes our senses of history, of religion, and

ultimately of the dramatic resolution of the South African conundrum which left the

racial and economic conuences undisturbed. Indeed, when Tshepo succinctly employs

a thespian metaphor related to the one Olwe had earlier used in her questioning her

auditions for a part in a play in which she did not want to participate, we arrive at theinternal unity of the text, and the fundamental question for South Africa today: how,

and by what processes, did black South Africans become appendages to their white

compatriots? Language, as M.M. Bakhtin recognises, is a living thing, to wit:

As a living, socio-ideological thing, as heteroglot opinion, language, for the individual consciousness,

lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone elses. It

becomes ones own only when the speaker populates it with his intention, his own accent, when he

appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to the moment

of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out

of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!) but rather exists in other peoples mouths, in other

peoples contexts, serving other peoples intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and

make it ones own. (1981, pp. 293294)

The nal sentence in the extract (Open your eyes) crystallises the very essence of

be-ing black in South Africa in the post-apartheid transitional period. It asks for a self-

reexive sense of be-ing. For, in the nal analysis, it is Tshepos viewpoint that makes

far better sense of the intricacies of be-ing in South Africa in its present context. He

earlier and sorrowfully provided a warning to Olwe that, as she progresses in life:

You will nd, Olwe, that the people you strive so hard to be like will one day reject you because

as much as you may pretend, you are not one of their own. Then you will turn back, but there too

you will nd no acceptance,for those you once rejected will no longer recognize the thing you have

become. So far, too far to return. So much, too much you have changed. Stuck between two worlds,

shunned by both. (p. 93, emphasis added)

Olwe has metaphorically worked on the vectors and calculations that are part of her

homework as Part I ends. She is alone and apart, just as Fikile is alone and apart in her

township after her rather acute rejection by Ms. Becky at the end of Part II. These girls,

rich and poor, separate and (un?)equal, are stuck in an interregnum not of their choosing

or making.



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How well do the previously oppressed understand themselves in relation to their

previous oppressor? How much do the previously oppressed understand themselves

in relation to one another? These, it seems to me, are fundamental questions in our

evolution as a post-apartheid society.14 The disengagement from African cultural

practices by some of the wealthier members of the South African black community acommunity that, much as in Jane Austens astute novels, sets the tone for the lower

classes is detrimental to African humanism, thus culture in South Africa. The urban

space, it seems, retains the hypnotic disavowal of the African personality, much as it

did during the dark days of apartheid. Though much has been written on the African

character of cities such as Johannesburg (see, for instance, Achille Mbembe and Sarah

Nuttall), what Matlwas text exposes is the mirage of black lives in such spaces. A

black government whose by-laws cannot accommodate African cultural practices is an

anomaly of the worst sort, the Mbeki-ite outcome of disavowing ones culture in the

name of nonracialism. One admires Matlwa for the perspicacity of her observations,

for she stretches the normal articulation of coconut to show its possible origins, itsimplications, its repercussions. Africans who happen to be black are now expected to

celebrate their somethingnessin places such as Nkandla (complete with disused paint

containers serving as receptacles for utywalaand providing the David Bullards of South

Africa with much mirth-making material), in Idutywa (and its frothing mess and beaded

natives); this cannot however, happen in Sandton, in Camps Bay, in Constantia, or in

Bendor Park. To do so would be to traverse the great divide, to act black. To act black

in contemporary South Africa is a great mistake; it is to make nonsense of the mirage

underscoring the national motto, unity in diversity.

Such are the fundamental questions that are raised by this powerful narrative,

Coconut.

Notes

1 I owe this wonderful phrase to the incomparable Njabulo S. Ndebele. I express my gratitude to thetwo anonymous readers of the draft form of this essay.

2 See, for instance, Henry Louis Gates Jr., (1986), Anthony Appiah (1992), Michael Banton (1998), RichardDelgado (1997) and Richard Dyer (1997).

3 See Mandy Rossouw, Mmanaledi Mataboge and Rapule Tabanes article, In black and white, Mail &Guardian, 24 September to 1 October 2009, p. 11.

4 Ko Annan was effusive in this regard, when he noted: South Africa has become a beacon of tolerance,peaceful coexistence, and mutual respect between people of different races, languages and traditions.

See in this instance Ian Macdonald, Towards non-racialism and multiculturalism [online]. Available from:www.sagoodnews.co.za/.../towards_non-racialism_and_multiculturalism [Accessed 12 June 2009].

5 If I do not concern myself with the criticism of the literature here, it is because it has been previouslyengaged with much earlier by critics as diverse as Kelwyn Sole (1983, 1993), Michael Vaughn (1981,1982), Martin Trump (1988), Mbulelo Mzamane (1978, 1991), Albie Sachs (1990), and quite recentlyRob Gaylard (2009), amongst others. My take on the present text is quite different in that it situatesitself in the post-apartheid period.

6 Wilkins and Strydom, The Super-Afrikaners, pp. 215216.

7 A poignant ctionalization of this eerie period is provided in the short story, Comrade, heal thyself!by Sindiwe Magona (Push-push! and other stories, pp. 3964).



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8 The text I am using is the 2007 one from Jacana Media. All textual references are to this edition andwill appear in the rest of the essay as pages in parenthesis.

9 Aspasia Karras, The rst wives club, The Times, 18 June 2009, p. 19.

10 Mark Gevisser, The roots to power,Sunday Times, 18 December 2007.

11 Rita Barnard, Contesting beauty, p. 346.12 Cornel West, Black strivings in a twilight civilization, p. 55.

13 Biko, White racism and black consciousness, p. 74.

14 These questions are adapted from Njabulo S. Ndebeles essay, Actor and interpreters, p. 82.

References

Appiah, A. 1992. In my fathers house: Africa in the philosophy of culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The dialogic imagination: four essays. In:Michael Holquist, ed.Title of book.Austin: TheUniversity of Texas Press,pages.

Banton, M., 1998 [1987]. Racial theories. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Barnard, R., 2000. Contesting beauty. In: S. Nuttall and C-A. Michael, eds. Senses of culture: South African

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an indefensible obscenity - fundamental questions of being in kopano matlwa's coconut

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