Book review: Going back to say goodbye by Kenneth de Kok

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Going back to say goodbye: A boyhood on the mine
Kenneth de Kok
Kwela Books, 2016
ISBN: 9780795707841

Looking at the cover of Kenneth de Kok’s Going back to say goodbye, one notices this quote from JM Coetzee: “Just in time, before it vanishes over the horizon forever, Kenneth de Kok gives us the South Africa of the 1950s as it appeared to the fresh and innocent eyes of a child.” No faint praise. On the back cover follows a quote by Antjie Krog: “A childhood caught in amber – so clear in writing, exquisite in detail and glimmering in delicate beauty, that, peering closely, it helps us fathom today.”

Well then. Reviewer beware.

De Kok’s book, a novella-length text classified by the publisher as fiction, relates, in a series of sketches, the experiences of a young boy growing up in the 1950s mining town Stilfontein, situated in what was then known as the Western Transvaal.

Even though the different short chapters of the text are related, and the middle section is structured roughly chronologically, the book does not quite form an overarching narrative structure that would typify it as a novella. The text opens with a sketch set in 1986, when, after a long time overseas, an older Kenneth returns to South Africa to visit his ill father. The title of this sketch is also the title of the book. The sketches that follow, which make up the largest part of the book, are set in Stilfontein between 1954 and 1961. The final section is set in 2012, in which the narrator moves from occupying the position of son to that of father. While the first and last sketches create a narrative frame in the middle of which 1950s Stilfontein is outlined, each of the sketches has a degree of autonomy in the way it focuses on a particular experience or perspective. It is especially in the middle section that the sketches become slightly more interrelated. While the text is therefore certainly not a novella, it isn’t just a collection of disparate short stories either.

Many parts of De Kok’s book reminds me of Dominique Botha’s False River (2013). As in the first part of Botha’s novel, the narrator in Going back is a young child who illustrates his world as much to himself as he does to the reader. The boy, Kenneth, therefore contextualises, from the often amusing and insightful perspective of a child, his family members, the history of his family, and the mining community they live in. Although some of the narrator’s observations may seem trivial, they are frequently revealing of the various tensions surrounding socio-economic, linguistic and racial lines that were prevalent in South Africa during this time (and some of which still remain).

Explaining how he came to have an Afrikaans-sounding surname, Kenneth recounts:

“Hey you, de Kok!” kids say. “You’ve got a big hairyback name. How come you’re not at the rockspider school?” I’d explain, but they’re stupid and walk away laughing like crazy. […]

In South Africa, first you’re either black or white. And if you’re white, you’re either English or Afrikaans. There are others, like Greeks, Portuguese, Jews and Lebanese, but they count as English. (26)

The narrator relates many playful experiences with other children in Stilfontein. The sections that stand out to me are particularly those that deal with the other members of the De Kok family. Expressing his clear fondness for his sister Ingrid, Kenneth exposes in a beautifully simple way the complexity of feelings that siblings bring about in one another:

[Ingrid] walks through the house doing those spins and practising for the dance exams. She passes easily and can go to the Royal Ballet or Sadler’s Wells, I’m not sure which, but luckily we don’t have enough money. She’s way too small to be by herself. Anyway, I suppose I’d miss her. (63)

About his sister Gill, who suffers from cerebral palsy, Kenneth also speaks with a surprising boyish frankness that still remains sensitive, as it is balanced against a deeply felt affection that offers a nuanced take on the feelings of children towards their disabled siblings (96–7).

Going back is a tightly woven narrative that offers insight into a brief and formative period in a young boy’s life. Weighed up, the only sketch that seems poorly executed is the one entitled “Natives” (116–21). Here, the convincing naivety of the child narrator is broken by a contrived overstatement of views and facts that seem beyond the supposed age of the child. Various views on race are recounted (including those of Kenneth’s parents, uncle and a family friend), and all seem to conveniently represent differing positions on the political spectrum of the time. There is the kind, well-meaning, but ultimately patronising view of the mother; there is the slightly more conservative, but not quite cruel view of the father; and then the extremes of, on the one hand, the vile racist uncle and the liberal family friend who is considering running for the Progressive Party on the other. Overall, though, this shortcoming does not mar a text that is otherwise a poignant and enjoyable read.

Going back to say goodbye tells the story of a boy saying goodbye to his childhood as it flits past. It is also the story of a boy saying goodbye to his father and, movingly, to a South Africa that both no longer exists and lingers on in surprising ways.

 

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