Litnet

Title:Way back home
Author: Niq Mhlongo
Publisher: Kwela
ISBN: 9780795704789

Buy Way back home from Kalahari.com.

 Niq Mhlongo fans have waited for a while for his third novel and here it finally is – Way Back Home.

Mhlongo received acclaim for his previous novels, Dog Eat Dog and After Tears, in South Africa and abroad and was hailed as a great new voice of South African writing – the literary version of the kwaito generation, if you will. This is because the protagonists in those novels were young black men who represented a social paradox. On one hand there was early post-apartheid euphoria imbued with the perfume of liberation and the promise of wealth and improved social standing, while on the other these young men were members of a group that carried the stigma of being responsible for crime, violence, absent-fatherhood, laziness and lack of employability. With acerbic humour, Niq writes about how these men navigate their way through their young lives in the midst of these bewildering circumstances. He doesn’t create romantic heroes; he gives the reader human beings in all their messy colourfulness.

In Way Back Home we are presented with a more mature protagonist, darker humour and a particularly tragic tale that reveals a version of South Africa’s liberation history that its leaders, in all probability, would rather have us ignore.

Kimathi Tito is a comrade made good thanks to The Movement’s victory in the war against the apartheid regime and cadres’ monetary rewards in the form of Black Economic Empowerment deals and government tenders. He is the king of his universe – until everything begins to unravel, starting with his estrangement from his wife. His corrupt, politically involved business dealings are leaving their stink everywhere and his unsavoury actions from his exile past in Angola invade his psyche, creating hell for him and everyone with whom he comes into contact. Kimathi is not a likeable character; he is a cheating philanderer who is breathtakingly arrogant. There are many moments in which I found that here was an opportunity for him to change. He could be generous, he did love his wife and he believed in helping to create a better life for people.

While revealing what happens to Kimathi, the author flashes back to events in the Amilcar Cabral camp in Angola, during the height of the resistance against apartheid, where freedom fighters were put through a process whose aim was to “re-educate, re-orientate, re-habilitate, re-dedicate, re-deploy” them in the aftermath of their misdemeanours. The Movement appears to have left the nature of this discipline as well as the proof of guilt of the transgressors to the discretion of the Comrade leaders. Comrades Pilate and Idi were two such leaders and they meted out brutal forms of punishment. As we witness Kimathi’s disintegration we are treated to the creative cruelty of the comrades upon their own, back in the day.

The ghost of a Lady Comrade comes to the present to haunt Kimathi because she also wants to find her way back home to South Africa and he is the only one who can help her. She is also becoming impatient and her fury causes chaos in his life.

Traditional magical realism dances with high fashion and modern high-class lifestyle in Way Back Home. Mhlongo explores psychological trauma through the bifocal lens of Western medicine and traditional healing practices. He takes on the task of writing a character whose remorse hardly seems to crack the surface, unless in an act of self-preservation, and even then he is reluctant to assume responsibility for his actions. It is not easy to try to understand such a person – one who can love and be truly evil at the same time.

This is a commendable effort on Niq Mhlongo’s part. He doesn’t disappoint with his writing style – his is a uniquely South African register that has a wide appeal. He exhibits a thorough knowledge of his settings both in Angola and Johannesburg and its surrounds. There are references to music and history that give the novel solid weight.

My only disappointment is with the editing of the book. Such a worthy author deserves better. There are typographical errors and a grammatical flaw that a meticulous editor and proofreader should have picked up.

South African writing is aching to evolve beyond narratives about our painful past and how it continues to haunt us. This is not to say that these narratives aren’t necessary, but I feel that our imaginations have been held captive by our pain. I concede that beauty cannot captivate a starving person, which is why our literary art continues to be preoccupied with our pain, but dammit, I could use a happy distraction – like a literary version of a Mi Casa tune!