LITMIR.BIZ

“This apricot tree has multiple souls that fill me with wonder every morning and enchant me by afternoon. This tree has bitter-sweet memories, just like the fruit it bears.” If the apricot trees of Soweto could talk, what stories would they tell? This short story collection provides an imaginative answer. Imbued with a vivid sense of place, it captures the vibrancy of the township and surrounds. Told with satirical flair, life and death are intertwined in these tales where funerals and the ancestors feature strongly; where cemeteries are places to show off your new car and catch up on the latest gossip. Populating these stories is a politician mesmerised by his mistress’s manicure, zama-zamas running businesses underground, a sangoma with a remedy for theft, soccer fans ready to mete out a bloody justice, a private dancer in love and many other intriguing characters. Take your seat under the apricot tree and be enthralled by tales that are both entertaining and thought-provoking.

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Fana’s eyes wandered from one corner to another. Joburg people! he thought. Why would a person buy such an expensive car but live in a place like this? He shook his head. This is Johussleburg and everyone here is suffering from affluenza. Almost every black person pretends to be rich while staying in a rented room. Didn’t he just pay for the ladies’ expensive drinks with his credit card when he already skipped two instalments on his car? Who was he to judge? In his first unabridged collection of short stories, acclaimed author Niq Mhlongo confronts the span of our democracy and the madness of the last twenty years after apartheid. He takes an unflinching look at urban and rural South Africa, which he explores through themes such as racism, xenophobia, homophobia, crime, land redistribution and economic inequality. Stylistically satirical and piercing, the stories combine Mhlongo’s street-smart realism with a truly South African magical realism.

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"That was it. I had had enough of Cape Town. The cold Atlantic Ocean, the white sand beaches, Table Mountain, the Waterfront . . . I decided right there, in front of the notice board, to go and pack my belongings and leave for good. The compass in my mind was pointing north, back to Johannesburg, my landlocked city, and Soweto. I was sure that if I stayed in Cape Town for one more day I would go mad. The four years that I had spent there, shuttling between the university lecture theatres and libraries, had come to nil. My fate had been decided. I wasn’t fit to become an advocate the following year. I was a failure." Bafana Kuzwayo has flunked his law studies at UCT. Now, back at home in Chi, Soweto, he has to pluck up the courage to confess the truth to his proud mother and uncle. But maybe, just maybe, it might be easier to let everyone believe that he is a qualified attorney. Especially as everyone in Chi is already calling him Advo …

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Dingz is an average Wits student – struggling with money, partying with his friends, picking up girls, skipping lectures, making up elaborate excuses for missing exams. A bright, articulate guy, Dingz and his circle of friends sit around drinking and discussing current affairs – Aids, racism, South African politics and history – in between being kidnapped by taxi-drivers, contracting gonorrhoea and trying to fake a death certificate.
This is an authentic, witty slice-of-life set at the time of the first democratic elections, full of interesting perceptions and vivid descriptions, and well-drawn and believable characters.
All in all, an exciting and lively read; the narrator has a humorous, wry voice, perceptive and cynical. A glimpse into the lives of the “kwaito generation”, both in the township and on campus.

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I, Kimathi Fezile Tito, do solemnly declare that I am a soldier of the South African revolution. I am a volunteer fighter, committed to the struggle for justice. I place myself in the service of the people, The Movement and its allies. I take up arms in response to the wishes of the masses. I promise to serve with discipline and dedication at all times, maintaining the integrity and solidarity of the people’s army. Should I violate any of these, I accept that I should be punished by all means, not excluding death. A tooth for a tooth; an eye for an eye; a life for a life.
13 August 1986, Angola
Kimathi Tito has it all. As a child of the revolution, born in exile in Tanzania, he has steadily accumulated wealth and influence since arriving in South Africa in 1991. But even though everything appears just peachy from outside the walls of his mansion in Bassonia, things are far from perfect for Comrade Kimathi. After a messy divorce, accelerated by his gambling habit and infidelities, he is in danger of losing everything. With his company, Mandulo, struggling, Kimathi’s financial future hinges on landing a huge tender in the Soutspanberg – to provide coal for South Africa’s struggling power sector. But the ties that exile has woven are not always as strong as one might think, especially when there are millions of rands at stake. And now, to top it all, Kimathi’s seeing ghosts. Sometimes what happens in exile doesn’t stay in exile.
A caustic critique of South Africa’s political elite from the author of Dog Eat Dog and After Tears. In this, his third novel, Niq Mhlongo rips open the underbelly of tenderpreneurship in South Africa and exposes the war that has raged across the country between the exiles and inxiles since 1994. Not only does Way Back Home herald the coming of age of one of South Africa’s most important writers – The New York Times called him “one of the most high-spirited and irreverent new voices of South Africa’s post-apartheid literary scene” – it also points the way to a new era of South African literature, an era in which writers once again begin to engage with the political reality of a country at war with itself.

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Dog Eat Dog is a remarkable record of being young in a nation undergoing tremendous turmoil, and provides a glimpse into South Africa’s pivotal kwaito (South African hip-hop) generation and life in Soweto. Set in 1994, just as South Africa is making its postapartheid transition, Dog Eat Dog captures the hopes—and crushing disappointments—that characterize such moments in a nation’s history. Raucous and darkly humorous, Dog Eat Dog is narrated by Dingamanzi Makhedama Njomane, a college student in South Africa who spends his days partying, skipping class, and picking up girls. But Dingz, as he is known to his friends, is living in charged times, and his discouraging college life plays out against the backdrop of South Africa’s first democratic elections, the spread of AIDS, and financial difficulties that threaten to force him out of school.

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Bafana Kuzwayo is a young man with a weight on his shoulders. After flunking his law studies at the University of Cape Town, he returns home to Soweto, where he must decide how to break the news to his family. But before he can confess, he is greeted as a hero by family and friends. His uncle calls him “Advo,” short for Advocate, and his mother wastes no time recruiting him to solve their legal problems. In a community that thrives on imagined realities, Bafana decides that it’s easiest to create a lie that allows him to put off the truth indefinitely. Soon he’s in business with Yomi, a Nigerian friend who promises to help him solve all his problems by purchasing a fake graduation document. One lie leads to another as Bafana navigates through a world that readers will find both funny and grim.

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