Name: Sean William Messham

‘Title’

Chapter one

“What are they going to do with all these people?” asks Greg Williams standing on top of the military compound wall in Zimbabwe overlooking the Zambian border.

“God knows” answers Colonel Taylor with a regrettable tone as he lights another cigarette.

“The camps along the border of Zimbabwe are already over flowing and disease and malnutrition is high” Taylor outlines the reality of the problem, with a closing snap of his Zipo.“And with the militia growing in strength, more are surely to come” says Greg, a photojournalist for the Special Reports unit an arm of the Southern Africa United Force Army, known as the SAUFA.

Greg joined the Special Reports unit when reports were coming out of Zambia that the militia pushing south in Zimbabwe were actively killing all journalists. Not just western journalist, but anybody who had the capacity to report or correspond with the outside world.

Greg was fresh out of University when Southern African countries, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa united under a single flag and with the formation of the SAUFA, and the war of liberation started in Zimbabwe. SAUFA, supported by the British Army, pushed through Zimbabwe and began to restore the country and its people under the United Southerns Unions. But it was not in the Liberation war of Zimbabwe that Greg joined the special unit, but after his experience in Lusaka, the Zambian capital.

“Shit man we need to get back into Lusaka” says Greg, “the Central Militia are growing in numbers and the refuges are just streaming down into the Unions”

Colonel Taylor responds with a deep drag of his cigarette “You sure you want to go back there Greg so soon, after” there is a pause in Colonel Taylors voice “well you know after what happened there with you guys” I mean, there is another concerned pause by Colonel Taylor “still having the nightmares?”

Greg was sent to Lusaka by the then named Argus Newspaper to do a story on the war between the central militia and the British supported SAUFA. The war was often fought at very close range and SAUFA service men had bayonets continuously fixed to their rifles as they fought for each, street, house and brick face. Greg often thought that if he was in the battle of Leningrad during War World Two, Lusaka is how he would have imagined it looked like. But two fronts broke out during that war, the physical and ideological fronts. The Central Militia, realising the importance of the free press began to target journalists. Captured journalists were disembowelled in the streets, hung like cattle in an abattoir along the street lamps, with the women often being raped before being shot or merely thrown into the mass graves north of Lusaka.

“It will only get worse if we don’t get that city back Taylor” ignoring the question about the nightmares.

“We both know the Central Militia are wiping out the people so that they have land rights and rights to the water sources”

“Plus people are living under such terror their minds are being wired into a barbaric existence, many kids don’t even flinch to the sight of the rifle or worry about the mind fields anymore”

“We have to start fighting the ideological battle because we are losing them, their minds”

The war in Lusaka was bitterly fought and the war soon grew in to one that was no longer fought only for the physical boundaries and resources of the towns’, but for the minds of the citizens. SAUFA pushed the Central Militia out of the town before American troops, not recognising the legitimacy of the SAUFA invasion and wanting to put Militia leader, Sinako Kabame, in power of the region had threatened military action if the British and SAUFA forces did not retreat out of Zambia. Britain, not wanting to risk war with America pulled out, whilst the American supported Central Militia pushed SAUFA forces over the boundary back into Zimbabwe. Greg was fortunately not captured during the retreat, but it soon grew apparent that journalists’ had to fight for themselves and the ideological front as SAUFA could not defeat the Central Militia whilst defending or extracting journalists.

Greg, after escaping the atrocities in Zambia fled back into the safety of the Southern Unions and began to urge for the need for the ideological battle to be fought and hence a special unit was developed within SAUFA, with Greg being one of its founders. The Special Reports Unit objective’s through the years were refined into a very specific aim to fight the ideological battle front, and try re-establish what can loosely be described as a ‘free press’ in the Northern borders. The Special Unit would be combating Sinako Kabame and his Central Militia propaganda and totalitarian states that pushed as far north as Congo Basin. The SAUFA Unit was called The Special Reports Unit (The SRU).

“While we have to be tactical about it all Greg, we can’t just pull an America and do what we want, fuck it up and then ask the questions later”.

“We need a reason to go in and a means to pay for it” Colonel throws his cigarette on the dusty and coarse floor of the military compound post and continues

“I know you Journos don’t like the reality of it, but we need to be able to pay for the invasion, humanitarian reasons are not enough to help people anymore, if there ever was a time.” Colonel Taylor lights another cigarette

“Well these damn people can’t just stay in the buffer zone?” Greg protests to Colonel Taylor, as he looks at the exodus of refugees streaming into the buffer zone like the Nile delta leading into the Mediterranean.

“There must be something we can do for these people”

“You focking journo’s, even with a gun in your hand you are too blind to see simple truths” Colonel Taylor  says whilst taking a deep drag of his cigarette in protest to his situation, his rough beard being the only shadow on his face as he looks down towards the refugees flowing towards his military base.

“I just told you that there is something, find a reason moral or humanitarian reason to legitimise British support and then a means to pay for it, like minerals, and then we can push the Central Militia back out of Lusaka with the Brits” argues Colonel Taylor “and these people can go back home to their focking crops and skinny goats”

“The Brits wont just throw military support, not while the Americans support Kabame, anyway” Greg enquires while he sets up his camera tripod, a clumsy looking contraption, in the midst of more serious problems, which are in need of more life-saving equipment than a camera tripod.

“The Americans believe that they are doing is right, change that opinion and America will remove their military support” says Colonel Taylor “it’s that simple, and you are the journo, so stop fucking jerking yourself off and do your job”, taking the last drag of his new Zimbabwean cigarette “then I can do mine and we can push these fucking raping bastards back.”

Colonel Taylor turns towards the post radio, as if a sixth sense has told him that there is going to be a correspondence.

Grrsssts

“Colonel Taylor”,

“Come in Colonel Taylor”

“Over”

Grrrsssts

“This is Colonel Taylor in tower 39 on Northern East block”

“Over”

A crackle of words comes through the radio, the sentence broken up. “There is a grrrrst growing grrrsts disturbance in section A23”

Section A23 is a humanitarian camp of 10 000 people that was constructed after the Liberation war of Zimbabwe a few kilometres south of Hwage along a main international road. At first the camp was welcomed by refugees and homeless Zimbabweans, but after a few years cells of Kabame militia grew in the camp Xenophobia resulting in mass murders and what became known as ‘target raping’ which was a method used by both parties to try ‘breed out’ foreigners on one side, and Kabame Militia on the other.

“Shit”, “Get your Unit ready Greg”

“A23 again?” asks Greg turning his back on the people over in the northern borders

“Ya, fock it man, the Jackals are moving out in 30min, ok?”

Greg nods his head as he snaps the shutter down on his camera. Another moment of Africa suffering, surviving, but through the cloth of dust, has been frozen, collected and maybe remembered, Greg hopes, as he packs the tripod. Greg walks down concrete stairs, off the patrol walls of the Military compound, seemingly rejecting the problems of thousands of people to look back into his own borders. He swings his rifle over his right shoulder while his camera balances on his left hip.

Assignment one: Poetry

‘Nightmare’

As I put my head down to sleep,

My mouth dry of drink and hair smoggy with breathful soot.

My heads spins me into a coma, it’s then when it comes.I feel it tugging my sheet, I keep my eyes shut- trying my best to ignore it

But how does one ignore the creature

It spastically crawls up my sheets,

It’s not made by God, It should not be here

It’s not nature

It comes closer, its breath smelling of rotten perspiration and clogged drains.

Its metal spine protrudes from its back, you can see its medical stitches, its scars

It’s a creature that’s dying –it cannot be fixed

But yet it still comes towards me, tilting its head from side-to side

Its eyes like the smog blocked sun

Name: Sean William Messham

Assignment two: Poetry

‘The Leopard ’

Will you look at me, when I look at you

Give me a moment, give me a chance

You live a life of mystery, alone in solitude

With whiskers like quills of the porcupine

And paws so soft and silent, wanting never to crumple the dusty grass

Will you look at me, like I look at you

Give me a moment, give us a chance

Your branches are snapping

Your tree is felling

But yet you’re purring, with your coat, the mark of your prowess

Will you look at me, like I look at you

Give me a moment, give yourself a chance

Give me a story, give me a scar

Let me see you, give us a chance

Tracey Farren: Whiplash

“Shit some guy split her from her throat to her belly button. Popped out her eyes. Left her buried in the sand at Clovelly. Some mom was collecting sand for her kid’s sand pit. Dug up her loose eye…”

This is an extract from the Tracey Farren novel, Whiplash. The novel tells a story about a prostitute, Tess, who is addicted to Syndol, living in Muizenberg. The book has received plenty of great reviews like the one from Brenton Geach from the Cape Argus. “WHIPLASH…eats into you and will make you think three times when you see a prostitute again. WHIPLASH got so deep under my skin that every time I pass a street worker now I think, ‘That could be Tess’.” That’s great review for the people who needed the wake-up call and needed to grow a little more of a sympathetic understanding for other people’s positions. What about, however, the readers who ‘knew this’ or assume that they have this kind of ‘understanding and the factual information’ of prostitution and the social situation in South Africa? Can the book offer something to you as well?The main reason why I picked up the book was a simple fact, I grew up in Muizenberg. I live in Watson road adjacent to Alexander road, a mere 3min slow, very slow, walk to where Tess may have stood. I assume I know where the corners or streets are where prostitutes work. I can even tell you stories of watching a prostitute climb into a car and by the time I have finished buying my ice-cream or waxing my surf-board, she will have climbed out. I know the contradicting environment of Muizenberg. Muizenberg is a place where children, like myself, would play on the streets, and it is a surfers and beach bum haven, but yet Muizenberg is a place of social worry and hardship. Vlei road is grand little spot for these kinds of activities too, if you must know. But have I never gasped the complexities and true horror of this lifestyle, not really.  I feel that I am a person much like Karina, who posted this comment on the WHIPLASH blog, “Personally, I have heard of these circumstances from many sources before, so the book did not upset me on a factual level. What I found unsettling was the dramatisation of these facts. That is where the power of fiction lies.”

An agency sex worker wrote to Farren about her reaction to reading WHIPLASH.

“Although I can’t say I had the hard times that Tess had, and never had a dependency, I could totally relate to the lifestyle. You really got the street worker’s lifestyle on the mark… she also wants to love and be loved”.

Tracy Farren is a freelance journalist who got a lot of her information and understanding from her interviews with prostitutes in Marina Da Gama, a suburb on the vlei north of Muizenberg. With newspapers, tabloids, reality shows and autobiographies bulldozing down the doors of secrecy in an attempt to show ‘truth’ and with our new age of media the public are being constantly bombarded with images and descriptions that show us more ‘offensive truths’. Farren argues that fiction “should give what the daily mirror doesn’t give, the why and as well as the how. It should show why the victim toppled over into the trap, or why the monster grew”. And I tend to agree, fiction writing can do what journalists, in the  large, fail to do, answer the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’. Fiction can provide a metaphorical window whereby factual information can converse with the soul of the reader and adequately answer those questions that journalism does not. And I hope WHIPLASH will do this for me when I read the novel.

As an individual, who I cannot remember, once said, “never judge a person’s position unless you know their journey or where they have come from”.

I have, to be fair, had times whereby I have naively ‘judged’ prostitution and yes, regrettably, the person too. And I have done this with the understanding of the social complex facts, so maybe by reading WHIPLASH I can understand a persons’ journey- at least metaphorically.

Assignment one: Smell

‘Just a game’

The smell of freshly cut grass, beautifully trimmed for a single purpose. It’s a smell that not many people would recognise and if they have, would not spend time remembering. For me it will always remind me of the beginning of summer and the beginning of the cricket season.

The smell of freshly cut winter grass, trimmed to a silk carpet surface, with schoolboy cricketers walking onto the field, filled with arrogance and nervous expectations. The smell will always take me back to my school days when every Saturday morning, with the grass and benches still damp with morning dew and Devils Peak crisply sharp in the soft morning sun, I was preparing for a cricket game. There is a lot about this time that I hated, but love today. I was a nervous cricketer, perhaps that is why I noticed things like the smell of cut grass, and I was a cricketer who was always expected to do better. It was a time whereby I started to learn how to deal with triumphs and defeats. I always considered myself as a bowling all-rounder; however, my coaches always felt I was an opening batsman due to my sound batting technique that I expressed in the nets. The only thing that they failed too realise was that this was a technique by a blocking batsman, and attempting to score runs often meant the fall of my wicket.

I pity those who never try to understand the importance of sport in one’s life; it is like dismissing the importance of music. Cricket, sport, teaches one the harsh reality that you will triumph and fail and yes this can happen at the same time. The adage “it’s more than a game” is perfectly true. Cricket teaches you that no matter how confident you may be, or how good you actually are, a single ball, a time period of 0.7 seconds, a moment, can break your confidence and expose all your weaknesses. It teaches you when to attack and be aggressive, but also that this can result in your demise. It can tell you when to be more humble and defensive,  how patience is a virtue and control is essential. These lessons can be mirrored off the field and into life. In life, one can be confident and great at whatever they do, but a moment of arrogance can shatter all your preparation and expectations. In life aggression does not always show confidence and, sometimes, defence and humble patience can give better results.

Yet, to be fair, cricket it also just a game. The aim is to hit the ball around a field while fielders try restricting the batsman and bowlers try to win your wicket through varies rules. It can be played in the biggest stadiums and in the passage of a school dorm, cricket is just a game. But isn’t life also?

Name: Sean William Messham

Assignment two: childhood memory

‘A rosy fall’

“ring a-ring a-roses, a pocket full of posies, huaachoo, huaachoo, and we all fall down”

“Crack…snap”

As I fell, I put my hand behind my back to break my fall. But my arm was wedged, and snapped in two places. I remember clearly what went through my mind when it happened. It was not the pain but rather a thought, or more a plan to not let anybody know that I had just broken my arm playing a “girlie game.” See, I was never a boy who thought that girls were ‘gross’ and the idea of running away from a girl during a game of ‘kiss catch’ really did not make sense to me.  So when I was asked to play ‘ring a-ring a-roses” by the girls I thought “why not…I’m manning up against my mates, plus… I like playing it with my older sisters”. So I bravely got into the ring with girls who were naturally bigger than me at this age. But I played the game only once.

I knew I had broken my arm and I thought “shit”. So I got up, cradled my arm with my other hand, walked to my grade 1 teacher and told her “I have broken my arm”. She replied in a harsh and un-sympathetic voice “don’t be silly, get in line Sean”. So being the small and obedient white haired boy I was, I went and sat in line with all my mates, fighting back the tears, as I could not think of anything worse than letting my mates know that I had broken my arm while playing a “girlie game”. I lent over and told my best girlfriend that my arm was broken. Kim shouted out, “Sean’s arm is broken Miss!” Everyone turned to me and asked if I was ok, not a single cheeky remark from the guys, but rather comments that made me know that they all believed me. The teacher did not though, and with her remarks of “Sean’s arm is not broken” as we marched back to class in a single file.

I had had enough, and before we got to class I did the single most rebellious thing a little boy could do, I broke off the line. I walked into the secretary’s office, passed her and walked straight into the principal’s office and while looking confidently at the man who I called big ears only a week ago, said “I have broken my arm.”  He sent me to the lounge area and asked me to wait there, no cake or sweets, just a hand on the shoulder with the pressure directing me were to sit. So there I sat, my feet dangling over the ground as I was too small for the chairs, and my bare broken arm still nestled by the other. And there I waited…

I can’t remember how much time went passed, it felt like hours but it must have been only minutes. I remember my older sister coming to me, but only to leave again after a teacher made her go to class. So I sat in an alien place that was cold and dark, school passages have never been a comfort for me. Then I got an idea. For some reason I remember that there was a clinic near the school. How I knew it was a clinic I still have no idea, as I could not read. But I knew where it was, so off I went. I had had enough of waiting for adults to help me and walked down the passage, out the main gate of the school, across the road and into this clinic.

What the receptionist must have thought, I could only imagine. But in came this, tiny white blonde boy with his faded blue second hand school clothes on, most likely dirty. She had to lean over the counter to see me, I then told her, “My arm is broken”.

The rest I don’t really remember, but I do remember that I was getting my injections when my Mom walked in. And with a smile that only moms have, I knew that I was not in trouble. Funny how my first thought had been was I was in trouble. But, after all, I had just walk away from school to get to the clinic. But nope, my Mom just smiled and sat next to me while my cast, warming my arm as it dried, was put on. Needless to say my next thought was…“what is Dad going to think?”

“Lets’ do it”

“Sean, have you ever got grilled at Rhodes?” asks my mate.

I look across to my High School buddies. One could describe our friendship as a kind of ‘bromance’. The three of us have been friends throughout High School. We have experienced most things together. We have lied to our parents to get out of trouble. We have ran away from the Police and Security companies after deciding to swim in someone’s Summer House pool during the holidays or stolen street sign.

We are guys, and we love doing it all.

“Come Seano bud”

“It really is not that bad man” says my one mate. Whose only reason for smoking weed is, it seems, an attempt to create some quality time with his girlfriend.

So I looked around, evaluating my position.

I was at my bud’s house.

Safe.

And this meant that if I happen to get what I understood as the ‘greenies’, a state whereby you lose your rationality, become paranoid and eventually “fuck out”, as Steven’s girlfriend puts it, I would be ok.As they exchange stories of “fucking out”, I looked around evaluating that, basically, I was safe at my bud’s place. And therefore if I got this mystery response, I was ok.

Steven’s girlfriend best friend, Tammy, leaves the table to fetch her bankie, a small pouch of weed. The weed is kept in a special tin box with, what looked like to me, some Mediterranean looking patterns and colours on it with an Atheist sign on the right and a Socialist star, a little clichéd I thought. Inside the tin there was some normal tobacco, a lighter, a green rolling machine and Rizzla rolling paper. The weed looked as plain as Chinese Green tea. The smell was not like the mature or vintage smell you receive from normal tobacco. The texture and look of it looked was childish, premature and silly. A rather disappointing conclusion I thought to a substance, which for me carried such a mythical weight. It looked as plain and even as cheap as green tea.

Tammy proceeded to take out what looked like dried up organic ticks, I assumed they were pips or maybe even buds. And then it was mixed it with the vintage tobacco.

“I will mix it for you, Sean.”

“We don’t want him to get the greenies” Tammy says, like she just did me a favour. We are about to do an illegal substance and here she was acting like mixing it with a non-illegal substance was doing me a favour.

It is lit and the joint starts to circulate around the table like a religious ceremony.

Puff…..Puff, hold… and then pass.

This seemed to be the practice whilst a crusty grey smoke is released from the nose and mouth. It looks nothing like the candy floss smoke of a beautifully packed hubbly. A smell of burning rotten cabbages filled the air, entering the pores of our clothes and tributaries between our strains of hair.

Never mind all that, I thought as It came round to being my turn. I act with confidence, ready to display my willingness of not always having to be compliant with the law.

I breathe in.

My lungs were flooded with what felt like crushed bristles of burning coal. A syrup of gastric flu was injected into my body and my ex-smoking and hubbly trained lungs. I treat my second puff like a cigar, my taste buds desperately searching, seemingly shifting to find the taste of the lesser of two evils.

Seconds seem to grow into hours. And soon my mind floated away, removing the moisture from my throat and tongue as it left my reality, seemingly in protest. A milky bubble formed around my head and a fake, childish and apathetic smile grew on my face.

I could see all of this, like my rational side was watching me. Leaving me, but remaining close enough to return later with my identity intact.

I turned into a more apathetic Sean throughout the night with the continuously circulating joint. Tammy kept rolling up the next one before the last was finished.

I lifted my lead-heavy eyelids. With my joints feeling like mercury had been injected into them I walked around the house, trying to find my stuff.

Wallet?

Keys?

Mind?

Anxiety grew in my veins, so strong that it seemed to leak into my muscles. My rationality almost returned, holding my identity- to clear the milky way of the night. I sat on the toilet seat, drinking 500ml’s of water in an attempt to dilute this paranoia and anxiety riddled poison.

Student number: g06m0497

Music Review: Band: The Cat Empire.

Draft

I was trying to sleep and my girlfriend was editing a picture for the Activate Student Newspaper. She put it on, what I assumed was another Youtube song or advert rip off, with her usual remark of “I like this song”. I must inform you that this remark means nothing as she is a person who likes everything and when or if she doesn’t like something, she is too polite and gentle to say ‘THIS IS SHIT’.

Music for me is meant to be a stimulant that brings something to life, your emotions, your silliness or your dancing shoes. You do not have to take some unlawful stimulate to enjoy a song or an album, and this is what I would have to do to appreciate the New Cat Empire album. These songs sound like they would have been sung by the walking and singing turtle, Timothy Traddle. Well to be honest not even Timothy would have felt comfortable with some of the songs, as most of them do not have enough cords to get you to dance off a square centimetre. And the cords sound stereophonically cheap, like the musicians bought a Chinese-made-keyboard from Toys R Us to help them compose a sound.

While ‘Protons neutrons and electrons’ was playing, I had visions of those puppets we used to watch as kids on K-TV or Kideo. Those sock type puppets who sung songs which taught us about simple science in shows like Cabbage Patch. I swear the song was produced for the weed smoking and acid taking population who need a stimulant to feel the world around them. To be fair the piano bit and the end is kind of fun, yet by this time I am half way through my joint and I have already danced with Timothy.

It does not really get better either throughout the album. ‘Party Started’ sounds like a remix of the Super Mario Brothers theme song with a hint of Street rapping in the background. ‘Miserere’ really does make one want to cry for mercy, as it sounds like a Chinese pirated version of Coldplay with a brass recording that is only impressive if a Primary School Band was playing it. The trumpet solo does show the potential musical skill but quality takes time, and my advice to the band is to do more time in your garage gig a little longer. ‘Soly Sambra’ is a great song as you puts into a delusion that you think its is always just about to end, and the anticipation of it ending excites you.

It is strange though; the band seems to get you hoping through the album, wishing that they would come up with something better. You are with them, supporting them all the way. It’s Similar to how you are with Scooby Doo, who has no qualities be supported or liked, but yet we all still support Scooby all the way. And so are you with Cat Empire. You can tell that they are instrumentally very good, almost moveable at times in a few songs. But you still can’t help think that most of the songs deserve to be in High school productions or (with their song like ‘Soly Sambra’) in a lonely corner of a jazz restaurant. Their sound does not travel well over a CD face. But I find myself strangely supporting Cat Empire, hoping that they don’t embarrass themselves much further like Scooby. But like my support for Scooby Doo, I will lend another ear when Cat Empire brings out their third album.

Book Review: ‘We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families’

By: Philip Gourevitch

‘It will happen again’

If you don’t know about Rwanda, then catch a wake up. If you think you know all there is to know about the genocides in Rwanda, then read Philip Gourevitch’s book. The book will leave you with many un-answered questions of yourself and others, but with a greater understanding that humanity is another word for barbarism.

I had heard about this book for a long time. As a South African journalist student I have been constantly battered with courses that discuss the genocides that occurred in Rwanda. I have looked at all the rational reasons, written exams on these ‘explanations’ and discussed many theories. But these discussions, these rational ways of trying to explain the genocides have always left me in a state of delusion. Academics try and bring a rational equation or formula which creates genocides, but I have always asked myself, “How can one pose rationality when we are dealing with insanity?”

It’s with this predominant question that I picked up Gourevitch’s book and began to read. The first day that I read the book, I positioned myself in the South African lukewarm afternoon spring sun, with a cup of black coffee. And in this illusion of relative safety I began to read about how peace, like the one I have surrounded myself in, can be hacked to pieces. How friends and family members slaughtered each other, in atrocities that I could never comprehend, and I would never want to. As I read, I constantly moved around in my chair, forever uncomfortable as my rational mind struggled with the equation of humanity. I read more than half the book in one afternoon, and was left with questions, questions, questions and without the heart to discuss them. I did not pick the book up for another five days…

Gourevitch’s use of interviews and detailed descriptions of his experiences after 1994 truly does bring the number of murders down to earth, the situation to the soul. You start picturing your friends, family and strangers on the street, realising how fragile it all truly is. With stories of family members hacking each other to death and neighbours raping one another, churches being used as human abattoirs, and in the same breath, adults and children doing their best to save their fellow Rwandans. It’s a book that surely leaves you with questioning humanity.

“The dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust. It was the most efficient mass killing since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”

How does one not read on from this sentence?

The book is not without its faults. The reader never truly gets the perspective of the Rwandans who committed the genocides, the reader never hears their voice. For me this is a huge defect in the book. He uses a proportional contrast of blame without assigning true or adequate responsibility to anyone, his objectivity is at times annoying to the point that you as a reader cannot form your own true opinion or assign proportional responsibility to groups of people, be it the international community, African States, the French government, history, Hutus, Tutsi, or Rwandans.

When I finished the book, I could not help but think, “With no one taking true responsibility, does humanity claim the responsibility? Do we construct the perspective that this is a unique Rwandan situation?” For me, an approach that adequately leaves no one more responsible that the next, besides the human conscious, will only leave space for it to happen again. And my gut tells me it will.

Student number: g06m0497

By: Alexandra Fuller

This story by Alexandra Fuller is a beautiful and compassionate story about a young girl growing up in Southern Africa. Fuller use of what can be loosely described as a simple English style does not remove one from complexities of her life. The English used in the book allows one to flow easily into her childhood but yet it does not euthanise the tragic episodes nor remove the complexities and contradictions of her childhood. She writes with a unique fashion that seems to write in a way that removes certain categorical identities, like being white and female, but yet, and contradicting, she makes no excuses for her position. It just seems that with every story she tells, you can remove those categorical classifications and the story is still just as powerful. I think this is what she has managed to do in this book.

It’s a story about a white child, Bobo, growing up in her own world under the umbrella of wider political situations, ‘Rhodesian Liberation’, war, domestic strife, racism and farm relocation. “My life is sliced into in half. The first half is the happy years, before Olivia dies.” The story of Bobo is at times a heart renching story of survival and successive tragedies that are too much to bear once, never mind over again. But each tragedy seems to be mixed in with memories that you cannot help but smile too and laugh at. The most powerful aspect of the book is how it makes you relook at your childhood, opening your eyes to your special uniqueness. While reading the book I would often find myself drifting back into my childhood, recognising memories which brought me up and built my character. It is truly a book that captures the magic of childhood, a magic we often forget.

The story of Bobo growing up is through her eyes and imagination.  It comes across as a fresh and innocent perspective, and she makes no excuses for her thoughts or even what she does. She is growing up, exploring her possibilities, and I loved her for that.

For those who do not know much about Southern African history, Bobo’s life is briefly interrupted  with little synopses of the historical context which one understand and appreciate the macro-complexity of the time but without removing you from the fragile perspective of Bobo.

At times you read the book my eyes could not glance over the words quick enough. But, as life also works, the book will be at times very slow and Fuller’s use of fruitful descriptions entices you read just as slowly.

I found, however, that towards the end of the book it became a little laborious. Fuller seems to feel that the book had to come to a conclusion and therefore you get a synoptic ‘round-up’ of Bobo’s life in the final chapter. This part of the book seems to lose the style that I enjoyed and therefore the magical feel of the book is lost in a sea of random conclusions that do not add to the story in anyway.

Never the less when you read each, subtle, description of Africa like “there is breeze through the window, the cold sinking night air shifting the heat of the day”. Each period of laughter and tears, after each chapter, I still found myself with a sensation of wanting to go outside and take a breath of fresh air-releasing it slowly and with control. It brings an understanding that life cannot always be controlled but only lived.

By Zukiswa Zimela

It is very seldom that I have nothing to say about a book that I have just read. Usually I am able to articulate with verbose confidence the wonder and the wit of the writer or the awfulness and tediousness of the plot. But once in a while I get a book that is so brilliant that I am terrified to break the illusion of its existence in my mind. I am reluctant to bludgeon it with my words and smother it with writers’ clichés. The God of Small Things is such a fragile story that I cannot bear to tear it apart by over analysing it. This is a change from my usual sentiment as I have no issues tearing a book apart and trampling it while shooting verbal missiles at it. I have very little patience with average books and firmly believe that all bad art should be punished, I am also willing to play the role of the persecutor. In my literary life time I have left a trail of barely breathing books in my wake having bulldozed through everything with a self satisfied know it all attitude. This book changed all of that. I found myself wanting to protect from being reviewed, from being looked at too closely and examined for faults.

The God of Small Things is an epic novel that takes us through the lives of two children, Estha Elvis Pelvis with a Puff and and Rahel Airport fairy with an I-Love Tokyo and angry glasses. The twins are also called the two egg twins because they are not identical and yet they are one person. The story takes place in India where caste and religion play a major role in peoples lives. The author manages to weave a common thread through all the characters lives that comes full circle in the end. History has set the stage and the people in the novel are the unwitting participants. The book oscillates between simplicity and complexity. The reader is required to keep up with the authors astounding imagination. The writer also makes use of repetition in the most unexpected places. For instance we are told that Estha is a “little boy he lived in a caravan dum dum” The writer also makes allusions to children’s books like The Jungle Book and cartoons like Popye the sailor man. The child like naivety of the author makes the events that unfold all the more harrowing. Roy manages to create some characters that are completely lovable and others that are so diabolical that it is difficult not to spit with disgust and the mere mention of their names. The book allows the reader an intimate look at each of the characters psyche. The characters are completely different and yet Roy manages to make them relate to each other using a subtle nuanced way of story telling. The thread that links all the people in the story is delicate but it is there and it up to the reader to keep it in sight.

Baby Kotchama, the twins’ aunt has an evil stench that permeates throughout the story. She is the instigator of all the suffering. Having been disappointed in her youth she dedicates her life to making life as unpleasant as possible for her grandniece and nephew. She plants seeds of doubt in the character’s minds. She lies and manipulates to fulfil her evil ends. Her selfishness is exasperating and incomprehensible. Ammu, the twins mother, is an independent woman who divorced her alcoholic husband after the twins were “almost born on a bus” After that she moves back home to her disappointed parents Mamachi and Papachi. Home brings back memories of abuse and neglect. From this neglect she manages to acquire an “Unmixable Mix- the infinite tenderness of mother hood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber”. Her affair with a man from the wrong caste makes a brooding shadow over the narrative. Her secret involvement with Velutha “ the man her children love during the day and the man that she loves at night” brings the story to a shocking close.

The book culminates in two deaths. After this the lives of the characters slowly start to fall apart. Ammu is kicked out from her home and forced to look for work without her children. At the age of eight Etha Elvis Pelvis with a Puff is Returned to his father and Rahel, Airport fairy with an I-Love Tokyo and angry glasses is left behind in the reluctant care of Baby Kotchama.The twins from two eggs are separated from each other. They are later reunited when they are thirty- one, not young, not old but of a die-able age where they reastablish their former bond by giving themselves to each other.

At the end of the book there is a haunting silence that hovers in the mind of the reader like a pregnant rain cloud. Begging to be considered and reconsidered. The book draws you in so that you are tainted with the blood of the dead, moved by grief and forced to cry for the randomness of History.

I love my daddy, when I am small and scared of boarding school he is there.

Papa, when I am a little girl crying over big girl problems and he listens

with his head cocked and an answer playing behind a patient smile,

he promises to come visit soon before the week is over and he does.

Daddy is the man who works far away and comes home on weekends with chips

and sweets and strong legs that I ride like a pony in the evenings,

he lets me play tug of war with his moist socks fresh out his working boots

while he concentrates on the T.V soaking up the evening news.

Daddy with the big hands that hold my small one to get the rusty aerial stuck in my palm.

He rushes me to the tap and clasps my wrist to stop the blood from staining the grass,

carefully deposits me to my mother who is shaken by the gorge in my hand

While he laughs the it will be OK laugh in the background

Daddy’s head with a camping bag holder slouching off it, while he trudges down the stairs.

I love him with his square shovel foot on the dash board while he drives

and towel on his shoulder to catch the sweat that rains off his grey forehead,

even with the window open and the  cold air rushing in.

Daddy who loves my mummy and his mummy and me.

WAR

At school, its the poems that get the worst of it,

The students and teachers wield their sharpened pencils, circling this and that and

Stabbing meaning between the stanzas and leaving a bloody trail of

I thinks, and maybes.

The words on the pages hop, skip around, ducking form here to there.

Confined to the page they try to camouflage themselves

but they recognise the futility of war and so they give up. resigned

and let the massacre continue.

Metaphor! Rhyme! The barrage is unrelenting, the onslaught deadly.

When the all is done they stare at their masterpiece,

a literary Frankenstein.

Rush

It comes like a wave of lava from my stomach

twisting and turning, a violent turbulent gush

that pushes its way up my oesophagus, winding up to my throat.

A relentless pulsating force scrapes its way out hungry for air.

This insistent bubbling throb that marches to its own tempo

rages and burns scorching and searing the back of my tongue

It brands my cheeks, and merges with viscous molten flesh

A fiery cocktail of wrath, membrane and enamel

I feel it well up behind a pursed grimace,

my mouth pregnant with an acid glacier I clench

In pain I hurl it out, thick globular and moist

FUCK!