Welcome to Msawawa: The post-apartheid township in Niq Mhlongo’s novels of deception

Abstract

Critics’ comments on the dustcovers of Niq Mhlongo’s novels, Dog Eat Dog (2004) and After Tears (2007), praise them for their ability to capture “the raw colour of the township” and Mhlongo is described as “the authentic voice [ … ] of being young, black and living in the township in a new democracy”. His contribution to an ongoing art project called remotewords run by the German artists Achim Mohné and Uta Kopp, seeks to represent Soweto on its terms. This essay explores the tensions and contradictions within this project of giving voice to a neglected part of the city. Mhlongo’s narrators are reluctant tricksters, con-artists, who lie, steal and cheat through narratives which describe the gritty, aspirant milieu of post-apartheid Johannesburg. This essay argues that these novels are no simple celebration of a new post-apartheid township chic. Instead they enact a critique of a post-apartheid reality in which social relations are deformed by ongoing exploitation and in which the post-apartheid project – so full of the promises of justice, fairness and equality – shows the signs of a grotesque betrayal.

Keywords:

• post-apartheid South African novel
• township writing
• Niq Mhlongo

Notes

1. These comments from Lucas Malambe and Vuyo Mntuyedwa are taken from the dustcover of the Kwela editions of Dog Eat Dog and After Tears. The comment that Mhlongo is “writing from the heart of the kwaito generation” is unattributed.