Literature
Niq Mhlongo is a South Africa writer born in Soweto. His first novel titled Dog Eat Dog, which turned out very successful, is an evocative account based on his experience as a young South African of the post-apartheid generation. Based on the work, the New York Times described him as ?one of the most high-spirited and irreverent new voices of South Africa?s post-apartheid literary scene.? His second novel, After Tears, is also a great success.
Niq was one of the facilitators at the creative writing workshop organised by Farafina Trust in Lagos. In this interview with SUMAILA UMAISHA, he sheds light on his works and the contemporary South African writings.
NNW: What?s your novel, Dog Eat Dog, all about?
Niq Mhlongo: As the title suggests, it is survival of the fittest. It is mainly set in 1994, the political landmark of South Africa, in a sense that, that was when apartheid was officially eradicated and we were ushered into a new democracy under Mandela. After apartheid was dismantled, South Africans faced new challenges, especially the youths. The challenges are around issues like poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, AIDS scourge and the new order of the day. So, in the book we see all these through the eyes of a young man who now has the opportunity to go to a good university which was normally all-white. In 1994, if one came from a not so good public school there was a kind of unpreparedness, because it is something that happened suddenly without the preparation by the disadvantaged people like him. For instance, the first challenge was that the lecturer is a white person; you try hard to understand him. You fail not because you are not good, but because the language barrier is there.
It also talks about issues like new hope where people think things would come easy. They think education will be free and so on, because when politicians were busy campaigning they promised all these just to entice people to vote for them. So when he went there he thought I?m going for a free education, only to find out that it is not like that.
It is also about transition. The main character lived in a slum and now he goes to Johannesburg, a new environment altogether, a place he was always denied to go. During the apartheid era the country was designated as a white area, black area, coloured area and Indian area. Johannesburg was a white area. So the character?s transition from the black area to the white area was not an easy one. It is a challenge because you have to cope with a new environment.
The end of the book is all about how the character manages out of all the circumstances.
Is your second novel, After Tears, on the same subject?
It is on the same subject but I used different plot. In a nutshell, After Tears simply means a kind of celebration of life after the burial of someone. It is a way of trying to forget the death. So, literally, the issues discussed centre on life after apartheid. After the tears of apartheid, what are the youths of South Africa doing? They are still unemployed, there is too much corruption going on. So all these elements are very much involved in the book.
Is this the kind of subject-matter the contemporary South African writers are writing on?
Not all of them. Some write love stories. But the themes are interrelated; you will find the rich and the poor, the white and the black politicians in the stories in a way they were not portrayed before. There are a lot of writings based on African culture.
Why are the contemporary South African writers not writing on apartheid; is it that the theme has been exhausted or it is no longer relevant?
I think apartheid has been over-written. We now write about post-apartheid issues. But it does not mean that we don?t have to reflect. Even in my own writing, when I say a person goes to university in post-1994 and he is not prepared, in a nutshell, I?m still referring to apartheid but not in a direct manner. Yes, we can say we do not write about apartheid now like we write about the new challenges, because we got new challenges, such as the ones I mentioned earlier, and xenophobia. Even the class division is still there.
What kind of subject-matters do you think South African writers would be writing about in the next twenty years or so?
[Laughs] It?s a tricky question. It is quite a difficult thing to postulate, but I?m imagining that it will follow the same pattern with other African countries that became independent. It is usually from independence to dictatorship. So we might experience such thing in future, we can?t tell. We may have writings on that. We may also have a multi-racial kind of writing. I?m just hoping that people will be writing in ways that black and white are no longer separated. There are so many possibilities.
(c) Published in the New Nigerian Newspapers of 19/6/2010
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Literature
South African writers address new challenges
Niq Mhlongo is a South Africa writer born in Soweto. His first novel titled Dog Eat Dog, which turned out very successful, is an evocative account based on his experience as a young South African of the post-apartheid generation. Based on the work, the New York Times described him as ?one of the most high-spirited and irreverent new voices of South Africa?s post-apartheid literary scene.? His second novel, After Tears, is also a great success.
Niq was one of the facilitators at the creative writing workshop organised by Farafina Trust in Lagos. In this interview with SUMAILA UMAISHA, he sheds light on his works and the contemporary South African writings.
NNW: What?s your novel, Dog Eat Dog, all about?
Niq Mhlongo: As the title suggests, it is survival of the fittest. It is mainly set in 1994, the political landmark of South Africa, in a sense that, that was when apartheid was officially eradicated and we were ushered into a new democracy under Mandela. After apartheid was dismantled, South Africans faced new challenges, especially the youths. The challenges are around issues like poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, AIDS scourge and the new order of the day. So, in the book we see all these through the eyes of a young man who now has the opportunity to go to a good university which was normally all-white. In 1994, if one came from a not so good public school there was a kind of unpreparedness, because it is something that happened suddenly without the preparation by the disadvantaged people like him. For instance, the first challenge was that the lecturer is a white person; you try hard to understand him. You fail not because you are not good, but because the language barrier is there.
It also talks about issues like new hope where people think things would come easy. They think education will be free and so on, because when politicians were busy campaigning they promised all these just to entice people to vote for them. So when he went there he thought I?m going for a free education, only to find out that it is not like that.
It is also about transition. The main character lived in a slum and now he goes to Johannesburg, a new environment altogether, a place he was always denied to go. During the apartheid era the country was designated as a white area, black area, coloured area and Indian area. Johannesburg was a white area. So the character?s transition from the black area to the white area was not an easy one. It is a challenge because you have to cope with a new environment.
The end of the book is all about how the character manages out of all the circumstances.
Is your second novel, After Tears, on the same subject?
It is on the same subject but I used different plot. In a nutshell, After Tears simply means a kind of celebration of life after the burial of someone. It is a way of trying to forget the death. So, literally, the issues discussed centre on life after apartheid. After the tears of apartheid, what are the youths of South Africa doing? They are still unemployed, there is too much corruption going on. So all these elements are very much involved in the book.
Is this the kind of subject-matter the contemporary South African writers are writing on?
Not all of them. Some write love stories. But the themes are interrelated; you will find the rich and the poor, the white and the black politicians in the stories in a way they were not portrayed before. There are a lot of writings based on African culture.
Why are the contemporary South African writers not writing on apartheid; is it that the theme has been exhausted or it is no longer relevant?
I think apartheid has been over-written. We now write about post-apartheid issues. But it does not mean that we don?t have to reflect. Even in my own writing, when I say a person goes to university in post-1994 and he is not prepared, in a nutshell, I?m still referring to apartheid but not in a direct manner. Yes, we can say we do not write about apartheid now like we write about the new challenges, because we got new challenges, such as the ones I mentioned earlier, and xenophobia. Even the class division is still there.
What kind of subject-matters do you think South African writers would be writing about in the next twenty years or so?
[Laughs] It?s a tricky question. It is quite a difficult thing to postulate, but I?m imagining that it will follow the same pattern with other African countries that became independent. It is usually from independence to dictatorship. So we might experience such thing in future, we can?t tell. We may have writings on that. We may also have a multi-racial kind of writing. I?m just hoping that people will be writing in ways that black and white are no longer separated. There are so many possibilities.
(c) Published in the New Nigerian Newspapers of 19/6/2010
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