Magic Realism in Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying (1995) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995)

Magic Realism in Zakes Mda's
Ways of Dying (1995) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995)
by
for the degree of
in the Centre for the study of South African Literature
and Languages (CSSALL)
UNIVERSITY OF DURBAN-WESTVILLE
December 1998
DECLARATION
I declare that this thesis, apart from the quotations acknowledged within it, is my .
own investigation and research. It has not been submitted previously in part or in
•
ABSTRACT
I shall argue in this thesis that Zakes Mda' s novels Ways of Dying (l995a) and She
Plays with the Darkness (1995b) are magic realist texts that are representative of
the hybrid nature of this literary mode. Furthermore I shall demonstrate that Ways
of Dying (l995a) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995b) share common
elements with a variety of magic realist texts. Mda's own creative and literary
consciousness has been shaped by an intellectual background stemming from
tertiary education at Ph.D level, his teaching positions at various international
universities, and his knowledge of Africah folk-culture. The seemingly contesting
streams of Western education and African mysticism are not presented as sources
of conflict in Mda's novels, but rather as syncretic forces of potential
transformative power. Mda displays in his project as a novelist, the continuing
concerns of black writers who saw the novel as a tool for socio-political change.
My thesis therefore also investigates the extent to which Mda's use of magic
realism in the novels mentioned above, signals a radical shift in literary
representation by South African black writers who wrote in English.
Mda's novels transcend Black Consciousness-inspired protest that
characterised black literature in the 1970' s and 1980's. His use of tropes
associated with magic realism, African folk-culture, the apocalyptic and
carnivalesque has enabled him to create a discursive space for South African black
writers on the international stage, and foregrounds a movement towards literature
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that offers opposition to being classified as merely ''black writing". The death of
the old order in South Afiica and the birth of a new one, invites questioning and
analysis of the position of the self during a period of cataclysmic change. That the
apocalypse brings with it both death and renewal could be seen within the context
of post modernist visions of the erosion of the selfand death as the ultimate reality.
Mda's novels, Ways of Dying (l995a) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995b),
are the first English narratives by a South Afiican black author that can claim
affinities with postcolonial writers such as Carpentier, Marquez, Okri and Rushdie.
These writers reflect in their narratives, the infinite possibilities of magic realism in
reclaiming the self submerged by the colonial experience.
I shall attempt, in Chapter One, a survey of specific theoretical assumptions
relevant to magic realism. Chapter Two will provide biographical details of Zakes
Mda the playwright, poet, theatre practitioner, film producer and novelist and the
importance of magic realism in his writings. Chapter Three is an analysis of Mda's
published plays and points to the early uses of elements consistent with magic
realism in his work. Chapters Four and Five are investigations into Mda's use of
magic realism in Ways of Dying (1995) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995),
respectively.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the Centre for Science Development for their generous grant for this
research. Opinions expressed in this thesis and conclusions arrived at are those of the
author and are not to be attributed to the Centre for Science Development. The financial
assistance of University of Durban-Westville Research Committee is also acknowledged.
I am indebted to the following people for their assistance:
Professor AJ. van Wyk of the Centre for the Study of South African Literature
and Languages (CSSALL) for being a constant source of inspiration and for his deep sense
of commitment to the supervision of this thesis .
Zakes Mda for his support, for making time in his busy schedule to answer my
queries, and the interview published in Alternation 1997 NO. 4: l. Mda was also generous
with his C. V. and an autobiographical chapter.
Members of family, in particular my parents and my wife' s parents, for their
constant support. My wife, Pushpa Rani, and my children, Darrin and Nerissa, for their
tolerance and patience and willingness to assist whenever they were called upon to do so.
Librarians at universities, municipal libraries and special libraries for their
expertise.
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CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Theoretical Assumptions 33 Introduction 33 Towards a definition of magic realism 35 Magic realism: a historical survey 53 Bakhtin and grotesque realism 68
Chapter Two: Biography 74
Chapter Three: Elements of magic realism in Mda's plays 101
Chapter Four: Magic realism in Ways of Dying (1995a) 141 Reality and magic realism 145 Narrative voice 150 Odysseys 160 Ghosts, spirits and the supernatural 164 Incest and Oedipal conflicts 169 Madonnas and whores 174 Images of the carnivalesque 180 Images of the apocalypse 190 Images of the transition 196 Dreams and magic realism 211 Sex and magic 215
Chapter Five: Magic realism in She plays with the Darkness (1995b) 234
Conclusion
African folklore and magic realism 237 Historical realities vs magic realism 251 The absent patriarch 259 Twins 264 Time 267 Mansions Silence and solitude Wars, civil strife and political uncertainties
275 280 296 302
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This thesis is dedicated to: my parents for their lessons in perseverance
my wife's parentsfor instilling in me the power of belief my children, Darrin and Nerissa, for being my anchors in reality
and most of all my wife, Pushpa Rani, for the magic of her love ...
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INTRODUCTION
The tenn magic realism is an oxymoron that suggests the co-existence of two
contradictory elements, the supernatural and realism in a text. The tenn was coined
by the Gennan art critic, Franz Roh, who in an essay written in 1925, praises its
use in Post-Expressionist paintings. Since Roh's initial fonnulation, however, the
term has undergone various revisions, especially with regard to its use in literature
and literary criticism. Our concern here is with the literary application of magic
realism, rather than its use in paintings.
Magic realism is now commonly regarded as an international literary
phenomenon. Latin American writers such as Aljeo Carpentier, Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende and Mario Vargas Llosa, have promoted
magic realism as a popular international literary mode. Carpentier's EI reino de
este mundo (The Kingdom of the World, 1949), and Marquez's Cien anos de
soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), first published in 1967, are regarded as
"canonical texts of this mode" (Angulo 1995:xi). Writing during the "boom
period" in the late Fifties and the Sixties, Latin American writers have drawn
attention to magic realism as a literary movement best suited for depicting the
stories of people in '1hird world" communities. Contemporary postcolonial writers
in English, such as Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and Vikram Chandra have also
found in magic realism a mode most favourable for expressing the realities of their
particular societies. As Boehmer puts it, ''Drawing on the special effects of magic
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realism, postcolonial writers in English are able to express their view of a world
fissured, distorted, and made incredible by cultural displacement" (1995:4). Even
writers such as Gunter Grass, Toni Morrison, Milan Kundera, D.M. Thomas and
Angela Carter who do not write from a typical Third World context, have used
magic realism in their texts. These writers have chosen to situate the characters in
their stories on the margins of society, thereby demonstrating affinities with the
marginalised people in Third World locations.
In Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni (Zakes) Mda's novels, Ways of Dying
(1995a) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995b), the protagonists are depicted as
being located on the peripheries of their respective societies. These protagonists
are constructed as characters who are empowered through their association with
the supernatural to decode the historical realities of their times.
Mda's novels, Ways of Dying (1995a) and She Plays with the Darkness
(1995b), signal a radical shift in literary representation in English by South African
black writers. Mda has used magic realism extensively in his novels to construct
alternative visions of reality. Critics and reviewers, however, have not always
recognised this important element in his literary work. Research has revealed that
to date only three reviewers have alluded to the use of magic realism in Mda' s
novels. These are Helen Moffett (1996), Keorapetse Kgositsile (1995) and
Dorothy Driver (1996).
In her review of Ways of Dying (1995a) and She Plays with the Darkness
(1995b) in The Cape Librarian (1996) Moffett applauds Mda's skill as a novelist.
Indeed if Moffett's review is to be accepted unequivocally then Mda's novels,
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mentioned above, cannot be faulted. As academic editor of Oxford University
Press, publishers of Ways of Dying (1995a), one could accuse her of not being a
disinterested commentator on Mda's novels. The validity of Moffett's criticism,
however, is not in contention here. What is pertinent is that she situates both
novels within the context of South African literature and asserts that Mda's novels
certainly mark a potential watershed in South African writing. They have several innovative qualities that break new ground in current local fiction writing. Possibly the most striking of these is their use of magic realism, usually associated with Latin American novelists (1996: 14).
Keorapetse Kgositsile, the well known South African poet, in his review of She
Plays with the Darkness (1995b), published in The Sunday Independent (1995),
does not make direct reference to magic realism. Kgositsile's review titled
''History, myth and magic are interwoven to create a palpable world", does make
reference, however, to "magic" in Mda' s novels. Kgositsile points out that from
the very first page of She Plays with the Darkness (1995a)
Mda asserts the existence of the world of his characters as convincingly real. In this world tradition and custom, myth and legend, the mysterious, the magical, as well as known historical events and actual personalities are inextricably intertwined. Mda renders them all as real, as palpable as the paper in your hands (1995:22).
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In his reading of She Plays with the Darkness (1995a) and his comments on
Mda's intertwining of history, myth, custom, tradition, legend and magic,
Kgositsile is actually pointing to Mda's use of magic realism in his novels.
Like Moffett and Kgositsile, Driver is positive in her appraisal of Ways of
Dying (1995a) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995b). She also draws attention
to Mda's use of magic realism as an important element in the aforementioned
novels. Driver states that both novels
have been recognised by reviewers as considerable achievements: energetic and imaginative, with the kind of risk-taking that makes them innovative in their field. Ways of Dying has been especially highly praised, displaying as its main character a self-styled Professional Mourner whose approach to the horrifying ways in which people die in South Africa produces a carnivalesque quality unusual in South African fiction; achieved here in part by Mda's masterly combination of realism and supernaturalism, in what some critics have called after the South American models, magic realism (1996: 123-124).
While reviewers, like the ones mentioned above, have been positive in their
responses to Ways of Dying (1995a) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995b)
Achmat Dangor, a novelist in his own right, has criticised Mda for the
"proliferation of badly constructed sentences and malapropisms" (1996:22).
Dangor's own ineptitude as a reviewer is revealed, however, when he fails to
identify Mda's use of magic realism at a crucial moment in Ways of Dying
(1995a). He points out that:
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There are moments of beauty in the book (that reveal the true potential of the story and Mda's true depth of talent): the haunting description of Jwara' s "gaunt death"~ the walls of a squatter shack pasted over with illustrations from Home and Garden and transfonned into a gardened place by the intertwining imaginations of Noria and Toloki (1996:22).
What Dangor refers to as ''the intertwining imaginations of No ria and Toloki" is in
fact one of the most poignant examples of magic realism in the novel. Dangor's
criticism, however, has not gone unchallenged by the reading public. In a letter to
the editor of the Sunday Independent, in which Dangor's review appeared,
Thakane Mokoena, a Wits Medical School student, states the following:
It is very clear to me that Mr Achmat Dangor does not agree with the political content of Zakes Mda' s new novel (The Sunday Independent, February 4 1996).
Fair enough. But then he goes further to say that the author should not have allowed it into print. That, of course, is ridiculous. Why should Mda write the novel ifhe would not allow it into print? In other words Mda should censor himself - depriving the hundreds who are enjoying the novel and the millions who will derive great pleasure from it in years to come.
Ways of Dying is not a political novel. Yet your reviewer sees it fit to grasp the political straw. He has not commented on the novel.
The review is full of petty observations that clearly indicate the depth of characterisation and the poetry of Mda's novel merely floated above the reviewer's head. He is only capable of understanding naturalistic-realistic situations and is therefore incapable of grasping the simplicity of the magical world that Mda creates ...
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I have an ethical problem when novelists try to review the work of fellow novelists ., . It is like asking Chick~n Licken to evaluate and pass judgment on the quality of Kentucky Fried Chicken products.
Having read Ways of Dying more than once, I can bet Mr Dangor my last dollar that this novel will create waves internationally. I will eat my felt hat if it does not bring home a number of important awards (1996: 11).
Mokoena's faith in Mda's ability as a novelist and the literary value of Ways of
Dying (1995a) is evidently well placed. In 1997 the novel won the English
Academy's Olive Schreiner Prize and the M-Net Book Award, adding to the
Honourable Mention of the Noma Award, and the Special Mention of the CNA
Award, in 1996. In 1995 Mda also received the Sanlam Literary Prize for She
Plays with the Darkness (1995b). According to Mda both novels are also presently
being filmed for cinema and television. Mda's achievements in this regard are
worth noting in view of the limited number of novels in English written by South
African black authors, and the fact that few black novelists have enjoyed the
critical acclaim that Mda has received.
Black literary commentators such as Mphahlele, Modisane and Nkosi have
pointed out that historically the novel as a sociopolitical tool was avoided by South
African black writers. They maintain that writers favoured the short story,
autobiography, poetry and the writing of plays. In pointing out the preference for
short story writing in particular, by South African black writers during the sixties,
Es'kia Mphahlele asserts: ''During the last twenty years the political and social
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climate of South Africa has been growing viciously difficult for a non-white to
write in. It requires tremendous organisation of one's mental and emotional
faculties before one can write a poem or a novel or a play. This has become all but
impossible" (1962: 186). Mphahlele makes this point again in his article, "The
tyranny of place and aesthetics. The South African case" (1987) when he states:
"Autobiography, the short story, the sketch, and verse, come more easily than the
novel to the South African black .. . You can get quickly to the point, pressure your
language for quick delivery of your anger. This is an aesthetic" (1987:53).
A similar claim is made by Bloke Modisane: "Everything you do must be
done today. Only today is important. You cannot budget for six months in order to
write a novel. The short story, therefore, serves as an urgent, immediate, intense,
concentrated form of unburdening yourself - and you must unburden yourself'
(1963:113).
Barnett lends support to the statements made by Mphahlele and Modisane
when she asserts that for South African black writers the short story was a more
suitable mode of expression because as she puts it, ''from the beginning of fiction
writing in English by black South Africans, it was situation rather than individual
characters and their interaction which interested authors" (1985:113). Furthermore
Barnett (1985:113) points out that the focus on the individual that the novel
advocates is alien to African culture. In this regard Nkosi too has asserted that:
" ... the novel - the traditional novel at any rate - proposes the 'individual' as the
centre. To be truly dynamic, to have progression, the novel further proposes as
one of its essential mechanisms 'conflict' between 'individuals' or between an
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individual and a group, between the individual and his environment. Its main
characteristic is the exploration of individual character and as such it is an art form
that best serves bourgeois society or manifestations of incipient bourgeois society.
The novel, it has often seemed to me, must distort the Afiican past and tradition in
order to contain it within its framework ... The novel, much more than drama,
represents therefore a radical departure from native art forms" (1981 : 5).
The "situation" referred to by Mphahlele and Modisane with regard to
South Afiican black writers' lack of interest in writing novels in English did not
change significantly during the seventies and eighties. Few novels of note were
published in English by South Afiica black writers during this period. Some of
these novels are Dikobe's The Marabi Dance (1973) and the so-called "Soweto
novels": Serote's To Every Birth its Blood (1981), Tlali's Amandla (1986),
Sepamla's A Ride on the Whirlwind (1981) and Mzamane's The Children of
Soweto (1982), which is actually a novel trilogy. The "Soweto novels" were
inspired by the Soweto youth uprising that occurred on June 1976, and are
influenced by the rhetoric of Black Consciousness. Without exception the "Soweto
novels" mentioned above are an attempt to portray a realistic account of Soweto
during 1976. These novels have failed to attract any critical acclaim mainly because
the writers have constructed novels that verge on what Nkosi, in another context,
has referred to as 'lhe journalistic fact parading outrageously as imaginative
literature" (1965: 125). Nkosi has also criticised The Marabi Dance (1973), stating
that, its "combination of bad taste, clumsy construction and wooden
characterisation must seem ... [to] exceed anything we have yet encountered in
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African writing" (1981: 80). Ironically Nkosi' s own novel, The Mating Birds
(1987), is a pastiche of flashbacks and psychological ramblings that detract from
the story-line.
While the comments made by Mphahlele, Modisane and Nkosi might hold
true for the lack of novels in English by black writers, it must be pointed out that
a number of novels have been written in the black languages. Ntuli and Swanepoel
(1993) and Gerard (1971) have documented novels written in Zulu, Xhosa,
Setswana, Southern Sotho and other black languages. In seeing the novel as
essentially a Western literary preserve, Mphahlele, Modisane and Nkosi have failed
to recognise the developments in the writing of the novel by black writers in their
own languages. An important aspect of many of these novels is the influence of
African folklore and orature and those elements that we have now come to
recognise as being consistent with magic realism.
If the comments by Mphahlele and Modisane are to be accepted
unequivocally, then Zakes Mda has perhaps attempted the "impossible". Mda, as
our discussion will demonstrate, returns in English to the South African novel~
written in African languages. Mda has not only gained international recognition as
a playwright, poet and artist, but…