UKZN Press

Thando Mgqolozana is attending the 13th Time of the Writer International Literature Festival. Journalist Thandiwe Mthethwa caught up with him in Durban:

Author Thando Mgqolozana is unapologetic about writing A Man Who Is Not a Man, which is based on the Xhosa initiation ritual of circumcision.

Even though talking about what happens on the mountain while boys undergo the snip is taboo, he dares any traditionalist or Xhosa man to challenge him and defend this ritual at this year’s Time of the Writer Festival.

“People are dying every circumcision season and nobody is allowed to say anything. I am inviting Xhosa men to come out and tell everyone what it is that circumcision teaches. So-called custodians must account and they must give society a reason to let a culture that goes against fundamental constitutional principles of life, healthcare, dignity and so on space to continue existing,” Mgqolozana said.

• Complete review at IOL Tonight

Book details

• A Man Who is Not a Man by Thando Mgqolozana
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781869141769
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

At the Cape Town launch, last week, of Sunnyside Sal, Werner Pretorius of the Book Lounge welcomed Anton Krueger, the award-winning playwright, poet, academic and lyricist.

Krueger started the evening by reading Church Square, 1987, the hilarious (and openly autobiographical) account of his be-wigged 15-year-old self getting arrested while larking at a protest march in a flamboyant orange Hawaiian shirt and bearing an irrelevant – yet still irreverent – cardboard placard. Krueger’s expansive stage presence had the audience in fits as he read.

Toast Coetzer, a multi-faceted author in his own capacity, assured the audience that the book was full of “amazing incidents like that”. Early on in the book the author acknowledges that the fiction is based on a true story, with certain minor characters created as amalgams. “This is a coming of age novella that covers the last years of apartheid. Salvatore Malan, growing up in Pretoria, traces the times from Std. 2 onwards. There are girlfriends, drugs, more girlfriends, and more drugs against the political changes happening in South Africa. Why did you decide to write a memoir, rather than a fictional novel?”

Krueger said the book started off as a homage to a friend who was no longer around any more, remembering their shared crazy adventures. “I didn’t consider my own involvement initially, but I also end up being implicated, and rather embarrassingly so.” He reflected that his father, after reading the back cover, said he was not too interested in reading about his son’s sex life. “Twenty years on, I’m not that person any more.”

This distance has given him time to evaluate that period of his life. He said, “It’s the first time I’ve written something so personal, so close to the bone. And yet, it doesn’t quite feel like the real me.”

Coetzer asked how he decided which events to exclude from the narrative. “How did you think about supporting the narrative tension by what you left out?”

Krueger, not answering entirely directly, reflected on Spike Milligan’s epigram to one of his war memoirs, where a quote appears from Thucydides, after the Peloponnesian War: I have described nothing but what I saw myself, or learned from others. Milligan, echoing Thucydides, added: I have just jazzed mine up a little. Krueger, similarly, is extending the riff.

He said the structure was not, in fact, that of a novel, but rather that of a novella. There are two section of the book, with the second part finding a more contemplative, less funny tone. “I wrote this quite quickly about five years ago and tried to get it published on a yearly basis. With each rejection, I’d rewrite it and reconfigure it. Each time it was a complete rewriting.”

Coetzer reflected on publisher Deep South’s range of books, which includes the experimental novels of Paul Wessels and Lesego Rampolokeng, as well as the genre-breaking poetry of Joan Metelerkamp, Bernat Kruger, Nadine Botha and others.

He said, “Robert Berold, my publisher and editor, is a poet who appreciates the idiosyncrasies in language. In working with the text, there wasn’t a flattening out, a making white bread out of it. He runs a small operation, and while there may still be a couple of typos, there’s an authenticity about his range which is very appealing.”

“The cover image’s arresting artwork has a curious literary background,” said Coetzer. “My first association was with the Waterkloof Vier.” Krueger said it was a multi-media piece: a full size car door, painted on by the Grahamstown artist, Anton Brink (son of André P), and belonging to his personal collection.

Coetzer said the novella comes across as “a cautionary tale against drugs”. The author said that hadn’t been the intention, “but it’s a good thing if people give them up, in general.”

Facebook gallery

Book details

• Sunnyside Sal by Anton Krueger
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780958491563
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

UKZN Press, distributor of Deep South’s Sunnyside Sal, is delighted to invite you to the following series of events to launch Anton Krueger’s book.

Sunnyside Sal is a jauntily narrated novella set in the tumultuous early 1990s, when a whole generation was discovering that everything they’d been taught to believe was wrong.

Fuelled by his reckless bravado and post-punk philosophy, Sal plunges into extreme situations, but his innocent experiments in rebellion lead him increasingly into hazardous realms. Although ultimately a tragic tale, Sunnyside Sal is borne up throughout by an exuberant humour.

Pretoria

• Date: Thursday, 18 February 2010
• Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: Exclusive Books Menlyn, Shop LF51
  Menlyn Park Shopping Centre
  Pretoria
• Guest Speaker: David Medalie
• RSVP: menlyn@exclusivebooks.co.za, 012 361 6184/8

Cape Town

• Date: Thursday, 4 March 2010
• Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: The Book Lounge
  cnr Roeland & Buitenkant
  Cape Town
• Guest Speaker: Toast Coetzer
• RSVP: booklounge@gmail.com, 021 462 2425

Durban

• Date: Friday, 12 March 2010
• Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre
  University of KwaZulu Natal
  Durban
• Guest Speaker: Syd Kitchen
• RSVP: cca@ukzn.ac.za, 031 260 2506/1816

Grahamstown

• Date: Friday, 19 March 2010
• Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: Reddits
  New Street
• Guest Speaker: Robert Berold
• RSVP: mnrkrueger@gmail.com, 046 622 9981

Book Details

• Sunnyside Sal by Anton Krueger
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9780958491563
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Photo courtesy African Writing

UKZN Press is the distributor in South Africa for Deep South Publishing, publishers of this new work.

Sunnyside Sal is a jauntily narrated novella set in the tumultuous early 1990s, when a whole generation was discovering that everything they’d been taught to believe was wrong.

Fuelled by his reckless bravado and post-punk philosophy, Sal plunges into extreme situations, but his innocent experiments in rebellion lead him increasingly into hazardous realms. Although ultimately a tragic tale, Sunnyside Sal is borne up throughout by an exuberant humour.

About the Author

Anton Krueger teaches drama at Rhodes University. His award-winning plays have been performed in nine countries. He has published poems, short stories, reviews, academic articles and song lyrics. Sunnyside Sal is his first novel.

Book details

• Sunnyside Sal by Anton Krueger
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780958491563
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

When A Man Cries is Siphiwo Mahala’s first novel. Before its publication, he was known as an accomplished short story writer and freelance journalist with articles featuring in The Sunday Times and The Sowetan. The Mail and Guardian, doing a series on South African writers, met with Mahala to learn more about his writing, loves and inspiration:

Describe yourself in a sentence.

Some people say I’m reserved but I love to laugh and make other people laugh even more; and I guess that makes me a sucker for fun, love and peace.

Describe your ideal reader.

Imaginative individuals who allow words to invade their minds, penetrate their heart and soul, and take them to the highest peaks of ecstasy.

• Read the complete article

Book details

• When a Man Cries by Siphiwo Mahala
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781869141318
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

To say that circumcision, as a facet of the Xhosa initiation ritual, is a cultural lightning rod is to understate the case. Some in the community are dead-set against it; others will go to the furthest extremes to ensure that it happens.

The latter scenario played out recently in the Bhisho High Court, where a young man pursued a case against his father, who had abducted him and had him forced-circumcised in the bush:

A YOUNG man who took his father to court after he was circumcised by force did so to protect other young Christians from the ordeal, his lawyer said yesterday.

Bonani Yamani from KwaMasele village near King William’s Town in Eastern Cape took his father to the equality court after he was abducted from his home at 4am, tied up, taken to the bush, and subjected to further circumcision by his father and 10 community leaders on March 3 2007.

He had earlier refused to be traditionally circumcised as it had already been done in hospital in November 2006 and it was against his Christian beliefs.

• Read the complete article in the Sowetan

Thando Mgqolozana’s A Man Who is Not a Man is the first novel to tackle the taboo against questioning circumcision head-on. It’s a must-read for those who track the evolution of cultural debate in South Africa.

Book details

• A Man Who is Not a Man by Thando Mgqolozana
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781869141769
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Energy, excitement and a frisson of tension were palpable at the Xarra Books launch of Thando Mgqolozana’s A Man Who is Not a Man. Lively, engaging and sometimes heated debate kept the event on course as one of the launches of the year in Johannesburg.

Proceedings started as June Josephs-Langa welcomed guests. With many “literati” present – including the venerable Don Mattera – the evening’s chair Khanyi Magubane introduced a panel of writers whom she hoped would not only explore the art and craft of fiction but examine SA society too. The panellists were Mgqolozana, Siphiwo Mahala (author of When a Man Cries) and Andile Mngxitama, author and publisher of New Frank Talk.

A Man Who is Not a Man is a novel that, only four months into publication, has people stirring, questioning, angry, interested and above all talking. And talking is what author Mgqolozana wants.

The book may be fiction, but it deals with issues of culture, tradition and the secret rites of Xhosa initiation that are very real, very taboo, and that many young South Africans males experience. In telling the story of a young initiate whose circumcision goes wrong, Mgqolozana creates a platform that allows readers to question what forms a man today – to ask “what defines masculinity?”.

Mgqolozana read a moving extract from his book, in which the main character wakes up in a hospital ward overseen by a less-than sympathetic nurse, who sneers at the “boys” in her care enjoying the “comfort of white sheets” instead of enduring the manhood-making hardships of “the mountain”.

Acknowledging the furore quietly brewing around the book, Magubane asked Mgqolozana why it has touched “so many a nerve”? Mgqolozana said he thought the exposure of any sensitivities had come 20 years or more too late, considering that young men have been dying every circumcision season for decades. He said that there is a need for South Africa as a nation to discuss the issue but challenging it is well-nigh impossible for many men, as their individual manhood is then put under scrutiny.
(more…)

UKZN Press and Xarra Books invite you to the Johannesburg launch of Thando Mgqolozana’s riveting novel centred on the Xhosa circumcision initiation ceremony, A Man Who is Not a Man.

The author will be in conversation with Khanyi Magubane, Siphiwo Mahala and Andile Mngxitama.

We look forward to welcoming you at the event!

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, 27 August 2009
• Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: Xarra Books, 1 Central Place
  Jeppe Street
  Newtown, Johannesburg | Map
• Guest Speakers: Khanyi Magubane, Siphiwo Mahala, Andile Mngxitama
• RSVP: info@xarrabooks.com, 011 832 3069

(more…)

A double launch of two substantial books speaking to contemporary South African political issues drew an impressive crowd on Wednesday night of what UCT’s Harry Garuba termed “hardcore social scientists”. A broad sweep of academics, readers, authors, leaders of society and artists filled Cape Town’s The Book Lounge to hear the lineup of authors discuss a range of contemporary philosophical issues.

Compere David Bunn invited Harry Garuba to introduce From Revolution to Rights in South Africa by Steven Robins. Garuba confessed to a feeling of being “an impostor” at such gatherings, but said it was a position he was not unhappy to assume. Tracing an arc from Fanon to post liberation South Africa, he articulated the messy trajectory of the revolution to the middle class disconnect, re-examining orthodoxies and exploring the dichotomies of the present struggle.

Author Steven Robins responded, noting ruefully that his recent opinion piece in the Cape Times, posing the question of how best to achieve meaningful reform in the current millieu, had fallen victim to a regrettable headline. A sub-editor at 2a.m. had given it the dubious title “Class action, class struggle or a classy combo?”. Robins spoke about the various discomforts that the case he was presenting evoked for him.

The author offered much food for thought on the different ways of doing politics, as did Achille Mbembe, who continued in a similar deep, honest and funny vein. He addressed Ethnicity, Inc by Jean and John Comaroff. He said most people say, “Africa! Here we go again. Nobody wants to touch it.” But the Comaroffs had shown practically that if you want to understand anything about the contemporary moment and movement globally, where our world is going from, where it’s going to, you have to study Africa. This the dynamic academic duo then demonstrated with their penetrating insights on how the commodification of identity is playing out across the world.

A profound evening all round left much provocative philosophy to ponder.

Gallery

(more…)

Two reports appeared in the Mail & Guardian this week on the Xhosa initiation ritual of circumcision for boys – cultural rites and trials of endurance that are currently taking place in many spots in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces which, because of infectious conditions, cause the deaths of a number of initiates each year, and leave even more mutilated for life.

The death toll for 2009 is approaching fifty:

Four more boys have died because of botched circumcisions in the Eastern Cape, bringing the death toll to 49, health officials said on Friday.

“Three of the boys died in Mdantsane in East London and the other in Mount Ayliff last week,” Health Department spokesperson Sizwe Kupelo said.

“These cases were only reported to us today [Friday],” he said.

Thando Mgqolozana’s first novel, A Man Who is Not a Man, tackles Xhosa circumcision head on, as journalist Percy Zvomuya learned when he attended the book’s launch in Grahamstown. Zvomuya’s subsequent feature on the book is part reportage from the launch, part review, and part sociological treatise. He compares A Man Who is Not a Man with Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God. The piece is well worth a read:
(more…)