family guy voices

The New York Times puts Niq Mhlongo in the same realm as K Sello Duiker and Phaswane Mpe. Oliver Roberts caught up with him to find out what's missing in local literature and why the countryside has yet to find its voice.



It is Friday night at Xarra Books in Newtown. Niq Mhlongo ― at 34 arguably one of South Africa's best young authors ― is reading from his new book, After Tears. The über-trendy bookstore is so full that the literati are literally pouring out of the doors and onto the pavement made shiny by steady drizzles of rain.

The classic Xarra crowd is here ― youthful black South Africans with flowing skirts, sandals, dreadlocks and slightly worn notebooks at their sides. Discerning, fiercely intellectual and possessing a penetrating rhetoric, they are this generation's spawn of bookworm. And Mhlongo, I sense, is starting to get a bit impatient with them.

"Yes me, give me the microphone; I would like to ask a question." A girl at the back thunders with angst. "Don't you think there's a lot of ― what do you call it? ― chauvinism in After Tears? No. Misogyny, I mean misogyny. There seems to be a lot of misogyny in your writing. Is this intentional?"

Another question, this time near the front, from a middle-aged man who looks a lot like Gregory Hines but talks like he's just smoked a rather large spliff: "Yes, erm, tell me, erm, how exactly, erm, how exactly do you provide integrity for the characters you write about? What I mean, erm, ahem, what I mean is, is, is do you ever feel like you are exploiting your characters?" A voice from the back: "They're fictional, he can write what he wants about them."

Among all this Mhlongo, perched on one of those steel, three-legged stools , is a body of self-assured calm. With both wit and insight, he dismisses even the most haughty and convoluted of questions with a brand of simplicity that is hard to refute.

I leave before the talk is finished, lacking the patience to listen to the over-intellectual scrutinising of a book that, while well written and at times profound, is a straightforward work by a man with a straightforward approach to writing.

"Ja, it does get a bit ridiculous, all this talking," Mhlongo says when I meet him a few days later. "Sometimes people want to ask questions about books just for the sake of it, perhaps to look more educated."

Mhlongo has developed a keen ear for extrapolators ― he's sat on awkward chairs at similar sessions in Africa and Europe since earning acclaim for his first novel, Dog Eat Dog, published in 2004. The book, about a young black student struggling to put himself through university, has been translated into Spanish and is taught at universities in the US and Germany.

Mhlongo's position as one of the country's most influential literary voices has even been noted by The New York Times. The paper ran a five-page profile on him in December last year, and put him in the same category as the late K Sello Duiker and Phaswane Mpe.

"Mhlongo is one of only a handful of black novelists of his generation to have achieved a certain level of prominence," said the article.

"I think people sometimes overcomplicate the act of writing; there's this impression that unless you've studied at university you cannot write books," says Mhlongo. "Especially within the black communities: they think you cannot write a book when you are so young and people become wary of you. But writing is just another kind of story-telling, like sitting around the fire listening to your grandfather telling a tale; it's got little to do with being educated."

Though Mhlongo majored in African literature and politics at university, his insistence that you don't require a degree to create meaningful stories forms part of his hope for the future of black writing in South Africa. This, along with a second novel that is already receiving positive vibes, has unwittingly turned him into an important literary role model.

"My English is not great but I write in it. From living in the township I know almost half of every language so the English I write is a mixture of a few languages."

Mhlongo grew up in Soweto, where both his novels are set. H is greatest wish is that his portrayal of it will encourage more South Africans ― especially white South Africans ― to visit or at least take an interest in the township.

"I would like to see a white audience coming into Soweto, but it's not happening . There are lots of white people who don't know which direction it is in. I don't want white South Africans to be tourists in the townships, or black South Africans to be tourists in the suburbs. Through reading we can achieve some kind of tolerance."

The biggest challenge facing any local author is a lack of readers. This is even more significant for black writers. Mhlongo lays the blame for a lack of reading culture in the black community not on poverty, but on the family.

"Being a black writer means you are writing stories that you hope will reach your intended audience. I mean, I'm writing for everybody but it's my wish that my stories reach the black communities because they are about our experiences in the townships ― alcoholism, drug abuse, crime, poverty ― and I hope the stories will make a little bit of difference. But how many blacks read?" he asks, throwing a hand into the air. Then he leans forward and wipes the froth from his latte off his top lip.

"I am making the assumption that with white people it is different because when I go to literary festivals attended by whites, whole families come. This culture is not there among the black communities and everybody ― homes, schools, writers and publishers ― have to be involved in order to change that mindset."

After Tears is about a young guy who fails law, buys a degree and sets up a practice in Soweto. Mhlongo himself fell short of attaining his law degree in 2001 and tells me he makes a point of letting people know this.

"Because of the perception that writers are intellectuals ― and people are intimidated by intellectuals ― we need to open up," he says. "Writers are the most under-used people in South Africa. We are not being used to our full potential to integrate society."

Mhlongo believes the best books are lying unwritten in the silence of South Africa's rural areas.

"I hope that is where our writing is going to next," he says.

Where Mhlongo is going to next is no simple assumption. It took him three years to write After Tears . The question of when he's going to write another book is treated with the same maverick shrug that dominated a room full of clever people at Xarra Books that Friday evening.

"I don't know. I write simply because I have a story to tell, and I'm inspired by that story. I have no set rules about things like that."


After Tears, by Niq Mhlongo is published by Kwela Books, R125