+questions. answers
zakes mda part ii. writer. playwright. educator
+benjamin austen

Ben Austen: You’ve had a good deal of success abroad. How is your work received in South Africa?

Zakes Mda: If you have to choose between buying a loaf of bread or a book, the loaf of bread will win hands down. The so-called grassroots people—they don’t read my work. We have a growing middle class of black people in Africa that can afford to buy books. Women are the readers, black and white. I meet people at supermarkets who will comment on my work. More than that, I am invited to book clubs. The book club, this new phenomenon--many people credit Oprah Winfrey with that. Her show is televised there, she visits every month. She has fallen in love with South Africa: she has projects with women there. I have been invited to books cubs in the most remote villages, ordinary day-to-day women—house wives, school teachers, nurses---in a village have come together and they read a book. The most read is Toni Morrison’s Beloved. This is Oprah Winfrey. And they meet once a week to discuss the novel, and they invite writers to come when they discuss their work. You find all that is there are women. Even in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town you get mixed race book clubs, but even there it is women. In some instance you find men, but they have brought their girl friends or wives and then they go outside to gossip while the women are discussing literature in the house. I have to turn down invitations from book clubs. A whole gang of women there talking about your book. A very, very active book club movement and it cuts across classes. Village women reading books in their own languages—Sotho and so on. They’re reading my plays in their own language. And the same month one of my books has been published it has been prescribed in a course. The Whale Caller is prescribed for a course at the Western Cape. This is amazing, man.

BA: What do you make of the government’s criticism of J.M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace on political grounds?

MDA: It is true that Disgrace was criticized by the ANC on very foolish grounds. When they were giving evidence before the HRC of racism in the media, one of the examples was Disgrace. Coetzee wrote that book for the public and part of the public is the ANC. And they have a right to have a critical view. No body ever talked of banning, they merely said this book is racist. They have a right to say it. That book now is prescribed in school. It was chosen as one of the ten best books of the decade of democracy. Only two novels on the list. Also, my novel, Madonna of Excelsior. A government institution chose this book. We live in a democratic country.

BA: What are some of your favorite novels?

MDA: I can tell you who are my favorite writers. A Xhosa novel by The AC Jordan Of Ancestors. The first novel I ever read by the father of a minister in Mandela’s government. Thomas Mfula in SiSotho. I have read British author TK. Wole Soyinke, Chinua Achebe. Those are the guys I used to read a lot. I observed in my novels a great influence from Sotho and Xhosa writing. The expression, the voice, I expect comes from them. The collective narrator comes from the oral tradition, the way people talk. The communal voice.

BA: A great many those who were writing during apartheid later became politicians. Is this a good thing for writing? For the government?

MDA: Politicians are very filthy. Other writers in South Africa became politicians. A lot of the women. Poets of high caliber. Wally Serote, South Africa’s ambassador in England is also a poet. When they were in the liberation struggle they were very active as poets. I can see them some times longing to be writers. I’ve seen that it’s very easy to be corrupted by power. I think I can easily be corrupted. That’s one fear. I am very happy to be outside and be critical, because I know that power can corrupt. I’ve seen good people fall and become very, very rotten. If these good people can become rotten, then I can become rotten too. Heroes of the liberation struggle that become very, very bad. That’s why I’d rather be a critic. The thought of being a politician is very harrowing.

BA: What was your experience of voting during the first all-race elections in 1994?

MDA: I voted in Canada, in Montreal, at the Ukrainian center there in 1994. It was the nearest voting station for me because I was teaching at the University of Vermont. I voted for the first time in my life. Soon after I returned to South Africa. There was euphoria. Then after some time there was depression, and deeper polarization. Now things are looking up. The economy and people are beginning to accept that things can change.

BA: You are very critical of the ANC in your work? Do you see an alternative to them?

MDA: Just on three issues I would vote for the government: pro-choice, death penalty, and gay rights. If they took issue of death penalty to the people, they would lose on that referendum. Sexual orientation is also an unpopular policy. But we can not move from that great oppression and be the oppressors of others. You need a strong opposition to the left of the ANC and to the right of the ANC. The ANC is Thatcherite. When you look at their policies, it looks like Reagonomics. You need a party to the left of that. The ANC manages to be strong because the opposition is hopeless.

The opposition will come from the ANC. The trade-unionists and the communists still toe the ANC line, and they become ministers, but sooner or later there will be leaders who can’t be bought anymore. There will be a new left party, which will be a strong opposition party to the ANC in three or four years. Afrikaaner farmers are joining the ANC, especially in the northwest province. They are campaigning for the ANC. I’m quite excited with developments in the country. I’m quite happy that the ANC came together with the National Party. My hope for South Africa, as far as white people are concerned, lies with the Afrikaaner. They have a greater commitment. They have no other home. The English have always looked to England; they have always seen themselves as a colonial outpost. They still have that mentality. The Afrikaaners didn’t become Dutch; they are the first people to call themselves African. The Afrikaaners did many dirty things to us, but we need to face the facts now: we are compatriots. They belong there; they can’t go to Holland or France or anywhere. They became a new tribe all together. A new culture. They are like the tri-racial isolates in Ohio. I’m excited to see Afrikaaners shedding those old racist views. They are working together. They are still there. We are human beings we can actually work together. We can create a new society.

Benjamin Austen is an associate editor of Harper's Magazine. His essay, The Pen or the Gun on the fiction of Zakes Mda, appeared in the February 2005 issue of Harper's.