The Curious Case of African Crime Fiction
In much the same way, speak of fiction, in general, and Africa, in particular, and the names of persons of European origin, mostly from South Africa, float into view, face up. For crime fiction, it is Alexander McCall Smith. Or Adam Mcclure or Tom, Dick or Harry. After all, it seems to us, these names are easier to pronounce. Thus, easier to recall. Once remembered, they are easier for name-dropping. A case of White-washing, so to speak!
However, the dogged sleuth, such as yours faithfully, disregards these imposters and continues to dig for clues about the real heirs to the genre in Africa. Their names are a mouthful - but that's only because we have never seen them nor heard them said. Once anything is done regularly, it becomes familiar.
Using methods unique to Itiuvacha, this investigator plodded past all the red or tanned herrings, and successfully discovered some of the victims of the crime. To get at the rest would require a more time consuming look at Google's sinister colour algorithms.
The new stories, world views, and dialects of thought and culture, shared below, are but clues. To solve the case, we need to work together to read, and otherwise rescue, diverse voices from around the world.
Find below the profiles of a precious few of the victims of the Crime of the Bleaching of World Crime Fiction. We proceed, more or less, chronologically, according to order of birth.
Unity Dow
First lady High Court judge in Botswana
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| "Unity Dow - PopTech 2011 - Camden Maine USA (cropped)"- Licensed under CC |
Her novel, The Screaming of the Innocent (2002) is said to be 'powerful and disturbing'.
A young girl disappears. It is assumed that a lion ate her. Flash forwards to a girl, a student, who finds a box with clothes. Those of the girl who vanished? The student partners with a female lawyer to solve what turns out to be a case of ritual sacrifice, where body parts confer power.
Alain Mabanckou
Congolese-origin novelist, journalist, poet, and academic novelist, journalist, poet, and academic, novelist, journalist, poet, and academic novelist, journalist, poet, and academic novelist, journalist, poet, and academicnovelist, journalist, poet, and academic
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| Photo by Harald Krichel - Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Commons |
fresh and witty style
Angela Makholwa
Alas, I can offer you no photo of this most attractive author!
2007
Set in Johannesburg, Red Ink is about Lucy Khambule, a public relations consultant and ex-journalist, who investigates a spate of rapes and murders.
2013
The Black Widow Society - three black businesswomen seek to help women by doing away with abusive mates. Read an extract .
Critically-acclaimed crime writers Jassy Mackenzie, Angela Makholwa, and Mike Nicol stand out in this field through their creations of instantly memorable female serial killers as protagonists. In the interviews that follow, the three writers discuss the rationales behind their choice of a traditionally masculine role for their female protagonists, how they navigated through ensuing ethical problems and their characters’ potential for uncomfortable reader identification, but also virulent issues of gender in contemporary South African society. They argue that since assertions of power have so long been connected to assertions of masculinity, performing the male role of the killer is a way for their female figures to move to a place of power. Thus, their protagonists’ perpetrating agency enables them to be the equals — if not superiors — of the men they interact with. Moreover, it empowers them to act as renegades who contest the dominant power and who are generally in control in an environment which is rife with inequality and where women more often than not are the victims of crime. In this way, besides being a means to explore female perpetrating agency, the figure of the female killer also has the potential to transform the way readers of crime fiction view women.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi
Here is an excerpt from a study that
A cop from Wisconsin pursues a killer through the terrifying slums of Nairobi and the memories of genocideexplores the thematic concerns which Mukoma addresses in his novels Nairobi Heat and Black Star Nairobi...I have analyzed Nairobi Heat by focusing on the themes of betrayal, corruption, racism, greed and deception. These concerns are linked to violence and crime in this novel. I have also discussed themes which Mukoma advances in the novel Black Star Nairobi. It is evident that Mukoma is concerned with international violence and crime and the intricate webs of relationships that sustain the violence and crime. The narrative techniques the author uses and their effectiveness have also been discussed in relation to corruption, racism, and the question of identity as explored in the novels. It is evident that Mukoma has successfully weaved intricate detective narratives using well thought out narrative techniques which enables him to communicate transnational violence and crime, and other related concerns which he has addressed in these two novels in an effective manner.
Hawa Jande Golakai
Scientists are bound to be good crime writers and a good hold on science forcibly contributes to superb crime writing. Anyway, her area is TB and HIV. Brilliant. That's another notch.
An academic
Though he's written many crime novels, Masondo is lesser known. He also has, to his credit, a dissertation - The detective novel in Zulu: Form and theme in C.T. Msimang’s Walivuma Icala. He was once publishing manager at Macmillan .
The Love of Money, a short story, may be his only existing work in English.
Browse the abstract of a scholarly examination of his works:
For the purposes of Iphisi Nezinyoka {The expert hunter and the snakes), Masondo’s first detective story, the writer expects the reader to condemn Nsakansaka Nkosi’s murder of Bheki Hlophe, and to denounce Magwegwe Buthelezi’s deception and his abuse of his position of power as manager of the Nation Bank. Similarly the reader must pat Themba Zondo, the detective hero of this detective story on the back after he has solved the case and after he has brought the criminals to justice. Code stories reflect a strong form of objectivity on the part of the writer - his handling of matters reflects his personal uninvolvement which explains the absolute indifference to death in the detective story (Groenewald, 1977:19). When Zondo discovers the corpse of Bheki Hlophe, he factually takes note of the situation: He was wearing a green pair of trousers and a white shirt. He was lying in a pool o f blood. Zondo looked hither and thither and then bent down to look at the stretched-out man. His attention was caught by a big wound situated on the neck o f this man(Masondo, 1990:38). Zondo does not stop to ponder the unfairness or tragedy of the murder of this old man - rather, his mind races in an attempt to try and fit together the pieces of the puzzle which led to Hlophe’s death. This indifference towards death brings to inijid an identical situation in the folktale in which the most gruesome happenings are portrayed in such a way that the beholder is not shocked by them at all.
MESHACK Masondo, who wrote crime novels in Zulu, died as violently as any one of his characters. He was murdered outside his home in Alberton on the East Rand.
As the French say, sometimes, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose! The below teaser from an early film by Ousmane Sembene showcases how the coloured fade in a world that's all Black and White.
We have but touched the tip of the iceberg in The Case of the Missing Colour in African Crime Fiction. Much remains to be done but one thing is clear - try as one will, there is an annoyingly persistent white drawl that drowns all other voices. The only way to tackle such a crime, sometimes, is to adopt the criminal's strategy - let us consider another apartheid of sorts where we outcaste the White author. For a while, at least. Until we learn that Fair is not always Lovely and it is neither fair, nor lovely, to submerge diversity in favour of the familiar.
Tomorrow, we broaden the net and sift through some more examples of crime fiction from around the world.
She's moved from Liberia to Togo, Ghana, Zimbabwe and is now mostly in South Africa.
Her debut novel, set in Cape Town where she now lives, has a nice review: The Psychology of Reward.
compelling and witty prose
An academic
"aims to examine the portrayal of African migrants and South Africa’s relationship to the African continent in post-apartheid crime fiction. Exotic settings and the figure of the stranger have featured in the crime genre since its emergence in the 19th century. Reading Mike Nicol’s The Ibis Tapestry (1998), his trilogy Payback (2008), Killer Country (2010) and Black Heart (2011), and H.J. Golakai’s novel The Lazarus Effect (2011), this article suggests that the themes of migration and ‘xenophobia’ have become central to reconfigured socio-political commitment in contemporary South African crime fiction. The article argues that the re-writing of generic formulae and boundaries inThe Ibis Tapestry and The Lazarus Effect becomes a powerful vehicle for an enquiry into constructions of ‘foreignness’ and a means to allot a space to African migrants in the ‘new’ South African imaginary. The simultaneous unmaking and remaking of ‘African foreignness’ that characterizes the Revenge trilogy draws attention to the paradoxical temporality of transitional literatures and cultural formations, in which former discourses of ‘the foreign’ remain imprinted."
Meshack Masondo
The Love of Money, a short story, may be his only existing work in English.
For the purposes of Iphisi Nezinyoka {The expert hunter and the snakes), Masondo’s first detective story, the writer expects the reader to condemn Nsakansaka Nkosi’s murder of Bheki Hlophe, and to denounce Magwegwe Buthelezi’s deception and his abuse of his position of power as manager of the Nation Bank. Similarly the reader must pat Themba Zondo, the detective hero of this detective story on the back after he has solved the case and after he has brought the criminals to justice. Code stories reflect a strong form of objectivity on the part of the writer - his handling of matters reflects his personal uninvolvement which explains the absolute indifference to death in the detective story (Groenewald, 1977:19). When Zondo discovers the corpse of Bheki Hlophe, he factually takes note of the situation: He was wearing a green pair of trousers and a white shirt. He was lying in a pool o f blood. Zondo looked hither and thither and then bent down to look at the stretched-out man. His attention was caught by a big wound situated on the neck o f this man(Masondo, 1990:38). Zondo does not stop to ponder the unfairness or tragedy of the murder of this old man - rather, his mind races in an attempt to try and fit together the pieces of the puzzle which led to Hlophe’s death. This indifference towards death brings to inijid an identical situation in the folktale in which the most gruesome happenings are portrayed in such a way that the beholder is not shocked by them at all.
As the French say, sometimes, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose! The below teaser from an early film by Ousmane Sembene showcases how the coloured fade in a world that's all Black and White.
Ousmane Sembene - The man
Possible explanations for the whole thing
Tomorrow, we broaden the net and sift through some more examples of crime fiction from around the world.
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