Mlalazi’s sharply observed world
Dan Wylie reviews Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township
This collection of eleven “tales from the township” extends what has become something of a tradition in post- independence Zimbabwean writing: vignettes of urban life, generally of the deprived classes, which focus on individual lives in the midst of economic decline and state terrorism. It’s a genre that seems to exist in the cracks between public imageries, to want to be a little inconspicuous. While generally avoiding overt political critique, these snapshots of the often shattered lives of township denizens nevertheless show the marks of political abuse in every daily transaction.
Christopher Mlalazi’s collection is like this, too. The stories vary between twenty and two pages, the characters are generally dislocated, their dilemmas torn between scratching out a living and pursuing relationships in an environment where families have collapsed, infidelity is endemic, and traditional spiritual beliefs persist into modern fragmentation. Some of the stories might be termed social realist; a couple are livelier in venturing into imaginative satire. At its best, this bites strongly.
In “Matchstick Man” the eponymous protagonist lights the fires of resistance to the state: “They beat the fire with acid statements in the state media. They tear gassed it, set police dogs on it, truncheoned it, shot at it, and, finally, the two lions subdued it at the palace door. They put it in a straitjacket, raked its face with their sharp claws, drawing blood, then carried it away still struggling to an unnamed grave deep in the sacred forest behind the palace, in which, it was rumoured, resided the maimed spirits of silencing.”
Another satirical squib, “Election Day”, lampoons an unnamed dictator’s terror of losing an election; while it’s quite funny, it relies on a fairly crude twist in the tail. Another brief vignette, “The Bulldozers are Coming”, is set against the background of Murambatsvina (Operation Clean-Up), like Valerie Tagwira’s recent novel, The Uncertainty of Hope. It portrays one woman’s personal tragedy as the direct result of government oppression, which is of course quite legitimate, even necessary, but it sacrifices complex individuality and characterisation for making its blunt point.
Mlalazi’s prose is generally serviceable rather than inventive. The undeniable courage of societal and political critique – in Mlalazi’s case from an occasionally explicitly Ndebele viewpoint – is pervasive, but falls short of a far-reaching historical density, and of ever daring to actually name the ultimate culprits: Mugabe and his party henchmen. This work is still a little shy, a little fearful of retribution, a little unambitious in its scope. Still, it is also not just about politics, but centrally about the tangled lives of ordinary people.
That said, Mlalazi has extended himself further than many of his contemporaries, and observed his world sharply. One looks forward to more writing from this new talent.
Dan Wylie is a professor at Rhodes University in South Africa.
First published in Wordsetc