Aryan Kaganof

Aryan Kaganof Reviews "People of the Townships" by Omoseye Bolaji

"The whole society is sick, I think. Everything is upside down. Modernity has taken a terrible toll on black society."

This is the grim summation that John Lefuo, the protagonist of "People Of The Townships", makes at the end of his perambulation through his 'kasie one sunday afternoon. "Mr. John" tells us that he is not considered "normal" by his township brethren. During the two hours or so of his walk through the township we discover why. John is a thinker. A book reader. Not an alcoholic. Not a dagga roker. He does not steal. He keeps his word. He frowns upon sexual promiscuity. In short - he seems like a rather prissy, dour protagonist for a novel.

But "seems" is very much the operative word in my previous sentence. For Omoseye Bolaji has set us up
for an extraordinary revelation that unfolds in the last six pages of this short (93 pages) somewhat breathless novel. I say "breathless" because the pace of the writing is so snappy and its "unputdownable" factor so high, that the reader is left as out of breath as I imagine protagonist John Lefuo must have been at the end of his last sunday walk as a free man.

The set-up that author Bolaji carefully constructs in this important work of South African fiction begins on page 4 when the first person narrator of the book, the afore-mentioned John Lefuo, describes himself thus: "I am not a criminal. I
have not killed anybody, nor robbed anybody." As readers we expect of our narrators that they be honest, that they tell us the truth - or at least, that they tell us their side of the truth.

Mr. Bolaji plays with these expectations in an almost wickedly sophisticated manner, that demands of the
reader, once we have absorbed the last 6 pages of the book, that we IMMEDIATELY return to the beginning of the book in order to carefully re-read it. For it is only on the second reading of the book that we can determine for ourselves to
what extent John Lefuo really is "crazy", and gauge for ourselves the veracity of his statements about himself and his moralistic pontifications about all the no-goods, rubbishes, non-readers, demi-mondes, and low lifes that he numbers
amongst his acquaintances.

I don't want to give too much of the plot of this book away. It really is important to approach "People Of The Townships"
fresh, without knowing the details of its riveting and utterly unexpected denouement. I have to qualify that sentence. Upon reading the book for the second time it struck me that the shock ending was in fact carefully planned, and the walk through the township is literally "littered" with clues that might make an astute reader guess what is to come - if there are such readers out there who are prepared not to take a narrator's narration at face value.

This is a relentlessly grim novel that is surprisingly funny along the way. There are some hilarious dialogues and John Lefuo's opinions often reminded me of the kind of absurdity we all know so well in South Africa - the hypocrisy of politicians calling for "moral regeneration" whilst indulging in the pleasures of the flesh wherever, whenever, and with whomever
they can.

I would suggest that Mr. Bolaji has created a morally ambiguous protagonist in order to test our own opinions and ethics. The truth is that judgements on the moral plane are extremely hard to make, both in life and, as John Lefuo amply demonstrates, in fiction. This picaresque tale is essential reading for all those interested in South African writing that comes
from outside of the politically correct ghetto created by white-owned publishing houses who still determine the shape and content of so-called "black writing" sixteen years after the end of apartheid.

Long after reading the book for the second time John Lefuo's tragic words rumbled through the township of my skull, ""The whole society is sick, I think. Everything is upside down. Modernity has taken a terrible toll on black society."

Aryan Kaganof