Beaven Tapureta Reviews 'The Polygamist' by Sue Nyathi
Title : The Polygamist
Author : Sukoluhle Nyathi
Publisher : Logogog Press, South Africa
Year: 2012
ISBN : 978-0-620-52260-1
Reviewer : Beaven Tapureta
Sukoluhle Nyathi may be new on the list of known, published Zimbabwean writers but her gripping style of writing, complemented by a sharp awareness of issues pertaining to relationships (marriage), sexuality, and power could enlist her in
the pioneering group of writers such as Virginia Phiri, who have candidly tackled sensitive subjects commonly known as taboos. What makes The Polygamist such an irresistible read is no doubt its unique blend of skill and subject. While polygamy, in its traditional times before the advent of HIV/AIDS, was at one point a cultural type of marriage principled in some societies, it nonetheless has become a delusional institution almost inapplicable to these modern days. Men and women have now carved out a new type of polygamy in a desperate bid to justify their different situations, most of them selfish situations.
The Polygamist exposes the secrets which most married and unmarried men and women, with the nouveau riche in particular, would rather want dealt with silently or “indoors”. In the novel there is an interplay of dreams and reality, sensuality and sensibility and the conflict of these elements is tactfully presented through the characters, who are mainly four women (Joyce, Matipa, Essie and Lindani) and a man named Jonasi Gomora. All the four women have a stake in Jonasi’s life whose transition from poverty to riches (and back to poverty) they witness each from a different perspective.
The Polygamist, written from the dramatic monologue point of view, with each chapter devoted to any one of the four women, progresses with captivating action and dialogue. Each chapter is a dramatic monologue of Joyce, Matipa, Essie or Lindani. The reader learns who the speaker is and her circumstances only from references within the monologue itself.
In this story which is set in Zimbabwe, Jonasi Gomora rises from poverty to become the founder of ‘the most successful black-run business in the city’, but his rise is not without its own complications. Women, money, power soon catch up
with him and what follows is an exciting, adventurous, yet touching unveiling of the characters’ hidden desires.
Jonasi’s first marriage is with Joyce, a woman who stands the hard times with Jonasi but whose harvest of joy is soon taken away from her marriage. Joyce and Jonasi make the transit from driving nothing to driving a Mazda 323, to driving a Mercedes C-Class, from living in a one-roomed cottage in Queensdale to living in the avenues and finally in a
mansion in the posh suburbs of Glen Lorne. Together in love they ditch poverty as Jonasi’s company J & J Holdings gets more and more successful.
However, things fall apart when enter Matipa, a woman who bulldozes into Jonasi’s 16- year- old marriage at all costs.
Matipa falls in love with Jonasi, the CEO of J & J Holdings, having found a job at his company. The trio of Joyce, Jonasi and Matipa play their parts in the drama of love and betrayal, each trying to assert his/her position. Then enter Essie, Jonasi’s first lover from his youth with whom he had a child named Sarah. As if that’s not enough for the reader, next enter Lindani, a girl Jonasi meets in a nightclub. Enchanted by Matipa, Jonasi thinks of divorcing Joyce who refuses his bid. He abandons
Joyce and starts living with Matipa whom he has promoted to Assistant Director in one of the J & J Holdings departments. Yet Jonasi soon becomes a ‘bed-hopper’, living with each of the women at different times. As the story unfolds through the women’s subjective accounts, one notices that each of the women wants to assert her position as Jonasi’s wife.
In the maze of the story, children are not left out. Although the effect of Jonasi’s polygamous life upon his children is covered by his ability to at least cater for them, a reader may fear they will grow up to pay for the mistakes of their parents. Although Freedom is not Jonasi’s child but Essie’s, whom she sired with a departed soldier earlier in the story, his life of a thug and disrespectful nature heralds an unspoken contagious storm in the future of the whole Gomora family but that's for the reader to imagine.
There’s an unsatisfied ego in Jonasi but it is the question why he behaves the way he does that stands out most. Psychoanalysis may convince us who Jonasi is by looking at his early and present actions. First, as a youth he raped Essie when he found out she had been impregnated by another man (the soldier with whom she bore Freedom). He next beats her up when he finds her having sex in a car with yet another man. Remember, Essie had grown up with Jonasi. When Jonasi’s mother died, four-year old Jonasi found refuge (from his abusive father) in Essie’s family and they became childhood lovers. Could this early bitter disappointment in the first relationship have awakened his insatiable desire for women to the point that he views them as mere objects?
When somewhere along the line Matipa tells him that she has been to a doctor and been diagnosed of a sexually transmitted disease, he beats her up with a metal belt and rapes her. "...I can see through you, but I own you Matipa. I own you. You were bought and paid for, my dear,..." (page 127).
Jonasi’s early background of neglect somehow tallies with Lindani’s. Lindani, a night-clubber who refers to the men she sleeps with as ‘fossils’, is the fourth and youngest of all Jonasi’s women. Lindani has lived through a rape trauma,
drinks alcohol and goes into night clubs to prostitute. What would Jonasi, as highly positioned in society now as he was, have seen in Lindani? Later, disease and the economic climb-down change the course of things. Although Jonasi tries to live in denial, AIDS and death soon catch up with him.
.
The Polygamist was launched in Durban (South Africa) and then in Bulawayo before being launched at the Book Café,
Harare, on August 16. At the Harare launch, Sukoluhle Nyathi, the author, spoke of her ups and downs as a writer before reading an excerpt from her book. The Polygamist is now available in Zimbabwe at the Blackstone Bookshops.
More about the author on this blog: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SUE NYATHI
Author : Sukoluhle Nyathi
Publisher : Logogog Press, South Africa
Year: 2012
ISBN : 978-0-620-52260-1
Reviewer : Beaven Tapureta
Sukoluhle Nyathi may be new on the list of known, published Zimbabwean writers but her gripping style of writing, complemented by a sharp awareness of issues pertaining to relationships (marriage), sexuality, and power could enlist her in
the pioneering group of writers such as Virginia Phiri, who have candidly tackled sensitive subjects commonly known as taboos. What makes The Polygamist such an irresistible read is no doubt its unique blend of skill and subject. While polygamy, in its traditional times before the advent of HIV/AIDS, was at one point a cultural type of marriage principled in some societies, it nonetheless has become a delusional institution almost inapplicable to these modern days. Men and women have now carved out a new type of polygamy in a desperate bid to justify their different situations, most of them selfish situations.
The Polygamist exposes the secrets which most married and unmarried men and women, with the nouveau riche in particular, would rather want dealt with silently or “indoors”. In the novel there is an interplay of dreams and reality, sensuality and sensibility and the conflict of these elements is tactfully presented through the characters, who are mainly four women (Joyce, Matipa, Essie and Lindani) and a man named Jonasi Gomora. All the four women have a stake in Jonasi’s life whose transition from poverty to riches (and back to poverty) they witness each from a different perspective.
The Polygamist, written from the dramatic monologue point of view, with each chapter devoted to any one of the four women, progresses with captivating action and dialogue. Each chapter is a dramatic monologue of Joyce, Matipa, Essie or Lindani. The reader learns who the speaker is and her circumstances only from references within the monologue itself.
In this story which is set in Zimbabwe, Jonasi Gomora rises from poverty to become the founder of ‘the most successful black-run business in the city’, but his rise is not without its own complications. Women, money, power soon catch up
with him and what follows is an exciting, adventurous, yet touching unveiling of the characters’ hidden desires.
Jonasi’s first marriage is with Joyce, a woman who stands the hard times with Jonasi but whose harvest of joy is soon taken away from her marriage. Joyce and Jonasi make the transit from driving nothing to driving a Mazda 323, to driving a Mercedes C-Class, from living in a one-roomed cottage in Queensdale to living in the avenues and finally in a
mansion in the posh suburbs of Glen Lorne. Together in love they ditch poverty as Jonasi’s company J & J Holdings gets more and more successful.
However, things fall apart when enter Matipa, a woman who bulldozes into Jonasi’s 16- year- old marriage at all costs.
Matipa falls in love with Jonasi, the CEO of J & J Holdings, having found a job at his company. The trio of Joyce, Jonasi and Matipa play their parts in the drama of love and betrayal, each trying to assert his/her position. Then enter Essie, Jonasi’s first lover from his youth with whom he had a child named Sarah. As if that’s not enough for the reader, next enter Lindani, a girl Jonasi meets in a nightclub. Enchanted by Matipa, Jonasi thinks of divorcing Joyce who refuses his bid. He abandons
Joyce and starts living with Matipa whom he has promoted to Assistant Director in one of the J & J Holdings departments. Yet Jonasi soon becomes a ‘bed-hopper’, living with each of the women at different times. As the story unfolds through the women’s subjective accounts, one notices that each of the women wants to assert her position as Jonasi’s wife.
In the maze of the story, children are not left out. Although the effect of Jonasi’s polygamous life upon his children is covered by his ability to at least cater for them, a reader may fear they will grow up to pay for the mistakes of their parents. Although Freedom is not Jonasi’s child but Essie’s, whom she sired with a departed soldier earlier in the story, his life of a thug and disrespectful nature heralds an unspoken contagious storm in the future of the whole Gomora family but that's for the reader to imagine.
There’s an unsatisfied ego in Jonasi but it is the question why he behaves the way he does that stands out most. Psychoanalysis may convince us who Jonasi is by looking at his early and present actions. First, as a youth he raped Essie when he found out she had been impregnated by another man (the soldier with whom she bore Freedom). He next beats her up when he finds her having sex in a car with yet another man. Remember, Essie had grown up with Jonasi. When Jonasi’s mother died, four-year old Jonasi found refuge (from his abusive father) in Essie’s family and they became childhood lovers. Could this early bitter disappointment in the first relationship have awakened his insatiable desire for women to the point that he views them as mere objects?
When somewhere along the line Matipa tells him that she has been to a doctor and been diagnosed of a sexually transmitted disease, he beats her up with a metal belt and rapes her. "...I can see through you, but I own you Matipa. I own you. You were bought and paid for, my dear,..." (page 127).
Jonasi’s early background of neglect somehow tallies with Lindani’s. Lindani, a night-clubber who refers to the men she sleeps with as ‘fossils’, is the fourth and youngest of all Jonasi’s women. Lindani has lived through a rape trauma,
drinks alcohol and goes into night clubs to prostitute. What would Jonasi, as highly positioned in society now as he was, have seen in Lindani? Later, disease and the economic climb-down change the course of things. Although Jonasi tries to live in denial, AIDS and death soon catch up with him.
.
The Polygamist was launched in Durban (South Africa) and then in Bulawayo before being launched at the Book Café,
Harare, on August 16. At the Harare launch, Sukoluhle Nyathi, the author, spoke of her ups and downs as a writer before reading an excerpt from her book. The Polygamist is now available in Zimbabwe at the Blackstone Bookshops.
More about the author on this blog: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SUE NYATHI