‘No African should be a foreigner on African soil’

Considering your background, which I find really interesting, I am wondering if you agree with this Afropolitan debate of whether your background makes you feel like one?I’ve sadly not been following the debate so when I saw your question I went to my trusted friend Wiki. AchilleMbembe and Sarah Nutall who coined the term stated: […]

Considering your background, which I find really interesting, I am wondering if you agree with this Afropolitan debate of whether your background makes you feel like one?
I’ve sadly not been following the debate so when I saw your question I went to my trusted friend Wiki. AchilleMbembe and Sarah Nutall who coined the term stated: “in an attempt to overturn predominant readings of Africa, we need to identify sites within the continent…not usually dwelt upon in research and public discourse that defamiliarise commonplace readings of Africa.” My writing has thus far been set in cities. Most of my contemporaries’ writing have been set in cities on the continent be it Angela Makholwa from South Africa, Richard Ali A. Mutu from Congo, Liberia’s Elma Shaw, Kenya’s KinyanjuiKombani, Nigeria’s Igoni Barrett or any 100 writers from Africa.  That would mean that I am in fact writing about spaces that are often dealt with, no? And may therefore mean the label wouldn’t quite relate to me. Unless of course we decide we are looking at the reading of Africa by the west and I couldn’t be bothered by how they want to read this continent to be honest. I am more excited when someone from Nigeria says they read me and got me than if anyone from England says the same.
Do you feel a sense of responsibility when you write, because some of your writings have shown tendencies to highlight social issues even if in a really witty way?
I suppose I should go down to the root of why I write. I write because I feel I have something to say and so yes, because I stay in society, I do find myself highlighting some societal issues. Not in a preachy way I hope. I’d hope that while reading me, my readers are being entertained and after reading then maybe they can pause and reflect on some of the issues. Although my writing has largely been social realism, I suspect I would do the same even if I were writing fantasy, crime or science fiction.
Race and interracial relations also feature prominently in your works. Do you think South Africans both at home and in the diaspora (such as Martin O’Malley in your newest novel, London Cape Town Joburg) are still struggling with the idea of a rainbow nation?
I notice (and know from my friends who are white) that race discourse is often different when people are with folks of the same race than in mixed company. A friend of mine tells a story where she went for a party with a British (white) friend married to a South African (black) guy. The party was being hosted by a South African (white) couple in the north of England. The South African/British couple had a son (white) who the South African dude adopted upon marriage. The white South African couple knew the British woman was married to a South African, they just hadn’t met him. Their sons had become fast friends based on the South African connection at pre-school, see? Black South African guy worked in the South so would come and visit during the weekends or his family would go to see him so the white South African couple had never met him. So back to this party – The British woman, son and my friend arrive at the party and Black South African guy is given GPS coordinates of where to go. On arrival, his son runs on some “daddy daddy daddy”…his little friend looks at him and says loudly, “you didn’t tell me your daddy was a kaffir.” This five year old kid was born in England. He obviously didn’t hear the k-word, which is South Africa’s equivalent of the N-word, at the playground. So ja. That would be a Yes.
Interesting. But this issue is not restricted to race, is it? For instance, for your Africa39 submission, you chose to write about a foreigner trying to fit into South Africa. Do you think South Africa is not only trying to come to terms with itself but also with the many foreigners flocking to it?
My Africa 39 story is actually an excerpt from my novel Men of the South. After the selection, they didn’t ask me to submit anything new so I didn’t. I cringe at the word foreigner. I figure since my ancestors didn’t have any say in the borders that we have, no African can or should be considered a foreigner on African soil. But yes, South Africa, particularly poor South Africans who form our highest demography, struggle with the idea of fellow Africans coming from beyond SA borders. My travels on the continent show me that it’s not a uniquely South African problem though. Ghanaians and Nigerians have had their animosities, so have Ugandans and Kenyans. Ditto Zimbabweans and Mozambicans. And of course in the Maghreb region as sub Saharan Africans attempt to go to the alleged Eldorado that is Europe.
Your style is witty and humorous even when talking about serious things like infidelity, divorce and racial tensions. How did you come about this style?
I didn’t really come about my style. My writing is an extension of my personality and I suspect I was a comedienne in my last life.
That is quite true. Knowing you and reading your work, it’s like listening to you talk.  But tell us how writing came to you.
The late Lewis Nkosi, author of Mating Birds, Mandela’s Ego and other books sort of forced me to become a novelist. I was doing PR at a museum when I met him while he was on holiday in SA (he was staying in Switzerland). When he went back, I would email him little creative nonfiction pieces. He suggested I write fiction. He died without  ever telling me whether it was because he saw a possibly good fictional writer or whether it was just because my creative nonfiction sucked. So I took it as a challenge and over three weeks sometime in February, the first draft of The Madams was written. I submitted it to five publishers at the suggestion of another Drum era old timer. Three of the five accepted the manuscript and the rest, as they say, is history.
How challenging is it writing in the male voice as you have done in your novelsBehind Every Successful Man, Men of the Southand your latest work London Cape Town Joburg?
Not challenging at all. Men are human too.
Do you have a preference for writing in the first person? It seems to me you favour this POV.
I do indeed. My second novel was written in third person. I didn’t like it much.  I have however written a couple of short stories in third person and those I enjoyed. I like the immediacy of first person narrative when I am writing. It makes my characters and their emotions more real to me. That said, I often challenge myself and I may yet write a novel in third person that I am proud of.
What would you say has been the highlight of your career so far?
There have been so many. In 2010 Wole Soyinka came to SA to interview me and four other writers (separately) for the BBC. Now this was pretty huge to me because, everyone wants to interview Soyinka but Soyinka interviewing one must mean some sort of acknowledgement that one has arrived, no?