Race, Culture, Narrative Voice, and the City in South African Literature

'Jim Comes to Joburg' - a culturally pervasive South African literary theme that was originally sparked by the 1949 film of the same name - has had a contagious influence on the development of apartheid era and post-apartheid era film, literary, and dramatic works, and, regardless of its questionable validity, its hand in shaping the perceptions of South African culture and ways of looking at life lived in these great, 'Golden Cities' and 'Eden-like' countryside cannot be denied. The image of the poor, inexperienced naïf from the country trekking to the great, 'Golden City' of Johannesburg looking for fame, fortune, or merely money for marriage; or to send money back to his village to support struggling family members, has been replicated by many different works of literature, film, and drama over the years. One would think that with the political death of apartheid, so too would this literary theme lose its strength and persistence, but as the ghosts of the apartheid era remain, (much as the 'ghosts' of Sophiatown haunt the poor, blighted Benades in Triomf), thus, so do the ghosts of Jim Comes to Joburg haunt many different modern South African works today.

Haunt is an excellent term to use concerning this genre's continued existence, because while its presence is still felt in a variety of works and films in a myriad of ways, its presentation has changed; its manifestations altered, and possibly so has the genre itself been altered. A good example of this would be Zakes Mda's Way of Dying, which regales for us, (as we of the village watch with hopeful yet dreadful anticipation), the story of poor, ugly Toloki and his quest to the city to find love and fortune (60). So too do we see the story unfold of that "bitch" Noria of the village, as she also travels to the city, where she finds that instead of streets of gold lined with diamonds, there are streets full of mud and open sewers (135). In his novel, Mda presents us with many Jim Comes to Joburg elements; a 'homeboy' and 'homegirl' find themselves in a city that is vast, violent, and corrupt, and not all they thought it would be. However, he tweaks this theme to his own ends; he presents the city as a dangerous, violent place, and evil certainly abounds here, as Bhut'Shaddy's encounter with vicious rogue policemen is ample evidence of, (140-143), but the city itself lacks the pervasive sense of all-encompassing evil that is presented in so many Joburg novels. Mda paints a picture of the countryside that is not necessarily flattering either, dispelling with the stark contrast between 'evil city' and 'Eden-like' countryside that the Jim Comes to Joburg genre is often wont to portray. In Ways of Dying, the countryside is presented to us a place where:

...pale herdboys, with mucus hanging from their nostrils, looking after cattle whose ribs you could count, on barren hills with sparse grass and shrubs. Streams that flowed reluctantly in summer and died happily in winter. Homesteads of three or four huts each, decorated outside with geometric patterns of red, yellow, blue and white. Or just white-washed all around. One hovel each for the poorest of families. In addition to three huts, his homestead had a four-walled in-roofed stone building with a big door that never closed properly. (28)

An excellent example of how the ghosts of Joburg past still haunts today's South African literature, but often at the author's own beckoning and for his or her own purposes is Welcome to Our Hillbrow, by Phaswane Mpe. The novel opens very early with a powerful Joburgish image as our God-like narrator recounts for the now dead Refentse his first impressions of Hillbrow as he arrives from his home village of Tiragalong:

By the time you left TiragalongHigh School to come to the University of the Witwatersand, at the dawn of 1991, you already knew that Hillbrow was a menacing monster.....The lure of the monster was, however, hard to resist; Hillbrow had swallowed a number of the children of Tiragalong, who thought the City of Gold was full of career opportunities for them. (2- 3)

The narrative continues this presentation of the Joburg theme by recounting the tale of one of its fallen, a young man who died of a strange illness the people of Tiragalong could only assume as being AIDS, which he must have caught roaming the whorehouses and dingy pubs of Hillbrow, "while his poor parents imagined that he was working away in the city, in order to make sure that there would be a huge bag of maize meal to send back for all the homestead" (3). Of course, it goes without saying that AIDS is a city caused problem, because of the bizarre, sexual behavior of the Hillbrowans (3).

Other Jim Comes to Joburg elements haunt this novel. Refentse is amazed by the amount of people who clog the streets at nine in the morning (6); he is teased about his naiveté by his cousin concerning the buildings that turn out to be brothels, (11), and then is admonished by him for attempting to talk to anyone and everyone on the streets, because "not all people who greet you in Hillbrow are well-wishers" (12). Refentse is shocked by the plight of some of the dirty children who run through the streets, sniffing glue (13), and the Joburg image is strengthened for us as Refentse spends his first night in Hillbrow and falls asleep amid worries of robbers breaking in, only to be woken in the night by the sounds of gunshots and a woman screaming (9). As the narrator says often throughout the book, "Welcome to our Hillbrow", and perhaps, 'Welcome to our Jim Comes to Joburg', as well.

The Jim Comes to Joburg theme is even portrayed for us in heaven, when the souls of Refentse and Lerato meet Refente's mother, and she relates to them the story of how Tshepo, (Refentse's father), lost his father when he "went to Johannesburg to look for work. And how the monstrous city swallowed him. 'Those unknown dogs just plunged their knives into this poor son of Tirgalong'" (70). Strong Joburg sentiment is shown by Refentse's mother when she is alive, for she "knew that all Hillbrow women were prostitutes, who spent their nights leaning against the walls of the giant buildings in which they conducted their business" (39); the flames of the Joburg fire is fanned by the spurned Refilwe as she re-wrote the story of Refentse's suicide, blaming his end on a "sad naiveté that had allowed you to get hooked up with the Johannesburg woman who was your final nemesis" (43), and the residents of Tiragalong eagerly lapped up the tales, agreeing with Refilwe, because "everyone knew that Johannesburg women were bound to bring destruction down upon any man" (44), after all, betrayal of Lerato's kind was "behavior only to be expected of a Johannesburg woman" (60), and most of those from the home village agreed that Refentse had been "short-sighted.........to believe that any woman encountered in the city could be a good partner" (60).

In this novel, we see much of the same 'leveling', if you will, that took place in Mda's Ways of Dying; that the city, while dangerous, violent, and corrupt, is in many ways no worse than the countryside, which is certainly not portrayed as the 'Eden-like' landscape the traditional Jim Comes to Joburg model usually presents it as. As the novel progresses, Mpe uses Refilwe especially as a vehicle for a strong anti-Joburg statement that is woven with delicate threads throughout the fabric of her journey to the end of the novel, and unfortunately, her own life. She begins her story as the spurned former lover of Refentse, very willing to participate in and propagate rumors about his death, attributing his fate to his unfortunate involvement with a city, Hillbrowan woman. When she hears fragments of the tale from Sammy, she wonders "what else could have been expected from such a woman?" (83). Upon Refentse's visit to her flat while he is still alive, she presses her case for their past love, asking him, "would you not feel more at home in the arms of a child of Tiragalong? We know what a Jo'burg woman can do to a man...!" (90). As Refentse leaves Refilwe, he believes her to be "disappointed that a child of Tiragalong like you (Refentse) should find vulgar Johannesburgers equal to - or better partners than - the woman of the village" (90).

However, as time passes after Refentse's death and Refilwe spends more time contemplating it and the story he had written about "AIDS and Makwerekwere and the many sidedness of life and love in our Hillbrow and Tiragalong and everywhere" (95), Refilwe begins to look at her life and her own thoughts from a new perspective, re-thinking some of her preconceived notions about Johannesburg women (96). Here we see, woven into Refilwe's tale, an outpouring of Mpe's anti-Jim Comes to Joburg sentiment, the idea that the people of Tiragalong; ie. those from the villages and the countryside, were "no better or worse than Johannesburgers" (96). This view is found very early in the book in a friendly argument between Refentse and his cousin concerning the differences between the city and the countryside. Cousin would often complain of the crime and filth of Hillbrow, blaming it on the foreigners who had brought all such evils there, (17), however Refentse had never agreed, his opinion being that "the moral decay of Hillbrow, so often talked about, was in fact no worse than that of Tiragalong" (17). He challenges his cousin to think about the density of criminals packed in one place, stating that if thought about, it was just as bad back home in the village, (18), and that most Hillbrowans indeed were not foreigners but wanderers of Tiragalong and other rural, countryside villages, who had come to Hillbrow, as they themselves had, in search of education and work (18). Thus, the twisting or tweaking of the Jim Comes to Joburg theme: rural wanderers coming to the city in search of education and work, but instead of the evil city corrupting them:

...hadn't we better also admit that quite a large percentage of our home relatives who get killed in Hillbrow are in fact killed by other relatives and friends -(as Piet was killed by Molori) -
people who bring their home grudges with them to Jo'burg. That's why Hillbrow is so corrupt. (18).

Refilwe comes around to her former lover's way of thinking some time after his death, eventually seeing that the people of Hillbrow were "people from all over the country, and other countries - people like herself, in fact - who entered Hillbrow with all sorts of good and evil intentions" (96). This becomes a gruesome, morbid reality for her when she is forced to return from her studies in England to the village, afflicted with AIDS, the terrible, "sin of the city", caused by the "bizarre sexual behavior of the Hillbrowans" (4) or, "insert any city here". She comes to the part of her journey to "AIDS and Tiragalong condemning her and the Bone of her Heart Refilwe herself reaping the bitter fruits of the xenophobic prejudice she helped sow" (113). She comes to realize that she too is a "Hillbrowan. An Alexandrian. A Johannesburger. An Oxfordian." (122). Or, perhaps, as it seems Mpe is trying to say, a human.

Jim Comes to Joburg elements are clearly present throughout the novel but Mpe also twists them to his own uses, making the statement that our own interconnectedness makes impossible the stark, didactic poles of existence portrayed in the classic Jim Comes to Joburg story. Whether he does this intentionally or instinctively is not known, however, a powerful sentiment can be found in the following quote from page 55: "Because home travels with you, with your consciousness as its vehicle". Whatever space we inhabit; be it in the city or the countryside, even given all the inherent lifestyle differences that one will find in these vastly differing landscapes, when we move about to these different spaces, both near and far; home, local, or abroad, there is one thing that is an inescapable constant: the humanity that we all bear inside of us, with all our dreams and nightmares, goals and fears, victories and downfalls. Whatever new space we inhabit; be it the "Evil city cloaked as a Golden Land of Opportunity" or the "idyllic, Eden-like Countryside", we all take the same things inside of us there when we go, all sorts of "good and evil intentions".