The Ghosts of Jim Comes to Joburg: The Search for a True Cultural Narrative in Post-Apartheid Africa

But if the artistic statement serves to endorse the existing social structure, to paper over the cracks and contradictions within the society, to deflect the attention of its audience from causes to symptoms, to stress the pliability and resilience of dominant institutions, then the ultimate effect is the conditioning of the audience to insensible acceptance." Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Barber/Horn, 73)

"We produce literature and we read it and study it. What kind of literature do we produce in Africa today, and who reads us? Who cares?......Do we write literature that informs and empowers future generations, preparing them to confront development? Are we concerned with the issues of the majority of Africans? Do our children read us and do they care to?" Molara Ogundipe - Leslie (Adams/Meyers, 28)

"I asked him a favor, Oiseau de Cham, a favor which I would like you to remind him of: in the name of my Esternome, in the name of our sufferings, in the name of our battles, let no one, across the centuries and centuries, ever remove the name of this place TEXACO, by the intangible law of our highest memories and the more intimate law of my secret name which - you may know now - is none other than that one there." The words of Marie-Sophie Laborieux, captured by The Shamefaced Word Scratcher (Chamoiseau, 382)

Since the fall of apartheid, literature in South Africa has struggled to find its place and its true voice in representing a culture that has, for most of its recent history, lived in a constant state of oppression and segregation. Cultural and literary development has been dogged by a literary and creative past that has often been criticized for being created by whites for blacks with the intention of keeping native South Africans in their respective 'places'; in the artificial, white created spaces of the native relocation Homelands.

An expression of a true, valid cultural voice has been undermined by commercial desires to sell a certain perspective of South African life to foreign, bourgeois audiences, and even the protest literature that arose in response to such hindrances acting as a limiting agent itself, proclaiming all South African work that didn't aim for the overthrow of oppression to be silly, useless, and a waste of time. The struggle to find a narrative; a story, so that the people of South Africa, and perhaps even we outsiders, would never forget, as the narrator of the novel Texaco desires, has gone through many permutations and changes over the years, but in the stories of Zakes Mda and Phaswane Mpe lives the hope that stories speaking for the voice of South Africa will break through all barriers and overcome all obstacles in its own time.

'Jim Comes to Joburg' - a culturally pervasive South African expressive 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, (Barber/Horn, pg. 73-74), 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 - by native South Africans, Afrikaners, European immigrants and us all - cannot be denied.

The theme has been re-worked and reproduced in a variety of ways by many different works of literature, film, and drama over the years (February, p. 83). The poor, inexperienced naïf from the country, 'Jim', longs for a wider, more sophisticated or financially beneficial horizon (which the rural land invariably cannot accommodate). He or she eventually embarks upon a great, wide-eyed trek to the looming, 'Golden City' - often Johannesburg, other times Cape Town or any of Joburg's suburbs - looking for fame, fortune, or merely money for marriage or to send money back to support their respective struggling family members in their home villages.

Upon reaching the city, said characters are beset by all the evils and vices the corrupt, seething metropolis has to offer, and of course, in their naiveté, they are ill-equipped and unable to resist downfall, temptation, or at the very least, an irreplaceable loss of innocence. The only choice is to give in, lose a sense of one's native self and become one with the city, or return to their roots in the country. In the end, the result is often tragic, the blow cushioned only by a returning to one's countryside to seek redemption and restoration by returning to the countryside from whence they came (February, 82).

The movie that started it all, (at least on a widespread, accepted scale), was made by two British immigrants, Donald Swanson and Eric Rutherford, in 1949 (Smith, pg. 2). In an interview made in the late eighties, Gloria Green, financier of the movie and Rutherford's girlfriend, stated that the movie was made with an eye towards appealing to mainly black audiences, especially given the fact that black South Africans had been given starring roles (Smith, pg. 2).

It was applauded, celebrated, and marketed as the first "All-African Film"(Maingard, pg. 4). A notice at the start of the film stated in a rather presumptuous, almost smug fashion: "The first full length entertainment film to be made in South Africa with an all-native cast. It is a simple film, and its quaint mixture of the naïve and the sophisticated is a true reflection of the African Native in a modern city" (Smith, pg. 2-3). It's an amusing thought to consider perhaps a sidebar or disclaimer to this note, saying something to the effect of, "Of course, we are white people from a white country who are generous enough to make a movie about you and your people for your people and country, so don't mind us if we tell it the way we see it, in a way that benefits us….of course, it's still all about South Africa, isn't it?"

The movie tells a story that becomes a genre which extends its influence through countless of movies, plays, and novels. The prosperity of the patrons of the nightclub Jim finds himself working at, (and by extension, the prosperity of the city), is placed alongside his menial labor experiences and poverty of the oppressed as he fights his way towards his dreams (Smith, pg. 3). Early on in the movie, a sharp division is drawn between the perfect, innocent countryside and the evil city, and even though no official sanction of apartheid or segregation is presented, the implication is implicit: the country is a peaceful land of simple, homegrown values; the city is a hive of evil; a den of muggers, thieves, prostitutes, and corrupt political officials waiting to prey upon the unwitting naïf from the country (Smith, pg. 3).

As soon as Jim arrives in Johannesburg, he is mugged by gangsters, and while he works in a menial labor job tending plants and cleaning in a garden, the movie shows him dreaming of his village and rural life, which of course is far better for a native man like himself. Of course, the only reason why Jim left the country is because he had to - and by extension it is implied that this is what all young African men eventually have to do - leave the country for the city to seek money to pay for lobola, (bride money), or to send money back home to their struggling family, (3), after which they will eventually return home.

After securing his job at the nightclub, he gets waylaid from his goal of returning home as he is captivated by a sophisticated nightclub singer, who wonders - perhaps as a representative of all native South Africans who travel to the city - in her song just why is it she has come to Johannesburg: "Oh, I went to Joburg, the Golden City, Oh…what did I go there for?" (3). Despite his troubles, Johannesburg is confirmed for Jim as a place of opportunity, and Jim eventually makes it as a singer; he gets the girl, recording contract, dons a snappy suit and becomes a completely transformed city dweller as the movie fades to black and the credits roll (3). He has been changed, ushered into a new existence from his naïve, rural vulnerability, and he incorporates none of his rural roots into his new dress.

Even though his new girlfriend, the nightclub singer Dolly does still wear some of her traditional necklaces and jewelry, they are adornments, and nothing more. The divide is sharply presented when Dolly and Jim are walking along a street and they encounter a group of black workers on the way home. Jim is dressed in his new city clothes, and Dolly also is dressed in the modern, sophisticated clothes of successful nightclub singer. There is no conversation with the black workers as they pass; they have changed, transcended, and been lifted from their rural roots and accord the workers no significance or connection at all, (Maingard, p. 10), much like Nefolovhodwe the coffin maker in Mda's Ways of Dying when he forgets his village, wife and family after his success in the city.

Somewhat absent from this original movie is the ultimate downfall of the naïf and his or hers eventual humble return to the countryside, (which of course they are better suited for), and according to Vivian Beckford Smith of the University of Cape Town, this is because the movie itself is more representative of Pre-Apartheid policies, which for the most part believed that while the black resident was an 'unwelcome visitor' in the city, his presence was unavoidable due to menial labor demands and therefore must be strictly controlled (5). This is relevant in the lurking theme in Jim's final transformation: "they're going to be in the city, no matter what, we can't control that - better they become something of our (white superiority figures) creation than of their own "nativeness".

Indeed, much of the flaws with many works that subscribe to this model, (as will be presented later), is the ultimate power accorded to white authority figures, and the 'white concern' for the 'noble savage' that leaks into literary and creative expressions. Emerging around the late nineteenth century, much of the liberal ideology of segregation was extremely concerned with the possible adverse effects of exposing the 'vulnerable, noble savage' to the evil sides of white civilization; ergo, they were better off in the countryside where they belonged (Smith, pg. 4), and we know that because…well, we're white.

Not all negative things can be said about the movie itself; Jim makes it in the city and becomes a success, rather than going home to the country in failure. Of course, he becomes a success because his white boss awards him the contract, (Maingard, pg. 3-4, 11), which is a key encounter that Jim's success hinges on, perhaps re-affirming or portraying that the black South African's success/fate in the city is ultimately in the hands of white people in superior positions. In any case, some positive reflections upon the movie should be noted. The fact that Jim's own individual determination in his future success is limited by the importance of the white boss's generosity can be seen as a somewhat accurate representation of what it was like that that time, especially for singers and musicians (11).

It also was the first ever widespread, mainstream film that attempted, at any rate, to centralize the black experience and tell a story from an African perspective (Maingard, pg. 4), although its creation came about by the rather arbitrary, random musings of Eric Rutherford - "Why not a feature film, why not, you know, really having a feature film, a full length entertainment film, with African actors?" (Maingard - Davis, 2 quoting Rutherford). Even to someone largely unacquainted with South African literary development and history, this smacks of an afterthought, an expression of whimsical curiosity only - "hey, why not make a movie about Zulus abducted by aliens?" - rather than a noble attempt to bring the "true reflection of the African Native in a modern city" to film.

Thus was born what Andrew Horn calls the Theater of Exploitation in his essay on South African theatre entitled Ideology & Rebellion. The Theater of Exploitation used black actors to misrepresent prevailing conditions in the country to largely foreign and white bourgeois domestic audiences, (Barber/Horn, pg. 74), an ailment claimed prevalent in literature as well by Nigerian-born poet, writer, and English professor Molara Ogundipe - Leslie. In an essay entitled Literature and Development: Writing and Audience in Africa, Ogundipe - Leslie ponders in her analysis discussing the links between cultural development and literature the question whether or not African writers 'write carefully' or do they 'write only to make a buck, sensationalizing Africa for foreign consumptions?' She expresses her misgivings about some of her dealings with publishers looking for a certain type of African story, much like Phaswanse Mpe does in a metafictional fashion in Welcome to our Hillbrow (Gaylard, pg. 3) with the character Refilwe.

The Theater of Exploitation adhered to two main formulas, one of which we are well acquainted with at this point: the vulnerability of the lost naïf in the evil, corrupting city. Even in South African/Caribbean novels that don't necessarily adhere completely to the 'Joburg' theme, the rural, country-side born native is frequently portrayed as starry-eyed and at a loss with their first glimpse of the city, as Galihad reacts when encountering the fullness of London for the first time in Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, "When they enter a kind of atmosphere hit Galahad so hard he had to stand up against a wall for a minute. It ain't have no place in the world that exactly like a place where a lot of white men get together to look for work and draw money from the Welfare State while they ain't working. Is a kind of place where hate and disgust and avarice and malice and sympathy and pity all mix up. It is a place where everyone is your enemy and friend" (Selvon, pg. 45).

The second was the extolling of the 'ethnic idyll'; that the values and mores of tradition African rural societies were romanticized and portrayed as more suited and congenial to the black South African than the city. Shadows of this can been seen even in works where the city is not portrayed, such as in Season of Migration to the North, when the main character, the nameless narrator, feels an overwhelming sense of relief and belonging when he returns home to his village. He feels at peace, solid, and rooted there. As he gazes at a tree, he thinks, "I looked at its strong, straight trunk, at its roots that strike down to the ground, at the green branches hanging loosely down over its top, and I experienced a feeling of assurance. I felt not like a storm swept feather but like that palm tree, a being with a background, with roots, a purpose" (Salih, pg.2).

As early as the 1960's, many critics purported that these themes, instead of creating works "for Africans and from an African perspective", as touted with the release of the movie Jim Comes to Joburg, have done nothing more than promote the belief and understanding that the African Nationalist government's policies of 'Separate Development' was something created for the benefit of the black South African people (74). Critics claim that the continued repetition of this genre has helped legitimatize and give credibility to the creation of and black South African relocation to 'Native Homelands' in the countryside, (Barber/Horn, pg. 74), portraying it as almost humane. Through these various plays and works, audiences overseas where reassured that relocations policies and the Group Areas Act were the best things for black South Africans; while native black audiences where gently prompted to 'go back to your clearings, and leave civilization to us" (74).

It "reinforce(d) white fantasies and the stereotype of the "happy and lively rural African, born with an irrepressible sense of rhythm (Barber/Horn, quoting Russell Vanderbrouke, pg. 74). The International Defense and Aid Fund of Africa expressed similar complaints, stating that, although works of drama in particular that expressed these themes claimed authenticity and validity concerning South African culture and life, they "distort African culture by pandering to the supposed western tastes for bare breasts and pelvic dancing…..they present a similar glossy image of black South Africa as the tribal dancing displays for tourists, and are often used abroad to 'sell' apartheid" (74). In 1975, this genre was challenged further by Anthony Sampson, first editor of Drum, a South African literary magazine, when he suggested that 'the story of the blanket-boy gazing in astonishment at the Golden City, is, I suspect, a white-man's folk tale, a kind of projected admiration of himself" (74).

With this, we think of the key element in the movie Jim Comes to Joburg; that Jim eventually perseveres and makes it, but the bottom line is he only 'makes it' because of the generosity of his white boss, who offers him a contract. This key element; the continual regurgitation of blacks succeeding in the city only at the behest of white authority figures, is why many, many educated blacks in South Africa object to what is considered by the world over, especially in the white, non-colonial world…as one of the greatest classics concerning the tragedy of South African existences within the bonds of
apartheid, Cry the Beloved Country, written by Alan Patton (February, 83).

Cry the Beloved Country was written by Alan Patton as he toured the prisons of Europe and America throughout 1946, written from his Johannesburg experiences of reformatory administration before the elections of 1948, and at the very least, he offers a moving, evangelical lesson in the sad tale of Stephen Kumalo, a Zulu minister in the Anglican Church (Heywood, 122). He rushes to Johannesburg after receiving a letter from his sister stating that she is ill and in need of assistance.

When he reaches Johannesburg, he is almost immediately taken advantage of by a con man and loses a great deal of money; in short order he discovers his sister is a prostitute and a 'shebeen queen', (brewer of liquor), his brother John is now a self-important protest speaker who has left behind his faith for notoriety and a thriving carpentry business, apparently also leaving his wife for another, and his son Absalom - a fitting Biblical allusion to the wayward and traitorous son of King David - has lived the life of a juvenile delinquent: in and out of reform homes, getting the girl he lives with pregnant, involved with various, illegal schemes, and eventually sentenced to death for shooting a white man during a robbery.

In essence, everything touched by Johannesburg is tainted, spoiled, and ruined.

Very early on, the novel evokes all the best, vibrant images of the idyllic countryside as Kumalo prepares to leave for his perilous journey into Johannesburg. In the very first chapter, "…there is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any signing of it……if there is no mist, you look down into the fairest valleys of Africa. The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground, feeding the streams in every kloof" (Patton, pg. 33).

The Reverend is about to open the fateful letter that will send him on his journey; and even the letter coming from Johannesburg is "dirty…it had been in many hands, no doubt" (34). We are presented with the appropriate, dreadful vision of Johannesburg; a city in which "were many of his people", and all have not returned; his brother now with a successful business of his own, his sister looking for her husband, who had also traveled to Joburg to work in the mines and had never been heard of again, and his son Absalom, who had gone to look for his aunt, Kumalo's sister (34).

As Kumalo and his wife discuss what they should do in regards to the letter, an even more ominous picture of Johannesburg is painted. His wife laments wearily that their son is "…in Johannesburg ….when they go to Johannesburg, they do not come back", and Kumalo says in argument to use the money they've saved to go to his sister, "He went to Johannesburg, and as you said - when people go to Johannesburg, they do not come back. They do not even write anymore…..They go to Johannesburg, and there they are lost, and no one hears of them at all…." (39). This refrain is repeated many times over in various ways and snatches of dialogue throughout the next several chapters, but this perhaps is the most threatening prophetic vision in the book: Johannesburg is a black hole from which no tribal person ever returns, and is punctuated by a dread sense of inevitability with Kumalo's wearied musings as he passes into sleep on the train at the end of chapter 2: "All roads lead to Johannasburg. Through the long nights the trains pass to Johannasburg." (40).

The overall message of Patton's book is anti-racist; Bishop Msimangu's narrative concerning how it "suited the white man to break the tribe, but it has not suited him to build something in the place of what was broken" is only one example of Patton's attempts to illustrate the unequal state of affairs in South Africa (56). It was written with the best intentions, with deep, religious and spiritual overtones concerning faith and the rewards of faith, especially considering the reconciliation that comes at the end of the novel between Kumalo and the father of the man his son killed. However, many black South Africans balk at the usefulness of the narrative, because of the message - intended or not - that apartheid policies on black urbanization are justified, for the good of black South Africans (Smith, 4).

In this novel, there are no redeeming qualities to Johannesburg, despite the awe Kumalo feels at "…the buildings that are endless, the buildings, and the white hills, and the great wheels, and the streets without number..." (46), but it is also a city "...of the unknown…" where people trembled at the "…fear of the great city where boys were killed crossing the street…" a city that is sucking the countryside dry, because of "the mines, they cry, the mines. For many of them are going to (work in) the mines" (46), never to be seen again

The argument against this novel and its cinematic counterpart is that even though Patton may have written it to shine a light on the plight of blacks in South Africa, and in all reality, no other work has gained such a broad-spectrum appeal in its attempts to bring home the "terror of the black South African's existence", (February, pg. 84), its anti-urban message lends apartheid helping a hand. Many argue that the book was written and the movie essentially 'made for blacks' to reinforce the idea that the city was a bad, degrading place to be, and no matter how hard agricultural, rural life was - it was far better than living in the city (Smith, pg 5). Bishop Msimangu reflects this with his musings about the trams, "I am not a man of segregation, but it is a pity that we are not apart. They run trams from the centre of the city, and part is for the Europeans and part for us" (58).

In other words, South Africans should stay where they belong - in the country, for their own well-being.

In debating or formulating a critical analysis of the text's apparent useful or non-usefulness, one of the main flaws with Patton's story, despite his humble attempts to create a tale that pulls hard on the heartstrings, (and really, how can any person not be moved at the following refrain: "Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much" - pg. 111), is that the majority of the authority figures and those in charge of determining the fate of the black South African are still white. Because of this, Patton's experience and relation to the Zulu community must be exterior in nature, (Heywood, pg. 123) despite his best intentions and desires - not being native, black South African - how can he generate a work whose narrative is truly South African?

We think back to Jim making it in Joburg because of this white boss giving him a record contract, and as rich a tapestry as Beloved Country is, we are presented with the same structure of white authority. When trying to "educate" his rural brother Kumalo about the cosmopolitan ways of Johannesburg, John the carpenter, (an interesting parody of another carpenter that spoke vibrantly to crowds with itching ears? Most likely not, given Patton's devout religious leanings, but one can always ponder), he prefers to speak in English for he can "explain things better in English" (66). In Bishop Msimangu's speech about how the white man has broken the tribe, he prefaces it by saying, "It is not in my nature to hate the white man. It was a white man who brought my father out of darkness" (55), and here we see the reverence extended to the forces of colonial evangelism.

Talking to Kumalo about the lure of power to the rural native in explanation of what has happened to his brother John, Msimangu states: "Because the white man has power, we too want power, he said. But when a black man gets power, when he gets money, he is a great man if he is not corrupted. I have seen it often. He seeks power and money to put right what is wrong, and when he gets them, why, he enjoys the power and the money. Now he can gratify his lusts, now he can arrange ways to get white man's liquor, now he can speak to thousands and hear them clap their hands" (70). The underlying message? Because white men have power, blacks will want power as well, (a sort of racial 'monkey-see monkey do'), and that is bad, because it is a rare rural naïf who is not corrupted by the power white men take for granted, because they simply can't handle the temptation to satisfy their every rural whim.

It is a white worker at the reformatory that gives them their first lead on Absalom (97). Arthur Jarvis, a "courageous young man"; a man well known for his "social concerns" and his "efforts for the welfare of the non-European sections of the community" is ironically killed by the corrupted and ill-fated Absalom just as he was composing an essay dealing with the tragedies of native violence and crime (103-104). In an interlude in chapter 12, a speaker to a white audience draws applause with his statement, "I say we shall always have native crime to fear until the native people of this country have worthy purposes to inspire them and worthy goals to work for" (107). Who should give them these goals? Well, the white people, of course!

Of course, the eventual and almost foregone conviction of Absalom is bad enough for Kumalo and his tortured family, but, according to the young white man, it will also be bad for the reformatory - a presumably white staffed and run reformatory - because they will be accused of letting the boy out too early (126). He even has the audacity to remind Kumalo that he "must not think a parson's work is nobler" than his, that while Kumalo "saves souls. But I save souls also" (134). This white reformatory worker even takes some parental responsibility for the ruined native's life that he apparently reformed, saying, "I saw this Absalom born into a new world and now I shall see him out" (135).

Even the kind, gentle Father Vincent, the "rosy-cheeked priest from England" (129), the "one who wants to hear more about your country" when he is first introduced to Kumalo, who is "a white man and can say what must be said" (56) is an emblem of white power/authority, as he gently takes the hurting Kumalo's hands into his own and promises to do "…anything, he says, anything. You have only to ask. I shall do anything" (129).

Indeed, a closer reading of the text provides this writer an undecided position concerning Patton's ultimate schema concerning where the black South African should be. Yes, he is writing to illustrate the pain and tragedy of their harsh life; yes, he is writing to bring attention to the trials and tribulations suffered by those who have lost an integral part of themselves in the devouring juggernaut that is Johannesburg …but what does he say should be done, or can be done? Or is it necessary for him to provide a solution at all?

It is hard to tell whether or not Patton is satirizing the lie that was the temptation of working in the mines of Joburg in John's little "sermon" to his brother on pages 66-67. John is explaining, (in the grand fashion he has become accustomed to, because of course, black men cannot resist the notoriety that comes with power), how things are changing, how, as the tribal society is falling apart, "…it is here in Johannesburg that the new society is being built. Something is happening here, my brother" (67). He goes on to pronounce working in the mines of Joburg as the future of the tribal man. "Here in Johannesburg, it is the mines, he said, everything is the mines. These high buildings, this wonderful City Hall, this beautiful Parktown with its beautiful houses, all this built with the gold from the mines" (67).

He propounds that because "everything in Johannesburg is the mines"; every modern and sophisticated aspect of the huge city depending on the gold mined by natives, then in reality, everything in Johannesburg was not built on the mines but was "built on our backs, our sweat, on our labour. Every factory, every theatre, every beautiful house, they are built by us. And what does a chief (of a homeland) know about that? But here in Johannesburg…they know" (68). With a grave sense of assurance, he assures them; Msimangu and Kumalo, that because of this, "There is a new thing growing here…stronger than any church or chief. You will see it one day" (68).

It is common for authors to take viewpoints and perspectives they themselves disagree with and compile a character that embodies those viewpoints and perspectives, merely for the purpose of satirizing them and making a point against them. Writers have been using satire as a part of their proving process for ages, going all the way back to Swift's A Modest Proposal and his grim hangman's-humor solution to the overpopulation of England - the boiling of babies for dinner. Samuel Clements did this very successfully in the creation of Huck Finn's abusive and drunken father Pap; who embodies what most of us would consider to be the vilest traits known to humankind, but also possessed eloquent and well-versed opinions about why black men should not be able to vote or be free - a character that may have made many a well-respected, gentlemanly, sophisticated southern plantation owner with similar views look askance at the character when The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published.

However, it is simply not clear as to what side of the fence Patton falls upon with his various interludes where characters carry on diatribes concerning the white man's burden of taking care of the rural blacks. In Chapter 12, in one of Patton's many narrative interludes, he takes us into the perspective and minds of white South Africans and how they view their rural African neighbors. A Mr. de Villiars approaches a board, proposing that it is the white South African's responsibility to pay for a black's schooling, because "if we wait till native parents can pay for it, we will pay more heavily in other ways" (107). A visitor at the local zoo wonders why they can't have separate visiting days for natives and white South Africans, and wonders if they couldn't have a separate recreation center as well (108-109).

Some "cry for the cutting up of South Africa without delay into separate areas, where white can live without black, and black without white, where black can farm their own land and mine their own minerals and administer their own laws", while others "cry away with the compound system, that brings men to the towns without their wives and children, and breaks up the tribe and the house and the man and they ask for the establishment of villages for the labourers in mines and industry" (109). The poor whites are given a voice, as they wonder "how they will fashion a land of peace where black outnumbers white so greatly", "who knows how to fashion such a land? For we fear not only the loss of our possessions, but the loss of our superiority and the loss of our whiteness" (110).

Unfortunately, as satire it falls short somewhat, failing in the face of Marlene van Niekerke's Triomf, whose ridiculous, perversely warped main characters the Benades wait in desperate terror for the elections that may set blacks loose upon them all; their apocalyptic fears connected with the equally bizarre apocalyptic coming of Lambert's next birthday and his one and only chance at spending the night with a woman. Here is real satire; it is imaginable that respectable, "un-incestial" white South African families would cringe in horror to imagine they had anything in common with the carnivalesque grotesqueness of the Benades.

In evaluating a text in this way, one must always be aware that the line between depicting something for the sake of a story and promoting something as a personal belief to be spread is often very hazy indeed. As a novel that depicts the complexity of the situation of South Africa, puts into words the grief of those touched by its violence and racial hatred, and pronounces good and right the laws of forgiveness, mercy, and reconciliation between aggrieved parties in the characters of Reverend Kumalo and Mr. Jarvis, Cry the Beloved Country is indeed a remarkable piece of literature.

However, it has been treated with caution and wariness by many black South Africans, because of the haziness of what side of the 'line' it comes down upon. Is it a protest novel denouncing apartheid and its evils, or is it a subtle variation of the Jim Comes to Joburg theme, wrapped up in a nice little Christian, evangelical package with mercy and forgiveness towards all - even white oppressors - as a sparkling red ribbon? Some critics over the years have found the Reverend Kumalo as an unacceptable black South African character, because he personified the good, healthy life of the Homeland reserves, a South African 'Uncle Tom', if you will, (February, pg. 84), whose nature as a character seems to promote the ultimate moral advantages of the South African black living in the country (84).

Others simply felt that while the novel told its tale well, other stories, such as Black Hamlet, which introduced the conflict of and the terror of the black individual in 1947, before Patton's novel, is hardly ever referred to (February, pg. 84). And for others, while Patton's novel strikes all the right emotional tones, it simply does not go far enough in its anti-oppressor viewpoint, perhaps because Patton could never quite divorce himself from his whiteness and his image of the leader of the now defunct Liberal Party of South Africa; that perhaps he believed there was more good in working against the 'machine of apartheid' from inside the machine, rather than overthrowing it altogether (February, pg. 83).

In this dogged pursuit of a cultural narrative that is uniquely and vibrantly South African and representative of the 'people' as critics so often like to throw around, how then are writers to write the African city and its countryside without falling into the looming maw of Joburg and find themselves on the receiving end of criticism that they are buying into a stereotypical genre? That so many works of literature and drama should represent a theme of tension between city and country values, portraying the suffering of a protagonist while in the throes of social convulsions created by a transversing of rural and urban spaces is by no means a new literary element. Neither is it an indictment that they belong in the Jim comes to Joburg category, nor evidence that the author(s) or playwright(s) are intentionally trying to cash into the stereotypical vision of the rural naïf unable to handle the big white city.

Nadine Gordimer writes, "It's axiomatic that the urban theme contains classic crises: tribal and traditional values against Western values, peasant modes of life against the modes of an industrial proletariat, and, above all, the quotidian humiliations of a black man's world made to a white man's specifications" (February, pg .82) In other words, in writing to represent the city and the countryside, the reader is inevitably going to be presented with the image of the townman against the tribesman (82).

Nevertheless, opposition to this theme and portrayal of the black South African stretches all the way back to the protests against the Land Act of 1913 and Native Representation Act of 1936 (Heywood, pg. 26). Protests against successive Acts designed to enforce apartheid policy erupted at a convention in 1955 at Kliptown, a town on the outskirts of Johannesburg. The convention was intended to be a peaceful meeting surrounding the Freedom Charter, a document ratified by the Congress of the People in Kliptown that desired to put more power into the hands of the people, stating, "that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people", but in the end it was violently broken up by riots and protesting.

The following arrests and trials of those at the meeting eventually paved the way for the rise of Black Consciousness in the sixties, a more aggressive, almost militaristic movement (26). Preceding this movement, perhaps even laying the foundations for it was the formation of the already mentioned literary magazine Drum in 1951. This literary magazine, with its eclectic combination of reporting, prose, protest writing, and humor inspired many writers and playwrights to come, and perhaps even born out of this was a reaction to the Jim Comes to Joburg and apartheid polices, a literary genre called protest writing, or, as Horn calls in the theatrical arena, The Theatre of Criticism and Confrontation (Barber/Horn, pg. 76).

"There is no time to be showing thighs….If we go on with these kinds of capering productions, we will take another thousand years to cope with the real demands of theatre" (76). This quotation from South African stage actor Moalusi John Ledwaba expresses well the contempt that grew in the 1970s for commercial productions pandering to western tastes and visions of South African culture. Born in the turbulence surrounding the Soweto uprisings of 1976, a new black drama rejected the commercial, entertainment driven plays of the past in favor of plays portraying developing political awareness, leading towards the ultimate goal: liberation (76). However, by nature human beings are mutable, varied beings, and as such so are their expressive creations; thus the paths that these works of drama and literature claimed led to such liberation were varied, and by no measures agreed upon unequivocally (76). There developed within South Africa's own opposition a perceptual and conceptual division; ironically, opposition with opposition concerning the…opposition.

One camp claims stridently, vigorously that all of South Africa's inequities devolve ultimately back to racial issues, and when the whites are successively thrown out of the region, a new, native society will emerge, founded on the tribal, pre-colonial, traditional African community values, (76), and the theme of the oppressing settler and apartheid forces someday being overthrown by those oppressed has, over time, worked its way throughout much of South Africa's more nationalistic literature (Abrams, pg. 1). That literature is used as a vehicle for revolutionary, radical change is nothing new; literature is the story of life; of people's lives intersecting and crossing over the paths and spaces of others lives, separate from and yet connected to a larger story, so it is natural that stories about something that is always subject to change, from within and without - life - would be used as a vehicle of change.

Also, if literature is about life, it must have something to say about how to improve that which it is written about. However, as stated by writer and University of Edinburgh professor Eustace Palmer, though literature can certainly impact people's lives for the better, the impact is often something that can't be quantified in tangible results people are normally accustomed to, it cannot be calculated like money in the bank, or stocks and bonds on the market (Adams/Meyes - Palmer, pg. 37). It often improves our lives in small, less radical and revolutionary, invisible ways (Palmer, pg, 38).

According to Palmer, African Literature should be part of the cultural awareness that has grown with the rise of African Nationalism, but he posits the question as to whether or not every African writer should feel the imperative to push through the ideological and political transformation of African society, as many writers in the protest school of thought are convinced is necessary (46).

There is a current movement within African literature that, very similarly to the Theater of Criticism and Confrontation , believes that not only should their works be hearkening calls pointing out all the flaws and deficiencies of the system, but also rallying points behind which the South African people should be mobilized to implement change in that system. Like the Theater of Criticism, they see the dominance of the 'neo-colonialist bourgeoisie' as the sole source of Africa's problems. Development to them means the overthrow of this system and replacement by the power of the people, and literature should therefore be used to bring about this revolution (47).

Just as the Jim Comes to Joburg genre is flawed because of a white perspective trying to tell a South African narrative, as flawed as Cry the Beloved Country is with the predominance of white figures of power showing mercy upon poor black natives, it is apparent that protest literature is essentially flawed as well because of the element of narrow-mindedness towards a goal that its proponents assume is the same as all other South Africans and South African writers.

This is not to say that writers falling into this category are ignoring a segment of the South African populace that actually prefers oppression, but that these writers and creators hold to the belief that this is all South African literature should do: throw down the oppressors, and that all other creative efforts are nonessential and wasted, because there is neither the time nor the luxury for them (47). They are assuming that their perspective of contemporary African culture, much as those credited with spawning the Joburg genre were in the past, is inherently correct, and that African writers need only address certain, important issues (47).

Any kind of control over the creative process is tainting, be it for noble or ignoble reasons, and in many ways, this didactic stance of protest writers and the Theater of Criticism has caused frustration for many South African writers who are passionate about their works; passionate about creating a true cultural voice for South Africa. Many of these writers have been severely criticized for not advocating radical movements for change in their narratives, because, according to the protest school of writing, such writers make no worthwhile contributions to what they consider to be development (47).
Writer and poet Ngugi wa Thiong'o has interesting views on the subject, claiming that pioneering African protest writers diagnosed the problems of pre-independence Africa wrong; instead of attacking the species of colonialism - simple political domination by one race of another - they should have attacked neo-imperialism, the oppression of the poor by economic means (48).

Because they were wrong in their diagnosis, the literature written to attack it was ineffective, and thus the neo-imperialistic system of oppression was still in place after independence, with a new black bourgeois taking the place of their former white oppressors. Though criticizing their attempts at satire and literary ridicule to bring about change, Thiong'o clearly places himself in the protest school by stating that once African writers switch strategies and begin attacking neo-imperialism, they will find their writing to be more effective, and change will come much more quickly than by their old methods (48).

Out of this has developed a shift in the Theatre of Criticism and the literary school of protest writing towards putting more emphasis on class and economic stratification in South Africa, rather than focusing on race as the sole agent of oppression in the apartheid system (Barber/Horn, pg. 77). Because of this, the pathways of writers and playwrights have become blurred and decentralized, works are not easily categorized, and just knowing the creator's political affiliation is no longer enough to deconstruct their works for meaning (77).

So the search for a cultural narrative continues. In the past are narratives that even though well intentioned - or oftentimes just blatantly commercial - were invariably influenced and directed by a non-South African worldview and perspective, and in the present has been born a whole generation of literature that was conceived in protest of this past genre; a school of thought that believes literary inspiration only holds any value in South Africa if it calls for radical political, social, and philosophical change and the overthrow of oppressors, be they white or black.

Two novels in a particular stands out as successful attempts at creating a narrative that seeks a true South African narrative; a story that utilizes elements of the Jim Comes to Joburg them, but for their own discourses and affairs, and while they show and depict forces and elements of oppression, they are not tainted by the rhetoric of protest literature and more closely tied to the word of the people, to the life of the "everyday" in South Africa. One of them was written by a playwright who first emerged in the second division of Horn's Theater of Criticism that leaned toward the economic inequalities rather than racial inequalities, (Barber/Horn, pg. 77), and that is Zakes Mda, author of Ways of Dying.

In Ways of Dying, we are introduced to Toloki, a professional mourner who has made grieving for the dead his livelihood. Early in the novel, during one of his performances, he recognizes a "homegirl" from the old village, Noria. This calls up images of his youth living on the countryside, and as the story progresses, the narrative - told by the omniscient third person "we of the village" narrator - slips back and forth between the respective lives of Noria and Toloki as they struggle from their provincial, countryside origins to making their way to the novel's unnamed, anonymous city, surpassing violence, death, and personal hardship and tragedy to finally make some sort of life together in a rural squatter settlement on the outskirts of the city. We of the village watch with hopeful yet dreadful anticipation the unfolding of 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.

In the end, they enjoy a measure of peace and happiness, because as Noria tells Bhut'Shaddy when the successful but recently beaten up taxi driver tries one last time to woo her, (albeit from a hospital bed), "He (Toloki) knows how to live", (144), and Toloki realizes with shocked wonder that for all his wisdom and common sense, "It is Noria who knows how to live" (169).

These realizations by Mda's main characters mark the novel as one with a different story to tell; it is not a protest story laced with political discourse and ideological symbolism about overthrowing an oppressor; it is about two people who make a peace with their space and their lots within that space; about two people and their everyday lives. Thus, it has been called by many as a postcolonial novel, a genre or school of thought that is most assuredly still a transient and in-development being. According to Rita Banard, Ways of Dying performs and helps us perform the task held out for the postcolonial critic; it "compels us to contemplate one of the most striking thresholds of recent history - the demise of the apartheid regime - in an antic and even grotesque fashion, and as part of an ongoing and far from straightforward process of decolonization" (Banard, pg. 279).

In other words, this is the story of the everyday life of people living in the oftentimes tragicomic reality of post-apartheid Africa, where violence is still prevalent, decay and prosperity are juxtaposed against progress and rampant poverty, and in many cases, black oppressors have slipped into the seats vacated by white oppressors - and yet, people somehow still have to find a way to live through and in spite of it all.

Throughout the novel, Ways of Dying toys with the familiar Jim Comes to Joburg theme; the elements of the genre have not died with the death of apartheid, it lives on in an altered, ghostly form that is a mere shadow of its original self. 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. After divesting himself from a father that does not love him, Toloki begins his "odyssey to a wondrous world of riches and freedom" (59), on his way to search for "love and fortune" (60). After the death of her son Vutha, Noria decides to go to the city to start a "new life" (95) where the city streets were "paved with diamonds and gold" (135).

In familiar Joburg fashion, both are sourly disappointed when they reach the city. Noria finds that instead of streets of gold lined with diamonds, there are streets full of mud and open sewers (135). Toloki, after an initial success as a boarwors vendor, is left penniless when he is "mugged" when his portable grill is trashed (123), and metaphorically "mugged" by Nefolovhodowe's rejection of him, a fellow village, when he goes to him for help.

However, Mda 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, especially in Cry the Beloved Country. 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 as 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).

Perhaps the greatest differences between Ways of Dying and classic Joburg novels like the still often discussed and argued over Cry the Beloved Country are the racial representations of authority figures and how the characters utilize their space in both novels. In Cry the Beloved Country, Reverend Kumalo is a helpless figure completely at the mercy of others throughout the whole novel. As shown earlier, he turns several times to white authorities for help and solace, and the ultimate salvation of the novel lies with the white Mr. Jarvis' willingness to reconcile with Reverend Kumalo by endowing the minister's church and bringing agricultural reform to Kumalo's district. The prosperous future depicted in the novel lies in the murder man's son, a white boy, who befriends Reverend Kumalo and learns Zulu form him, giving the aged minister a sense of importance and purpose in the closing pages of the novel.

In Ways of Dying, the narrative focuses on the lives of both Noria and Toloki as they, despite falling upon hard times and moments of desperation, are mastered by no one, least of all the spaces they traverse. Whence upon entering Johannesburg, Kumalo is repeatedly mastered by the spaces around him, he is at their mercy; whereas Toloki and Noria master the spaces around them for their own benefit and uses. Toloki, out of work, rejected by a fellow villager who has forgotten his rural roots, (once again, a ghost from Joburg past, reminiscent of John the carpenter and the reborn Jim as he walks past poor black laborers, ignoring them), creates his own profession, his own niche, that of a Professional Mourner. When Noria and Toloki create their new home together in the squatter settlement; in the imagination of the "garden" they create in their minds, they are using the space around them, rather than being used by it.

This utilization of the spaces around them, in spite of the deaths of both of Noria's sons; in spite of the personal rejection
and humiliation that "ugly Toloki" has suffered, can be seen to come to a culmination near the end of the novel, when Noria at long last sings once again as she did as a child for Jwara, but this time for Toloki as he does what he also has not done since childhood: draw (199). He draws like a man possessed; excited, invigorated, drawing children playing and faces and pictures of all those around; he is the picture of a man who has had something vital, something important returned to him, rather than stolen, like is shown in so many classic Joburg stories.

More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that it has not been given to him by a white authority or knocked down by an oppressor-over thrower, but it has been given to him by his fellow village-mate, his homegirl and new life-mate in the settlement, Noria. Perhaps this is where Barnard surmises that Mda suggests to us through his narrative that the hope for any kind of change lies not with the beautiful people, but with the improvisational ways of the poor, (Barnard, pg. 286), for it is they who really know how to live, how to change the space around them, even if it is only the mental space on the inside.

The onlookers of Toloki's newly inspired work declare it to be genius. They read meaning into the pictures like they read meaning into Noria and Toloki's shack, even though they don't really know what that meaning, they know it is there nonetheless, and that it is indeed profound - and that is enough for them (200). In this, perhaps we have Mda's statement concerning meaning in literature, and we see reflections of Eustace Palmer's belief that the value in literature is often not something to be held or counted or possessed, that is something of a more transitional nature.

An excellent and final example of a piece of South African literature that strives to find a unique narrative not bound by cultural stereotypes or protest rhetoric is Welcome to Our Hillbrow, by Phaswane Mpe. The novel, like Ways of Dying, beckons the Joburg ghost for its own narrative purposes as it opens very early with a powerful Joburgish image. Once again, a third person, God-like narrator that seems to be all of South Africa 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 Tiragalong High 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).

In this we are presented with clear resonations of Jim and his passion for traveling to Joburg, and number of Kumalo's people who had traveled to the Golden City, never to return.

The narrative continues this presentation of the Joburg theme by recounting the tale of one of its fallen, a young man who had 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 an urban caused problem, because of the bizarre, sexual behavior of the Hillbrowans, and urban-dwelling people in genersal (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, though, we see much of the same 'leveling', if you will, that took place in Mda's Ways of Dying, as well as several hallmarks that mark it as being different from both Joburg literature and protest literature. 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 nove