“The book feels like Yizo Yizo (whose soundtrack was almost always playing in my head as I read it) meets Kings of Jo’burg, with a winking homage to Vusamazulu (meaning “resurrect the heavens”) Credo Mutwa’s Indaba, my children. The fans of Sifiso Mzobe (who blurbed the book) and his Young blood and Tshidiso Moletsane’s Junx will find much to like in this book. These books fall under the genre termed narcoliterature in Mexico. The pressing question for me is whether this genre has meaningful social and cultural value – whether it is enough for literature just to expose and mirror back to us what is happening in our age. My resounding answer is yes. Literature is not a sub-department of sociology or law, which are compelled to provide policy direction that curbs the ills of our society. And so, I ask these questions not as an apologia for purity of art as a means towards salvation. But, since this is also Youth Month, perhaps it is opportune to take a closer look into the culture of fetishising money as a symbol of the success these books mirror back to us. Have we, as a society, gone too far in obsessing about money as a status symbol, even with glamourised lifestyles that are associated with violent hassling for soft life. Our preoccupation with the Thabo Bester and Nandipha Magudumana saga, the predilections for criminality in order to get rich, and the obsession for soft life at all costs, provide another spotlight for the prevailing values of our society.
Then there’s a Lucky Dube character in Qwabe’s book who has enigmatic tendencies. His preternatural visions introduce us to the mystical abilities of communicating with the dead, like the personality of Henry Cele, through art. Through this, The resurrection limns well our contemporary problems in black communities, our superstitions and gullibility. These make us easy victims to scams (religious and financial). They make us readily appeal to false apotropaic powers when confronted with confounding situations. This, methinks, is also the reason behind the rise of fake appropriation of ukuthwasa (being called by ancestors to be an igqirha) practices, especially with the youth, who appropriate this wrongly as some form of going back to our traditional roots. There is a serious identity crisis within our black communities which manifests mostly in our youth. It leads them to venerate false solutions and shortcuts towards success.” Mphuthumi Ntabeni (LitNet)
Photo of the first review of the Resurrection. (from City Press – 11 June 2023)
Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a South African author living in Cape Town. His debut novel The Broken River Tent won the University of Johannesburg Debut Novel Prize in 2019. He worked with the drama department of Rhodes University on two plays he wrote for the South African National Arts Festival about Maqoma and his half-brother Sandile, both of whom had been Xhosa chiefs. He has a passionate interest in South Africa’s frontier history and the wars of land dispossession. His most recent novel The Wanderers was published in 2021.
Sphesihle Vusimuzi Qwabe was born in a small Kwazulu-Natal village. He was raised by his grandmother who, as a retired teacher, read to her grandchildren every evening. He is 29 years old and works for a Foschini store in Johannesburg. Sphesihle completed a national diploma in public relations. He spends every lunch break reading and then writes every evening when he gets home. He writes because he firmly believes that this is what he was meant to do; it is his calling and contribution to this world. He is never so at peace as when he holds a pen in his hand. He is fully committed to the art of writing and is determined to make writing his full-time occupation.
