Trauma in the telling

Post-Traumatic: New South African Short Stories,
Edited by Chris van Wyk and Vagn Plenge
2003
Botsotso Publishing
240 pages

Review by Gary Cummiskey

Not only is the publication of this new anthology of South African short stories welcome in itself, but it is also a particularly long-overdue surprise in view of its curious conception and history. Post-Traumatic was born as a result of a chance suggestion by Danish organisation South African Contact to author and editor Chris van Wyk about putting together an anthology of stories by South African writers regarding their experiences and responses to the post-apartheid era. Van Wyk contacted about 50 local writers about the project, selecting the 22 stories that form the anthology. Once compiled, the anthology appeared in Denmark in 2000, under the title of Opbrud, naturally in Danish. It was thus that the contributors saw their work published in a foreign language overseas, while back home the manuscript battled to find a publisher – a reflection of the appalling state of South African publishing – until finding a home with Botsotso.

The collection opens somewhat quietly with Johnny Masilela's 'A Grain of Sorghum', a tale of rural childhood in which innocence is slowly subjected to erosion by a mother's mental illness. In fact, violation of childhood innocence – whether sudden or gradual, intentional or unintentional – is a recurrent theme in this anthology. Chris van Wyk's 'Magic' contrasts the light-hearted magical realm of childhood with a gradual awareness of domestic violence, alcoholism, social inequality and depravation. Rachelle Greeff's 'Swartland' disturbingly unveils the horrors of incest and murder in an isolated rural setting, while Rayda Jacobs' 'You are the daughter' deals with the trauma of child rape within an urban environment, as does Roshila Nair's 'A Certain Ki

'Violation of childhood innocence – whether sudden or gradual, intentional or unintentional – is a recurrent theme in this anthology'

nd of Love.'

Another theme in the anthology, and a hardly surprising one considering South Africa's turbulent past, is that reconciliation, not only with the historical past, but also with subjective values, prejudices and guilt. George Weideman's 'Compress' traces a young man's journey to rural Namibia to visit his estranged, dying father. Barry Hough's 'Change' studies a young woman's psychological response to, and final acceptance of, the violence of a transitional South Africa, while Farida Karodia's excellent 'A Chance Encounter' deals with an academic's return to South Africa and his chance meeting with an Indian woman whom he had sheltered as a child many years before during the apartheid years.

South Africa's political past and the issue of reconciliation becomes more pointedly portrayed in Achmat Dangor's 'Sexually Transmitted Diseases', which focuses on a close-knit group of friends and the shocking realisation that one of them may have been an apartheid-era police-spy. Even more direct, Maureen Isaacson's 'The Spy Who Loved Me' is a tense and gripping story of a woman journalist who finds herself an involuntary social guest of a group of apartheid-state murderers who have been summoned before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

More traumatic experiences of the new South Africa are expressed in Moira Lovell's 'There's Too Much Sky', wherein the white woman narrator becomes a victim of mugging and housebreaking, and retreats from a threatening social reality. By contrast, in Maropodi Mapalakanye's 'Dance Cycles', a black male playwright and former activist becomes a mentally unstable social outcast.

Some of the stories in Post-Traumatic drift over the border of reality and plunge into an unsettling surreal landscape: Ken Barris's 'Cat Got Your Tongue' is a dream-like narrative about a child murderer, Alan Kolski Horwitz's 'Gemors' concentrates on the drug- and alcohol- induced hallucinations of two lovers in the social squalor of downtown Jo'burg, while Zachariah Raphola's 'Lesiba The Calligrapher' studies the tragic consequences of religious self-righteousness and delusion. 'Julie and The Axeman' by Finuala Dowling is an unsettling tale of fantasy become reality when one least expects it.

Two stories in Post-Traumatic deal almost exclusively with adult relationships and their associated dilemmas: Arja Salafranca's Sanlam award-winning 'Couple on the Beach' is a sensitive study of an inhibited relationship nipped in the bud, while Roy Blumenthal's sardonic poetry-and-prose narrative 'A Mother, Her Daughter and a Lover' explores a bizarre love triangle.

Two stories towards the end of the collection, Graeme Friedman's 'A Spy in The House of Art' and Ivan Vladislavic's 'The New Ford Kafka', stand apart from the others, due to their more intellectually distanced, but no less imperative, approach. The first story questions the role of communication – and particularly of fiction – in the cyber era, while Vladislavic's tale examines the pressing issue of art in the service of industry.

The collection closes quietly with Gcina Mhlope's 'Sweet Honey Nights', reminding us that the source of stories is not only found in books, high culture and literature, but in folk tales, the tales of our parents and grandparents, stories told in social gatherings and on the street corner, or even – as editor Chris van Wyk disturbingly reminds us in his introduction – in the horrors of history such as the revelations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But, equally importantly, Mhlope also reminds us that one of the functions of art is to assist us to confront – and overcome – the potentially damaging obstacles of history.

Finally, I congratulate Botsotso Publishing on an excellent production and invaluable contribution to South African literature. Botsotso has proved that 'small publishing' ventures can succeed and offer hope to local writers.

Gary Cummiskey is a poet and publisher, he lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is active in promoting new writing