Durban playwright and author Ronnie Govender got the best first book award in this year’s Commonwealth Writers Prize. He spoke to SUZY BELL
RONNIE GOVENDER, director of Durban’s Playhouse Company, recently won first place in the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in the category for best first book for his collection At the Edge and other Cato Manor Stories.
The book verges on being a collection of sentimental anti-apartheid memories, but it’s not. Just the mention of Cato Manor – as with District Six and Sophiatown – sparks remembrances of apartheid horror, as well as paeans to what was destroyed.
Ruthless upheavals of more than 180 000 people took place in 1958 when Cato Manor was declared a white area. This is the unsettling historical backdrop for each of the 14 short stories in Govender’s book . But then the question arises:is At the Edge is a feat of historical reconstruction, or an achievement of the literary imagination? “It’s not strictly historical,” says Govender, “although some of the characters come from real life.”
And those character exude innocence and charm. In the story Lala Phansi, Sonny-Boy Budhram is described as a “slim, handsome six-footer with a smile that was calculated to seduce the girls as it seduced him every time he looked in the mirror, and that was for the major part of his life”. But the next sentence firmly tucks the idea way too far into bed. “In fact, it seemed that the mirror was invented specially for him. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who’s the fairest, er, handsomest of all?”
And the story Saris, Bangles and Bees could be seen as sexist, or perhaps ambiguous. Ayakanoo, has “nightmares” about his wife Savithree’s “sexy, sari-clad hips”. Nothing nightmarish about that, unless he hates women, perhaps? You may also feel slightly tetchy about the need “to keep Savvy just that little bit uncombative and maybe even sexually forthcoming”.
The strength of the book lies in its use of colloquial language. Govender has a fine ear for the fluid, musical rhythms of speech. The dialogue is soulful and very funny. His hit play Lahnee’s Pleasure was a success for the same reasons.
“I love being able to capture an entire world in speech patterns,” says Govender. “I’m a keen listener and make many mental notes of the nuances in speech, like `I’m only saying for a word’ -to me that’s incredibly charming. So even if it’s not the king’s English it is still literature.” (Yet he still has a weakness for the old clich “black as the ace of spades”.)
Govender himself has been at the receiving end of racism. As a young playwright, he had to live with the notion of being known, as he tells it, as “that little coolie boy in Natal who wrote little coolie plays”.
He still has to tolerate patronising reviews, such as that by a “cheap, small minded Durban critic” who said of stage adaptations of four of m his At the Edge stories: “There is no doubt we need to see more Indian actors and their plays on the stages of this province, but perhaps the characters are too culturally specific and therefore lose out on general appeal.”
Yeah right! So let’s just dismiss Under Milkwood, Ulysses and the stories of Herman Charles Bosman. The very fact of Govender’s cultural specificity is the source of his popularity – it is Govender’s ability to write with such affection of the Cato Manor community he knew so well.
Nevertheless, Govender will knock what he calls the “Sunday Times coolie extra”, and remind us how “Eurocentric” the Grahamstown festival used to be. He went to the Edinburgh Festival instead. But Govender’s major gripe is that his book is “not openly displayed and sometimes not even on the shelves”. To break into these “largely white-dominated book stores is seriously problematic”, he moans.
So how many copies of At the Edge are available at bookstores in his hometown? An Adams staff-member said “the computer” indicated “38 books in stock and four books on display”. Later it transpired there were six on display and none in stock, which was blamed on a new computer programme.
Musgrave Adams said they were sold out, but that’s not as promising as it sounds – they had only ordered two or three books. After Govender’s recent award, however, they plan to re-order. Exclusive Books (Pavilion) have two copies, but none in stock. Adams at the University of Natal confirmed they had two copies of the book, “but we are waiting for more press coverage before we re-order”.
So here’s some coverage, guys!