Shirley Kossick
OKAVANGO GODS by Anthony Fleischer (David Philip)
CHILDISH THINGS by Marita van der Vyver, translated by Madeleine van Biljon (Penguin)
In Okavango Gods, Anthony Fleischer tells the story of Pula Barotse, a Hambukushu youth who straddles the divide between Western modernity and the ancient beliefs and myths of his own “people of the swamp”.
Drawing him to the former is his close friend Julia Pinto, daughter of the Portuguese doctor in Shakawe, which is situated at the head of the Okavango delta. Pula’s father, on the other hand, reminds him of his special status as the child of a mugrodi or rain-mother who, uniquely, has been saved from sacrifice.
This is Fleischer’s seventh novel and, as in the earlier works – most notably Children of Adamastor – he draws on his profound knowledge of and feeling for the African continent in all its complexity. Sometimes gentle and at other times savage, the spirit of Africa informs the narrative throughout. Fleischer also draws on the Babylonian legend of Gilgamesh with its account of warlike adventures, friendship and, above all, the great flood.
Yet Okavango Gods is not simply a meditation on varying myths and traditions, but an exciting and immediate adventure story. Pula and Julia contend first with the vicious enmity of Potlako Lereng, whose thin sword made from a bicycle spoke is “an evil cattle-killing weapon, in evil hands”.
The human dangers encountered by the couple are as nothing compared with the enormity of the flood that overtakes the Okavango region. Fleischer’s powers of description are particularly evident here as the archetypal cataclysm sweeps up Pula and Julia, dragging them “to the centre line of the current where they tumbled along with the debris from the land, like bits of damp rag”.
Julia’s terror in the face of this primaeval threat takes on an atavistic colouring as she imagines devils who “would cut her body into little pieces … They would use her for their own dark purposes. She would be disposed of in ugly pieces, fuel for their power, food for them.”
In contrast to the impassioned prose of this section is the much more measured and objective tone of the pilot who flies a mercy plane over the area. This versatility of style is a further indication of Fleischer’s mastery of his material in what is a fast-moving and highly readable novel.
Of a different order is another South African novel, Childish Things, Marita van der Vyver’s second adult novel, now out in paperback. Both this book and Entertaining Angels were first published in Afrikaans and, like her three children’s novels, were widely acclaimed.
Set in an imaginary Lowveld town, Childish Things centres on the first- person narrator’s recollections of growing up in the 1970s. Seen from a standpoint in the 1990s, that time strikes Mart as “probably the most ephemeral decade in the history of the world”.
A sound observation, perhaps, of the fashion, music and dance crazes, but in South Africa at least, one event was to have a lasting and indelible effect. The Soweto uprising of 1976, which comes as a total surprise to Mart and her friends, not only forms a climactic moment in the book, but alters both the country and the characters’ perception of it.
Though this is not a specifically political novel, Van der Vyver subtly shows how politics do, in fact, underlie most of the action. The whites in the story know little of what is going on around them and when Mart’s mother suggests that the government has been lying about South Africa’s involvement in Angola, her husband’s reply is bland, not to say dismissive: “Well, if they’re doing that, they’ll have a very good reason.”
Childish Things tells a good story about characters who evoke one’s sympathy. The translation is smooth but vigorous, retaining a convincing South African flavour.