A 16-year-old boy from Soweto has been widely praised for his sketches of township life
Greg Marinovich
Nkululeko Jenetwa, like many teenage boys, has a fascination with cartoons. Instead of joining his friends playing soccer and whistling at girls on the streets of Mapetla, Soweto, he spends his time indoors, inventing a world of cartoons that are a unique reflection of township life.
Television ignited such a passion for cartoons in Nkululeko (16) that he swopped his radio-cassette for a box of coloured pencils. In May, he used them to create Me and My Crazy World: My Township Years, an illustrated tale of the life of NJ, an 11- year-old boy living in Duncan Village township near East London. Next month his drawings go on exhibition in Johannesburg.
In NJ’s world, every path is a zig-zag. Boys obsess over their female teachers, flirting with the good-looking ones (“Miss Pretty Nose, where do babies come from?”) and baiting the ones they dislike (“Miss Jakes, how come you are the ugliest in the school?”).
In the chapter entitled A Visit to Town, NJ visits his grandmother, who is a domestic worker in town, and sneaks a luxurious bath: “I never knew white man’s bath would be so warm.”
While he’s bathing, a mugger accosts a helpless old man in a city alley, but the young author finds that scene too painful to draw.
The world of Nkululeko has a pure South African resonance, though the characters seem to be devoid of race. There’s a practical reason: “I see them as black, but I was short of a brown pen, that’s all,” he says.
Cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, aka Zapiro, says he was stunned at the talent and output displayed by Nkululeko, who scripted and drew Me and My Crazy World in just three weeks.
“Staggering,” he says. “Also staggering is that he has had no training. Usually you find a strict adherence to one form of comic. What he does is far more risky and more absorbing than something slicker.”
One of the cartoon characters has to survive a school where the principal can’t understand why the scholars do not liked being caned and, when he gets home, his mother refuses to let him sleep with her because, as she tells him: “You always pee when you sleep next to me.” But he is sustained by visions of former archbishop Desmond Tutu in a township-bound train. “Sharp, Majita,” the good bishop assures him rather enigmatically.
“He has so many other strong and promising points. The stuff you can’t teach is what he has got: real creativity and a real passion to reproduce what is going on around him,” says Zapiro. The anecdotes and jokes made Zapiro laugh out loud – he finds Nkululeko’s insights and satirical takes of pop culture profound and hilarious – like the township characters who hate having to take muti, because it has no salt or sugar.
It’s not all jollity. When shebeen owner Bra Spokes’s nephew is hanged for murder, the tautly drawn frames lead us to a speech from the gallows and finally a scene of utter despair as other prisoners worry about who will be next, their speech bubbles filled with mindless jabber. In fact, it is Bra Spokes who has the kiss of death – 92 people have died in “accidents” at his shebeen, he confesses to us.
Other things to be feared in NJ’s world are family gatherings, gangsters, witches, politically motivated killers and losing your job. An entire chapter is devoted to unemployment: “No, no, you cannot tell me that your fifth wife has died and you were hijacked,” says one man. “I can’t take it no more – get out of my sight. You are fired!”
The hapless chap writes a suicide note to his wife and shoots himself, and leaves an angel and the devil to fight over his soul (heaven won), and stressed policemen to collect his body.
Nkululeko’s debut graphic novel is dedicated to school friends of his who have died violently (two shot, one poisoned); his hardworking Gogo and his doting but unemployed father, Gerald, who “likes everything I do”.
Nkululeko thinks he may also have become a homebody because he is terrible at soccer – but good at cricket, let it be said – and so he stayed home and drew: “Some think I am strange, but others say it is good for me. If you play outside you do not do good at school. I feel like completing school.”
He was shy about his first attempts at drawing, and showed a few to his family, but was proud of his images: “I loved my work, so I decided to move on to another step, doing cartoons and sketches.”
Nkululeko draws on the rich and often harsh world of the townships for his inspiration. He says: “I am reflecting what I see around me, in my community and my family.” He’s working on his second graphic novel, but it’s likely to be less colourful than Me and My Crazy World – he’s down to his last six coloured pencils.
The Wild World of NJ can be seen at MuseumAfrica from July 10 as part of the Johannesburg Urban Futures 2000 exhibition