After 12 years of weathering rejection slips from the politically correct middle-ground press, Lesego Rampolokeng — known for his published and performed poetry — is finally getting his novel Blackheart on to the shelves. Always controversial, Rampolokeng was recently relieved of his job as MC by the organisers of the Urban Voices festival, because of his statements. Rampolokeng is not known for “celebrating our little fantasy land”. Of his own struggle to get Blackheart published, he says: “It is evidence that in this country we cultivate mediocrity.”
Blackheart is my attempt to delve into the place of what and where I am,” he says. Although the core of Blackheart was written about 12 years ago, parts have been “patched in and other things have been patched out over the years. If it were still with me, I’d still be writing it,” he says.
Blackheart is informed by the richness of Rampolokeng’s poetry. The words twist with rhymes, metaphors and puns, suddenly metamorphising to reveal contemporary world events, cultural dispositions and psychic frailties. Although a lot of scenes in the book project imagery and tones of apartheid South Africa, with gratuitous police violence, a vitality of fear and various forms of detention, the framework and references are fluid, locating the action in an absurdist space that is not time-bound.
If you are hoping for a linear structure in the book, or characters who recur and develop progressively, you will be disappointed. The prologue happens only after the second scene, and part two doesn’t even exist. Some structure creeps into the “patched” scenes through the periodic reversion of Rampolokeng to his “rant” style of poetry. These sections seem to provide comment and draw larger social realities into the preceding absurdist scenes.
William Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon come to mind in the dark-humoured, surreal-image-association mind-splurge that drives the book, with tones of science-fiction, overt sexuality and fragmented identity. George Bataille and Russell Hoban are echoed in its enigmatic animism: this novel will not fit easily into the post-colonial African slot. Instead, it professes a sublime global identity. The sublime is something other than the ordered social world; rather, it is irrational, untamed, overpowering. Blackheart sails into this realm.
“Too complex” … “audiences should not have to work hard when reading” … “it won’t sell” … These were some of the objections publishers had to Blackheart. But, as Rampolokeng says, no one said it was badly written. Finally, it has been picked up by Pine Slopes Publications, the press run by artist-writer-provocateur Aryan Kaganof.
A cynic to the end, Rampolokeng does not see the publication of his book as a celebration of freedom and democracy. He says: “I don’t think our country is mature enough for this yet.”
Blackheart will be launched at Gallery Momo on Tuesday September 28 at 6pm. The first chapter of Blackheart can be read on www.mg.co.za/books