The empowered native
by Letepe Maisela
(Sizwe)
The Empowered Native is the story of Lerumo Sekhukhuni, who leaves South Africa for exile at age 16 after the 1976 Soweto uprisings. In exile, Lerumo studies and works for “The Movement”. Shortly after the release of Nelson Mandela et al and the unbanning of political movements in 1990, he comes back home. His intention is to pick up the scattered pieces of his life — but it’s not so easy.
Lerumo’s attempt to restart his life in South Africa involves revisiting the relationships built before exile, and that is where the story of Mandla Tokollo comes in. Mandla is Lerumo’s childhood friend, who wandered the globe on the run from both the apartheid government and The Movement — some in the movement suspected Mandla of being a sell-out.
The book’s chapters zigzag between Lerumo and Mandla’s stories, their exits from South Africa and their movement across the globe, until they find each other once more. They are the “empowered natives” of the title — at the inauguration of Mandela as South Africa’s first democratically elected president, the future of their empowerment looks good.
Don’t be deceived by the title, though. Yes, the author, Letepe Maisela, is a champion of black economic empowerment, but the empowerment in this book is anything but economic.
Lerumo’s return to South Africa is an opportunity to examine what has changed over the years — and he finds a country changing very fast. Now he can enjoy a drink in a joint called The Shebeen in Rosebank; he can sleep with a white woman, though she, much to his annoyance, declares that she is African.
Here Maisela is able to use his characters to explore contentious issues, such as his views on white people who claim to be African. Also, he uses Lerumo, who is highly opinionated, to make some harsh statements about the Freedom Charter’s assertion that South Africa belongs to all who live in it.
In a recent interview I conducted with Maisela, he said that, like any author who assumes a God-like position over his characters, he can use them to deal with contentious issues of the day, without pointing fingers at specific persons. Such, he says, are the privileges of artistic licence.
He examines, for instance, the role played by the partners or spouses of freedom fighters during the years of exile. Gugulethu, Mandla’s girlfriend since their school days, decides to wait for him even though they haven’t had any contact for about seven years. A character called Lerato, likewise, stands by Lerumo: in their years in exile, she is his pillar of strength and his conscience. But the author could have gone beyond the obvious roles played by women in these kinds of relationships. The Empowered Native does not go beyond the conclusion that women’s role in the struggle was a footnote to the story of the men’s involvement.
Maisela admits that he never went into exile, but says the stories are based on extensive research. As an author, he slips into the shoes of such exiles and former exiles with ease and it is detailed enough to make you believe this is the author’s own story. The book is also sprinkled with humour, which helps make it a page-turner.
The Empowered Native is Maisela’s first work of fiction after his 1998 non-fiction Survival in the Corporate Jungle. For a debut novelist, Maisela has done very well. His novel stands alongside other works dealing with 1976 — such as Miriam Tlali’s Amandla, Sipho Sepamla’s A Ride on a Whirlwind, Mbulelo Mzamane’s Children of Soweto and Sibongile Mkhabela’s Open Earth and Black Roses — and brings the story of the 1976 generation up to the present day.
Sabata-mpho Mokae is a literary critic on Kaya FM in Johannesburg