/ 27 August 2010

Decoding the overload of crime writing

Crime, unless one subscribes to the view that it is a projection of minority racist ramblings, is a feature of South African life today. As such, it is not surprising that it is a common subject in contemporary South African writing, fact and fiction.

The respected journalist-academic Antony Altbeker has tried to unravel the complexities of “true crime” in South Africa. In The Dirty Work of Democracy (2005) he combined journalism and social analysis in an account of his year accompanying the police, presenting a complex vision of embattled public servants seldom praised for what seems a near impossible task. Later, in A Country at War with Itself (2007), he highlighted the climate of fear that crime has generated across race, class and gender lines. His newest book, Fruit of a Poisoned Tree (2010), documents a major miscarriage of justice and asks uncomfortable questions about the criminal justice system and even the role of media.

No less grim, though fictional, are the works of Andrew Brown. The prize-winning Coldsleep Lullaby (2005) used a murder-mystery set in Stellenbosch to address questions of history, residual racism and the uneasy role of police in the new South Africa. The psychological impact of policing was echoed in his memoir of being a police reservist in Cape Town, Street Blues (2008). His return to fiction, Refuge (2009), uses the thriller genre to reflect on the precariousness of life for migrants in South Africa, trapped in a culture of illegality and xenophobia, between criminals and corrupt officials.

Margie Orford has written a series of novels that often deal with gender violence. Orford’s novels frequently address this question in a manner that likens sexual violence to a new kind of civil war.

We might see this exploration of crime writing as a reflection of white middle-class concerns, implicitly vindicating critics who see crime as a white obsession. But the youngest member of the panel challenges that sweeping assumption. Sifiso Mzobe is a young journalist from Umlazi, Durban, whose first novel, Young Blood (2010), looks at the question from a different perspective.

Is crime the new South African political literature? If so, is crime writing ultimately progressive or reactionary? Given that any published author represents influence in our unequal society, what role should writers play in addressing the reality of crime today? And, most of all, given that everyone seems terrified of crime to a degree, why are writers such as Altbeker, Brown, Orford and Mzobe, to name but a few, so widely read by us?

Anthony Egan will chair Session 8: Scene of the Crime: Writing Crime in South African Fiction and Non-fiction on Sunday September 5 from 11.45am to 1pm. Panellists will be Antony Altbeker, Andrew Brown, Sifiso Mzobe and Margie Orford