Echoes: The novel carries undercurrents of Karl Marx’s views on leadership. Photo: Getty Images
This is the first novel of a writer based in Cape Town. It therefore comes as no surprise that the cover picture is one of a male figure in front of the majestic Table Mountain.
In Search of Who We Are, by Muhammed Yousuf Minty, is set in Cape Town before the arrival of the white people and their colonial enterprise, it tells the story of a young man Kanu, of the Ofuru tribe, who leaves his newly pregnant wife Afua, his hut and his tribe and goes into the mountain in search of his identity and to listen to the vibrations in the ether to determine a name for his soon-to-be-born son.
Based on the Socratic premise that the “unexamined life is not worth living”, Kanu sets out to discover his identity.
In order to know who he is, he must not only know where he comes from, but also where he is going. This will reveal his true destiny and it will also lead him to understand the meaning of his life, as well as the history of his people.
Like Telemachus who went out in search of his father Ulysses, he is searching for his father, Jaamir, who was compelled to leave the tribe when Kanu was very little.
The quote from Alex Haley’s Roots after the title page of Minty’s book leaves no room for doubt about the author’s intentions; that the griots played an important part in the lives of a people or tribe as they were the carriers or repositories of its history.
As there was no written script in those times in those localities, oral traditions played a crucial role in spelling out the identities of a people. The author is also saying in order to know your true identity, you must be conversant with your history.
The book serves as an allegory for modern times and represents an attempt to achieve a coalescence of myth and reality.
Passages such as the following are unmistakable: Kanu says, “To lead you is not my purpose. Many have ruled over us, some good, others not as good, and many mistakes have been made. There are lessons to be learned and only time will tell if our leaders have learned well. If they fail, then know it is you who have the power to make a change. No leader will do it for you.
“… Honour the humanity of all and you shall remain human.”
The text, therefore, operates on two levels: on the level of myth and on that of contemporary political reality.
It demonstrates how the dominant narrative is unscrupulously crafted and manipulated by unconscionable leaders, thereby clearly echoing Marx’s famous dictum that the dominant power will always create and promulgate an ideology that will be akin and favourable to itself, and that will promote its interests, irrespective of what the truth really is and dictates.
In Search of Who We Are is published by The Project Justice Trust and Awqaf.