“Three generations of white South African men were bound together at that table. Vermuelen was the first generation. He defined Africa, made it safe for Basson to defile. I was the last generation, the last to grow up in segregated neighborhoods. Between us was the silent photograph of Wouter Basson. Like a distant father, Basson was absent at the dining table.” – Henk Rossouw (Hole in the White ‘Hood). Also Mahmood Mamdani on Bantu Education at UCT, Gael Reagon on sisterhood, Binyavanga Wainaina on dis-covering Kenya, Gaston Zossou on African intellectuals and more…
Cover:
Strange Fruit by Lewis Allen
Set in 2019, Volume 1 opens with the discovery of the mutilated body of a middle-aged white woman in the basement of Shalom Court, an abandoned block of flats in Yeoville, Johannesburg. What follows is both the struggle to identify the victim and the hunt for the killer. En route, various characters – neighbours, cops, property owners, municipal officials, as well as past and present residents of the building – co-operate or clash in terms of their own agendas and concerns.
“Utilizing brutal realism and satire, with touches of the fantastical, The Chronicles of Shalom Court delves into contemporary South Africa by cutting across cultures and classes. Its fictional universe is populated by every stratum of society fleshed out in a blend of social encodings, tonal registers and individual eccentricities. Examining competing notions of sanity, the extremes of violence and gender relations, political and bureaucratic corruption, racist phobias and everyday struggles for survival, this is truly a work of the neo-colony.” – Andries Walter Oliphant
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