‘I love my life. I love my cute, smart-ass five year-old son, Hintsa. I love his witty beer-gut-lugging father and my significant other, Mandla…I am tired of having to be a Superslave at the office, a Supermom to my son, and a superslut to my man…I have somehow fallen short of the high standards set for me as a modern woman’ (Zukiswa Wanner, The Madams, 2006).
…
‘Why are you so ungrateful? Many women are dying for what you have and you are complaining. Your husband gives you and your children everything…Stay with your husband and stop complaining…better to cry in a limousine than laugh in a taxi!’ (Zukiswa Wanner, Behind Every Successful Man, 2008).
When I picked up The Madams by Zukiswa Wanner sometime last year from Xarra bookshop in Newtown, I was generally drawn to the cover (some say it’s KB on it. Well, I really don’t know. You see, her eyes are closed). The salesperson was also quite good at convincing me to buy it. I was at Xarra hunting for back copies of Chimurenga when my eye fell on the blue, gay cover, and my first thought was, it’s so un-South African. What I mean is, in Kenya for example, you can find that kind of book quite easily. My Life in Crime, or the Minister’s Daughter, have similar covers designs and fall within the general category ‘popular fiction’. Well, the girl at the counter told me that the books were ‘selling like hot cake’. So being me, I bought it, more to suit the demands of the cosmic powers than anything else really. I mean, why did I see it when I saw it etc?
Anyway, great book, easy read, page turner. In a recent interview during the book launch of her second book, Wanner was irritated with one male critic who had called her books ‘chic lit’. Sex and the City, the movie, was recently dismissed as a boring ‘chic flick’ by the South African film critic Shawn de Waal who writes for the Mail and Guardian. The problem is, why do such critics (usually male) find it necessarily easy to categorize, then dismiss works that have women as central characters; as irrelevant narratives fit for female airheads? Do they believe that such books/movies/shows are nonsensical and irrelevant in the face of grand (phallocentric) national narratives?
Anyway, The Madams revolves around three chics, uThandi, who is the main character; Nosizwe and Lauren. It is a mix of races and class. Thandi is ‘coloured’ (a problematic racial category she rejects even before she begins narrating the story), Nosizwe; black and born rich, and Lauren, white and born/bred dirt poor. The novel is clearly a complete reversal and challenge to popular perceptions of race and class in South Africa.
But the clincher of the novel is that uThandi hires a white maid.
Now in today’s South Africa, this is a bit much. A white maid? Mhhh....
In the novel, gender is central to the narrative, and class (in the case of the poor white maid and the other maids really, and their relationships with the middle class trio) and race are bystanders in the greater story. The white maid, Marita, is a jailbird, something about murdering her abusive husband. She is, in the narrative time-frame, in some kind of rehabilitation programme. She grows to love Thandi’s five year old son, Hintsa; and forms a close relationship with the other maids, Pertunia (Siz’s maid), MaRosie, Lauren’s maid-btw, Lauren is quite abusive to MaRosie. Treats her like she’s some kind of leper. I love how Wanner captures this particular complex narrative strand; that while Lauren treats MaRosie so badly because she is black, she treats her girlfriends differently, because they are ‘better’ blacks worthy of her respect and attention. This is unfortunately. a familiar trend in SA’s racial politics. It doesn’t matter that Lauren, in all ways, shares a similar history with MaRosie, they both come from working class backgrounds. For her, Thandi and Siz are ‘better blacks’ and therefore deserve the better treatment she gives them- But I digress....
The men: uMandla, the quiet, nice jamaa who loves and takes care of his family, until Thandi learns she isn’t the only woman in his life; Vuyo, the all-time loser of a man, with several baby mummies and who later has an affair with Pertunia, the house maid; and that Michael, Lauren’s husband, earlier referred to as ‘the lamb’ but who later turns out to be such a schmuck…He has been abusing Lauren behind the walls/doors. He is only discovered when he knocks her out after one of his drunken episodes.
Wrapped in the story is Ma, Siz’s mother: the strong, pushy, gets-what-she-wants type, unapologetic about the manner in which she got her wealth etc. She strings in a HIV narrative. She is infected by her ‘mute’ husband who I think dies (been long since I read the book). Quite an interesting character though.
But why do I say the book represents popular feminism? Because it is about poetic justice, where all the women win, and all the men must come back and bow at the feet of these women. They are all independent working women: Thandi, a manager in a tourist company in Soweto; Siz (God I can’t remember what she does, but I do know that she has loads of money, and loves to shop at designer shops, and that she takes care of Vuyo, her husband and his two bastard sons), and Lauren, a lecturer at Wits University. Because of their economic leverage, they can just about do anything and go anywhere they want.
Their men are at first portrayed as 21st century progressive men who have embraced the idea of the modern woman. But later, we find out that these men are particularly backward, patriarchal and egocentric. When they are not cheating, see case of Mandla and Vuyo, they are beating up their wives, in the case of Mike. (And one thinks Things Fall Apart is outdated). The novel is therefore about retribution i.e when Siz shoots Vuyo in the leg, Vuyo is unable to sue her because of some legal complication; and about justice; when Mike is jailed or given a retraining order or sth; and respect: when Mandla is forced to plead with Thandi to have him back. The best part is that Thandi does have an affair with Martin (this part so reminded me of that Whitney movie….with the four women…will remember it in due course...Waiting to Exhale), but yeah, she lets him know what she has done, and Mandla is so jealous, he could kill sth/sb. But why is it so hard for him to swallow Thandi’s affair when his betrayal is possibly worse? I mean, Thandi has a one-night stand with a stranger; Mandla has an affair with his ex-girlfriend. Which is more likely to come back and bite who in the butt?
But beyond its embrace of popular feminism, I am very interested in the kinds of solutions the book suggests for the rainbow nation. It suggests that people of different races and nationalities in South Africa can come together in harmony. By overturning popular perceptions and assumptions about race and class relations in South Africa, Wanner arrives at her own idealistic suggestions. That Marita is a white maid who eventually gets into a relationship with a black woman (turns out Marita is gay), ((pushed to it by her late abusive husband?))
The dominant theme is female power, and everything else is secondary. But Wanner also raises the characters to national significance. In a country affected by serious racial tensions, in a system that squarely embraces what bell hooks calls ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ Wanner does well to put gender on the agenda. Suddenly, we are looking at an alternative nation, a nation in which women rule, judge, love, hate but all the while remain united in their shared suffering and pain. The men become disposable. They are no longer the centre of the new South Africa. Just mere secondary characters in the grand narrative of the nation.
What is the opposite of phallic/phallocentric? ‘Cuntcentric?’ ‘Cuntocentric?’… a female version of phallocentric, equally in your face…something other than gentle matriarchy…Mmph! a thinker.
Anyway, loved The Madams.
And now, Behind Every Successful Man…just starting it, but sth tells me I will have a wonderful time. I love the line, ‘better cry in a limo….’
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