Forethoughts: Tsotsi by Athol Fugard

After finishing an unscheduled but hugely enjoyable read of Song For Night by Chris Abani [afterthoughts], I return to my ‘organised’ reading pile to find my literary feet still firmly planted on African soil, with a virtual move southwards to the townships of Johannesburg and the intriguing tale of Tsotsi, a gang leader for whom violence and theft are a common everyday occupation.

As was demonstrated by reading Abani’s literary offering (and many more if you care to look around RobAroundBooks), there are two things which you can guarantee will always draw me to a novel more than anything else – if the novel is the work of a foreign writer, and if the novel has the promise of a character(s) going through some kind of profound personal transformation. Tsotsi possesses both of these ‘draws’, so you can bet that this is a literary work of considerable interest to me.

Despite being adapted into an award-winning movie in 2006, I’ve got to admit that I’m completely unfamiliar with Tsotsi (which is no bad thing because I hate it when a film spoils the read of a book for me). I have of course heard of its author, the monumental South African playwright Athol Fugard, but that’s as far as my knowledge of him extends to. I’ve never read him, or for that matter seen any of his plays. But that is in no way off-putting to me. Quite the opposite in fact, because I’m always responsive to an unread author, in the hope that I discover a new favourite to add to my ever-growing list.

So let’s start with the official blurb for the book, which is succinct and to the point undoubtedly, but also hugely powerful:

Tsotsi is an angry young gang leader in the South African township of Sophiatown. A man without a past, he exists only to kill and steal. But one night, in a moonlit grove of bluegum trees, a woman he attempts to rape forces a shoebox into his arms. The box contains a baby, and his life is inexorably changed. He begins to remember his childhood, to rediscover himself and his capacity for love.

Sounds incredibly appealing doesn’t it? (as a cover blurb should of course )), but the novel becomes all the more alluring when one reads the foreword to Tsotsi; a foreword which was penned by Jonathan Kaplan, a fellow writer who grew up and studied medicine in South Africa (Canongate have kindly made this foreword available on their website). In this foreword Kaplan not only explains that the tsotsis were a collective group seen as a gangland menace in the townships, he also makes it clear, from experiencing their handiwork first-hand, that the tsotsis were ruthless and calculating in their acts of violence:

In my years as a medical student I saw their victims delivered to us with the neatest of wounds. We learned to inspect the collapsed patient for the almost invisible puncture in the armpit from a sharpened bicycle spoke, slipped between the ribs into the heart to cause a tamponade: a squirt of blood into the pericardial sac that as it filled, pressed on the heart, strangling it in its own labour.

Kaplan then goes on to qualify Fugard’s own informed position from which to write about the tsotsis, having spent time in a career that brought him closer than most non-blacks to the hardships and conditions experienced in the Johannesburg township of Sophiatown.

So the backdrop for Tsotsi appears utterly engrossing, and it’s author hugely knowledgeable on the subject matter. However it’s the fact that Fugard has always remained vehemently opposed to South Africa’s apartheid system that holds the most intrigue for me. Here he is showing transformation in one of the darkest characters he could imagine, and with his sympathetic stance for the plight of the townships being at the forefront of his motivations, it’s hugely exciting to see how he shapes this. I’m expecting a wonderfully enlightening literary journey laying ahead of me. I’ll be back to let you know if those expectations were met.

Canongate Books | 05 February 2009 (UK) | £7.99 | PAPERBACK | 256 PP | ISBN 9781847673312

__________________

A note about Forethoughts

‘Forethoughts’ offer an insight into what my initial thoughts and impressions of a book are, before I begin reading it. Informal, and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – the anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when my excitement is piqued for the reading experience which lies ahead.

Blissfully ignorant my ‘forethoughts’ may be, but when they’re combined with my eventual ‘afterthoughts’, the result is a unique and comprehensive record of a very personal literary ‘journey’ through a particular book; a literary journey which will hopefully be of some value to other readers.