Despite the flaws in the latest novel by South African writer Nthikeng Mohlele, there is something alluring about Revolutionaries' House. It is Mohlele's most political novel, and the parallels drawn between love and politics - and their pitfalls - are intriguing.
Revolutionaries' House is timely. It advocates the desperate need for South Africa's political elite to take a step back and evaluate its own deficiencies before thinking of a possible path into a better future. Too little has changed for too few since democracy in 1994.
It's Mohlele's eighth novel and follows the narrator Mr Winston, "a politician first and foremost". He is an active member of Revolutionaries' House, South Africa's fictional ruling party and its headquarters of the same name. But he can no longer stomach his party's shortcomings.
Increasingly unstable and stricken with a medically inexplicable and seemingly incurable disease, Mr Winston "stopped caring or asking questions", both about politics and his three reasonably successful fast food restaurants. He is intent on purifying himself of his personal and political burdens. After a messy divorce, he starts living on Johannesburg's streets, sleeping on a bed "made of plasma television boxes under Nelson Mandela Bridge" and working the odd car or dishwashing job.
As a scholar of post-apartheid fiction in South Africa, I have been reading Mohlele for many years. The award-winning novelist is a unique voice in South African fiction.
His work is writerly with unusual descriptions and perspectives, often from the view of a flawed male character and with a philosophical intent. Revolutionaries' House, however, does not match his previous works Small Things (2008), Rusty Bell (2014) and Pleasure (2016), my personal favourites.
Mr Winston's women
The novel consists of five chapters, four of which are named after women who have left an indelible mark on Mr Winston's life.
There is Alessandra Pereira, "his Brazilian from Santa Teresa" and "goddess with admirable political instincts" working for the United Nations. There is Monica (aka Monica of the Baritone), his outspoken and provocative sister-in-law with whom Mr Winston starts the "ultimate romance" and the reason why his marriage to Naomi "tumbled from such dizzying heights and shattered".
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There is Mira Chakrabarti, the austere manager of Little Paradise, the overcrowded and chronically underfunded relief centre Mr Winston is brought to by the police. She has "masculine hands, an unkissable mouth, chapped lips, hair under the armpits, bad tobacco-stained teeth" and her sudden death shakes him.
And there is Mmalerato, the attractive young nurse he encounters at a hospital after an accident. She has:
Big eyes, proportionate to her round face, and a mouth nestled like an exotic island on a sea of perfect skin, her skin two shades of strong coffee prepared without lactose intolerance considerations.
These women function as his fates of sorts. In mythology, the fates are the three goddesses who define a person's fortune. His ex-wife does not receive a chapter of her own, a hint maybe that theirs is not yet completed, maybe even yet to be written.
What is jarring, though, is the protagonist's blatant male gaze - his overly simplistic and stereotypical, not to say sickeningly objectifying, depiction of women. This problematic portrayal of women must be seen as part of the narrator's self-involved character. But Mr Winston's sexist attitudes and the at times terribly kitschy imagery are wearisome.
The obsession with the female body and women's sexualisation has become a repetitive and rather negative trademark of Mohlele's writing. South African literature scholars Danyela Demir and Wamuwi Mbao have made similar arguments about Mohlele's previous works Breasts, etc. (2023) and The Discovery of Love (2022).
Mr Winston's Johannesburg
Throughout the novel, Mr Winston paints a gloomy picture of Johannesburg's inner city, with its "evidence of a sorrowful malaise: clogged drainage systems when it rains, power outages that birth claustrophobic traffic, daring levels of vandalism and arson against government property".
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This chimes in with similar takes on the city in novels by other South African novelists, such as Niq Mhlongo's This City is Mine (2024), Kgebetli Moele's Room 207 (2006) or Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001).
Mr Winston's disillusionment with South Africa's "unjust politics" and his rather obvious unreliability, however, don't help his case. His hypocrisy and his contrived and verbose way of expressing himself - though fitting for a self-absorbed politician - just add to how unlikeable he is.
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Nothingness
In the novel's fifth and final chapter, Nothingness, Mr Winston comes to a dramatic and simplistic conclusion:
Human life - in its very nature and essence, including in love and politics ... can be said to be quite futile in the face of mortality.
Besides this existential "nothingness", there is also the "nothingness" of any significant transformation in South Africa and its political elite.
And then there is the "nothingness" of Mr Winston's development. Considering the extended time he has spent on Johannesburg's streets (over a decade if the reader is to believe the timeframe), he seems to have learnt little to nothing.
It's a pity that overall Mr Winston remains a rather abstract and aloof character that never becomes truly tangible or relatable. Political novels are still needed in South Africa. One can only hope that Mohlele's next attempt is less timid and tepid.
Olivier Moreillon, Research Associate, University of Johannesburg
