Book Log 81/2016 - Nick Wood: Azanian Bridges

[jacey]

Set in a present day South Africa where Apartheid was never abolished and the regime oppressed all the population, but particularly the black communities. Police checks; demands for papers; threats; casual, unthinking cruelty, and systematic institutional oppression. Sibusiso is an intelligent young black man who gets the opportunity to go to the city to go to college. At a demonstration he witnesses his friend killed and the resulting depression sees him admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he meets psychiatrist, Martin  who, together with his friend, Dan has invented an empathy machine. It’s not exactly a thought reader, but close enough for the authorities to be very interested. Martin wants to use it to make white South Africa empathise with black South Africa and reduce the chasm between them. The authorities see it as an interrogation machine. Sibusiso becomes Martin’s test subject but when he steals the machine in behalf of the Black African resistance movement he has to go one the run. This is told in first person from both Sibusiso’s and Martin’s points of view in alternating chapters, which works well in this instance. It’s intriguing and the taste of a dystopian South Africa feels terrifyingly real. The black South African experience comes over well, partly because of liberal use of isiZulu language and partly because of Sibusiso’s ‘voice’. Martin is a sympathetic character, lost in the system, white but also afraid of the authorities. He seems to learn more from his encounter with Sibusiso than Sibusiso does from him. The ending is entirely within keeping—sadly.