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What Will People Say? by Rehana Rossouw
Craig Higginson’s The Dream House and Henrietta Rose-Innes’ Green Lion received rave reviews on these pages, but in the end 2015 was another great year for new voices in fiction (last year Masande Ntshanga’s The Reactive got our nod).
There was much talk about Nakhane Touré’s Piggy Boy’s Blues and Panashe Chigumadzi’s Sweet Medicine from new imprint Blackbird Books.
But our novel of the year is Rehana Rossouw’s What Will People Say?
In her fiction debut, the seasoned journalist and editor manages to pull the reader back to the mid-1980s Cape Flats with all its political difficulties, while telling a frank and sincere story about a family and its personal struggles.
The story centres on the members of the Fourie family living in Hanover Park. Though it is about the family as a unit, each member experiences this world differently.
“There is no chief protagonist; the book’s about the entire family,” Rossouw told City Press.
“In my first draft, the delinquents took up all the space. The bad guys tend to be more compelling than the good daughter who goes to church every Sunday. When I rewrote the book, I gave each character their fair share, their own lives.”
The result is that her characters are incredibly nuanced. No one is clearly a hero or villain, even the gangsters.
The magic lies in the authenticity of every element in the book. Every carefully crafted metaphor, chapter break and twist in the tale is meticulously placed to serve the story. And beyond this incredible technical ability, the novel retains the truth of the society it is reflecting. – Binwe Adebayo
When it came to political books, this was the year of the tough question.
Largely due to democratic South Africa entering its second decade under the woeful misgovernance of Jacob Zuma, the major books of 2015 questioned the direction in which the country was being taken. They were harsh, they were scathing and they were damning.
The titles said it all. RW Johnson’s doomsday bestseller, How Long Will South Africa Survive? The Looming Crisis, could have had the reader fleeing for the North Pole to get as far away as possible from the impending chaos.
Although many dismissed Johnson’s work as the scaremongering of a right-winger, it was hard to argue with the facts he assembled as he painted his scenario.
Ditto Justice Malala, whose scary title We have now begun our descent proved apt when Zuma made the banana republic decision about our finance minister that drove the faltering economy into the mire. It’s a racy work of contemporary history that’s quite unsettling. The events of December had some social-media commentators suggesting he change the title to We Must Prepare for a Crash-Landing.
Susan Booysen’s meticulous Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma, paints a dire picture of the governing party and the country under the leadership of the man from Nkandla.
Editor Ferial Haffajee captured the militant mood of 2015 with What If There Were No Whites In South Africa? The title and the content got many backs up, but it was an essential work, examining the dynamics of power, class and race.
Former Independent Electoral Commission chairperson Brigalia Bam’s memoir, Democracy – More Than Just Elections, questioned the capability of the current electoral system. – Mondli Makhanya
