In the pink! Exclusive Books Killarney Mall was full to brimming with guests for the launch of Native Nostalgia by columnist Jacob Dlamini this Wednesday.
Remola Pillay from Exclusive Books welcomed everyone and introduced guest speaker, Dlamini’s editor at The Weekender, Rehana Rossouw. Rossouw started by engaging guests with a story of a young woman in the office who built up an image of Dlamini by working through his writing for his column every week. Rossouw pointed the man himself out to the young woman one day and she said, “But he’s so small!”. By reading Dlamini’s words every week, the young woman had “created this image of a huge man with a big booming voice”.
Speaking about the book itself, Rossouw said, “Jacob has written an extremely provocative book. He’s asked all the right questions, at the right time in the history of South Africa. They are extremely uncomfortable questions. They are the kind of questions all of us probably ask ourselves but are too scared to state publicly. And he goes a long way towards answering these questions.”
Reassuring Dlamini that she wasn’t going to give any of his answers away, Rossouw highlighted some of the question he poses in the book: “Why is it assumed in South Africa today that all black people suffered the same degree of oppression under Apartheid?” “Why is it that we all assume that every black person was equally committed to overthrowing Apartheid?”. She asked why, during recent service delivery protests, “black people are saying more and more that is was better under Apartheid?”.
She praised the “clever way” in which Dlamini examines these questions by drawing on his own experiences of growing up under Apartheid in the township of Katlehong – where he still lives today. Having finished reading his book in the early hours of the morning, Rossouw said, “I want more. I want much, much more from Jacob. I hope there are many more books in you”.
Dlamini took the mic and smiled as he pointed out the lack of an “acknowledgements” page in the book, saying “there are far too many to blame for the book!”. One wit in the audience suggested he “blame Apartheid!” which the guests enjoyed immensely. He described how Native Nostalgia looks at what it means for black South Africans to examine their lives under Apartheid or what it means for white South Africans to say they had a happy childhood under the same system.
Calling the book “an exercise in thought” and literally only “a fragment, not a memoir”, he said, “Apartheid suffered a moral defeat and not a military one” and that “the conditions under which people lived allowed them to imagine other possibilities”.
Dlamini asked that those who buy the book think about the questions and answers that he raises in it, inviting them to “tear it apart or gooi it in the toilet bowl if necessary!”.
He finished by thanking friends, colleagues and teachers who were present – in the same breath blaming them for making him believe that “thinking was worth it”.
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