Straddling the fields of satirical fiction and history
Willie Currie s Seizure is created around historical characters and events, embellished with imagined actions and conversations
Seizure’ by Willie Currie is published by Quickfox and available in bookshops or from Amazon and Takealot.com for about R333.
Tuning into a soap opera that’s halfway through its season might leave you feeling a little like I did in tackling the historical satire Seizure .
The names of some characters were familiar, I could grasp the gist of the events, but I always felt on a back foot in figuring out exactly who was who and what shenanigans they were getting up to.
Academic and author Willie Currie has created Seizure around historical characters and real events, then embellished them with imagined actions and conversations. His overall premise is to highlight early attempts at state capture, and reveal parallels that could help us understand the events of today, if only we listened to our history. Which we never do, he says.
The first story Currie presents are the events leading up to the Jameson Raid of 1895, when mining magnate Cecil Rhodes and his cronies tried to seize the old Transvaal Republic. The second begins in 1906, when the feuding Boers and perfidious Brits began to set their differences aside to form a union of SA that would keep the blacks firmly under white rule.
The blurb on the back cover mentions how 100 years after these events, president Jacob Zuma and his collaborators captured the postapartheid state in the blink of an eye.
So was I wrong to expect the book itself to cover those crimes? Sadly it doesn’t, except for some final thoughts from Currie where he says that SA is once again in danger of placing race above every value we hold. The struggle for a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic SA matters because united we succeed, but divided we fall, he says. Quite right, too.
I’m sure if Currie had lampooned the current state capture debacle in the same way that he sends up the previous two events, Seizure would be a lot more enjoyable. But perhaps that would have taken him down a path that’s too early to tread, since the players are still alive and litigious.
So we go back in history, with Currie weaving in genuine quotes and historical extracts obviously gleaned from deep research, with footnotes referencing all the historical records he has drawn from.
There are a few nice touches where you can see how he is linking the past to the present, such as a comment in the first section that describes a class of men who have sprung up and created the special business of influencing the politicians.
He also writes about the revolutionaries ’ intent to “bring an end to the bribery, corruption and wasteful expenditure in the state”, where the president and his cohorts are feathering their nests at the cost of economic growth and development. It’s still happening now, as it was then, of course.
The historical figures interact with other extraordinary characters caught up in the action, and around it all Currie weaves in elements of myth, mystery and witchcraft. Those are the parts I appreciated the most, because at times the historical narrative is too dry to succeed as the entertaining romp it’s designed to be. It tries to straddle the fields of history and satirical fiction, and hovers uneasily in both.
It ’ s also liberally dotted with the k-word in his characters’ speech, which made me squirm, while the lighter parts include some rather strange sexual scenes that don’t seem to belong at all.
I’m happy to take the blame and assume I found it less than enthralling because I don’t know my history. I suspect Currie is aiming at readers as erudite as himself, and equally au fait with these personalities and events. You’ll certainly appreciate it far more if you’re familiar with the history he’s recounting, embellishing, distorting and lampooning.
Can you still enjoy it without that knowledge? Perhaps, but I think a lot of the gentle absurdities, witticisms and irony will be lost if you are constantly trying to get to grips with the storyline instead of being able to relax into the writing.