Black middle class lives probed
IT’S not often that a novel comes dressed in a perfect pink gift wrap, with ribbon. What lies beneath the apparent soft veneer of pink? The cracked wedding ring is the first clue. It’s cracked, but not broken. The title reflects the image: Critical but, Stable. Marriage? Infidelity?
Makholwa is the mistress of her craft as she draws the reader into the lives of three couples in their forties, after the introduction where “he” has a “beautiful body now lying so still” in his bed. The scene is set.
The Manamelas have been married for 27 years. Noma applies make-up for all occasions that Ratu, her husband, calculates the hours she has done this during the course of their marriage.
The Jiyas, Moshidi and Solomzi, have a different set of worries. Final demands loom large in their marriage. Ostentation, and “ridiculous displays of extravagance” are exacerbated by them joining the social club, the Khula Society.
Moshidi thinks back over the years and to what attracted her to Solomzi in the first place, and why she ditched her accountant boyfriend, and why she feels attracted to other men.
The third couple, the Msibis, Lerato and Mzwandile, “never wanted to join her sister’s stupid social club”. But they do. Mzwandile is God-fearing and this becomes his excuse for his ascetic lifestyle.
Lerato is conflicted by how she has been taken in by this ploy and, horny as can be without a useful husband in her bed, strays. Her sister Lerato gives her a sex toy, with hilarious results.
The fourth couple is an older one with a dark secret. All the world has never been to his, the Duke's, house which apparently is in Tembisa. He drives an old Mercedes to cover a life of wealth, but his wife, in a high-powered position in mining, leaves him more comfortable about displaying wealth that does not have a clear-cut origin.
The lives of the couples and their friends are played off against the background of the conflict South Africans are so used to negotiating. They keep up with the Khumalos, look after their children, do whatever is necessary to keep debt at bay while appearing to live the good life.
Makholwa, having set the scene so the readers are now intimately involved with the lives of the couples, introduces Danie Wiese with a “double chin”, “meaty shoulders with an equally fleshy belly” who enjoys springbok carpaccio, cut from “our national talisman”.
Makholwa’s ear for dialogue is flawless, as is her understanding of what makes different South Africans behave in the way they do.
Danie Wiese is unpleasant, but compellingly described. He meets with the Duke, and opens an old, old story of theft and deception, and draws the Duke back into an old crime to be relived.
An excellent read with cracking and sparklingly witty dialogue, funny, sexy, fast, Makholwa covers the lives of the contemporary rich black middle class, with career challenges, sexual challenges and politics.