T Tragic tide of history

Fred Khumalo imagines the life of a black survivor of the Mendi sinking.

Dancing the Death Drill Fred Khumalo (Umuzi, R230)

HE sinking of the SS Mendi off the Isle of Wight in the English Channel on February 21 1917 was one of the biggest naval tragedies of the 20th century, certainly one of the biggest in South African history. The ship, carrying 823 men of the 5th Battalion, the South African Native Labour Corps, to serve in France, sank after a collision with another vessel. The South African death toll was 616 men, including 607 of the black troops, and 30 crew members.

Appropriately, South Africa’s highest award for bravery is the Order of Mendi, and there are four memorials in the country: Port Elizabeth, Atteridgeville, the University of Cape Town campus, and the Avalon cemetery in Soweto.

The publication of Fred Khumalo’s novel Dancing the Death Drill is just one of the publications and events that will mark the centenary this year.

A reluctant reader of fiction, I picked it up with some reservation. I dipped into it here and there, and when I became gripped I started reading from the beginning. Besides, it’s only half-fiction.

Fascinated by the story of the Mendi since childhood, Khumalo set himself the task of creating the story of one of the survivors, from his birth in the Orange Free State, through his education, his romances, his recruitment into the Native Labour Corps, and the Mendi tragedy to the climax of the story in Paris.

Along the way Khumalo gives insights into pre-1918 South Africa, race relations and private struggles with race identity. It’s a huge canvas which could fail miserably, but he pulls it off by keeping the chapters short and to the point, never laboured. Unlike many, he has the ability to convey this country in all its complexity and to see how others saw things.

He is on less solid ground in France, and resorts to avoidable Parisian clichés such as the Tour d’Argent restaurant, Notre-Dame cathedral, and absinthe drinkers at boulevard cafés in 1918. Unsure of that, I checked: absinthe was outlawed in France in 1915. But that’s nitpicking, and in the end it does not matter.

At times the dialogue is not totally convincing, especially when used to convey background information. More worrying, the chapter that covers the findings of the British inquest into the Mendi does not sit well with the flow of the story, and has too many long quotes. If necessary at all in a novel, the inquest could have been dealt with in some other way.

Still, this is a highly readable book that draws you in and makes you think. It humanises the story of the Mendi, and it unfolds the almost Shakespearean tragedy of a hero damaged by both this country and the Mendi’s loss.

It would make a great tragic opera by the right South African composer, but please, never a musical.