Magenta, by Denis Beckett (University of Natal Press)
Sharmini Brookes
Denis Beckett is best known for his popular South African TV series, Beckett's Trek and several non-fiction books. Magenta is his first novel and is set in present day Johannesburg - the high-octane, finance-rich capital of South Africa, where crime is the number one topic and security fences rise ever upwards.
Beckett's characters speak Seffricanese, the language of Josi or Joburg as the locals call their city – an exuberant mix of English peppered with popular phrases and slang words from Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho. Non-South Africans may find this difficult to negotiate even though he does provide a comprehensive, alphabetically-listed glossary, but South Africans at home and abroad will enjoy the witty wordplay in their familiar lingo.
Magenta is the story of Bart Dunn - a white, English-speaking South African journalist and business consultant (like Beckett himself) whose liberal values are sorely tested in a series of encounters with a number of characters who make up the rainbow nation of the country he loves and where he hopes to continue living. The story begins with news of the murder of Bart's long-forgotten old school chum, Roger McQueen – in itself an unremarkable crime statistic among the many hundreds mentioned on the radio and in the newspapers. This event allows Bart to reminisce about the optimism of the 1980s Reform era and today's harsh reality. It also provides the focus around which all the other characters coalesce through their past association with the dead man.
Bart and Roger were enlightened students opposed to the apartheid regime. He was once arrested at a township protest but remembers that as a white activist being arrested was a 'badge of honour – an anti-apartheid criminal record' and probably saved him from a worse fate.
It was at a township house party he and Roger were guilt-induced into attending that he first encountered the irrepressible Joyous Khumalo, who today is the dubious beneficiary of the government affirmative action policy to meet BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) quotas, and who, in Bart's disapproving eye, earns a fat cat salary as a token executive on a number of big business boards. And it was at a township protest that Gert, the policeman-husband of Bart's Afrikaans-speaking secretary Aletta, arrested him. Today, people like Gert and Aletta struggle to find the secure, state sector jobs that were once their privileged right under apartheid but to Bart's astonishment they appear to have buckled down to life in the new South Africa with less complaint than he has and more openness than he would have credited.
Roger's widow, Kei, entrances Bart with her unadorned beauty and her determination not to become caged behind burglar guards and security fences. At Kei's request, he becomes the mentor to her troubled and angry son, Lud. Through Lud, he meets a far right Afrikaner group that mocks his liberal values and forces him to reacquaint himself with religion and the bible in order to talk his way out of a violent end. In the squatter camp down the road from Roger's house, meanwhile, lives Themba the township sage and perhaps Beckett's own idealistic alter ego, who persuades Bart to look at things in a different way.
Bart's interaction with each of these characters changes him, and sheds light on everyday concerns about failing education standards, puppet Black executives on fat cat salaries, government corruption, potholes, deteriorating services, the lack of skilled workers, and the fear of crime that creates prisoners behind electric fences and alarms that go off inconveniently in the middle of the night. Beckett's background in documentaries and investigative journalism give real colour and authenticity to the work. A realistic car hijack scene in Zoo Lake is hair-raising. It's all done with ironic humour and a warm humanity; his characters always asking us to see things from another point of view.
The first half of the novel is fast paced and enjoyable, but the second half disappoints. In expounding his philosophy, Beckett's plot becomes somewhat contrived, and a few rather implausible situations towards the end mar an exciting conclusion. The section with the right wing Afrikaners is long and clunky. Beckett wants to show that there are good and bad people in all race groups. He grapples with their idea of 'geregtigheid' – 'pursuing honourable ends by honourable means' – and suggests they can be persuaded of more progressive policies by appealing to this instinct, but he could have done it better. And Themba's drawn out explanations about his two phases of democracy – sounding uncomfortably like the failed two-stage theory of the Communist Party – elicit complaints of preachiness even from the characters themselves.
Despite this shortcoming, I would recommend Magenta to all South Africans and anyone with an interest in the country and its future development. Beckett is after all 'positively South African' and even though he doesn't provide all the answers, his humorous, thought-provoking take on modern South Africa should stimulate others to pursue the concerns and tentative solutions that he raises. A belief in the best of humanity and a trust in people, whatever their background, is a good place to start putting the world to rights.
______________
Settle smoking, or what can we settle?
Clyde Broster
First, let me say that I think this is an important book and I hope it is being publicized, promoted and read appropriately. It must have taken a monumental effort and it has stayed so up-to-the minute as well.
The cover (by "Francois") serves the book very well and particularly the image of Themba contentedly contemplating his future society. Great choice of model.
The overall understanding of "next-phase" is splendid. We in the Western Cape are particularly bothered by structures. The conflicted attempts to provide low-cost housing and the faltering efforts to deal with xenophobic refugee problems are hampered by the dysfunctional cross-referencing of the central government, the provincial administration and the municipal tier. Now can this situation be improved by your intensive democracy (which I believe you used to call "participatory democracy")? For we already have many next-phase relationships going on but we don't have a smooth-running situation. Now I need to ask: Don't you agree that we can have some next-phase relationships independently of next-phase social and political structures? (Well, of course you do!) Must we have next-phase structures kicking in before we have these relationships? Or do they develop simultaneously?
One unfinished debate in your book – which you light-heartedly and deliberately abandon – is that of smoking areas in restaurants. OK, it seems to be too minor to argue about but actually it is a very major test for the society that you propose. If we can't settle this, what can we settle?
Many of the 'debate' scenes are most enjoyable to read. I especially liked the not-so-Socratic (or reverse-Socratic) sequence where Fanus becomes enlightened. A really attractive character among the assortment!
A great strength of the book is the way in which you show the prevailing prejudices and also illustrate their root causes! Nobody else does this. I mean, for example, the complaints about BEE and the incompetence of the incumbents, and then the shoe moves onto the other foot and you expose why this happens and what it is like for the victims. You don't minimize the fact that it happens. (I am reminded of a scene from Beckett's Trek where you stand at a farmyard fence. On the left is a lush paradise, on the right a desert. You say what no-one else will say – the new land-owner's lack of expertise, effort, etc., has ruined the land. But then you say why!)
By the way – did I perhaps miss out a 25-page chapter where you explained the title of the book? No? You didn't write it? You wanted us to puzzle it out? OK, here's what I think. Magenta is a colour that does not appear in the visible spectrum of our rainbow nation. It is a next-phase, post-rainbow colour. It is not even infra-red or ultra-violet. So it's what we're working towards.
I enjoyed, as always, your use and manipulation of the language and the spoken word (wish you liked the relative pronoun "whom" occasionally). The glossary, too, makes its contribution – even the parts where you are getting a little bored with the task!
Lastly – one thing I didn't enjoy – if I may be so bold – was the bid to demolish the validity of the Old Testament and by extension Jesus as a teacher, in Chapter 23. I realize that it's essential for you to invalidate the beliefs of the AWB, etc., and to have a non-divisive philosophy at the heart of your future vision. But I find this chapter to be overstated – understand what I mean when I say that nothing else in the book is attacked as strongly and directly as this kind of blind, judgmental faith. Perhaps you would see this as the biggest, most obstructive obstacle – or have you had a non-epiphany at the hands of Mr Dawkins? Let me just say that as much as you need to sketch the future without having a specifically religious aspect, equally as much I cannot see that it can actually work like that!
(Incidentally, I note that God doesn't disappear from the book after Chapter 23. There are still desperate appeals for divine intervention and even more so the gathering of Christian nurses singing hymns in the ward is really attractive. Maybe it's just Bart's agnostic phase showing through, rather than the narrator's. He does tend to hesitate a bit.)
So – in the end – a great achievement and the philosophy of a lifetime expressed. Congratulations! And o, that they who run may read. Will the message reach appropriate and comprehending ears?
_______________
Beckett's rollicking trek through Jozi
Jane Rosenthal - Mail & Guardian
When Bart, the protagonist of Magenta (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press), says he has better things to do than write a novel, he is told: "No you don't. Novels broaden us, they nudge the world."
And this certainly seems to be Denis Beckett's intention with this startling and amusing addition to South African fiction. As readers who remember him from his television days will know, Beckett has opinions and ideas and loves to share them with people.
This he does in 500 rather uproarious pages; this is not a quiet novel, though it is full of some serious distilled meditations on life in Gauteng. The style takes some getting used to, mainly because it is unusual, but once into the swing of it it's a lot of fun. Beckett sustains the narrative simultaneously with Bart's inner commentary and asides. There is much inventive playing with words; the text is ironic, speedy and succinct, which was always Beckett's distinguishing style, mixed with his idiosyncratic take on situations and his ability to present two sides of an argument.
Bad old crime-ridden Joeys is the setting, including the (old) CBD, the suburbs and the squatter camps. In the initial chapters we find Bart in various commonplace situations in which current issues such as affirmative action, dishonesty and racism in the office, and crime and violence arise, but all within the narrative. Here Bart's core character and beliefs are set out for us. Other minor characters are skilfully and memorably drawn, such as Aletta, Bart's forthright Afrikaner PA, his old student activist pal, Joyous Khumalo, with whom he has a somewhat troubled relationship now that Joyous drives a top-of-the-range car, and Themba Ndlovu, whom he met by chance in the Library Gardens when they both stopped to watch a chess game.
The part-thriller, part-love story plot revolves around the death during a hijacking of another old friend of Bart's, Roger, with whom he had lost touch. He reads about it in the newspaper and, prodded by Aletta who is shocked by his disinvolvement, gets in touch with Roger's widow, Kei. This leads to him becoming closer to her and her son, Lud, a disillusioned and confused young fellow who believes his father was killed by hitmen hired by the BEE partner in his business. Lud is gravitating towards an aggrieved and militaristic right-wing group.
Beckett is good at depicting fraught and dramatic situations, which he does with great gusto and many droll asides. In an attempted hijacking at a restaurant at Zoo Lake Bart tries to "stride off in an insouciantly though inoffensively fuck-you manner". This rollicking tale also figures a car chase involving a truckload of explosives and the most ludicrously unbelievable wedding scene ever written (an extreme version of shotgun sans the pregnancy). But interspersed are many debates and discussions on issues that concern ordinary South Africans. These include those already mentioned, Boer-Soutie (British) relations, BEE deals, wealth, poverty and the economy.
The most serious thinker in the novel is Themba Ndlovu, whose ideas on the future of South Africa are expounded at length. He is a returned exile but is alienated from the mainstream ANC with some rather radical ideas on how to go from "this-phase" to the "next-phase". At one point he says: "We don't need a constitution to protect democracy, we need democracy to protect democracy."
Beckett is clearly aware that this didactism is not always appropriate for a novel, but still thinks it the best way to get his ideas across, rather than, say, at a political meeting for "three old ladies who came for the biscuits". So he uses the novel form but takes the mickey with action-packed drama deliberately offsetting the "lectures" that Themba is berated for giving. Bart initially disparages Themba's ideas, calling him the "Apostle of Hope" and even buys him a copy of Meredith's The State of Africa to give him a salutary dose of Afro-pessimism.
Throughout the novel Beckett treats the reader to well-observed renditions of various forms of South African English. The more extreme forms of Afrikaans-English might cause raised eyebrows, and he is certainly mistaken, in this reader's opinion, when he states that South African English has no more regional dialects. He apologises for having this "wuss" thing called a glossary, but it's a wonderfully irreverent addendum.
The resolution of the plot is brought about by staff at the Zoo Lake restaurant (one just has to love Anastasia the manager) and the denouement is a little trite. Despite several such Tretchikoff moments, which for a person of Beckett's sophistication must be to pull the reader's leg, and despite the high concentrations of socio-political debate, this is a good read: often hilarious, eccentric and vintage South African.
_______________
Prodding us to a bigger step than 1994
David Smith - Sunday Independent 4 January 2009
Race tends to dominate much of the South African psyche and Magenta is a weird Aesop's Fable-type tale that looks for alternative ways of being. Denis Beckett is an odd duck and it certainly comes out in his writing. He also has a wide definition of South Africans that doesn't involve pigeon-holing them. Put the man and his thoughts together and out comes a novel that's either going to inspire or offend you.
At the launch of Magenta in Johannesburg recently, Beckett admitted that his work was heavily edited and cut. It's still a reasonably hefty book and the editing has not removed any similarity between the written word and the way Beckett speaks – it's fast and all over the place. The reader has to pay attention, which I suppose is what living in South Africa is all about.
At school, Beckett was probably one of those guys whose answer to a teacher's question was different from his classmates' and usually right. The chances are, the teacher didn't believe him at first, but Beckett would redeem himself with a long and complicated explanation.
I speak with no certainty that what I've imagined about a young Beckett is true, but it's this type of technique that he uses throughout Magenta. Almost all the characters behave in ways that underline and exaggerate the worst stereotypes in South African society, whether they be ethnic or linguistic. Beckett then pounces on these perceptions and destroys them. Most stereotypes are based on a certain amount of truth but Beckett argues that many, especially in South Africa, are not.
Nobody is spared – right-wing Afrikaner paramilitary types go head to head with Zulu gangsters and liberal rooineks. Some of them are bad, very bad, but they're not beyond redemption. A squatter-camp pastor by the name of Themba is the sage voice Beckett uses to break down the barriers that continue to exist in the new South Africa. Themba's philosophy is called "the next phase".
The plots and subplots of Magenta are interwoven with advice on how the next phase will create a better place for all.
And no, this is not a book with any sort of political slant. Themba is simply wise. Bart, the central character, sees himself as a liberal who did his part in the old days to bring down the old guard; he tells Themba that he understands how black people feel. In what I found to be one of the most profound moments in the book, Themba tells him, no. "You have no genetic memory of oppression. You're out of tune with angst."
Much less profound but profoundly entertaining are the oneliners Beckett is known for on television and elsewhere in print, such as Bart's take on novels: "Novels are figments of an unstable mind. Novels are TV for slow people."
It is a book about perceptions, and political perceptions – as do perceptions of humanity and otherness – take up a lot of space.
My description so far doesn't suggest that Magenta is entertaining but, because the author is Beckett, humour is in abundance. Writing in Seffrican rather than English is a good start. It's easy to hear the voices and accents of the characters on every page – making, I would think, this text easily adaptable to radio, or at home reading aloud to an intimate audience.
The author is undoubtedly trying to shake us out of our comfort zones. He wants us to ask questions about simple things generations of South Africans have taken for granted. Why are newspapers still targeting readers according to race? Why are radio and television stations still targeting viewers and listeners according to race? Why are so many assumptions made about others without asking the others directly?
Magenta is full of common sense but it may not appear so at first glance. Beckett is using a novel, and a humorous one at that, to prod South Africans into taking perhaps a bigger step than the one taken in April 1994 – the next step after a universal franchise is a universal identity, free from the old cages that still separate many of us. A debate about this book and its contents would not be out of place on a public platform.
For those who interpret the proposals outlined in Magenta for a newer South Africa as pie in the sky, or simply the ramblings of a man who is out of touch with reality, Themba offers a disclaimer: "I'm a person with contradictions like anyone."
_______________
Demanding readers keep their wits about them
Garth Johnstone - Durban Saturday Independent
SA writer, print columnist, radio commentator and TV presenter Denis Beckett turns to fiction for the first time with Magenta (published by UKZN Press).
A colourful and clever thriller, the book is written in Beckett's unique style, demanding readers keep their wits about them and stick steadfastly to the storyline as the plot develops.
From the outset, the writing in this 500-plus-page work is witty and sharp, and Beckett cleverly taps the circumstances, mood and psyche of many in South Africa today in developing his leading characters.
Described as 'rambunctious, hilarious, thoughtful and enthralling' by columnist William Saunderson-Meyer, Magenta is exactly what you'd expect from this provocative commentator on SA society.
_______________
Subscribe to this comment's feed