kagablog

The following is a response that I wrote after Stephen Gray mauled me in the pages of the The Mail and Guardian. The editors of that newspaper decided not to publish it.

I read Mr Gray’s article on me personally and on my work with amusement. It is interesting that he is basing his jibes and snide remarks on an article in Research in African Literatures that has been totally discredited by such scholars as Byron Caminero-Santangelo (author of an excellent book titled African Fiction and Joseph Conrad: Reading Postcolonial Intertextuality, published by the State University of New York Press in 2005) who calls the article “critical absurdity”. He points out to its lack of analysis of the fictional material and its relationship with the historical intertext, and also its lack of theoretical reflection.. That is why not a single newspaper here in the USA has picked up that story - everyone regards it as a nonsensical issue.

The Heart of Redness was first published in 2000. If Mr Gray is such a great scholar one wonders why he didn’t discover this “cribbing” all these years. Why is he now riding on the tailcoats of this so-called historian - who is in fact a student at Yale University and will only be regarded as a historian by his peers when he has published works of substance.

Mr Gray’s article distinguishes itself by its arrogance; for instance calling the language of my people, the amaXhosa, “tribal jargon”, exactly what an old colonial would indigenous languages, and claiming that my book or my theatre practice conned audiences into social development, without producing a shred of evidence to that effect. He also lies unabashedly when he says that both Jeff Peires and I have asserted that “fiction writers are traditionally irresponsible.” None of us ever made such a ridiculous claim. Another lie is that I have billed myself as an “internationally acclaimed playwright, novelist, painter and academic without qualms.” He cannot quote a single piece of my own writing where I call myself internationally acclaimed. The media and blurb writers have billed me as such, and rightly so. There are no “qualms” about that because it is the truth. There would be qualms if they were to bill Mr Gray as an “internationally acclaimed poet and novelist” because he has no such international recognition. At best he is a local hero, but I suspect only to fellow colonials.

One thing that Mr Gray should bear in mind is that I am a novelist not a historian. When I choose to write a historical novel I have to get my material from historians - both of historical record and of the oral history. For The Heart of Redness I chose the work of Jeff Peires, which I duly acknowledged in all the editions and translations of the novel. Gray’s complaint that I used a single source is not valid. I was writing a novel - a work of fiction - not an academic paper or a history textbook. The two sources that I used - namely Jeff Peires and the oral tradition - were adequate for the purposes of my fiction. When he writes his own historical novel he may use as many sources as he pleases. It is his choice. The last time I checked there were no regulations as to how many sources a writer of fiction should consult.

Mr Gray seems to suggest that I should have used footnotes in every page the material from The Dead Will Arise was used. Well, that’s not the kind of novel I chose to write I chose to write. I hate footnotes in a novel. In any event the historian whose work I used is happy with the manner I credited him.

Mr Gray is so hermeneutically challenged that he is unable to understand a novel that breaks the conventions of the English literature that was taught him when he was at school eons ago. If he had asked those who have the savvy before he embarrassed himself they would have told him that the use of tense in The Heart of Redness follows a simple logic: the historical past is narrated in the past tense and the contemporary and the contemporary events in the present tense. There! They would have also told him that the novel subverts standard English and uses the kind of language that is transliterated from the isiXhosa idiom. It is a new world Mr Gray, a world that has moved far beyond the literary canons into which you were socialized.

Jeff Peires wrote to me recently, unsolicited, expressing his dismay that Research in African Literatures has published such an unfounded allegation about me, and reiterating that he sees no plagiarism in The Heart of Redness. In the same letter he thanked me for my “generous acknowledgement” of his book in my novel. Now, if the guy from whom I am supposed to have “cribbed” says this, what is the motive of people like Mr Gray and The Mail and Guardian to insist otherwise, and of libeling me in this manner?

And finally, I must point out that as a successful writer (and yes, I say this without any qualms) you learn soon enough that not everyone will love your work. There are those who will go crazy over it and shower you with letters of praise. But there will be others who will be lukewarm about it, or even hate it with a passion. You take that in your stride and continue to produce your art the best way you can. When you attain an international stature - as I have (yes, I am saying it now Mr Gray), with works translated into 19 languages, including Catalan, Korean and Serbian in addition to the mainstream French, German and Italian - you also learn that there will be minor writers and shallow scholars who will try to build their reputations by destroying yours. Some will be driven by sheer envy, especially those aging ones who have spent years trying to establish a credible writing career but have little to show for it. The lack of substance, the sneering tone, and the personal nature of their attacks will tell you that the green-eyed monster is indeed at play here. You nevertheless brush that like dandruff off your shoulders because you know that there are a hundred positive reviews of your work for every negative one. And the sales speak to the fact that the world at large has embraced you.

Zakes Mda
Professor of Creative Writing and World Literature,
English Department,
360 Ellis Hall,
Ohio University,
Athens Ohio 45701.
Phone: 740-589-5725