Abstract:
This research report analyzes the representation of violence in Zakes Mda’s Ways of
Dying and She Plays with the Darkness. Ways of Dying questions whether social stability
and democracy would be fully realized in post-apartheid South Africa as is predicted in
Black South African literature written between 1970 and 1994. Mda’s disillusionment is
shown in his examination of undemocratic and violent practices committed within the
liberation movement against the oppressed and of “black-on-black” violence in South
Africa. She Plays with Darkness posits that political corruption and repression in
Lesotho occurred as a result of the erosion of African values and traditions, which caused
political leaders and the middleclass to dismiss the well-being of their society for
personal gains. For Mda, however, societies and individuals can be redeemed from
violence through memory, testimony, fantasy and art. Both novels reveal his endeavor to
creatively narrate the experience of violence.
