Books: THE MADONNA OF EXCELSIOR by Zakes Mda

Title: The Madonna of Excelsior

Author: Zakes Mda

Published: 2002

Genre: Fiction

I read this again right after I finished Chicago, and had just started on The Immigrant by Manju Kapur -  which I have yet to finish. I often find myself in a reading rut where I tend to read books with similar themes and in the same genre at intervals that are too close together. After Chicago, The Immigrant started off feeling similar, which is the reason I have put it down for  a while.

The Madonna of Excelsior is a novel set in pre-democratic South Africa,in the early 1970s, when the then South African government's apartheid state and all its accompanying discriminatory laws were in full force. The Immorality Act, was one such law that forbade sexual relationships between black and white people. Set in the small town of Excelsior in the Free State - and based on a real-life trial in which nineteen citizens of the small town; from upstanding white leaders and pillars of the tightly-knit Afrikaans community to the black domestic workers that worked for them, were charged with contravening the Immorality Act.

The story is told from Niki's perspective, the domestic worker that went on to have the blue-eyed, brown-skinned Popi with Stephanus Cronje, a white farmer. Zakes Mda's book is intriguing and well-written. He incorporates elements of the real-life trial, which adds to historical theme yet does not detract from the intrigue. 

The book tells of a South Africa of a different time, when the majority black population was beginning to find its voice and spans to the early 70s following the characters to post-democratic South Africa. Race and identity form the backdrop to the story - the first part of the book being told by the down-trodden Niki, while the second part is related by her children - Viliki and Popi, together with the perspective of Tjaart; Stephanus' legitimate son. All now faced with a changed South Africa. Viliki is still angry about the oppression black people went through, Tjaart is bitter about the plight of the Afrikaner in the New South Africa and Popi laments the fact that she was 'too black for the old South Africa and is now too white for the new one'.

This is a good story telling of the effects of institutionalised racism on the psyche of South Africans; both the oppressed and the oppressor and the effects on the generation that were a result of interactions deemed illegal at the time.