Mending The Broken Bridges: An Analysis of Familyhood in Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying (1995)

This paper examines South African literature’s paradigm shift through Zakes Mda’s disruption of the dominant trope of apartheid by his focusing on black ordinary lives in Ways of Dying . The novel foregrounds the broken bridges of love and unity that used to link families before colonisation. Mda demonstrates how the rise of the city engendered the demise of the village where blacks lived as a unified community before migrating to the city whence they sink into individualism. The discussion focuses on family units during the period of death and dying to reveal broken links that happen to have a bearing to black familyhood. The focus of the argument is on how Mda depicts and mends the lost spirit of oneness among the blacks during the final stages of the anti-apartheid struggle and the transition to a democratic South Africa. The discussion highlights a new traditional African community built on forgiveness, care and unity.

postulates that the family is very important throughout Africa whereby families, not individuals, are the building blocks of African society (1).

Familyhood and The Particulars of 'Broken Bridges' in Ways of Dying
Bheamadu opines that Mda has deliberately not focused on the usual 'White versus Black' confrontation and this relative omission of the white protagonist allows for focus on the African community itself (48).

Oppression, Irresponsibility and Abandonment
In Ways of Dying, the household of Jwara is characterized by 'oppression', 'irresponsibility' and 'abandonment'. The communal narrative voice asserts that Jwara is "a towering handsome giant in gumboots and aging blue overalls, was a blacksmith, and his bellows and the sounds of beating iron filled the air with monotonous rhythms through the day"(25). Jwara, an artisan, "earned his bread by shoeing horses" (25) and creating "figurines"(25). Jwara is not able to live up to the demands of his family. He is oppressive and spends most of his time in his workshop with "that stuck-up bitch, Noria, to sing while he shaped the red-hot iron and brass into images of strange people and animals that he had seen in his dreams" (25). Jwara's family is vividly lopsided, and his wife complains that "You spend all your time with that stuck-up bitch, Noria, and you do not care for your family!" (25).
Jwara has no love and respect to his wife and son, Toloki, who tries to impress Jwara through creative art. Toloki shows him "a picture of a beautiful horse" (28) and is dismissed: "get out of here, you stupid, ugly boy! Can't you see that I am busy?"(28). Jwara seems to go against Berk's viewpoint that "the family set up plays a paramount role in the development of  (86)(87). Toloki runs away from Jwara's oppressiveness "and vowed never to return while his father was alive…making his way to the city to search for love and fortune" (50). Jwara's family disintegrates and Toloki "throughout his long journey of many months he harboured a deep bitterness against his father" (87). Jwara dies a prolonged death which "was completed many years" (92) when Toloki has already "reached the city" (92) His wife deserts him and assumes "a job doing washing for the manager of the general dealer's store" (92)  and chocolate for a thing like you?" Resultantly, "Xesibe was ashamed, and his friends were embarrassed for him" (29) where they are frustrated by the fact that "That Mountain Woman had no respect for our ways and talked with men anyhow she liked" (29). Noria's mother goes against Wiredu's assertion that the family is of unique importance to a child in that it provides a buffer and mediates between the child and the world. That Mountain Woman has a defeatist tendency. Xesibe keeps the dejection to himself and "since that day he never complained again, and Noria continued to receive gifts from Jwara" (29. His wife rubber stamps Jwara's exploitation of Noria as his muse.

Poverty, Violence and Alcoholism
Napu, "a koata, which means that he was uncivilized and uncultured" (71) is a misfit to Noria's family. Noria's parents do not welcome him: "You have shown us how much you don't respect us…your people did not even come to appease us, and negotiate with us, after you had kidnapped our daughter" (67). Napu is parentless and lives below poverty datum level, having "an old grandmother who brought me up" (68) whom he is not able to look after with his meager earnings from a brick-making yard. Napu abuses alcoholand is violent. He pays a visit to his in-laws after Noria's birth to Vutha and he "had a nip of brandy in his pocket" (69) where "an argument ensued" (69) and "they exchanged heated words for a long time" (69) over the naming of Napu and Noria's son. Napu is able to stand up against Noria's mother and he "insisted that his son would be called Vutha…[f]rom time to time he took a swig from his bottle, which we suspected gave him courage to duel so bravely with That Mountain Woman" (70). It is vivid here that alcoholism allows Napu an edge to stand up against That Mountain Woman whom he discovers to be fork-tongued. Napu varnishes from the brickyard shack and goes to the city with Vutha with all their paltry belongings when Noria has gone to attend the funeral of her mother. Napu exploits his own son Vutha; using Vutha as a begging instrument to get money from well-wishers which he spends in his drinking spree. Napu's irresponsibility as a father figure forces him to chain Vutha and goes for some days to his usual beer drinking carousal. Napu returns after dogs have devoured Vutha to death, and later commits suicide. Without Vutha Noria is a "broken woman who had lost everything that meant something in her life" (79). In this quagmire, Noria "decided to go to the city, to start a new life" (79). This marks the disintegration of Noria's family and her detachment from his father and the village at large. Napu dies in the city away from the village where his grandmother is never heard of. Nefolovhodwe is a married man with a "wife and nine children" (104) to look after.

Migration, Wealth and Amnesia
He "used to be the poorest of the three friends"(103) and "had learnt carpentry skills in his youth when he worked in town" (103) but "was barely surviving" (103) from that kind of business, unlike Jwara who "was not doing too badly in his smithy" (103) Nefolovhodwe is encouraged by Jwara to migrate to the city who"warned him to be careful not to get lost in the city" (104) as many people "went to the city and did not come back" (104). The city is associated with amnesia as migrants forget "all about their friends and relatives in the village" (104). Nefolovhodwe soon "established himself as the best coffin maker" (104) and "unlike the village, death was plentiful in the city…[e]very day there was a line of people wanting to buy his coffins" (104). Of interest is the link between migration and Nefolovhodwe's financial transformation: he moves from the "squatter camps" (104) to the "township house" (104) before "he bought a house in one of the very up-market suburbs" (106). In the novel, we are told that: When in our orature the storyteller begins the story, 'They say it once happened…', we  (12) Mda brings backoneness among the blacks whose sense of unity has evaporated as a You must give way! But we are a procession We are a procession of beautiful people, and many posh cars and buses, while yours is an old skorokoro of a van, and hundreds of ragged souls on foot The links of unity, love and compassion between the two groups are broken and they should be resuscitated. There is no longer a sense of oneness that used to define traditional African family where the dead is respected. Toloki notices these 'broken bridges' and "walks to the convertible…[h]e greets the bridal couple, and is about to give them a stern lecture on funeral etiquette, when the ill-humoured driver of the convertible suddenly decides that he will give way after all" (11). Toloki instills a sense of Ubuntu into the wedding group and the driver of the convertible "signals to the other drivers in the wedding procession to park on the side of the road so that the funeral procession can pass peacefully" (11). The presence of Toloki as a professional mourner is of effect in this context, as he represents the healing and reengagement of the black community. Toloki symbolises the re-germinating seed of traditional African family love.
It is due to Toloki's positive presence that Shadrack approaches and informs him that "the mother of the child we have just buried wants to thank you for what you have done"  African family' that has been rendered obsolete, disunited and out of shape by the forces of colonialism.
Rukuni posits that Ubuntu is a trusted, reliable way of building oneself as a person, as a fully human being, in the spirit of fellowship, humanity, and compassion (qtd in Mafumbate 1). Here, Madimbhaza epitomizes the spirit of loving the African race -Ubuntuismthe driving force that unified inhabitants of those communities that existed before colonialism. In this respect, "Toloki learns that for the past fifteen years Madimbhaza has been taking care of abandoned children" (139) and "to find their biological parents, but usually without success" (139). Mda makes use of a character like Madimbhaza to underscore the recapturing of lost African dignity. Such loss of old traditional African ways results in the destabilization of families, especially children that are regarded as the'hub of the future'. Madimbhaza is a unifier of humanity as "some of the children are victims of the war that is raging in the land" (139). Madimbhaza glibly states the motive behind her actions: "All I want to do in life now is to give them a good start and teach them to be good human beings when they grow up…I will die a very happy person if this can be done" (139). In doing this, Madimbhaza lives to Mafumbate's suggestion that children in the family "require direction and delimitation of respect, Nefolovhodwe appears to have recovered from amnesia and is back to his old self.
Nefolovhodwe is transformed into a functional figure among his people. The presence of the figurines at Toloki and Noria's shack brings the whole settlement to a standstill, as "Toloki is amazed that the figurines give pleasure to the children in the same way that Noria gave pleasure to the whole community back in the village" (174). We see the rediscovery of the ordinary, the link between the past and present, as Toloki and Noria "decide that they will keep one of the figurines in their shack, next to Toloki's roses, to remind themselves where they came from" (175). The figurines point to the birth of a 'unified present' as well as the re-emergence of an African community built and anchored on love as "Toloki takes out his cake and onions" (174) and began to "share the cakes with the children" (174). There is an interlacing of the village and the city, and this arrows to the mending of the broken bridges which used to unify the traditional African family. Noria also suggests to "sell" (175) some of the figurines and "take the money to Madimbhaza's dumping ground" (175) or alternatively, to have them remain at their shack so that "the children could laugh whenever they felt like it" (175). Of major interest here is that the two options are of benefit to the community rather than to Noria and Toloki. Mda demonstrates the rediscovery of the lost spirit of oneness, of peace and of love that defines black people. In doing so, Mda repairs the broken links of the traditional African family as his focusing on the Black community points to the priorities for the future such as fostering social solidarity and attending urgently to the needs of those most severely hit by apartheid (Samin 25,qtd in Bheamadu 48).

Conclusion
It is the finding of this paper that Ways of Dying is an epitome of South African literature that breaks away from being confrontational to that which attempts to rediscover