admin
Beaven Tapureta Bookshelf
Polygamy was long ago a respectable traditional type of marriage in some African societies but it has become a delusional institution almost inapplicable in these modern days.
Some men and women, however, have now carved out a new version of “polygamy” which they desperately use to justify their evil desires.
Sukoluhle Nyathi’s gripping style of writing, complemented by an unusual responsiveness to issues regarding relationships, sexuality and power makes her debut novel The Polygamist (Logogog Press, South Africa, 2012) such an irresistible read.
The Polygamist exposes the secrets which some men and women, the “nouveau-riche” in particular, would rather want dealt with silently “indoors”. In the novel there is interplay of dreams and reality, sensuality and sensibility and the conflict of these elements is well presented through the five main characters Joyce, Matipa, Essie, Lindani and Jonasi Gomora.
All the four women have a stake in Jonasi’s life whose transition from grass to grace (and back to grass again) they witness each from a different perspective. The Polygamist is presented with each chapter devoted to a single character’s dramatic monologue which progresses with captivating action and dialogue. The reader learns who the narrator is and how related the character is to other characters only from references within the monologue itself.
Set in Zimbabwe, the story is about Jonasi Gomora who rises in life to become the founder of the most successful business in the city but his rise is not without its own consequences. Women, money, and power soon catch up with him and what follows is an adventurous life that leads him to nothing but death.
In all the twenty-five chapters, Jonasi is the one being spoken about by his “wives” who are observing him from different angles. While the women tell their individual parts of the story, Jonasi tells his story only in death in the epilogue; his voice as a dead man is a closing message that sends the reader back to the first page to go over the story again.
His first marriage is with Joyce, a woman who stands the hard times with him. Joyce and Jonasi make the transit from driving nothing to driving a Mazda 323, then to driving a Mercedes C-Class; from living in a single room in Queensdale to living in the Avenues in town and finally in a mansion in the posh suburbs of Glen Lorne.
Together in love they ditch poverty as Jonasi’s company J & J Holdings get more and more successful. However, things fall apart when in the drama of love enter Matipa, a woman who bulldozes her way into Jonasi’s 16-year old marriage.
Matipa falls in love with Jonasi, the CEO of J & J Holdings, having found a job at his company. The trio of Joyce, Jonasi and Matipa are seekers of something they don’t even understand. When betrayal slips between them, each tries to assert his/her position.
Then Essie, Jonasi’s first lover from his youth with whom he has a child named Sarah, re-appears and complicates the story. As if that’s not enough, next enter Lindani, a girl Jonasi meets in a nightclub.
Enchanted by Matipa, Jonasi thinks of divorcing Joyce but she refuses his divorce plan. He abandons Joyce and starts living with Matipa whom he had promoted to Assistant Director in one of the J &J Holdings departments. Yet Jonasi soon becomes a “bed-hopper”, living with each of the women at different times. Through the women’s narratives, one notices that each of the women want to legitimize her position as Jonasi’s wife.
The maze does not spare the children. Although the effect of Jonasi’s polygamous life upon his children is watered down by his wealth, wealth cannot buy decency.
Freedom, who is not actually Jonasi’s child but Essie’s whom she sired with another man, leads a thug-life and his disrespectful nature reflects how deeply the Gomora family structure is fractured.
A psychoanalytic look at the character Jonasi explains why Jonasi behaves the way he does especially in relation to women.
As a youth, he rapes Essie when he finds out she has been impregnated by another man (the soldier with whom she bore Freedom). He next beats her up when he finds her being intimate with yet another man in a car. Essie had grown up with Jonasi. When Jonasi’s mother died, four-year old Jonasi found refuge (from his abusive father) at Essie’s place and they became childhood lovers. Could this early bitter disappointment in the first relationship have awakened his sadist attitude towards women?
When somewhere along the line Matipa tells him that she has been to a doctor and been diagnosed of a sexually transmitted disease, he beats her up with a metal belt and rapes her.
Jonasi’s early background of neglect somehow tallies with Lindani’s. Lindani, a night-clubber who describes her male clients as “fossils”, is the fourth and youngest of all Jonasi’s women. Lindani has lived through a rape trauma; she drinks alcohol and is a sex-worker. What does Jonasi see in Lindani?
The Polygamist examines the modern day concept of “marriage” or “love”, thus becoming another voice breaking the silence on situations fuelling the spread of HIV/AIDS. The book is available online and in Zimbabwe, readers can get it from Blackstone and Innov8 Bookstores.
The writer Sukoluhle Nyathi was born in 1978 and was raised and educated in Bulawayo. She started writing at the age of 10 when she would cut out pictures from magazines and write little excerpts about the men and women in the pictures. This passion was reflected in her participation in poetry competitions for which she won several awards and accolades. Sue, as she is commonly known, holds a Masters Degree in Finance and presently works as a Research Associate for an economic and strategic planning consulting firm in Johannesburg which is where she currently resides. She was a freelance writer for the “Steaming Off”column in the Sunday Mail, a local weekly in Harare.
Online Reporter