Subject: ENG2603
Student: Elzaan Venter
Student No: 62913190
Assignment 03
Unique number:677732
Contact details: +27 788047813
Email:
, Essay – Welcome to our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe
Welcome to Our Hillbrow is a mind buffing and disturbing mental ride through
a chaotic and real zone of Hillbrow—a sight of all that is contradictory, alluring,
and painful in the post-apartheid South African psyche. Everything is there: the
shattered dreams of youth, sexuality and its unpredictable costs, AIDS,
xenophobia, suicide violence that often cuts short the promise of young
people’s lives, and the Africanist understanding of the life that does not end
with death but flows on into an ancestral realm. Infused with the rhythms of
the inner-city pulsebeat, this courageous novel is compelling in its honesty and
its broad vision, which links Hillbrow, rural Tiragalong, and Oxford. It spills out
the guts of Hillbrow—living with the same energy and intimate knowledge with
which the Drum writers wrote Sophia town into being.
A novel about Hillbrow, xenophobia and AIDS and the preconception of rural
lives. You, Refentse, had written the story of your focus heroine to buttle with
these profound questions of euphemism, xenophobia, prejudice, and AIDS to
which Tagalong pretended to have answers. Your story was in English, since
unlike the naïve and hopeful woman of your focus, you knew the limitans of
writing in Sepedi. But, like your heroine, you wrote your story to find sanctuary
in worlds of fiction that are never quite what we label them You wrote it to
steady yourself against grief and prejudice, against the painful and complex
realities of humanness.
I think issues like xenophobia have not been discussed very much in South
African literature written in English, but I think in South African literature,
having xenophobia treated in such a sensitive way is unusual.
And as Refilwe comes to this part of her journey to AIDS and Tiragalong
condemning her and the Bone of her Heart and Refilwe herself reaping the
bitter fruits of the xenophobic prejudice that she had helped to sow Hillbrow
and Tiragalong flowing into each other in her consciousness with her new
understanding of life love and prejudice gained in Oxford and Heathrow Oxford
London and Lagos demystified Tiragalong sweating its way through the scary
invasion of AIDS apparently aggressively sown by migrants and all witchcraft
becoming less colourful and glamorous in the face of this killer disease the
impact of which could be seen with the naked human eye without the
assistance of diviners and bone throwers love crossing oceans and flying over
Student: Elzaan Venter
Student No: 62913190
Assignment 03
Unique number:677732
Contact details: +27 788047813
Email:
, Essay – Welcome to our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe
Welcome to Our Hillbrow is a mind buffing and disturbing mental ride through
a chaotic and real zone of Hillbrow—a sight of all that is contradictory, alluring,
and painful in the post-apartheid South African psyche. Everything is there: the
shattered dreams of youth, sexuality and its unpredictable costs, AIDS,
xenophobia, suicide violence that often cuts short the promise of young
people’s lives, and the Africanist understanding of the life that does not end
with death but flows on into an ancestral realm. Infused with the rhythms of
the inner-city pulsebeat, this courageous novel is compelling in its honesty and
its broad vision, which links Hillbrow, rural Tiragalong, and Oxford. It spills out
the guts of Hillbrow—living with the same energy and intimate knowledge with
which the Drum writers wrote Sophia town into being.
A novel about Hillbrow, xenophobia and AIDS and the preconception of rural
lives. You, Refentse, had written the story of your focus heroine to buttle with
these profound questions of euphemism, xenophobia, prejudice, and AIDS to
which Tagalong pretended to have answers. Your story was in English, since
unlike the naïve and hopeful woman of your focus, you knew the limitans of
writing in Sepedi. But, like your heroine, you wrote your story to find sanctuary
in worlds of fiction that are never quite what we label them You wrote it to
steady yourself against grief and prejudice, against the painful and complex
realities of humanness.
I think issues like xenophobia have not been discussed very much in South
African literature written in English, but I think in South African literature,
having xenophobia treated in such a sensitive way is unusual.
And as Refilwe comes to this part of her journey to AIDS and Tiragalong
condemning her and the Bone of her Heart and Refilwe herself reaping the
bitter fruits of the xenophobic prejudice that she had helped to sow Hillbrow
and Tiragalong flowing into each other in her consciousness with her new
understanding of life love and prejudice gained in Oxford and Heathrow Oxford
London and Lagos demystified Tiragalong sweating its way through the scary
invasion of AIDS apparently aggressively sown by migrants and all witchcraft
becoming less colourful and glamorous in the face of this killer disease the
impact of which could be seen with the naked human eye without the
assistance of diviners and bone throwers love crossing oceans and flying over
