Splitting and becoming double in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness
This article explores Zakes Mda’s fascination with and deployment of the (leit)motif of twins, doubles/doppelgängers, and the notion of duality in his novels. In a close reading of The Heart of Redness, I explore how Mda dramatizes the breakdown of Xhosa society during
the colonial encounters with the British and their continued impact on the present. I am also interested in the ways in which this novel animates the tensions between colonial modernity and Africanist traditionalism, while also drawing our attention to societies that do not thrive on the fixed
taxonomies of rationalism. Through twinship, the figure of the double, and the notion of duality, Mda’s novel not only illustrates the complexity of the South African colonial experience, but also recuperates a historical episode that has been predominantly relegated to the margins of
hysteria and delusion.
Keywords: Cattle-Killing; Nongqawuse; Twinship; Zakes Mda; disillusionment; duality
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa
Publication date: 02 January 2019
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