LIFE AFTER APARTHEID As you go through this reading, note all the different points at which Mda shows the ambiguities of life after apartheid. It is NOT simply a clear-cut transition from an evil system to a awless system. The newly democratic country continues to be plagued by problems that range from human corruption to deadly disease. Mda refers to the outbreak of AIDS (203) that killed many people, especially young and otherwise healthy people, in Africa just as it did in the rest of the world. Even here, however, social structures contributed to the spread of disease. Many men continued to work in jobs far away from their families, just as Pule had done under apartheid. It was easy for these men to contract or spread the disease through encounters with prostitutes or other casual sexual encounters and later to transmit the disease to their own wives during visits home. The use of abstinence and monogamy as ways to prevent the spread of AIDS proved especially difcult to maintain when the job situation continued to keep many men separate from their wives for long periods of time. FAMILY AND POLITICS Of course, there are other human factors at work in what Mda shows. As you read about the bickering during Town Council meetings, keep in mind that in addition to being political ghts, these are also literally family fights. Popi and Tjaart are half- siblings, after all, and they are constantly opposed to each other. Popi and Viliki at rst present a unied front of sibling solidarity, but the running battle between Popi and Tjaart shows a different kind of family dynamic. OPPORTUNISM AND INTEGRITY Sekatle, who remains an opportunist, now declares himself a member of the \"Movement\" and turns everything to his advantage. The fact that he ends up as a wealthy businessman and the mayor of Excelsior is surely symbolic of the way in which honesty and integrity do not always win. Of course, he is not the only opportunist. As Viliki sarcastically observes, now that apartheid has ended, it is hard to nd any white who ever supported apartheid (214). Indeed, even white as bigoted as Johannes Smit grudgingly come to cooperate with blacks, not out of a change of heart, but out of pragmatism. At the same time, awless integrity can backre. Popi is uncompromising when she confronts white farmers who re their black workers for political activities, but Viliki, who is willing to negotiate, is the one who \"[s]ometimes would be successful and get the workers their jobs back\" (163). Popi rejects a RDP house because she believes that she and other town ofcials should take their turn on the waiting list for those houses, but she isn't able to build a house on her own, as she ambitiously plans to do. By the end of the book, even she is buying coal from Sekatle rather than foraging for cow dung (231) because it is too difcult to maintain the old ways. ANGER In particular, pay attention to the consistent exploration of anger running through this section. Tjaart is angry. Popi is angry. Anger, in fact, is one of the many things they have in common. The white Afrikaners are angry at their loss of supremacy. Die-hards such as Johannes Smit and Tjaart express their anger with great vehemence, although, as Viliki muses, \"Were people like Viliki, Popi and Niki not the ones who should be angry? Were they not entitled to even a shred of anger? Why should the Afrikaner hoard all the anger?\" (216). It's possible to speculate that Tjaart dies of anger, if he does die. Certainly, there is no clear-cut medical reason for his collapse. Yet learning that his ally in anger, Johannes Smit, has begun to cooperate with blacks, leads to his physical and emotional breakdown. While in this state of collapse, however, he also has a tentative quasi- reconcilation with Popi. Does Tjaart die after that reconciliation? We do not read anything further about him, another way in which Mda leaves much of the novel's conclusion open-ended. Read that section carefully and decide for yourself what you make of it. RECONCILIATION AND HEALING Keep in mind, also, that in an interview Mda declared that South Africa's emphasis on reconciliation after the end of white minority rule arises from an African tradition of reconciliation, something that Mda argues is part of African culture. (You can read the full interview at http:llwww.kclibrary.orgibloglkcunboundlauthorinterview-south-african- novelist-2akes-mda-mandela-apartheid-and-ubuntu.)At the same time, even though Nelson Mandela was a proponent of reconciliation rather than revenge after the end of white minority rule, Mda does not whole-heartedlyjoin in the West's current reverence for Mandela. In essays and interviews Mda has criticized Mandela for overlooking greed and self-seeking among his associates. (In addition to comments in the interview cited above, you can read Mda's essay entitled "Nelson Mandela: Neither Sell-out nor Saint" athttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/06elson-mandela- statesman-saved-south-africa-economic-reform.) Mda points out that many young South Africans are angry with Mandela, blaming him for their lack of economic opportunity. Reconciliation, it turns out, is a difficult and complicated thing. In the novel, however, Popi's anger is healed by a combination of the trinity's paintings (229) and the bees (258). The paintings are works of art while bees are part of the natural world; is there a suggestion of the healing powers of both art and nature? What are your thoughts about the transformation in Popi at the end of the book? If we see the paintings as suggesting that art has a healing power, we might believe there is that same healing power in musical art. After all, Viliki's music-making with the Seller of Songs gives Viliki a life of joy and "freedom" (237) such as he did not find through politics