Something new out of Africa

In a Johannesburg mall, a listless and lonely IT worker chats with his dad about the bitter fruits of upward mobility in South Africa. ‘Do you remember when you scored 139 for that IQ test?’ Pa asks, in Masande Ntshanga’s story ‘Space II’. ‘I thought it meant my life would be different, I tell him, but I don’t really like computers.’ As the dream of a ‘rainbow nation’ fades, all the Ubers, espressos and craft beers in the city can’t dispel the mood of yuppie melancholia.

Modern Africa, as several pieces in the latest edition of this annual anthology attest, may cast away old burdens only to take on the anxious freight of globalised life. Dump those stereotypes of want and strife, cease to peddle tales of epidemic, civil war or slumland misery, and any writer worth the name will still flick flies into the ointment of progress. With their flash motors, designer drinks and first-class air tickets, the back-slapping Nairobi bourgeoisie of Billy Kahora’s ‘Shiko’ nervously practise the fear-driven oneupmanship learned in dormitories and on rugby pitches, ‘a philosophy of survival in boarding-school life’.