After Tears

By Niq Mhlongo

Bafana Kuzwayo is a young man with a weight on his shoulders. After flunking his law studies at the University of Cape Town, he returns home to Soweto, where he must decide how to break the news to his family. But before he can confess, he is greeted as a hero by family and friends. His uncle calls him "Advo," short for Advocate, and his mother wastes no time recruiting him to solve their legal problems. In a community that thrives on imagined realities, Bafana decides that it's easiest to create a lie that allows him to put off the truth indefinitely. Soon he's in business with Yomi, a Nigerian friend who promises to help him solve all his problems by purchasing a fake graduation document. One lie leads to another as Bafana navigates through a world that readers will find both funny and grim.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0821419846
• ISBN13: 9780821419847
• Release Date: September 2011
• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Under the skin of the emerging Black Middle classes in South Africa

Every soap opera ever written has a its center the problem of misunderstanding. Sometimes its deliberate misrepresentation, sometimes it happens because person A doesn't want to "hurt" person B, and sometimes it comes about because A says X and B hears Y. At it's core though, that's what its all about. If it is sufficiently moving, or appeals widely, or touches the right nerves, we call it tragedy and it transcends its author. Its too early to pose that question about After Tears. Instead, focus on what it does speak to, which is partly about the weaknesses of not wanting to disappoint, coupled to the weakness of not wanting to take ownership of failure. It is also a sharp commentary on the shifting attitudes and mores of the emerging Black middle class in South Africa, its desire to transcend the poverty of its roots, and the confusion of its parentage as they watch the strain this puts on their own values and cultural beliefs. Here After Tears comes into it's own. I wondered, as I read it, "Did the emerging youth of the old Communist Block struggle like this too?" I'm sure they did. Oh, and yes. Life is tough in Africa. It leaves its mark on both men and women. Reading "After Tears" is to realize this, too.