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Shaun Johnson's debut novel, The Native Commissioner, is a particularly annoying book. It won't be put down, even if you have a meeting at 8am and your light is still on at 3 and you've convinced yourself that this really will be the last chapter.
Sitting outside a Hampstead coffee shop, Johnson lights a cigarette and leans back in his chair. The beers arrive. “The obvious question I get asked is 'How much is true?' I think of the book as a tent, of which the two tent poles are fact and the rest is fictionalised around it," he says. “The two basic facts are: My father was what was then called the Native Commissioner of the Transkei, and he shot himself when I was eight years old."
The book is set in South Africa from 1916 to 1968, the year in which George Jameson, the title character, commits suicide after years of struggling against depression. This is evident at the start of the book, which makes the reading of it a journey to discover why.
“This is a deeply un-PC, un-trendy period to write about," Johnson says, which is why he wrote it. It's a subtle story that steers clear of overt drama and lurid details, and provides texture to a time in our history that is largely unexplored. “We had struggle literature in the 80's, and then the 90's saw TRC writing, but now we are moving into an era where people are comfortable enough to write about ordinary people".
The story follows George and his young family around South Africa during the early days of Apartheid, taking the angle that is not often written about- that of the government employee. Johnson is careful to avoid blame, ideology and political lecturing, and tells the story of a man that most of us, or our parents, knew someone like. “Not everyone was a monster on the side of Apartheid, or a heroic liberation fighter," Johnson says. “Most people were ordinary".
Johnson is clear in his assertion that the placing of blame for George's life at the hands of the government is not the issue. George is not a mindless pawn of an obviously powerful and abhorrent system, but a man whose life is directed by the choices he himself makes. The luck of the draw and taking the right chances are easy to see in hindsight.
“People should be easier on themselves and realise the role that luck plays in our lives," he says, and this is illustrated in the book by the choices the characters make. You take a job, or turn it down, you move somewhere new or don't, or you just miss an opportunity that's too quick to see.
Today Johnson is mindful of the luck and good fortune that has shaped his life, despite and disastrous beginning. And he is passionate about South Africa, the country that gave him those opportunities. “I'm so thrilled with your generation in London," he says, meaning South Africans in their mid-20's.“It's a completely different presence to when I was here, which was a bitter time when people wanted to deny everything, to change their accents and assimilate. Now there are so many of you, and you're so relaxed about who you are".
One of the novel's main concerns is that of identity, which is always a prominent theme in South African literature. What does it mean to be African? “I've got no problem with saying that I'm a white African. That is who I am and I have no claim to anywhere else," Johnson says, and this topic is something that occupies George's fragile mind. What is his role in South Africa in a system he works for, hates, yet isn't able to leave? He is bound to the southern tip of this troubled continent, and expresses this passion.
“It is not enough to call yourself an African because of a geographical accident of birth. Sometimes I find myself despising white people who speak of their love for African landscapes, sunsets, African wildlife- but never the African people, not the people. Africa is not a film set!"
As a journalist by training, and one of the SA media industry's most illustrious components, Johnson knows how to grab you attention and keep it. This may be his debut novel, but he is no literary novice.
George's story, and the way Johnson describes his journey through our country, will make you homesick for places you've never even heard of. Libode, Duiwelskloof and Tsumeb come alive through his images, the colours and contours as clear and focussed as photographs. There are times when you wish you couldn't see the images quite so clearly for all the disquiet they cause.
Don't let the deceptively simple, Penguin Classic-esque cover fool you. This book is far from simple, far from typical and not at all like the Apartheid stories you've read so far.
The Native Commissioner is out in the UK in August 2006.
Copyright - Lindsay du Plessis
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