Metafiction in Mpe's Welcome to our Hillbrow - African Literature ...

avoid direct reference to the Western forces at play in postcolonial nations.
Mwangi explains, “the texts resist the West by erasing it from local discourses
on postcolonial culture, aesthetics, and politics of identity” (1). Erasing
the West from direct discourse, however, does not mean its presence has
vanished. Although often indirectly, the remnants of apartheid and colonialism,
nonetheless, come through in Mpe’ use of metafiction. As Refentše walks
through Hillbrow, he briefly thinks about the horrors that came with apartheid:
You would be reminded of . . . the endless string of South
Africans hanging and jumping from their ninth floor prison
cells because the agents of the Apartheid government wanted
them to do so . . . [and of] testimonies of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission hearings, of South African policemen
enjoying their beer and braai while black dissenters roasted
alongside their roasted meat in the heat of a summer day. (19)
Here, Mpe calls attention to the use of metafiction as a
framework for reality by describing all of these horrors as “stuff that
would be called surrealism or magic realism or some other strange
realism were it simply told or written as a piece of fiction” (19). If Mpe
had not pointed out the surreal nature of these apartheid images, readers
may be inclined to think they are fabricated, unreal. By explaining how
surreal they felt even to the witnesses, however, readers are forced to
understand and recognize their reality.
Illustrating the blur between fiction and reality creates an
uncanny feeling for both the characters and the readers. In Nadine
Gordimer’s July’s People (1981), for example, she presents her fictional
prediction as to how the apartheid regime would end. Although
Gordimer writes mainly in the tradition of realism, she employs small
acts of metafictive strategy in such a way that seems more real than the
realist elements of the novel. As her protagonist, Maureen, stays in
July’s village for protection from riots, Gordimer brings in elements of
metafiction to emphasize the cultural distance between Maureen and
July. Maureen’s experience of the uncanny reoccurs when she thinks
about how she would have seen the village depicted in her past. When
Maureen seems beads on a table, for example, she imagines them as an
educational display: “the dioramas of primitive civilizations in a natural
history museum contrive to produce tableaux like that” (24). Similarly,
an indigenous building Maureen sees reminds her of one “about which
Bam had once presented a paper” (108). She even finds herself unable
to enjoy reading a book because she already “was in another time, place,
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