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

distorts the border between reality and fiction for Mpe’s readers: “Comprised
of stories within stories and unstable, shifting narratorial viewpoint, the novel
presents competing version and vision of the city” (251). These “competing
visions” come together, allowing reader gets a fuller and more realistic image
of Hillbrow. The main difference between Mpe and Refentše’s protagonist,
however, is that she has chosen to write in Sepedi because “[s]he did not know
that writing in an African language in South Africa could be such a curse”
(Hillbrow 56). Here, Mpe addresses the language problem of African literature
and calls indirect attention to the remnants of colonialism in South Africa. Mpe,
although he is multi-lingual and writes in English, explains that he would prefer
to have his work translated into Sepedi because “there’s a big big big audience
that I’m not reaching and probably I’m never going to reach” (Healing” 143).
South African publishers, however, would not allow it to be translated. When
Mpe wanted to translate Welcome to Our Hillbrow, he explains: “I felt at some
point I was being censored, which I objected to. Nevertheless they said they
would publish it [into Sepedi], and at the end of the day it was published”
(“Healing” 142). Publishing a translated version of Welcome to Our Hillbrow
would make it seem too “vulgar,” and publishers want to censor this vulgarity.
Mpe explains that he does not take it upon himself to translate his own work
into Sepedi because “you don’t really want to waste time writing things that you
know for sure you’ll not get published” (“Healing” 143).
South African publishers censor literature in indigenous languages
because it becomes much more real and much less euphemistic. Corruption and
truth can be masked when it is written in English, but this mask is removed if it
is published in native tongues. Mpe and Monica Seeber explain:
Freedom of thought might not be problematic if the writer is an expert
at using euphemism, but whether freedom of expression—or more narrowly
choice of diction—is an easily granted in African language publishing remains a
sensitive issue. Readers’ reviews of manuscripts have been known to summarily
dismiss the writers’ choice of diction as ‘vulgar’ even when the ‘vulgar terms’
are carefully contextualized. If the manuscripts were in, say English, such terms
would not even have raised an eyebrow. (33-4)
Refentše’s protagonist, writing in Sepedi, does not utilize the
euphemism designed to hide the truth of corruption in a colonial/post-colonial
society. Therefore, “Calling shit and genitalia by their correct names in Sepedi
was apparently regarded as vulgar by these reviewers. . .who were determined
to ensure that such works did not offend the systems that they served” (Mpe,
Hillbrow 56). These “systems,” are still in place from the apartheid regime.
As Poyner explains, “Both the form and content of literature have been
regulated not only by the apartheid regime but also—of course to a much lesser
degree—by the oppositional movement for committed literature” (104-05).
144