I first met K Sello Duiker at Rhodes University in my hometown of Makhanda in 1997. I knew him only as Kabelo, an aerobics instructor and a journalism student, while I was an athlete and an arts student from the University of Fort Hare. South Africa was three years into its democratic dispensation, and both Kabelo and I were in the third year of our studies at our respective universities. What we did not know about each other is that we both harboured literary ambitions.
Perhaps Duiker had far greater ambition, commitment and talent than I, as he had been a writer from an early age. As a 13-year-old back in 1987, for a school project Duiker chose to write a piece titled “My Life Story”, which partly read: “I was born at Baragwanath Hospital, and my parents are Judah and Meikie Duiker. I was named Kabelo Sello Duiker. I was given my second name after my grandfather, who unfortunately died four months before I was born. My birth date is April 13 1974.” The “book” was reportedly neatly bound, and on its cover the following words were written in bold capital letters: “AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER KS DUIKER.” This is how a writer took up residence in a boy who would grow up to become a trailblazer in the post-apartheid literary landscape.
In 1995, Duiker enrolled at Rhodes University, where with two of his friends he founded a poetry society called Seeds, which published some of his earliest work. He later quipped that, though the publication gave him an opportunity to “get drunk and pick up girls, rather than teaching us about poetry”, it published an anthology.
It was during this period he reached out to Annari van der Merwe, a publisher at Kwela Books, which had been established in 1994. Kwela was founded with the object of “looking for fresh young talent”, a euphemism for a young black writers. Duiker aligned perfectly with Kwela’s vision and, though they did not publish the original manuscript he sent them, he formed a good relationship with the publisher. He and Kwela then started working on his next project, which would be published as The Quiet Violence of Dreams in 2001.
While The Quiet Violence was being edited, the aspiring author, overflowing with youthful energy, came to his publisher with a new manuscript under his arm. Kwela sensibly told him to focus on completing The Quiet Violence before beginning work on other projects. However, they did not forbid him from taking the new manuscript to a different publisher, so Duiker approached David Phillip, who duly accepted the manuscript. And that is how Thirteen Cents was published in 2000, before The Quiet Violence. Duiker’s debut novel went on to win the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Africa Region). Kwela, obviously haunted by its decision not to publish Thirteen Cents, bought the publishing rights for the novel from David Phillip 13 years later, but surely not for 13 cents!
The Quiet Violence was finally published in 2001 to critical acclaim. It won the Herman Charles Bosman Prize and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Literary Award in 2002. Duiker emerged as a novelist at a time when many social commentators were still wondering what South African literature would look like now that official apartheid had ended. In 1986, Njabulo S Ndebele had made his clarion call for the “rediscovery of the ordinary” in South African literature, by which he meant work that paid attention to the intricacies of everyday life. Indeed, Duiker’s writing distinguished itself by its unique exploration of unconventional themes.
In an interview with Bafana Khumalo, Duiker is quoted as saying, “I use Tshepo [the protagonist in The Quiet Violence] as a vehicle to explore the politics of identity.” Indeed, a close reading of Duiker’s works reveals that the thread that runs through his writing is identity in all its diverse forms. Azure, the teenage protagonist in Thirteen Cents, loses his identity and becomes Blue, while Tshepo becomes Angelo-Tshepo in The Quiet Violence. Interestingly, earlier generations of the author’s family had to abandon their original Lesufi surname and adopt an Afrikaans one, Duiker, to pass as “coloureds” under apartheid. The Duiker surname is a derivative of phuti, meaning a duiker in Sepedi, which is actually their family totem. His father, Judah Duiker, a former soccer star who plied his trade with Moroka Swallows in the 1960s, once shared anecdotes about how much his son detested racism.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Duiker’s writing is the graphic manner in which he depicts homosexuality, particularly in 'The Quiet Violence'
Thirteen Cents chronicles the journey of a 12-year-old homeless boy through the streets of Cape Town. Its protagonist, Azure, is exposed to the cruel world of gangsterism, substance abuse and sexual violence. The novel is based on Duiker’s own personal experiences. After finishing at Rhodes, he went to study in Cape Town and on his way to university used to walk past a group of homeless children. One of the young boys, a nine-year-old called Sammy, went missing, and for three weeks Duiker lived with the children on the streets as they embarked on a quest to find him. It turned out that a “kind” gentleman had given Sammy food and accommodation, and even sent him to school — at the price of molesting him. This experience led to the end of Duiker’s formal education and his writing of Thirteen Cents. “After being absent from college for three weeks, I was expelled. I went home and had lots of time on my hands, so I wrote Thirteen Cents,” he later said.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Duiker’s writing is the graphic manner in which he depicts homosexuality, particularly in The Quiet Violence. When reflecting on writing the novel, Duiker wrote, “I also explored one of South African society’s biggest taboos, sex, as well as — even worse, horror of horrors — homosexuality.”
The Quiet Violence is narrated as a heteroglossia, with the central character being Tshepo, a Rhodes University student who suffers mental illness and is confined to Valkenberg Hospital in Cape Town. The number of years and the amount of creative effort Duiker put into writing The Quiet Violence are evident in the sheer size of the book, which extends to more than 600 pages. He described The Quiet Violence as “a young black man’s view of what is happening — perhaps that is its strongest selling point, considering that very few black writers have got the kind of critical acclaim that our white counterparts have had”.
Duiker was the first black male author to explore same-sex relationships in post-apartheid South African novels. He was often confronted with questions about his exploration of these themes and his own sexuality. “Some people have asked me if The Quiet Violence of Dreams is a gay novel. I don’t think so, as there are other central themes in the novel. The fact that the main character discovers his homosexuality is only part of the plot,” he wrote. In an interview with Victor Lakay, who asked him if he was gay, Duiker said he did “not want to be pigeonholed”.
Though he never publicly confirmed his sexuality, Duiker was a catalyst for the flowering of male queer literature in South Africa. Since he published his two novels, there have been many more black men who have felt liberated to write queer narratives. Coincidentally, the latest winner of the K Sello Duiker Award is Dimakatso Mokwena for his queer novel Here Comes the Gay King.
The publication of Duiker’s two novels in quick succession marked a watershed in the South African literary landscape. His spectacular entry into the world of letters precipitated a new wave of writers, and he was soon joined by Phaswane Mpe, who debuted with Welcome to Our Hillbrow, published by UKZN Press in 2001. Other publishers like Jacana Media, Pan MacMillan and Umuzi also published a new crop of dynamic authors who put South African literature on the global map.
I tend to agree with Van der Merwe’s observation that “[Duiker] served as a source of inspiration to aspirant young black writers”. Perhaps one should add that Duiker’s success as a young black writer not only inspired would-be writers, but also went a long way towards softening the hearts of the rather hard-nosed publishers, leading them to take the risk of publishing new voices. This gave rise to a literary awakening that saw the emergence of a new pantheon of South African writers grappling with diverse themes.
This literary upsurge suffered its first devastating blow with the sudden passing of Phaswane Mpe on December 12 2004. Mpe’s memorial service was held at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (Wiser), where he had studied and worked for many years. In paying homage to Mpe at the memorial service, Duiker read an excerpt from his third novel, The Hidden Star, a work in progress at the time. Two years earlier, I had attended an event at Wiser at which Duiker and Mpe shared the same platform, as had been the case on many other occasions.
[Duiker] served as a source of inspiration to aspirant young black writers
— Annari van der Merwe
Barely a month later, the news emerged that Duiker had died by his own hand on January 19 2005. At the time of his passing, Duiker was still working on his third novel, which was posthumously published in 2006 as The Hidden Star. Last year, the book was translated into isiXhosa under the title Inkwenkwezi Efihlakeleyo by scholar and literacy activist Xolisa Guzula.
New editions of Duiker’s work are being published, and it is also being adapted for the stage and translated into other languages, including French, Dutch and German. Duiker’s output may be so resilient because his stories are exquisitely written and timeless narratives that will retain their relevance for as long as humanity exists.
At the time of Duiker’s death, the brazier had already caught fire. Niq Mhlongo became the next addition to the Kwela stable, and throngs of other black authors soon followed. The South African literary revival that ensued is a continuation of the movement that began with Duiker at the turn of the century. He cleared a path for the exploration of unconventional themes and paved the way for young black writers to be published. He achieved all of this before he turned 30. Duiker remains one of the strongest writers ever to have come out of South Africa — and is arguably the best to have emerged during the democratic era. On April 13 he would have turned 50, and what he might have achieved had he lived can only be imagined.
The question that will always haunt us is why someone with such a great mind, and whose star was so clearly on the rise, would take his own life. Perhaps we should have kept quiet and listened more intently when he wrote in The Quiet Violence of Dreams, “I don’t sleep well. I eat too little and smoke too much. I wish for death constantly, and sometimes at night when I sleep, I catch myself falling, dying, but I always wake up.” The tragedy is that he never woke up from his sleep on January 19 2005. May the voice of K Sello Duiker continue to reverberate through the quiet violence of our dreams.
• Mahala is an author and a senior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Johannesburg. He is the head of judges for the fiction panel in this year's Sunday Times Fiction Awards
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