Abstract This bachelor’s essay focuses on the depictions of life and death in the novel Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda. It claims that the novel is mainly focusing on a concept of life although it is set in a time in South Africa which is filled with death. The theory being used in the essay is mainly the postcolonial theory by Elleke Boehmer regarding terror since her definitions of terror corresponds very well to what is written in the novel. To add to this postcolonial theorist the essay has a feature of the structuralist binaries to enhance the focus upon the dichotomies of Life and Death. The essay discusses the situation of violence in transitional South Africa as described by the novel and focuses mainly on violence and politics to investigate the depictions of death. The representations of life in the novel are mainly shown through the magical realism, the story telling and the funerals which are visited by the main character Toloki. The essay explains that the novel is mainly focused on the binary opposite of life because of among other things the ending and the depictions of the funerals.

I shall argue in this thesis that Zakes Mda's novels Ways of Dying (l995a) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995b) are magic realist texts that are representative of the hybrid nature of this literary mode. Furthermore I shall demonstrate that Ways of Dying (l995a) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995b) share common elements with a variety of magic realist texts. Mda's own creative and literary consciousness has been shaped by an intellectual background stemming from tertiary education at Ph.D level, his teaching positions at various international universities, and his knowledge of African folk-culture. The seemingly contesting streams of Western education and African mysticism are not presented as sources of conflict in Mda's novels, but rather as syncretic forces of potential transformative power. Mda displays in his project as a novelist, the continuing concerns of black writers who saw the novel as a tool for socio-political change. My thesis therefore also investigates the extent to which Mda's use of magic realism in the novels mentioned above, signals a radical shift in literary representation by South African black writers who wrote in English. Mda's novels transcend Black Consciousness-inspired protest that characterised black literature in the 1970's and 1980's. His use of tropes associated with magic realism, African folk-culture, the apocalyptic and carnivalesque has enabled him to create a discursive space for South African black writers on the international stage, and foregrounds a movement towards literature that offers opposition to being classified as merely ''black writing". The death of the old order in South Africa and the birth of a new one, invites questioning and analysis of the position of the self during a period of cataclysmic change. That the apocalypse brings with it both death and renewal could be seen within the context of post modernist visions of the erosion of the self and death as the ultimate reality. Mda's novels, Ways of Dying (l995a) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995b), are the first English narratives by a South Afiican black author that can claim affinities with postcolonial writers such as Carpentier, Marquez, Okri and Rushdie. These writers reflect in their narratives, the infinite possibilities of magic realism in reclaiming the self submerged by the colonial experience. I shall attempt, in Chapter One, a survey of specific theoretical assumptions relevant to magic realism. Chapter Two will provide biographical details of Zakes Mda the playwright, poet, theatre practitioner, film producer and novelist and the importance of magic realism in his writings. Chapter Three is an analysis of Mda's published plays and points to the early uses of elements consistent with magic realism in his work. Chapters Four and Five are investigations into Mda's use of magic realism in Ways of Dying (1995) and She Plays with the Darkness (1995), respectively. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1998.

Since the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and his subsequent election to the presidency in 1994, South Africa certainly has not achieved the hopes and dreams of its people or for the rest of the continent. But despite bleak conditions, there are many who still have hope for their country. One of those people is Zakes Mda, and his hope is reflected in his novels. Yet, his novels remain complex. They do not provide all-encompassing solutions or answers to the problems that face the nation. But they do address questions with possibilities, suggestions, and innovation. The South Africa he creates, both in the past and the present, embodies what the real South Africa is and isn’t, and what it has the potential to be. Mda is not afraid to be critical of his own people, he is not afraid to face the history of his country with an equally critical lens, and even more importantly, he is not afraid to face the future of his country with that same critical gaze. This open approach to the people of his country, to its history, and current policies opens up his narrative to imagination, allowing his characters to re-envision themselves more completely and form a more complete and encompassing cultural identity that was previously denied to them.