Reviewer: Jennifer Crocker Wayfarers’ Hymns
Zakes Mda
Loot.co.za (R215)
UMUZI
ZAKES Mda is one of the most brilliant writers, but he is more than that, he also writes plays, is a poet and an artist.
In Wayfarers’ Hymns he takes us on a journey from a village in Lesotho to Johannesburg, the City of Gold, with a stopover in the Free State.
Boy-child, the main protagonist, is a wandering singer of hymns, hymns in this case not to be confused with church music, but rather the stuff of Famo music, a genre that communicates the very stuff of life.
Boy-child has a concertina and aims to become a kheleke, a master of the genre, a revered one. His hymns are dedicated to his sister “Moliehi, child of my mother”, a…
