A Walk through Hillbrow: Melancholic Attachments, Impeded Movement and the Search for a Post-Apartheid Image of Masculinity in Kgebetli Moele's Room 207

Abstract

ABSTRACT In South African writing, Johannesburg, as the economic centre of the country, has continuously been a topic for novels and poems throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the so-called “Jim comes to Jo’burg” genre, protagonists coming from a rural area are presented as being in danger of being seduced and swallowed by the corrupt ways of the city. Kgebetli Moele's Room 207 (2006) draws on and writes back to this genre in various ways. The novel focuses on the lives of six young black men who live in Hillbrow and insist that Johannesburg is no longer a “capital of sins”, but a place where dreams of a better future are possible. This article suggests that despite the narrator's claim that post-apartheid Johannesburg is a city of dreams and hopes and now belongs to the black population, the narrative is haunted by melancholia and an inability to confront both Johannesburg's and the country's past. I base my observations on Freud's theory of melancholia as the pathological alternative to mourning, to show that the protagonists have not overcome the losses or injuries incurred by the unjust and segregationist apartheid system. This manifests in a crisis of their masculine identity, which in turn can be traced back to a melancholic attachment to the image of the male anti-apartheid freedom fighter. Finally, by drawing on Sarah Nuttall's (2008, 2009) and Achille Mbembe's (2008) observations on Johannesburg, this article argues that Johannesburg itself appears as a place of loss towards which the protagonist develops a pathological melancholic attachment.